Breaking the silence


	A commentary by Guido Henkel

Well, the Holidays are over and the New Year is well under way. I hope all of you have had a good and save start into the New Year and as you have certainly noticed, we are finally back as well. After running “DVD Review” for well over a year without a single break, it was good to take some time off and relax to gather strength for the year that lies ahead of us. We are now back on our regular schedule with our frequent updates and features.

Sadly, upon our return from our vacation, we were greeted by a raging flame war in our chat forum. We did not have the chance to take a look at the discussion areas during our absence, and when we came back it was littered with profanity and derogatory posts. We would like to apologize to all users of the chat area that we had not been able to remove these posts earlier. The area is now clear and ready for you to post again in the familiar relaxed manner. We will keep an eye on the posts to make sure it will remain that way. It is very sad however, that some people use the chat forums to post these derogatory mails and start flame wars with other users, even taking on other people’s identities to post profanity. I feel, it is the most coward and uneducated abuse of our discussion boards. It simply escapes me why some people are not able to communicate in a human way once they get online and can hide behind stupid aliases, firewalls and the anonymity of the Internet. I decided to call this sick behavior “Chat Rage” from now on.

Okay, let’s move on to more enjoyable things. A lot of information came in during our absence and we are currently working on all this information to make sure we can relay it to you in an orderly fashion. Especially the “Film Vault” database needs some update, which we will take care of during this week. A vast number of street date changes have occurred and a great number of new titles have been announced.

As many of you know, MGM is releasing the Robert DeNiro actioner “Ronin” day & date with the VHS version of the film. Interestingly however, MGM are going one step further and actually release a Special Edition of the film on DVD, containing materials that are not available on the VHS version. It is great to see that more and more studios are giving DVD the benefit and help pushing DVD with such measures. So, what is really so special about the Ronin release that makes it worth mentioning here?

MGM takes the DVD movie experience to a higher interactive level with the release of “Ronin” on February 23. Utilizing the DVD-ROM capabilities of the format, the disc will offer PC users a unique opportunity to participate in an exclusive online event, hosted by none other than the the film’s director John Frankenheimer himself. On March 14, MGM invites users to participate in an online presentation with Frankenheimer about the making-of the 1998 action thriller. The event will be a 20-minute multimedia behind-the-scenes tour by Frankenheimer, illustrated by storyboards, exclusive footage, and film action sequences played directly from the Ronin DVD in the user’s DVD-ROM drive. The event will be followed by a live chat session with Frankenheimer.

MGM Home Entertainment’s senior vice-president of marketing, Blake Thomas, told us that MGM are always looking for new ways to leverage their properties. “To accomplish this, we developed an on-line event that includes exclusive audio and video interactivity to bring PC users and film buffs all the benefits of the technological advancements of the format.”

Since you are probably just as excited about this presentation as we are, here are the exact details how you can be a part of this great event.

To participate, you will need the “Ronin” DVD, a PC with a DVD-ROM drive running under Windows 95 or 98 and an Internet connection at 28.8 kb or faster. When inserting the “Ronin” DVD, the system will direct you to select the hyperlink, which will then connect you directly to the dedicated “Ronin” event website (www.mgm.com/dvd/ronin). This dedicated website will ask you to register for the event and submit questions for John Frankenheimer, many of which will be included in the event.

On March 14 then, when registered guests log on to the website, the system will verify that the “Ronin” DVD is present in your DVD-ROM drive and all system requirements are met. The event will begin at exactly 8:00 p.m. (EST). The event will begin with a discussion of the making-of the film, illustrated by specific scenes, as well as storyboards, and behind-the-scenes footage and stills sent to the user via the Internet. A live 30-minute chat session will then precede the discussion. To ensure that current and future owners of the “Ronin” DVD can re-experience

the event and print out the transcript to the online chat session, the entire “Ronin” online event will be stored on MGM’s network server until December 1999. It is that simple!

That’s it for this time. I am sure you can’t wait for the “Ronin” event, but for now, let’s enjoy the discs that are already available.


		January 11, 1998


	© 1997-99 by “DVD Review”. All rights reserved.