100 essential films. i tend to dislike lists like this mainly for the fact that i always feel like something is missing. but even with my misgivings i can' t help reading them. this one seems to be a bit different because aside from merely being a list, it also contains indepth reviews of the films on the list. so far they are only up to film number 17. i'll be curious to see if rubin and ed makes it onto the list. via scrubbles.

speaking of films, greencine daily has been discussing the issue of extras on dvds. are they worth it and do you watch them? i've wondered this myself. it seems with a lot of extras, i feel like the information is very shallow. i had grand hopes for an indepth look at all the references used in moulin rouge for their extras, but what we got was more akin to something you'd see on entertainment tonight. the lord of the rings dvd on the otherhand really went in depth, and of the dvds i own, for extras nothing can really touch that. i prefer to see shorts or interviews(if the interviewer is asking pertinent questions and it's not simply a pr commercial) as extras, most of the voice overs i have failed to watch/listen to. some voice overs i just find, well, boring.

it seems with the advent of dvd, every film seems to have some sort of director's cut included. usually i would be inclined to think the director's cut would be the superior version, but i don't think that's always the case. i'm still not sure if the director's cut of almost famous is better than the original theatrical release. there are extra scenes, and that is nice. but does it neccesarily add to the film as a whole? are they neccesary? i mean the original version of blue velvet was 4 hours long. a 4 hour version of blue velvet may not be an improvment. at that length i'm starting to think it's more of a serial and less of a single film. of course the original footage of blue velvet is long lost, so i don't think there is any chance of a 4 hour version surfacing.