Question about different releases of two DVDs, "Donnie Brasco" and "Tears of the Sun"
 

Hi guys, hopefully somebody can answer this question for me.

I recently picked up "Donnie Brasco" and "Tears of the Sun" from Circuit City's current sale they have going on, for $6.99 each. Usually I would think that a newer release, with an extended director's cut, and "exclusive, never before seen footage" would be the best version of a DVD, however I compared the features of these with the older versions after I bought them, and it appears that that may not be the case.

The new release of "Donnie Brasco" seems to be missing deleted scenes, I think a commentary track, and something else. I'm not the biggest stickler for commentaries, I only occasionally listen to them, but I am curious if all the missing deleted scenes are only missing because they were added back into the film on this disc.

The same goes for "Tears of the Sun," as I believe the old release had deleted scenes as well, but the newer release has "over 24 minutes of never-before-seen footage." Are the deleted scenes from the previous release included in this?

Basically, I know I'm missing commentaries, but am I missing any footage of the movie itself with these newer releases? Am I missing any cool featurettes? And most importantly, which version do you recommend, considering the fact I'm not huge on commentary tracks, especially if the actors are not in them?

Any help here would be appreciated, before I drive myself crazy with this.

Thanks!

I know for Tears of the Sun, get the old version. In the commentary for the deleted scenes the director, Antoine Fuqua is like, these scenes are terrible and should never be in the movie. The extended cut just adds those EXACT same scenes that the director hates back into the movie.

Well for the extended Donnie Brasco I'm sure they also just took the deleted scenes from the older disc and shoved them back in the film. It wasn't a directors cut or anything.

Also with Donnie Brasco, the commentary was done for the original cut, so they would have had to insert gaps of silence during the extra scenes.

Sony seems to do this often. Releases like these go to show you that extended isn't always better.

Ah, good old Sony and their double/triple dips... They did this with A Knight's Tale and dropped the commentary with Helgeland and Paul Bettany.

Thing is, Sony kept Rob Cohen's commentary for xXx...

I have a thread dedicated to tracking DVD "upgrades" that lose special features. Link in my sig.