What did I tell you all..!

And yet it's still available for pre-order at these places:

Amazon.com
DVD Empire
Deep Discount DVD
BestBuy.com

What's the difference between a feature-length documentary and the exact same documentary broken up into four parts?

I'm not saying the docs are great, but if your big complaint is the three extra times to have to hit "select", I can't agree that it's an issue. [I actually preferred it with 'Color Purple', because I could watch one, run to the store, watch another one, go have a cigarette, etc. I didn't need to figure out where to pause it, I just waited till it stopped.]

He has often said that it ruins the magic to have other scenes floating around ... I imagine because people start to second guess the cut that he released, thinking "Hey, this way might've been better," when he never wants people to be thinking about the filmmaking at all.

I don't know about 'Lost World' [apparently there may be some on a British 'Jurassic Park' too], ... I know that 'Jaws' and 'Close Encounters' both have deleted scenes because those scenes were made available to the public previously; 'Jaws' had a TV edit which was padded with a few scenes, and I doubt I need to explain the complicated release history of 'Close Encounters' ... but, in those cases, since the audiences had already seen them, he said he wanted people to be able to see them.

One other thing to keep in mind: Since Spielberg still edits on a flatbed, there would be added difficulties involved in including deleted scenes, even assuming (with no reason to) that all the deleted scenes were fully edited up to his snuff before he decided to delete them.

I'm with you on this; I expected a 'Munich' doc. But I'm sure that the first making of (some form of "Writing Munich") will involve the true history.

The thing is, it's not that he doesn't want to talk about the movies (obviously) ... he has some fundamental objection to an audio track of that talking accompanying the picture.

Which makes total sense until you see him on the 'Lawrence of Arabia' disc talking about how he watched it with David Lean once and Lean sat and gave him stories and anecdotes about the making of it the entire time they watched it. He drools over this, yet doesn't seem to want to make other people drool the same way...

Don't tell me you're gonna waste your money and get into the whole HD-DVD thing...

It's never wasting money when you invest in a product that is superior in terms of audio and video.

It's not an issue of hitting "select" multiple times, but rather the general quality of said featurettes: fluffy (mostly). However, a "documentary" often indicates greater depth, in my opinion. Obviously, there are plenty of exceptions, but at least labeling it as a documentary is a step in the right direction (they paid the extra money for the labeling). Of course, again, there are fluffy documentaries, too, but after experience with Paramount's featurettes and Spielberg's featurettes, I have an aversion to the term.

Again, just my opinion.

It's wasting money, because it's a new and evolving format. First of all, nobody knows which of the two will prevail, and moreover, there are already better formats on the horizon, so it's possible that within five years HD-DVD and Blu-ray will be obsolete.

Yes, and the first HD-DVD reviews have been very modest. Some even very disppointing, actually. AVSForum for one. Unless, one is made out of money, I don´t see any reason to upgrade just yet.

Personally, I believe HD-DVD and Blu-ray will be nieche products like so many down the road before them. The majority will not very likely go out and upgrade their DVD collection once again. VHS to DVD was a HUGE change. From DVD to HD-DVD or Blu-ray is not. And it really needs to be as big as a change as from VHS to DVD, and that´s not HD-DVD or Blu-ray.

Yes, the inital reaction of The Digital Bits is that the visual (not factual) difference between DVD and HD-DVD is not as eye-opening as that of VHS and DVD.