Tell you all about it when I got the time!

Aladdin, one of my two favorite Disney movies of the '90s (Mulan being the other), is finally getting the special edition treatment. From DVDFile:

Kicking off this week's are three big new announcements from Buena Vista Home Entertainment. The next in Disney's acclaimed Platinum Collection line of two-disc special editions is one of their biggest animated hits of all time, Aladdin. The genie will be let out of the bottle on October 5th, which will include a super-duper new anamorphic transfer (featuring a new version of the film upgraded with new animation) and a Dolby Digital 5.1 "Enhanced Home Theater" surround track. The considerable supplementary materials will boast two audio commentary tracks, a documentary, deleted sequences (including a new musical number "Proud of Your Boy" by composers Howard Ashman and Alan Menken), a pop-up trivia subtitle track, extensive still galleries, storyboards, pencil tests, a virtual carpet ride, 3-D tour of Genie's lamp, sing-along songs, set-top games, "A Whole New World" music video, theatrical trailers, and DVD-ROM material to be announced. Expect a retail price of $29.95, and another relentless marketing campaign. Retail will be $29.99.

Heh

I just sent The Jakob Nielsen Drinking Game to a listserv at work, because someone pointed to one of his articles where he made ten points, eight of them asinine or obvious.

I will not bid. I will not bid. I will not . . . Well, maybe I'll add it to my "watch" list.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2224218054&category=35772

You don't know what sort of memories this auction brings up.

When I was growing up, Marvel didn't have the Essential or the Masterworks collections. DC didn't have their Archives. And the direct comics market was only just starting to make an impact. In other words, for a kid who was into comics, there weren't many resources for discovering the history of characters, or discovering new books to follow.

But DC did have one. It was their Blue Ribbon Digest series (there were actually two Blue Ribbon series: Best of DC, and DC Special). Each digest collected a number of tales based on a theme. Sometimes it would be the greatest adventures of the Teen Titans or the Legion of Super-Heroes. Sometimes it would be Superman's Weirdest Foes, or classic detectives from Detective Comics. Even the great Plop! (my first intro to such characters as Abel, Cain, and Eve. Sort of). Once a year, it was the Best of DC, reprinting the best stories of the past year.

Thanks to these digests, I discovered the Legion of Super-heroes and became addicted to their backstory (not long after I discovered them, DC started reprinting their entire early run in Adventure Digest, which was a dream come true). I found Sugar and Spike, one of the best humor titles ever. I discovered Sgt. Rock, found out how Adam Strange came about, and watched Green Arrow evolve from the Golden Age member of the Seven Soldiers of Victory through the 1980s superliberal millionaire.

These were the books of my childhood. I started reading them when I was seven, and stuck with them until they ended. There were other major books (JLA #200 was another gateway comic for me, ditto All-Star Squadron #1), but the digests were what first got me into comics in a serious manner, and until i hit the indies (Elfquest in the fifth grade, American Flagg in the seventh), they were what kept me excited about super-heroes.

(aside: There were at least two comic geek references in this week's Sunday Times crossword, both Superman-centric. And at least one (Kal-El's mom) qualified as info the average person is probably clueless about).

Bookslut!

The February Bookslut is up!

See my Special Valentine's Day column, in which I talk about severed penises and other fun stuff.

Catch my review of Scott Nicholson's The Harvest, a surprisingly fun novel.

Read kizlj's article on Earthling Publications (who gave us the best damned Michael Marshall Smith collection imaginable).

Check out hangingfire's review of and interview with Craig Thompson!

Enjoy lizlet's analysis of Cold Mountain the Book vs. Cold Mountain the Oscar-Nominated Film.

And read the rest of the site, too (even if it's not written by folks on LJ)!

Stop me before I run out of exclamation points!