Giant Size #26: "Magical and Transcendent" featuring J.M. DeMatteis

Welcome to "The New 26", "Crisis on Infinite Formats", or "Format Reborn"! Our first foray into the new format is now available for your downloading pleasure (subscribe in iTunes/RSS). Sorry for the late posting of this Reading List installment. Reboots are a lot of work!

This past week's primary topic covers "Superan Origin Retellings" and Man of Steel. Joining me and co-host John Gholson is Justin Korthof, die-hard Super-fan who previously ran BlueTights.net.

Comics legend J.M. DeMatteis, one of my writing heroes, is this week's interview. He will return in future on the show, including in an episode this summer that will focus on Doctor Strange.

The weekly chat with Austin Books and Comics returns this week, in episode #27.

If interested in more Superman jumping-on points, check out the Reading List for episode #28 of the now-retired Comic Shack.

Reading recommendations from Giant Size #26: 

From the Panel Discussion

John Byrne's Man of Steel   Vol. 1
TPB: $10
 ComiXology: $2 per issue

One of the biggest, most long-lasting overhauls to the Super-mythos, John Byrne's revamp was the foundation of many modern readers' perception of Kal-El/Clark.

Superman: Birthright 
TPB: $16
ComiXology: $36 ($3 per issue)

Whether outright acknowledged as such or not, the bones and a lot of the meat in Man of Steel the movie come from this outstanding 12-issue run by Mark Waid.

Superman: Secret Origin
 TPB: $15
ComiXology: $18 ($3 per issue)

This re-revision of Superman's origin came less than ten years after Birthright, only to itself be undone by The New 52 wiping the slate clean.

Action Comics: The New 52
Vol. 1/2 TPB: $13/$19
ComiXology issues #1-12: $36 ($3 per issue)

John has really enjoyed Grant Morrison's run on Action Comics. I trust John's taste.

Superman: Earth One 
Vol. 1 TPB: $11
Vol. 1/2 Hardcover: $14/$16
Vol. 1/2 Kindle: $10/$13

There are a lot of major detractors of this "Superhoodie" origin reboot, which I wish they had used to signal a separate line of "Earth One"-universe comics, in the mold of Marvel's Ultimate line. In a separate Earth One continuity, DC could actually full-on kill major, iconic characters and leave them dead. Since Volume 1's publication, they've done a Batman: Earth One and a second volume of Superman.

Superman: Secret Identity
TPB: $16
ComiXology: $12 ($3 per issue)

Kurt Busiek's re-imagining of the Clark Kent of Earth Prime really grabbed me, and is a nice afternoon-worth of reading. Earth Prime is essentially our real world, where all the heroes we know are found in the same comics Earth Prime people know them from. There are no super beings until a Kansas farm kid named (as a joke) Clark Kent discovers he has the powers of Superman.

Superman: Speeding Bullets  (OOP)
TPB: used from $22

Unfortunately out of print, J.M. DeMatteis' brilliant reconnection of the Super-myth alters the landing site of the Kryptonian capsule to Gotham City, where Thomas and Martha Wayne find baby Kal-El and name him Bruce Wayne. DeMatteis and I talk about this briefly in this week's interview segment. Somebody help me find a decently-priced copy of this one.

Superman: Red Son
 TPB/Kindle: $14/$11
ComiXology: $9

Whether Mark Millar was directly inspired by DeMatteis' earlier "what happens when the capsule lands somewhere else?" story or not (my bet is that he was), having Superman raised in the workers' rights-centric Soviet Union is another fascinating twist on the concept DeMatteis pioneered with Speeding Bullets. This one is in print, and readily available all over the place.

It's a Bird
TPB: $9

Briefly mentioned on the show by Justin, writer Steve T. Seagle put together an autobiographical tale focusing on his juggling the various hardships of life with...writing Superman. A different kind of origin story for sure (the origin of a retelling), but very interesting in the context of the discussion, and added to my enormous "to read" list.

From the Interview with J.M. DeMatteis

The aforementioned Speeding Bullets

Moonshadow
"The Compleat" TPB: ~$30

A personal story with fantastical elements, it tells the story of a half human, half alien trying to find his way in the world. 

Brooklyn Dreams
Hardcover: $28
ComiXology: $10

As I put it, DeMatteis' followup to Moonshadow could be considered his telling of his own origin story. It was recently reprinted by IDW, and shouldn't be hard for your LCS to find if they don't already stock it.

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
Paperback/Hardback: from $7/$14

One of Bradbury's best works, it explores the joys of a boyhood summer.

From the After Dark (#391) 

Doctor Strange: Into Shamballa  (Out Of Print)
TPB: used from $15

It will take a great deal to unseat this as my favorite Strange "tale". It contains so much of what I consider the undiluted essence of the character. As DeMatteis so eloquently puts it, that he boils down to "the moment of surrender" in the face of his shortcomings. It features gorgeous painted art by Dan Green, and can be found secondhand for under $20 in general.

Doctor Strange: Master of the Mystic Arts Vol. 1 #54

Co-written by DeMatteis and Roger Stern, this was his first touch on the character that he's returned to nearly as often as he has the Justice League. Unfortunately, there's no in-print collection I could find, nor is it available on any digital service, including both ComiXology and Marvel Unlimited.

The Defenders: Indefensible 
TPB: used from $8

A lighthearted, different take on both Doctor Strange and the Defenders team that's relatively recent, and not too hard to find.

The next episode of Giant Size is the first in a two-parter that checks in on the state of Marvel NOW!, an initiative six months old and, in some cases, twelve months worth of issues in.

Screen Time #39: Beyond the Physical

Jim Dalrymple (The Loop, Amplified) and Tom Hall (DOOM, Commander Keen, much more) join me to reboot my signature show.

We discuss and speculate on the fast-approaching war to be the one box to rule them all. We start by taking a look at what we each have connected to our TVs and consumption habits. Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Roku, and many more players have wildly divergent strategies.

The point regarding Apple that I'm spending a lot of brain cycles on is the question of gaming. TV and movies are already pretty fleshed out, they just need more "channels". Many of the games in iTunes' App Store either were designed for physical controllers, or come from genre that traditionally use controllers. That new Time Capsule/Airport enclosure makes me wonder yet more. The price tag on the new generation of dedicated console game systems goes from $350 to a staggering $500. There's a notable gap between the "hockey puck" price point (Roku and AppleTV) and the "aircraft carrier box" one. More on this very soon, and certainly in next week's Screen Time.

In this week's featured interview, I talk with Jen Linck, VP of Digital for Acorn Media, who distribute the largest library of UK TV shows and telefilms to the US. We talk about their instant channel strategy, including exclusive content from fan-favorite series like Doc Martin, Poirot (with original star David Suchet), Foyle's War, Marple, and more.

Each episode of the all-new Screen Time opens with a panel discussion, followed by the interviews that had previously been the backbone of the show. This is the version of the show I've wanted to do from the start.

Acorn TV: New App and Exclusive Debuts for DOC MARTIN, FOYLE'S WAR, and POIROT

In the latest episode of Screen Time, Jen Linck (Acorn Media's VP of Digital) revealed some news relevant to fans of UK TV here in the States. Not only did she reveal a planned July overhaul to their still relatively-new Roku app and streaming service, but some exclusive, faster-than-usual US debuts of popular shows. The overhauled service promises 800-900 all-you-can-eat hours of content from across all genre of UK TV.

The sixth (final?) season of public television hit Doc Martin  will debut exclusively on Acorn TV, as soon after each episode's UK airing as possible. They have put new series of both Foyle's War  and Poirot  into production, with original stars Michael Kitchen and David Suchet reprising respectively. The new Foyle's War  will debut on Masterpiece, and appear on Acorn TV the next day after airing. The entire final series of Poirot  telefilms will see the first two debut on Masterpiece, but the rest, including the very last one, will debut exclusively on Acorn TV. There's a new series of Marple  being filmed, with US distribution plans still under wraps.

This is a huge deal for the new entrant to the "streaming channel" game, which currently costs $25/year or $3/month. The content arms race is on, and Acorn holds the SVOD rights to a staggering library of UK TV content. They're moving earlier than most others with libraries even approaching the size and quality of theirs.

Matt Zoller Seitz on James Gandolfini →

I was trying to get to bed and instead, I read this three times.

The author is one of the best living critics and writers, and this is great evidence in favor of that opinion.

Live-Action GATCHAMAN Trailer

The cartoon that Americans may know as Battle of the Planets  or G-Force  is getting a live-action reboot in Japan this August. The trailer has no subtitles, and I'm honestly not sure what "Bump of Chicken" means (you'll know what I mean), but the tone looks extremely...earnest, even when the antagonist shows up in a suit with a bunny-eared helmet. Are they going for Gatchaman of Steel ?

OOP Watch: Warner Archive Adds...Out of Print Paramount!

In an under-the-radar tweet among many others today, Warner Archive teased the best thing to result from WB Home Entertainment distributing the Paramount library: OOP DVD titles from Paramount are being re-released by Warner Archive Collection. I've embedded the "Oops"...or "OOPs", rather, video below, but here's the full list of titles revealed in the video, all of which routinely run for between $30-80 on the secondary market:

• The Naked Jungle
• The Miracle of Morgan's Creek
• Jonathan Livingston Seagull
• Hello Down There
• Brother Sun Sister Moon
• The Brotherhood
• The Molly Maguires
• Back to the Beach
• Lifeguard
• Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy
• White Dawn
• Anything Goes (1956)
• The Family Jewels

Warner Archive has confirmed to me directly that all previously-available extras will be preserved on these new releases.

Could this mean that more...many  more OOP Paramount titles might soon escape?

Out of Print Watch tracks titles going in and out of print on physical disc, an event which either makes it much easier or drastically harder to find the movies you love at a reasonable (or any ) price.

James Gandolfini

Gone far too young at 51, Gandolfini has meant a great deal to me since I discovered him as a teenage character actor. there isn't much I could say that isn't covered in his episode of Inside the Actor's Studio, embedded below.

He was in Italy on vacation in advance of a planned appearance and masterclass at the Taormina Film Festival.  He leaves behind a wife and an infant daughter. He had a pile of projects in the hopper. Deadline's Mike Fleming has written a wonderful piece about his years following and covering Gandolfini.

We've lost a great actor and a good man, based on everything said by anyone I know who worked with him in any capacity.

We've also lost one of the greatest actors to repeatedly work with (and be championed by) Tony Scott.

If you missed Not Fade Away  last year, or have never seen The Last Boy Scout, True Romance, Crimson Tide, In the Loop, or especially The Last Castle , you can't go wrong with any of them. If you only know him from The Sopranos , you may not be fully aware of the broad range of nuance and humanity found across his entire filmography. I'm most selfishly sad that I never saw him perform on stage. If there exists a bootleg of him in God of Carnage , I don't have nor know about it.  

A tremendously sad, left-field bit of tragedy hit yesterday. The acting world is a dimmer place ever since. 

Death of Comic Shack & Rebirth of an All-New, All-Different Giant Size

For a while, there have been two comics-focused podcasts on 5by5: Giant Size and The Comic Shack. 

We cancelled The Comic Shack last night, and in the same breath, we relaunched Giant Size. 

I teased the cancellation/reboot on Twitter and got a pile of dismayed, upset tweets in response. Many moaned "but I liked Comic Shack better than Giant Size!"

I'm an awful person for toying with the emotions of those wonderful human beings. 

The good news for those listeners is that Comic Shack is dead...so that its panel discussion format can merge into Giant Size and open each show.

This is the version of Giant Size I've wanted to do since the beginning, and it's how the show was originally developed. With my pal Jim starting 'Shack almost simultaneously to GS (which I wasn't aware of), I didn't want to step on his toes or "flood the market", so to speak.

Equally if not more problematic was that I needed more time and infrastructure to support the more complex, ideal Giant Size show format. This infrastructure included a regular co-host.

Except on rare occasion, that co-host is John Gholson, who has joined me for the final few Comic Shacks while we hammered out a rhythm and feel for the "All-New All-Different" Giant Size.

Last night, we recorded the opening of Giant Size #26, in which we discussed Man of Steel and Superman origin story retellings. The Giant-Size-traditional chat with Brandon from Austin Books and Comics will get wedged in after, and the show will close with the also-regular creator/industry interview.

The logic behind this format is that the tightly-moderated panel/jumping-on-point discussion is the welcome mat, which leads into "what's cool/new/new-to-you this week", and closes with an interview with a creator whom you may or may not be interested in at first. As often as possible, the guest will be directly tied to the panel discussion. This is a dastardly trick designed to turn you into a fan of these people before you even hear their voice(s).

Extra-long interviews will get chopped, with the overage going in the After Dark feed. Each show will be under 90 minutes, ideally hitting around 75 minutes, but this will vary as we break in the new structure.

The goal is for all segments to be open to the widest possible audience of listeners, whether you know how many times and in what issues Jean Grey died, you hate superhero comics, or have never read a single comic book. This is the comics show I've been wanting to do since day one, and it should hopefully appeal to everyone who liked either previous show.

The goal of Giant Size remains the same: we want to bring new and lapsed readers into reading, enjoying, and discussing comics. There are some fun comics-dedicated podcasts out there already, but none of them hit this precise cross-section, nor do many (if any) seem geared toward new or non-readers.

I also think we can achieve three shows worth of content in the time usually taken up by one. 

No one needs one more podcast just like six others to listen to each week, especially one that runs two or three hours. This is something All-New and All-Different, and I hope you like it.

I mentioned that Screen Time is getting an overhaul too, right?  More soon.

The Critical Path 87 & 88: "De Gustibus" & "Siri in the Driver's Seat"

This morning, Horace and I recorded two episodes back-to-back, in an effort to catch up on being behind as well as to address the mountain of news and topics to discuss from WWDC last week.

Part 1, "De Gustibus" looks back at his first-of-its-kind AirShow event, the thrust of Apple's desktop hardware strategy and the "hardcore" Mac Pro, and a bit on Mavericks and especially iTunes Radio. 

We closed the day with Part 2 ("Siri in the Driver's Seat") focusing a great deal on iOS 7, but not with the reductive, colors-and-pixels design lens that others have over the past week. We instead look at what this overhaul means with regard to where Apple is going next, zeroing in on Siri and other bolted-in service improvements and enhancements. The next installment of our AsymCar discussion spins out of that, and we close on what iWork for iCloud really means  in the grand scheme of all things Apple.

We're recording Episode 89 this Thursday morning. There really is that much to discuss. 

Discs in a Box: MAD MAX Trilogy Blu-ray

The Mad Max Trilogy Blu-ray set is a mixed bag in the only positive sense of the term.

The Mad Max disc is an exact duplicate of the existing Blu-ray (which lacks the extras on the DVD included on the MGM release), the Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior  disc is a completely new AV transfer that improves substantially on the 2007 release, and Beyond Thunderdome looks great in its Blu-ray debut.

The $35 price tag is less than the movies cost separately, and roughly equals how much the first two movies generally go for ($15 each). Whether you're fine missing on the couple of extras only found on the packed-in DVD of MGM's Mad Max release (more on that in a moment) is one thing...

From the exact, down-to-the-data duplicate Blu-ray disc of Mad Max .

An example of one of the few seconds where the print reflects damage, in this case from mold.

Packaging & Potential Repackaging Speculation

...and whether you want them all in one metal tin, which lacks text on its ostensible "spine", is another matter entirely. I would have preferred a steelbook, personally, but I don't have any other sets like this on my shelf. Anyone complaining about the case not saying "MAD MAX" along its side is picking nits.

As is the pattern with Warner multi-movie sets, there will likely be a budget version down the line, but there's no way of knowing whether extras will be preserved, or if movies will be crammed together on discs rather than on their own, causing quality to suffer.

As it stands, the standard multi-disc, plastic Blu-ray case that sits inside the tin carries the exact same UPC as the outer tin packaging, so don't expect this exact set to be duplicated without the tin...that is, unless it really is a "limited" release, in which case the plastic case guts will replace the old SKU at a presumably lower price.

Movies, Gaps, and Value

There are a few extras on the DVD included in MGM's release of the Mad Max Blu-ray that are missing here, but they don't break my heart.

The most prominent is a 17-minute documentary called Mel Gibson: The High Octane Birth of a Superstar. Also missing are a trivia track (no big loss), a photo gallery (ditto), and some TV spots (double ditto). The Birth of a Superstar  thing is a Peter Cullen-narrated puff piece with a few talking head bits with George Miller, Piper Laurie, and others who knew Gibson early in his career. It's no enormous loss, except for completists.

From the brand-new picture and audio transfer of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior , which finally sports lossless DTS sound.

Flesh tones are more natural, and the color balance looks natural across the board.

All three movies look and sound great, with the biggest Blu-grade improvement going to Mad Max 2 , whose previous WB Blu-ray was from the earliest era of Blu mastering (2007). If buying just that movie, make sure you get this one, and not the old one, which Amazon is still selling for some godawful reason.

I can't help but have a hunch that all three movies will drop to the magic price point of $7.99 apiece at some point before the holidays (as catalog releases often do these days, but if these movies mean a great deal to you, the (unnumbered) limited edition tin is a better deal than buying the discs separately for the moment.

I don't know why I focused on frames that show off shafts of light. Contrast is very consistent, with a multitude of dark scenes looking great throughout.

For a movie that's mostly black and brown and dark, when you do see color, it pops nicely (and not to the point of over-saturation).

Buying Advice

Here are some "if this then that" cases and how I recommend you buy what as a result. 

Have:  Mad Max  Blu-ray and/or 2007 Road Warrior Blu-ray
Want: New The Road Warrior  Blu-ray
Don't Care About: Beyond Thunderdome 

Get the single The Road Warrior Blu-ray

Have: None of the Mad Max movies
Want: At least Mad Max and Road Warrior Blu-rays

Get the Trilogy set if you want Beyond Thunderdome  (comes out cheaper than separately), grab single Mad Max  and The Road Warrior  discs if pinching pennies.

The stupidest reason that I like the tin is the Road Warrior image with Max and his dog glued to the inside cover. If you're a diehard Max  fan, the current price is reasonable, and if a collector, it seems Amazon is having trouble keeping it in-stock due to popularity.

Discs in a Box reviews and provides contextual commentary on Blu-ray and DVD box sets. DIAB covers everything from repackagings to true Blu-grades to the opulent mega-boxes that pack in loads of extra physical goodies.

Recent and upcoming releases are examined here, in addition to sets that have been collecting dust on store shelves for months (or years, in some cases).

WOLF OF WALL STREET Trailer

This looks better than pretty good.

Regarding Disney's "Digital Copy Plus"

I lost track of a news link I saw that reported this as something akin to Disney starting their own Mouse House digital locker service like UltraViolet.  It's not, and thank god, since we've got enough locker up there in the magical, mysterious "cloud".

Having redeemed the Oz the Great and Powerful  code, I can say that Digital Copy Plus is just a responsive design site that funnels you to your digital vault of choice, whether iTunes, Amazon, or Vudu.

Who actively uses Vudu, by the way? Other than Walmart employees?

Now, you can redeem those codes directly to your iTunes account from any web-accessible device via the responsive site. 

The biggest plus to Disney moving away from disc-tethered Digital Copy (aside from general convenience and stronger engagement) is that their Digital Copy files are now HD and carry iTunes Extras. Paramount, Universal, and Lionsgate/Summit releases have had this since last year. 

iTunes Extras still, inexplicably, only work in iTunes itself and not on iPhones, iPads, or the AppleTV. Maybe that's another no-brainer, long-neglected UI problem Apple will fix in this, the year of Apple adding missing features that they should have years ago.

Fox is now the only studio delivering Digital Copy in SD on physical discs. 

Frame 153: Kahn

I’ve been full of admiration for Madeline Kahn since I saw her in Young Frankenstein when I was a kid. If you love her work, you will likely fall for At Long Last Love in a big way.

 "He snores." "I know."

"He  snores." "I know."

This one choked me up. It was as if she were saying goodbye to me and fading into the mist.

Frame 152: Ralph El Demolero, Un Nuevo Clásico de Disney

For only the second time in my life, my half-sister is visiting from overseas. She grew up in Cuba, but now lives in Italy with her husband and daughter. A big highlight of both trips has been watching movies with my niece. A particular treat is getting to watch the Spanish version of Disney movies, which not only feature high-quality voice dubs, but in some instances, modified on-screen imagery.

This is the first one of these in which I've used SquareSpace's image gallery block. Expect to see more of them.

Frame 151: At Long Last

Musicals take a great deal of work in general, and even more so when it’s a brand new show. Even if some of the most talented people are working on it, a musical needs work, re-work, and a complete do-over at minimum. At Long Last Love is finally available in an edit and HD master that its writer/director Peter Bogdanovich doesn’t merely like, but loves.

Culture On Demand: Deep Focus UI

I'm not a "tech blogger", but as with any time Apple does much of anything now, their keynote yesterday has some direct implications on the world of content consumption and discovery.

 "Flat" design expectations are now out the window. The look of the new iOS UI is all about not just depth, but layers of focus. With this fundamentally shifted visual paradigm, we're seeing the next big step in how Apple handles UI on product categories, both current and those they've yet to introduce: some theoretical (a watch, a larger iPhone), and evolving hobbies (TV).

The most famous cinematic example of deep focus is Citizen Kane , a movie that was not shot in 3D, but which achieves a perception of multi-layered depth. Cinematographer Greg Toland achieved simultaneous focus across the fore-, mid-, and background through very precise placement of objects in the frame, staging, and lighting.

The same principles apply to iOS 7 and, to a lesser extent, what I've seen of OS X Mavericks. Like the most basic tenets of stage magic, the new "look" is just as much about the window dressing as it is the structure of where the audience's eyes are being directed.

My kneejerk feeling about the Human Interface overhaul is that it's an exciting and interesting change that opens up a lot of possibilities. There are features and design cues in Apple's HI that are found in both Android and Windows Phone, but they're among the best parts of both. Things like awful icons and visual details that need smoothing out will eventually get fixed. 

Most importantly, a shift this big makes me confident that when Apple overhauls the AppleTV interface, it will change things as fundamentally as their mobile and desktop UI experiences have. 

Let's not forget that the current AppleTV runs on a custom version of iOS.

Gone from iOS are faux-3D design choices that look as fake as styrofoam boulders on Star Trek sets. The new iOS and OS X feel and look as different from their predecessors as the newer JJ Abrams Trek looks as compared to the most refined version of the original canon. In general terms, the new stuff is the epitome of modern design: big (but simple), bold (but subtle), and sleek.

Replacing the old are thin layers stacked in precise levels of depth. On Apple TV, I'm only starting to think about how this might specifically be employed, but overlaid layers of live content are interesting, including configurable, cross-platform notifications. Think of weather, stocks, and other apps as widgets that are as configurable in layers as you choose. The same actionable push notifications in Mavericks could be linked to your TV.

iCloud Keychain exists not just to solve having to enter the same fleet of passwords on your computer and phone, but certainly to also cover AppleTV at some point. Entering TV channel app passwords is one of the biggest problems for set-top boxes. Instead of re-entering them all, your AppleID will become your single sign-on for all of your content subscriptions.

I'm excited about modern, fresh, and near-futuristic design flourishes in TV apps, but I'm more interested in voice search tied to content. Think of what Siri already does on top of what was announced yesterday (improved function and quantity of indexed databases). Siri already knows who I mean when I ask about "John Malkovich" or "Jean-Pierre Jeunet". Wikipedia, Bing, and some version of IMDb that isn't owned by Amazon (which they're already using) are the tip of that iceberg.

I'm most enthused by the idea of Apple forcing a unified interface that pushes content vendors to index their content in a way that is user-friendly and leans toward driving discoverability.

As a Roku user, I'm never shy when complaining about how clunky and slow all of their apps are. The recently-introduced cross-"app", system-wide search is a fantastic improvement, but it does not go far enough. Individual app experiences are still awful. If Apple moves in the direction it looks like they're telegraphing, Roku is on the verge of being blown completely out of the water.

Note that they did not show iOS 7 for the iPad, nor is an iPad beta available yet. That may be indicative of the larger-screen interface working differently, due to the alternate usage pattern of a larger device as it relates to the expanding types of baked-in service logins (Facebook, LinkedIn, others). The larger-screen iPhone that many assume is in the works would be a part of this "bigger-screen" implementation of Apple's new Human Interface philosophy. 

The TV is a hell of a larger screen. 

More on all of this soon, after I play with both iOS 7 and Mavericks. I have more reading to do on all the game system stuff from yesterday too. 

Discs in a Box: Clint Eastwood 20-Film Collection Blu-ray

This past week's Clint Eastwood: 20-Film Collection on Blu-ray includes a very nice cross-section of the director's movies with WB that are on Blu-ray, but it isn't designed for the completionist. The style of packaging and timing of release makes it plain that it's aimed at Father's Day buyers here in the States. That aside, the relative per-movie cost almost makes this a bargain mega-set. 

The average $90 price tag breaks out to $4.50 per movie, which is a great deal if you own none or few of these and want them. If you're most interested in just a few of these, or want the entire Dirty Harry series specifically, other sets or individual discs are a better bet.

Packaging

It fits on a shelf just like any standard-height Blu-ray case would. The paper "pages" of the book-style slipcase allow you to pop the discs in and out easily, and I wish all studios would go with something like this for all future 20-ish disc sets. If they want to do a 40-disc thing, then fine, stick two of this in one slipcase. On the slipcase, I'll note that the super-thin plastic has never worked very well, and in my case, the review copy I was sent had a couple of the interior tabs snapped off just from the rigors of shipping and handling. Thicker, sturdier material is the simple solution.

Movies, Gaps, and Value

This set is not every single Warner Bros.-Eastwood movie that's on Blu-ray. Three out of the five Dirty Harry movies are in here (The Enforcer and The Dead Pool are missing), Letters from Iwo Jima is (Flags of Our Fathers is missing), and Eastwood's most iconic prestige pics are as well (Unforgiven, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby). In the Line of Fire , Absolute Power , and various others are missing. All of his most recent directing jobs (except for Changeling , oddly) are included. Here's the list of the included movies:

A Perfect World, Dirty Harry, Every Which Way But Loose, Firefox, Gran Torino, Heartbreak Ridge, Hereafter, Invictus, J. Edgar, Letters from Iwo Jima, Magnum Force, Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River, Pale Rider, Space Cowboys, Sudden Impact, The Gauntlet, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Trouble with the Curve, Unforgiven

In addition to all previous extras being on those discs, the set includes both the previously-available Eastwood Factor doc by Richard Schickel and the brand-new Eastwood Directs: The Untold Story, which is now playing intermittently on TCM.

Welcome to another new recurring feature. Discs in a Box takes its name from the title of The Lonely Island's best song.

Discs in a Box will provide commentary on opulent Blu-ray/DVD box sets that go the extra mile, packing in loads of extra physical goodies in boxes well larger than what is required to just house the discs.

Sometimes they're the shelf-unfriendly chocolate box size (Singin' in the Rain), whereas sometimes they actually fit alongside standard discs albeit taking up a great deal of horizontal real estate (Ultimate Collector's Editions of The Town, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest).

As with other features, I'll be covering recent and upcoming releases in addition to things that have been collecting dust on store shelves for months (or years, in some cases).

ATX Festival

I've been completely absent today, swallowed whole by the first day of the ATX Television Festival here in Austin. Selected bits gleaned from the panels I attended today:

Writer/producer Michael Jacobs talked about the super-grim ending of ABC's Dinosaurs , corporate meddling with good ideas, and the reason behind the heart he puts into his shows.

Dan Harmon believes Socialism is the key to the future of TV, and that Heat Vision and Jack  should eventually become a movie.

Rob Schrab never gets asked about SCUD: The Disposable Assassin as much as he would like. 

I'm interviewing the team of Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab tomorrow, as well as (time-permitting) Scott Aukerman, Ben Blacker, and my buddy Kevin Biegel.

13-year-old BBC2 Coens Doc

 Indiewire's The Playlist  unearthed this reasonably good piece on Joel and Ethan Coen. I agree that the BBC folks go a bit far in describing the brothers as being "intensely reclusive". It makes them sound not unlike the Beales of Grey Gardens.

I've been working on a Coen Brothers retrospective series that may start late this year. I'm soft-starting two more this week.

Bogdanovich on the Definitive AT LONG LAST LOVE

In 1975, Bogdanovich opened a live-sung feature-length movie musical. It came out on Blu-ray this week, and Bogdanovich wrote a piece about it. It didn't go so well:

We were killed. At Long Last Love was deplored by the majority of critics: the Village Voice headline summed it up: "At Long Last Lousy". The glee implicit in this phrase was part of the climate of that time regarding Cybill Shepherd (one of the stars) and me---we were living together then---and the press was fed up with our much publicized romance. One TV critic said it was "written, produced, directed and ruined by Peter Bogdanovich." A small minority saw the good qualities: Roger Ebert enjoyed it quite a bit, the Newsweek critic was kind, and the picture did very well in its Radio City run, but that was it. Woody Allen told me (many years after) that he'd gone to see it three or four times at the Music Hall and later did a musical inspired by it. But the studio pulled the film out of release. Cybill and I came to refer to our movie as "the debacle." Kidding around, I always called it "At Long Last Turkey."

I'm to speak with him this weekend about ALLL.  Should be fun.