Anyone else notice that the back of the case says "Presented in a "Letterbox" widescreen format preserving the "Scope" aspect ratio of its original theatrical exhibition." When it is clearly presented in a "Flat" aspect ratio?

Yes I did. I was puzzled about that, since the only review I had read (dvdbeaver) prior to seeing the dvd, as well as my memory from the theater, conflicted with this. Just a misprint, luckily. Nothing worse than a dvd in the wrong ratio (see Tideland).

In most instances I've seen, the two disc is only a few dollars more. Is it more expensive than the single disc? Yes, by definition it is...but if you can't spare a couple extra bucks to get a better edition, then I guess I don't know what to say.

Wow! I am glad I got the 2 disc edition. The Black and White Version was great, makes me scared to watch the color version. If you are a fan of old horror movies get the 2 disc editon. Frank Darabont has come up with another masterpiece. This is one of those movies that makes me want to watch more movies. Time to watch Shawshank again for about the 50th time.

Just watched the black and white last night....awesome! I'll watch the color version later, but wow I really liked this.

Only got into some the special features...the FX and what not, very cool how they did it.

Finally saw this last night. Great movie, it really is. But that ending....

I had heard from a local talk radio personality that it was a punch to the gut, but I was in no way prepared for what I was about to see. All I knew was that something was coming, and I wasn't going to like it. And that last scene, that last big shock....

There are worse things than death. Far worse. The true horror.

--THX

When you don't know what to say, it's best not to say anything at all. :D

Here you go.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/vine/s...5&postcount=46

The shots with the color simply turned off on the tv are darker than the Black & White version on the DVD.

Well, I think Darabont was certainly aware that this might happen. After all, the mist is alwasy referred to as "The Mist". You'd think one of the townsfolk, if not most of them, would call it "fog"...

So... What's your point?

Still doesn't change the fact that Darabont supervised it himself and turning the color down is a stupid remark whether they look similar or not.

Of course, they will look similar, after all it is just Black and White, but it's things like shadows, tint, contrast, etc....

This is what DVD Savant has to say about the Black & White version:

(http://www.dvdsavant.com/s2542mist.html)

Personally, I saw no difference whatsoever between the B&W and the colour version with the chroma turned off, except for the graininess. OK, call me a Beotian. I also found the de-colourization process self-indulgent and a strain: It worked in some scenes - that were especially lovely in colour to begin with, mind you, like the family watching the storm approaching framed by the picture window - and it didn't in others. Especially ludicrous is the sight of the incredibly detailed reflective colour work on the tentacles and the very-hard-to-render transparency of the birds' wings totally smudged in the B&W version. You also lose what little contrast there was to begin with between the sunny day with blue skies and the incoming white mist.

As for having the colour version recolourized, I think it's more than just a joke. Some of the shots are a little too much drained of colour or on the trendy blue-green/two-colour Technicolor side for my taste. They would need to be tweaked to be as lovely and resonant as the rich colour photography of Hitchcock's The Birds, which was obviously an inspiration for this film.

But all in all, I liked the film and bought the 2-disc set. The re-write job was respectful of the original and added a great number of actual improvements to King's rambling, introspective but almost pointless story. This is one story King started as a short story, inflated to a novella size because he had no one to edit him and simply did not write an ending for because he ran out of time or inpiration or both, or he couldn't decently charge extra for the extra word-count.

Whatever the case is, King approved of Darabont's ending and said he would have used it if he had tought of it, which is more than good enough for me.

A mist and a fog are somewhat different things.

As per Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mist

"The only difference between mist and fog is visibility. This phenomenon is called fog if the visibility is one kilometre or less (in the UK for driving purposes the definition of fog is visibility less than 200 metres, for pilots the distance is 1 kilometre). Otherwise it is known as mist."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fog

"Fog is distinct from mist only in its density. Fog is defined as cloud which reduces visibility to less than 1 km, whereas mist is that which reduces visibility to less than 2 km."

And "the mist" in the story reduces visibility to about 10 feet...

Interesting trivia note... John Carpenter's film The Fog came out in February 1980. According to IMDb, John Carpenter admitted that his inspiration for the story was the British film The Trollenberg Terror (1958), aka The Crawling Eye <object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/-BCKXxWwNuA&hl=en"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/-BCKXxWwNuA&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>, which dealt with monsters hiding in the clouds. And King's story first appeared as a contribution to an anthology of short stories called Dark Forces http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/image...2135a010.L.jpg, which came out later in 1980. The editor of this anthology writes that King had the idea a year before. Given the time it takes to put a film deal together, it is probably likely that Carpenter thought of his story first... And being a fan of horror films, King would almost certainly have known about the film being in production, which probably explains why he didn't call his story The Fog.

DAN: There's something in the mist! It killed John Lee!

OLLIE: What?

DAN: Something! In the mist?

OLLIE: What mist? I don't see any mist.

DAVID: I see fog, certainly, but no mist.

DAN: Guys! There's something in the mist...

OLLIE: FOG, Dan.

DAVID: Yeah, seriously. Didn't you read the WikiPedia entry?

DAN: Fine! (gets back into frustrated manner) There's something in the FOG!

OLLIE: See, now you're changing your story.

DAVID: He's probably mixing up "there's" and "theirs" too, knowing him -

TOWNSFOLK: THROW HIM TO THE MONSTERS!

DAN: NO! NO! AAAAGH

MONSTER: Munch, munch, munch.

OLLIE: Welcome to Sesame Street, kids. Today's word is "fog".

DAVID: Mist.

OLLIE: Whatever.

so it's just a color adjustment and not actually different footage - correct?

Correct. No new footage but the film has been color-timed differently.

I really liked the B/W version a lot. It felt more tense and claustrophobic. Even though the mist kinda blended in to the gray tones. I still think the ending is out of character for David Drayton. He spent ALL that time trying to survive. I just don't think he would do what he did so suddenly. Ending doesn't fit. On repeat viewings I'm going to stop it where the novella ended.

In the middle of nowhere?

Here is the ending from the novella. Drayton, his son, Amanda and Mrs. Reppler have stopped at a deserted Howard Johnson. The fog is still on and the bugs keep bumping on the windows of the restaurant. There is gas to go another 90 miles. David has fiddled with a battery-operated ham radio and thinks he might have heard the word "Hartford" at the very end of the AM band. He doesn't tell the others yet. David has written the story and left it on the counter, presumably for somebody else to find.

I've always wondered if the other word was "dope"...

On the page before, the narrator writes:

How right he was! (Actually, King's non-conclusive ending is exactly like the one for Hitchcock's The Birds (1963), which was fine but shouldn't have been repeated, if you ask me.)

Well, it's been awhile since I read it. I do remember them driving under the tree-like leg. I've listened to the dramatized audio version several times too so that might have something to do with the ending I remember.

At first I thought the exact same thing. I look at it like this, yes he did spend all that time trying to survive because in a general sense, there was a chance to survive. Now he is out in the middle of nowhere, knowing full well what fate awaits himself and his passengers. So what is left to do. Make them suffer? Or end it quickly? It is that ultimate decision that a man has to make. I thought it was a nice touch.

in the novella does the character of Brent Norton (Andre Braugher) have a

The novella does hint at the film ending somewhat near its end.

Doesn't the novella also state a different ending as well? Not too sure but I read it somewhere that the book has a compared to the movie.

Exactly the same. Except Norton is not Black, of course. And someone in Norton's party - not the biker, there is no biker - agrees to have a rope tied around his waist after Norton has refused. The rope comes out bloody and cut off. There is no severed body, only the cry of some prehistoric beast in the mist™.

How about reading post #179 above?

No, it doesn't. But the important thing is that King approved of the film's ending and even congratulated Darabont about it. I also like

The film also contains an important moral for our times not found in the novella and that is:

It does. Pulling Skeleton Crew off the shelf. Page 128 of the original hardcover, quote (beware SPOILERS! probably): "I checked the gun and then put it into the glove compartment. Ollie had reloaded it after the expedition to the drugstore. The rest of the shells had disappeared with him, but that was all right. He had fired at Mrs. Carmody, he had fired once at the clawed thing, and the gun had discharged once when it hit the ground. There were four of us in the Scout, but if push came right down to shove, I'd find some other way out for myself."

I just loved how the folks who did the subtitles (close caption) of the film... stating that... "Monster Rumblings from the distance"

Only to find out that those were

At the ending sequence...

I stand corrected. The thought occurs to David Drayton just after he retrieves Ollie's bloody gun from the pavement while dodging a giant spider and just before he fumbles in his pocket in a panic for the keys to get the car started while his passengers are all screaming hysterically for him to get going - a rather hectic time for both the narrator and the reader to be entertaining such long term considerations, not to mention advanced mathematics. IMHO, it's the kind of out-of-the-blue pulp fiction macho posturing that doesn't work/doesn't register in the novella. (Page 123 of the 1989 paperback edition of Dark Forces)

Maybe, but even the strongest person can only take so much. Plus he did promise his son he wouldn't let the monsters get him.

Just a nitpick, but you shouldn't put it all on him. Three of the others obviously agreed with him.

Sorry, don't have time to read through nearly 200 posts....but, is the black and white version on the same disc as the color one?

No, on the 2nd disc of the SE.

True. Plus I guess there's no telling what they saw on their journey through the Mist.

Hmmm. It doesn't show that on the bonus disc at Netflix.

This is a tad off-topic, so my apologies in advance. One of the reasons I decided to purchase The Mist vs rent it was that I still thought The Weinstein Co. had an exclusive rental agreement with Blockbuster. I now see that this is available to rent from Netflix, so does that agreement no longer exist?

The good news is that I enjoyed this movie immensely.

Blockbuster deal applies only to brick and mortar stores. Netflix can purchase retail copies of The Mist and then rent them out. Although it is interesting to note that Weinstein always has that message: "This copy is intended for sale only".

I see. Thanks for the clarification.

--THX