DVDuesday: Sin City, Fantastic Four

Chris Gore, indie-film-genius, Film Threat Webmaster, coauthor of  The Complete DVD Book and gadabout town, is back with his weekly delve into digital digression called DVDuesday. Today Gore takes a look at Fantastic Four, and the special edition DVD of Sin City.

Sin City: Recut, Extended, Unrated
This double disc set includes the theatrical cut of the film with extras, and the second disc is the film recut into four separate stories. It's unrated and has more sin, er, scenes.

Extras include a featurettes about Frank Miller, the cars, props, makeup, wardrobe, the monochrome look, trailers and three commentary tracks. The second disc has the four individual stories recut so they run as separate tales with a load of extras too, including the 15 minute flick school – green screen edition, plus the ability to watch all the films from the raw footage on green screen.

It also features a commentary track with co-directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller and another track with Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino and Bruce Willis. On the commentary we learn how Rodriguez used revolutionary production techniques to make this movie. Bruce Willis only worked on the film ten days, and most of the actors never even met, even when they were in the same scene. Bruce saw a short test of the look, along with his name in the credits, and within two minutes, stopped the tape and said he would do the film.

Miho, the assassin, is sprayed with blood and does not blink – seems simple, right?  But it's impossible not to blink when you're sprayed, so Rodriguez simply pasted the actress's unblinking eyes from another take onto her face. Another interesting fact: Steve Buscemi was originally going to play Yellow Bastard, but he could just not get his head around the character.  Miller had to be convinced to be involved, and Rodriguez asked him to come to Austin to shoot a test, which ended up being the first day of shooting.

Sin City 2 is coming; Frank and Robert are getting started on it now! I originally recommended buying the scaled down version, so sell that off, and upgrade to this worthwhile special edition – one of the best discs of the year.
Verdict: BUY

Fantastic Four
Last summer’s Fantastic Four was not a good film, but it’s a lot of fun. Really. It is. It actually works as a “TV movie” not as a big summer movie.

The single-disc DVD has commentary, deleted scenes, the trailer, behind-the-scenes docs, music videos and an FF video diary in which Jessica Alba takes a mini-DV cam and documents the whirlwind press tour – the amount of extras are not bad for a single disc. The three deleted scenes contain more character moments between Reed and Sue, including one in which Mr. Fantastic morphs his face into Wolverine to impress her. It’s cute. 

The commentary is from the cast, without Chris Evans, the human torch, and there’s not a lot of info imparted. Jessica Alba asks the cast questions – what was it like to stretch? Yeah, right. The best is Michael Chiklis who played The Thing. He is a true fan and put all of his enthusiasm into this project. 

Okay, there are three, count ‘em, three versions of the DVD – the single disc version, which I told you about, one double-disc version exclusive to Target stores where you receive an extra CD-Rom, and Best Buy has a 2-disc boxed gift set which includes a CD-Rom with the first 27 issues of Fantastic Four and some round trading cards or coasters.  This one is really for collector’s and geeks only.  Like me.

If you keep your expectations low, it’s fun.  Remember, fun, but not good.
Verdict: RENT