...no FLIPPERS!! I know Eric Paddon will be happy
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
Excellent stuff. A full review will be up this weekend!
I intend on ordering from AMAZON. I think their price was pretty good. I can't wait. In any event, it's interesting that these little details you mentioned are missing. Has Universal been removing their old logos from various series in the past few years or what? Do they think that it might make the release seem dated? Or is it, perhaps, a licensing issue?AndyDursin wrote:Ed,
The shows on balance look very good. There's only a 5.1 mix offered and it sounds fine -- one episode had a muffled opening intro for whatever reason but everything else on Disc 1 is good to go. There are a good mix of deleted workprint scenes on many episodes, no supplements otherwise, but everything is at least in broadcast order.
The only omission seems to be the brief "bumpers" that used to air inbetween segments are edited out -- as is the Universal TV logo at the end. Guess I'm so used to seeing these shows broadcast that way it doesn't seem right when they're not there, lol
Also, there are no "alternate" openings -- like when ALAMO JOBE (to name one show) was broadcast it had a ragged, more synth-like opening theme...when it was on Sci-Fi Channel it had that as well (apparently Doug Fake is going to throw that on the 2nd or 3rd volume of the Intrada CDs). Here, it's just the principal "performance" of Williams' theme that most of us know opening each episode.
Again, not a big deal but if you're hard-core AMAZING STORIES aficionado like me you'll notice. Packaging is very good, I do wish they had retained the show's actual graphics, but overall I couldn't recommend it enough.
Incidentally if you buy from Google Checkout they have a $10 off $20 offer at DVDEmpire.com, so you can get it for $26 shipped! (and if not please use the Amazon link through the Aisle Seat site, too
Andy, I've been on the AMAZING STORIES bandwagon since it debuted in 1985. In fact, I think that it was THE MISSION that may have been the debut of the series in MTS Stereo. I was working at Radio Shack at the time and I bought this MTS Stereo tuner which looked like nothing more than an analog FM stereo tuner with a dial you had to turn in order to get from channel to channel!. I hated the fact that it wasn't even a quartz-locked tuner. It had the misgivings of drifting sometimes, but covered both VHF and UHF (My god, in the new world of HDTV both VHF and UHF are now ancient history). However, I was able to enjoy THE MISSIOn in glorious stereo sound (with a little bit of hiss and buszzing for added measure). In fact, I may actually have a cassette tape that I made of the sound that night somewhere around here. I remember that I got around the point when the plane was just landing when I had to flip the cassette over.AndyDursin wrote:I'm having a great time revisiting these episodes in their full, uncut lengths...as I wrote before AMAZING STORIES had high quality budgets and talent in front of and behind the camera, so even today the program holds up beautifully (unlike other genre shows of the period like the '80s TWILIGHT ZONE, at least technically).
I'm not sure I could recommend it any more highly...it's tremendous fun, even with the occasional clunker of an episode.
Eric, Goldsmith was my hero and I'm still in mourning. However, I agree, I'm getting sick of the over-use of his Universal logo theme all the time, even though it says volumes about him that a studio would still use this theme after 10 years (keeping into consideration that he's been dead for 2 years already).Eric Paddon wrote:Universal's first TV on DVD releases left the old Universal tags alone (Night Gallery, Battlestar Galactica, Columbo Season 1) but since then they have cut them all out. The only one they kept them in on more recently was "McMillan And Wife" because the theme music always segued naturally into the Universal tag in a different arrangement.
At least thank goodness they're not drumming Goldsmith's logo and tag into our heads as much as they were before. I've grown to HATE that from the overexposure.
It doesn't. Outside of FAMILY DOG and MISCALCULATION (funny '80s comic horror with Jon Cryer) there's not much to talk about. The big-hour long episode is Robert Zemeckis' terrible GO TO THE HEAD OF THE CLASS with Christopher Lloyd and Mary Stuart Masterson -- and even Alan Silvestri's score, if memory serves, was disappointing.Hopefully season 2 has a better ratio of quality vs. crap.