New DVD Spin: Close Encounters, Princess Bride, and It's a Wonderful Life

The "Nice to See You Again" Discs of the Week:

Close Encounters of the Third Kind: 30th Anniversary Ultimate Edition (Sony)

An obsessive-compulsive man, prone to seeing things and then sobbing in the shower, loses his job, abandons his wife and kids, and goes on the lam to Wyoming, where he submits to a secret government black-ops project involving foreign kidnappers.

Steven Spielberg's classic enters the next-generation digital age on a sparkling new DVD and now also on the new Blu-ray disc format. The newly remastered image is vivid and razor sharp, and the sound options include Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Lossless Master Audio.

Whether you choose the DVD or Blu-ray edition, each of these multi-disc sets incorporates all three versions of the film, including the first-ever home video release of the 1977 original theatrical cut, as well as the re-edited 1980 theatrical Special Edition and Spielberg's definitive Director's Cut released to home video and Laserdisc in 1998 as the Collector's Edition, then on DVD in 2001. (IMDB.com details the various edits here.)

The Blu-ray release provides for all three versions of Close Encounters on one 50GB disc through a process known as "seamless branching," made possible with the added interactivity of Blu-ray's software and the robust processing power of the second-generation players.

Both the Blu-ray and the DVD versions are packed with bonus features, including deleted scenes, a new 22-minute exclusive interview with Spielberg, the 97-minute "Making of Close Encounters of the Third Kind" retrospective documentary, a fold-out mini-poster that illustrates the alterations made to the film over the years in a timeline flow-chart, and a 64-page Collectible Booklet. Available only with the Blu-ray version are additional bonus features including all new (and expansive!) "Storyboard-to-Scene Comparisons" (about 90 minutes), the original 1977 "Watch the Skies" featurette, a subtitle track version of the alterations timeline flow-chart, and more.

It's a Wonderful Life: Two-Disc Collector's Set (Paramount Home Video)
"Teacher says, every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings." This is what they're teaching kids in schools these days?

With this DVD edition, Frank Capra's holiday standard has never looked better on home video. Disc One beautifully restores the original black-and-white image so that it's noticeably superior -- cleaner, sharper, improved definition -- compared to previous releases. The second disc holds a newly colorized version, and it's surprisingly well done (if you must have a colorized version).

We get the same extras found on the earlier Silver Screen Classics edition: a tribute to Frank Capra narrated by his son Frank Capra, Jr.; the 23-minute 1990 TV special "The Making of It's A Wonderful Life" hosted by Tom Bosley with Sheldon Leonard, James Stewart and archive footage of Capra; and the original theatrical trailer.

The Princess Bride: 20th Anniversary Edition (MGM)

The Grandson: "Has it got any sports in it?"
Grandpa: "Are you kidding? Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles..."
The Grandson: "Doesn't sound too bad."

This popular confection, directed by Rob Reiner, returns for its 20th anniversary. This is, however, the fourth time MGM has released the film on DVD. So the big question is: Does this edition make a worthwhile double or triple-dip for fans? Hardly.

If you already own last year's two-disc Collector's Edition, this one has little to offer. The image is slightly improved in ways that only the more eagle-eyed DVDphiles will notice, and the 5.1 audio sounds the same. Rather than a super-duper 20th Anniversary package that bundles all the extras from the 2001 Special Edition and the 2006 Collector's Edition, and then adds more, we instead get none of the bonus material from previous releases and only a few meager new items. Three retrospective featurettes -- "The Princess Bride: Untold Tales," "The Art of Fencing" and "Fairytales and Folklore" -- total less than 26 minutes. The only other menu item is a commercial for "The Official Princess Bride DVD Game," which isn't even out of development yet. Inconceivable!

Read about more new DVDs.

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Mark Bourne

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