I saw this last week at the New York Film Festival (shown with intermission, by the way) and during the Q&A after the screening Beatty made it quite clear that he does not like the idea of a running commentary track, and would only agree to discuss the film for supplementary material. He also admitted that he's not been a fan of home video, but has come around to realize that DVDs are a good thing.

P.S. - The brief delay to Oct 17 for the DVD release was to accomodate the current theatrical engagement (only here in NYC?).

I didn't know about the release date change and neither did DVDPlanet because my copy shipped last week and arrived yesterday.

Here is our review...

http://www.upcomingdiscs.com/dvd_rev...pe=date_posted

"Whether I like it or not, Reds remains a vital and favorite film by many people. The interviews provide a good supplement to the feature, and the picture looks fairly solid. All in all, at a cheap price, it’s a touchstone for any Democrat, and is worth picking up if you’re one of them."

Link's not working.

I've never seen Reds, but I remember when it came out. It was, IIRC, competing with Raiders of the Lost Ark for the Best Picture and I was naturally hoping that Raiders would take home the little gold naked guy.

Reds seems like it's in kind of a weird place. I remember a lot of hype when it came out and a lot of Oscar nominations, but it really seemed to disappear after that. I don't remember ever seeing it on cable or in a video store in the past twenty or so years, and even now, it seems like it took almost ten years to be released to DVD.

Is there a reason for this? I realize that the subject matter could be pretty controversial, especially in the 80s at the height of Reagan and the Cold War, but I don't remember any kind of backlash against it either.

Is this just considered to be uncommercial and overlong (perhaps like Branaugh's Hamlet) and was thus forgotten?

The primary reason would seem to be Beatty's reluctance to have it released to home video. As I mentioned in my post above (#26) he has only recently began regarding DVDs with any affection. Although he didn't specifically say this, I would guess that the reason he is now more receptive to DVDs is because home screens are getting bigger, and home theater systems present movies in a way that a 21" TV cannot.

Your link literally says www..com (and so does the link in your profile, and in your signature, so I couldn't fix it from that either--I guess maybe your site is blocked from being posted here).

I don't really understand your snippet--from my remembrance (which is admittedly pretty old, last saw this 20 years ago) this movie has nothing to do with Democrats, unless you think we're all Socialists.

Anybody that thinks Reds is pro-communist obviously hasn't seen the entire move or wasn't paying attention at the end. John Reed was a tragic figure who sacrificed his journalistic intregity for the Socialist cause and ultimately suffered for it (even if he may not have regretted it).

Regardless of your political persuasion, this movie provides most of the background you need to understand why Communism was doomed to fail.

How big of an influence do film director's really have in getting their work put out onto DVD's, etc. Or is it more the studios say in all this? I have always thought it's around or near 50/50 as long as the studio has the rights to distribute the film onto DVD and have interest in doing so.

The site is upcoming discs

for some reason it is getting automatically deleted when posted.