Back to the Future 25th Anv. Trilogy on Blu-ray Oct 2010

Just thought I'd bump this to remind you that tonight at 7pm is the 2nd and final night to see the newly remasted print of Back to the Future on the big screen! For a list of AMC theaters screening the film as well as a link to buy tickets, go to http://www.amctheatres.com/bttf/ !

Also, tomorrow morning around 8am, Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Mary Steenburgen, Huey Lewis, Bob Gale, Robert Zemeckis, & Neil Canton will be appearing on The Today Show on NBC!

 

Leaving here in a bit to go too it. WOOO

 

Just got back. Man! What a blast! It was great seeing an old movie like this on the big-screen where I even noticed little details and things I'd never picked up on before the remastered print looks beautiful. Fun, fun, fun. People cheered in the movie during the right moments, applauded when George laid out Biff and at the end credits. Man! Just fun. More movies need to do this, remaster the original film and do a few one-showing nights for a special occasion.

Okay, the BD set that is coming out is there a "collector's edition" filled with all the nifty swag like we see in this video: LINK Because nothing I can find on the US release shows any collector's edition like this filled with nifty things like the sports book and the newspaper clippings.

And why, why, why would the UK get this set over America?

Not to go all nationalist here but, dammit, the movie is an American movie. So why does the UK get the better set and, not only that, the earlier release date for both the set and the theatrical re-release?

 

Got back from my screening about an hour ago. It was AMAZING to see it on the big screen again. I saw things I'd never noticed in dozens of viewings before... like the Auto Parts store from Part II shows up in the background of several town square shots in the 50s scenes. And young janitor/future Mayor Goldie Wilson has a GOLD TOOTH! Suddenly I finally understood why he had that nickname...

It's nice that the movie still works just as well as it did when I was 13 years old in 1985. And how great is Christopher Lloyd in this movie? I swear, I want to time travel back to '85 just to give him the Best Supporting Actor Oscar he so richly deserved for his work here (that's right, SUCK IT, Don Ameche in Cocoon!).

 

Yeah, I noticed Goldie's teeth too. Never noticed that before, amazing isn't it? Just a blast seeing this movie. The applause and cheering when George saves Lorraine was amazing.

 

It was the same in my theater. And I love that I can still notice new things in a 25-year old movie. Did they pass out free rerelease posters at your theater, too?

 

Before the show started two ushers came in, turned on the lights, and they did a "trivia contest." The first question was "What was the price of the gas at the Texaco station in 1955?" someone answered it and won the BD set. (I believe the answer is 19.5 cents) The second question was what show were the Baines watching when Marty has dinner with them (The Honeymooners) that person won... Some sort of collector cards... or something. The ushers left and then the movie soon started. The lights were still on and the sound was even off through most of the opening credits sequence. The sound didn't come back until part way through the credits sequence (when we're still just hearing ticking clocks) and the light finally got turned off about the time Marty enters the garage.

And, yeah, they were handing out posters for people too as you left but rather than handing them out to people as they left the doors you had to stand in line where they were passing them out. I didn't bother. It'd be neat to have but probably really just end up being more junk in my closet.

The scene where Doc enters the incorrect date for "The birth of Christ" as December 25, 0000 also got a laugh. (Wrong for, at the very least, because there was no year 0.)

 

Zemeckis is a bit CG-happy these days, but at least he hasn't touched the BTTF films.


Odd thing is, CG might work if they ever did a fourth one. However, I'd rather it not be the motion control stuff Zemeckis uses.

 

How many times will they release the trilogy do you think? I wish I could just see the new features only.

Can anybody who gets the set sum up the new features?

 

Pretty much has all of the same things the DVD release had. With the addition of a "time travel science" feature with the gay-haired Asian man who makes appearances on many Discovery and Science channel shows (if you watch any type of program on either of those channels dealing with physics, space, and theoretical physics you likely know who I'm talking about.) There's some new cast and crew interviews and the addition of The Ride aspects. (The History of the Future Museum stuff and the ride itself.)

So, all and all, a good upgrade of features over the DVD release not to mention the very nicely looking upgrade of the video and audio to the new format. How many times are they going to re-release the movies? Everytime a new media form comes out. They've hardly gone overboard with "re-releasing" the movies. There's been VHS releases, DVD trilogy release, I believe individual, stripped, DVD releases and now a BD release. It's hardly any thing over the top like, say, Star Wars or countless other movies so what's the problem?

My biggest problem with this set is that the packaging sucks! It's cheap, flimsy and lame.

You know how for the past, like, 20 or 30 years that we've had optical disc media to get the disc out of case you slightly press a button in the middle of the disc and lift it out? Well, apparently, Universal decided that was too hard for people to do so they decided to change it without filling anyone in on how to do it! The disc is wedged in there and no clear way to get it out. I ended having to bend the disc ever so slightly to lift it out. Research revealed the "secret" is to pull down on the disc slightly and then lift it out.

The box is too colorful and cartoony looking and the "jewel case" is flimsy and contains that cumbersome locking mechanism. I hated the look of the box so I simply put the BDs in my DVD trilogy set's box (which has a much nicer looking packaging) and put the DVDs in BD's case/trays. The BD release comes with six discs. 3 movie discs (extra features are on them) as well as 3 "digital copy discs" which I need about as much as I need another hole in my ass.

I recommend everyone does this, just replace the DVDs in your old DVD set with the new BDs. The box the BDs come in is bulky (it has open-able flap to reveal features), it's cheap looking, feels cheap and has the crappy design for locking the discs.

And I want to express, again, my disappointment over there being no collectors sets or anything in the US that contains all of the swag that various R2 sets are getting like toys, newspaper clippings, etc. I mean, seriously, what the fuck?

 

The UK also is gettting the DeLorean box set as well...and the "Inception" Limited Edition DVD Set isn't coming to North America either, but to cheer everyone up BTTF annotations thanks to Newsamara!



http://www.newsarama.com/film/back-to-the-future-annotations-anniversary-101026.html

 

What bullshit. Have American movie companies just decided they don't care about, you know, Americans when making DVD sets? "Eh, just put the disc in a cheap cardboard box with a complicated locking mechanism for the disc that'll result in them breaking some when they try and get it out. The Europeans? Give them all the nifty swag!"

 

Thanks for the description. I don't have a blu-ray player at home, and I don't think I'd want to buy DVDs just for a couple more features. I would pay less just for the extra features themselves if it were an option.

I thought the packaging on the regular DVD trilogy wasn't that great either, but mostly from an efficiency standpoint. Pulling the DVDs out of that super tight sleeve, and the individual cases being kinda flimsy.

 

They asked the same questions in my theater, too, along with one other (I think about 1.21 Gigwatts). The Texaco one was the last. And yes, it was 19.5 cents.

If there was a line for the posters afterwards, I totally missed it, because my friends and I stayed in the theater for a few minutes afterwards discussing how cool it was to see the movie on the big screen again. I still can't get over all the extra details I could make out at that size, like Goldie's tooth and 80s Doc Brown's old age makeup (he had definite crepe-paper style wrinkles on his neck).

 

It was similiar on my DVD set that I got at Best Buy. To get to the digital copy discs out, you have to lift out the movie discs and then slide the second disc out from underneath the center tab of the first slot. If I'd been little less careful or observant, I could very well have broken the discs.

I also noticed that the Bonus Features list a music video for "The Power Love", not "The Power of Love"... C'mon, guys... how did nobody catch that?

 

Here's a link to the Today Show segment:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/39846449#39846449

 

I want to be surprised that my local Best Buy didn't stock the blu-rays of this set, but I'm not. My Best Buy sucks.

 

Okay. On BluRay the other day I watched BttF 2 and 3 and while the picture quality and all of this nice and clean it's hard to really say they're a vast improvement. I suspect because there's not be a lot of improvements in sharpness and color quality since 1990. Sure there's been some but not shockingly enough.

So I put in the BD of the first movie tonight and? WOW! The picture quality here is great a sharpness, vibrancy and cleanness to it. Some reviews have said that the weakness in the latex makeup Lloyd, Glover, Wilson and Thompson have on in their older versions of themselves shows up more but I don't quite see it. I guess it's a bit more obvious but I think it still works because the actors I think still pull off the older characters. (Thompson I think does the best.)

Just comparing the BD to the DVD is like night and day, I'd easily say it's like comparing VHS to DVD if anyone doubts how much better the picture on BD is over DVD this would be the movie to show it off.

Even the black levels are far deeper. Stunning stuff. The BD picture has always been superior but it really shows off in an older movie like this one.

 

Don't know how long this sale will last, but as of RIGHT NEW Newegg.com is selling the Blu-ray for $39.98 plus free shipping. Tax depends on where you live.

 

It was great seeing the movie in theaters. This was a first for me. It's so... It's so... ...big.

I don't think I'll get the new DVDs. I was very tempted but I don't really like the packaging. The only thing that might persuade me is if they had a bunch of Eric Stoltz scenes on the bonus features.

The U.K. has always had a peculiarly strong relationship with Back to the Future. All of the bogus rumors for Back to the Future, Part IV originate in the U.K. I don't know why.

These features were also added on the individual 2-disc version of Part I that came out last year. I have such fond memories of The Ride that I couldn't resist that version, even though I already had the first trilogy set from 2002.