Jack says you're buying The Departed on DVD

Well well well,

I did the rare thing for the first time in two months of endlessly selling off my used DVD's...I actually bought one!

I found myself in the corporate conglomerate known as Future Shop (Yeah, and I frequent Cineplex Entertainment theatres and shop at Walmart too...aren't I a hypocrite?) to pick up a limited steelbook edition of The Departed on DVD.

And as some of my pals know, I love this movie to death. It's one of the best of 2006. Not only is it one of Scorsese's best flicks, but it is a story so richly layered with double-crossings, deception, lies and levels of power, and boy does it kick butt with repeat viewings. I normally don't see movies on a repeat basis anymore, but I viewed this mofo THREE times theatrically and have been counting the days until I can spin it on my home playa.

But what else did I see at Fuhrer Shop? A multitude of different editions of this flick:

- The 1 disc, widescreen edition that contains only the feature
- The same 1 disc but in the dreaded full-screen format (do any goofnuts still buy these?)
- The preferrable two-disc special edition featuring interviews and documentaries
- The previously mentioned steelbook edition, which houses same two discs of the SE
- A film only version on Blu-Ray DVD
- A release of the film on HD-DVD with the same special features of the two-disc SE

We're going format nuts! I was amazed I didn't see a Playstation Portable version on the same shelf.

(If you're one of those folks up in the Great White North that don't care for the dredded bilingual packing of their favorite movies on DVD, you'll be happy to know that the Steelbook edition is completely free of french text. Don't be fooled by the english/french insert on the back...it comes off.)

I'm still not that ga-ga over the whole Blu-Ray and HD-DVD format war that's going on right now. They both seem like good formats if you have fully invested in HD, for sure, but who knows which format is going to fold first? Right now, Blu-Ray is winning 3-to-1 in the sales, so I guess that's good for them. When all the dust settles and I feel like replacing my current television, maybe I'll make the jump. But those regular, low-res NTSC DVD's are still pretty hard to resist considering that the $6.88 bin at Wal-Mart is now 2/$10.00.

Oh, and if you do your homework, you can score discs off of Ebay for $1. Just a tip.

Jason
efilmcritic.com