Wednesday, September 30, 2009

woooooooooooooooooooooah, somebody's comin!


And he looks slightly better than he/she/whatever-it-wants-to-be (...) did after the Ghost Busters blew him (let's just say "him" shall we? Aren't sailers usually guys anyway?) up at the end of GHOSTBUSTERS. But even at the end of GHOSTBUSTERS his "skin" still had more texture than it does on this page. I mean, his face is THE biggest problem, IMO. It just sinks into his bib, with some generic smile carved in, and his eyes are just two little dots. WTF? And then his legs are waaay too long, and what the hell are those blocks at the end of his legs supposed to represent? Feet, right? They look like toes, really...WHERE ARE HIS FEET!!!!

So they screwed up the main reason for buying this thing, not to mention all the lack of care they put into the box itself. HOW MUCH GREEN was really IN GHOSTBUSTERS, the film? Slimer, obviously, was green, but wasn't that pretty much the extent of it? GHOSTBUSTERS had a lot of dark colors prominently featured in the movie. The uniforms they wore were a dusty brown, their clothing was gray and dark green etc....the streets were typically pitch black with just enough street and set-lighting to let you see what they wanted you to see...and the skies at & near the end of the film were various shades of darkness - from light gray, to darkly neon pink (?; I'm not very good at distinguishing colors) etc....SO THE ORIGINAL VHS cover, dark black background with a red/white no-ghost insignia featured on the cover would have made perfect sense for any given release of this movie on home video. Or how about the original theatrical poster with the 3 main dudes standing with their uniforms looking up at the stormy sky? That would indeed have worked!! But they instead pay some who-knows-who to design some crumby cover. The 2005 box at least featured the no-ghost-insignia, which looked a bit out of place in all that cheesy green background, but at least it was there for all to see loud and clear! But those lazy, careless diks had to put the title as "Ghostbusters 1&2" - THERE IS NO GHOSTBUSTERS 1!!!! There is GHOSTBUSTERS and there is GHOSTBUSTERS II, not GHOSTBUSTERS 2. When did this culture abandon their love for Roman Numerals? It was always FRIDAY THE 13TH VII: THE NEW BLOOD, not FRIDAY THE 13TH 7: THE NEW BLOOD. Or THE GODFATHER PART II, not THE GODFATHER 2. Either SONY just didn't care to satisfy all the little cravings us GHOSTBUSTERS fans have/had (or am I the only one who notices these things??), or people are just eating too many hamburgers and letting their brain ditereorate...and since they're saving money with ink by chopping off 2/3 of the title, why the heck not just abandon the miniature no-ghost-logo that traditionally replaces the "O" in GHOSTBUSTERS? and on this one post at Protoncharging, I commented regarding something about that, and this one guy came up with the MOST SQUARE-ASS ANSWER; 'well, it's not economical to have 2 no-ghost-insignias in the same picture'...WTF??????????????????????????????? IT'S PERFECTLY ECONOMICAL!!!! You have 1 big one, and 1 little one!! I used to have fun squinting at the tiny logo and seeing all the little details, and then just immersing myself in the glory of the no-ghost-sign at the focal point. I mean, that's like if someone walked up to you and ridiculed you for getting a big hamburger to almost fill your stomach and then getting a little hamburger to finish the job. Obviously, if I wanted two big hamburgers, (and could eat them at once), or if X restaurant had a bigger hamburger for sale, I would choose those options, but...agh...I mean, I'll admit that's not the best example, but AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

I don't know who'se right about the video transfer. Some people say it's improved and some say it's an abomination of cinema, ala STAR WARS post-1995...of course, they didn't cut up either GHOSTBUSTERS feature, so I'm not on the side of the "purists", but there was a reviewer at BestBuy DOT COOOOOOOM who said that the hi-def transfer was "off"...I can't really say much in regards to that b/c my "HDTV", according to some, or at least one customer review I read, "isn't a real" HDTV. And even if it is, it's only 720p, not the full 1080p. So it's not max. quality, and it's a cheap-o brand. So I'm not a videophile or whatever they call such folk (...). Basically, I need to do some more reading before I find out if SONY has indefinitely RUINED the GHOSTBUSTERS films...

The 1999 DVDs are my best bet though, it seems. Although GHOSTBUSTERS II, the 1999 release, didn't have any special features, the video is more reliable, as it hadn't been altered in any way, with the exception that it's on DVD, and thus looks outstanding(!!), so I'll go with that one until I know more about the effects of the "off" hi-definition transfer of the 2005/2006 DVDs. It would be nice to have a small handful of RGB & SRGB episodes, so I can hear that voice at the end of ? episode(s) say "deek" (aka dic, not to be confused with dik or some combination of both that I'm not sure I can print here...). The original first 1++(?) season(s) of RGB didn't say "deek" it just printed the logo (which was also different than it was later on...) and showed it to us for ?? seconds...I don't really remember the "content" of the episodes, with the exception of a very small handful, since I saw the first, uh, maybe 5? seasons, but I was so young, I mean it's amazing I remember as much as I do from those days of toddlerhood...
Oh, and GHOSTBUSTERS, the 1999 release, has the theatrical trailers for BOTH movies. Not to mention the boatload of other special features, most of which were carried over to the 2005/2006 releases (in 2005 they were released exclusively as a boxed set, then the DVDs IN the box set were released separately the following year).

Of course, if I were loaded with money, and blindly fanatical, I would buy EVERY SINGLE PRESSING of both GHOSTBUSTERS and GHOSTBUSTERS II. That would erase the dilemma of "missing out"; I mean, as stupid as that Stay Puft Marshmallow Man statuette looks, I still want it!!.

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