duluthdemon

I read Eric D. Snider's DVD review of Catch & Release at http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=27960 and...

Terrible review!

Why didn't Snider mention the Smith/Grant commentary was heavily censored? I was pissed when I brought this home, only to hear bleeps and long passages of legal-hopscotch sliences.

Geeze...I doubt Snider even listened to the track.

It's bad enough he recycles his theatrical reviews for DVD reviews, but now he isn't even watching the product.

EricDSnider

- The first time I saw this movie was on DVD.

- I did listen to the commentary track, noticed some of the language was bleeped, and thought, "Huh. I guess they figured people who bought or rented a PG-13 movie didn't want to hear a lot of F-bombs. Makes sense to me." It didn't seem like a big deal, so I didn't mention it.

Josh Z

I gotta be honest with you, the prospect of listening to an audio commentary for something like Catch & Release fills me with an immediate sense of dread. There are few things on earth as tedious as being forced to suffer through the bonus features of bad movies. That's a bullet that DVD reviewers have to bite but you the public don't necessarily have to. Doing so is a public service.

What, the reviewer's thoughts about the movie after seeing it theatrically no longer apply when watching it on DVD? What's the point of writing two separate reviews for the same movie?

duluthdemon

Recycling a theatrical review is just tacky and lazy. Why not let another writer take the DVD review? I wouldn't be hard. It would give the site further dimension and might elicit discussion.

Seeing the same written word twice, only now with a threadbare (possibly absent) examination of the supplements looks like the writer didn't care and just wanted some free DVDs.

Eric, I apologize for my assumption that you've written about this film before. I jumped the gun due to your past offenses. But put some more effort into reviewing extras, please. Your fellow writers are making you look foolish AND you cost me 20 bucks.

Josh Z

A person who saw the movie theatrically is well-positioned to evaluate how well it was transferred to home video. Likewise, when a title is double-dipped, the person who reviewed the original edition is best suited to compare it to the re-release. Requiring that reviewer to write a whole new review of the movie when their thoughts about it probably haven't changed is ridiculous, regardless of how "tacky and lazy" you think it is.

Further, DVDTalk encourages multiple reviews of the same titles. The fact that one reviewer "recycles" something previously written does not prevent another reviewer from covering it as well for that "further dimension".

You also assume that the reader has read every review of a particular title on the site, which is rarely the case.

Shannon Nutt

I can see the OP point, although he probably should have been more tactful about his comments. Kevin Smith is well-known for great commentary tracks, and - at least to my knowledge - none of his have been censored until now (including the PG-13 Jersey Girl). I'm guessing there are Smith fans who are picking this up JUST for the commentary...so it's something that I feel definitely should have been pointed out in the review.

As for reviewers reviewing DVDs of theatical reviews they also handled...no problem with plagerizing your own opinions of the movie again, but to cut and paste your old text over is a lazy practice, and frankly should be discouraged. A better policy (most magazines take this approach) is to - as duluthdemon pointed out - just to make sure someone else reviews the movie. More opinions about one title are always welcome...but I guess I'm one of the "few" that likes to read multiple reviews of one movie (he says with tongue firmly planted in cheek).

I do agree with Josh's "douple dip" DVD policy though...I seem to remember angry posters here who "insisted" a reviewer of a new version look at all previous copies for comparision purposes (even if they didn't have them, or have easy access to them) or their reviews were not valid.

Adam Tyner

In terms of vulgarity, although some of his tracks -- Clerks II and Dogma -- have a few bleeps for legal reasons.

I think reviewers should read over the text again and revise it, where necessary. There are plenty of cases where I've seen a movie a second time and spot some additional things to point out or may have a different take on things another time through. But if his opinion is substantially the same with another viewing, I don't have any problem with someone reusing the bulk of an earlier review. I'd almost argue that I'd prefer the opinion of someone who's seen a movie at least twice.

EricDSnider

I've thought about it for a while now, and I am truly, genuinely, utterly at a loss to figure out WHAT POSSIBLE DIFFERENCE IT COULD MAKE whether a person re-uses his theatrical review for the DVD review. Assuming he's rewatched the film and made adjustments to the review as necessary, why does it matter? What should I do instead: Watch the movie again, then write a totally new review from scratch, in which I express essentially the same opinions that I expressed when I reviewed the theatrical release? That would be fine if this were after-school detention and we needed to give people busy work to keep them occupied. But it isn't, and we don't.

The proposal to assign DVD reviews to people who did not review the film theatrically is reasonable. But that would be a matter to take up with the people who run the site, not with the individual writers, who are simply doing the only logical thing by re-using reviews where possible. If it's "lazy" or "tacky," then tell me, what would be the writer's best alternative?

Finally, concerning the Kevin Smith thing: I guess I'm sorry if you bought the "Catch & Release" DVD solely because it had a Kevin Smith commentary, and if you were subsequently disappointed that you didn't get to hear Kevin Smith say the F-word a lot. I'm afraid I can't really take responsibility for costing you $20, though. I think a person who will blind-buy a DVD of a movie he has no interest in JUST for a commentary track is kind of on his own, finances-wise.