DVD Review: Daredevil Director's Cut

Finally a version that won't make DD fans cringe...

Presentation: This one disc double-dip comes in a standard DVD case with a slipcase. The menus are animated and make good use of Graeme Revell's score. B

Audio/Visual: Presented in widesreen, the picture and sound quality are very similar to the theatrical version, and the picture sould be good since the film was made in 2003. There's one or two hiccups in the editing where the new scenes were put in, but overall nothing to disappoint. B+

Content: Okay, I liked Daredevil the movie, despite it sucking. The writer/director Mark Steven Johnson excels at interpersonal relationships: Matt and Foggy, Matt and his dad, Matt and Elektra, etc..., but he really lacks in bring the superhero aspects to life, relying too much on Batman stereotypes.

But the added thirty minutes really helps improve this movie. Most of the major fights have added material, and now there's a whole new sub-plot with Matt Murdock actually being a lawyer!

Unfortunately, there's still all the annoying flaws of the original: the "Darecave," all that blind justice stuff, the blatant Crow rip-off, etc... that keeps it from being Spider-Man good.

Theatrical Version: C- Director's Cut: B

Extras: There's a new commentary and a featurette, but nothing too amazing. Pretty sparse compared to the theatrical DVD. And what, no isolated score? C-

Overall: Here's how I see things: This is the actual version of the film, but movie executives wanted it to be PG-13, so they can market it to their favorite demographics: teenagers. (And I could argue that the theatrical version should also have been a R rated film.)

If they had released this version, then it would have done better, at least with the critics. It's a shame that the only reason they even released it on DVD was as a cross-marketing ploy with the new Elektra movie. B

Elektra Score To Be Released

Music from the Movies reported that Varese Sarabande will be releasing Christophe Beck's score to Marvel's Elektra movie on January 11th.

Beck's score is described to have "experiment with unusual sounds and textures." The web site stated that 'Beck says that he wanted to "create textures and music beds and edit and manipulate them to create both strange and familiar musical elements."'

The talks of prerecorded orchestral tracks and abstract sounds made me very curious about this score, and I'm interested in hearing it when it comes out.

Beck's other credits include movies like Taxi, Little Black Book, and The Perfect Man.

Ultraman Justice

I've become interested in this fairly recent Ultraman ever since I bought a little gashapon figure of him.

Ultraman Justice looks like a cross between UltraSeven and Ultraman Tiga. Like most of the more current Ultramen, he has two forms: "Normal" mode (unless it has a different name) and "Crusher" mode, a more powerful mode.

One of the more interesting things about him is that his host is a woman (GASP) played by Kazue Fukiishi.

As far as I can tell, he's only in one film, "Ultraman Cosmos VS Ultraman Justice," where evil robots/aliens are going to wipe out humanity so they can inhabit the Earth, and Ultraman Cosmos has to stop them. Only the robots/aliens have taken control of Ultraman Justice, so they have to fight each other. Soon, U-Justice breaks free of their control, and together they beat the robots/aliens.

Or so I've heard. If you know anything about Ultraman Justice, let me know.

Fantastic Four Movie Update

The new picture of Doctor Doom has been circulating the web for awhile. It looks good; Doom's got his traditional green robes and metal mask. Meanwhile, I heard that we might see a teaser trailer as soon as January, just in time for the Elektra movie.

Speaking of...

The Elektra movie official site's now up with new wallpapers, an image gallery, and a couple of behind the scenes movies. No word yet on the soundtrack, though I hope that there'll be a score CD.

In other news...

Hopefully by the end of the week, I'll have some more new chapters typed up for my novel. But I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.