The Sun-Herald

The Tribal Mind: Buy chocolate or rent vanilla?

To discuss Australia's greatest TV comedies of all time, go to Who We Are

by David Dale
Dunnobout you, but there are only two reasons why this column buys (as opposed to rents) DVDs:

1) To see a TV show that has been maltreated by the networks -- hence my recent purchase of 30 Rock season 1 (the cleverest sitcom since Arrested Development, shown erratically late at night by Channel Seven), Rome season 2 (from the murder of Caesar to the suicide of Mark Antony, never shown by Channel Nine), and Gilmore Girls season 7 (the saga's conclusion, shown erratically during daylight by Nine).

2) To get extra information about a movie I enjoyed at the cinema, via the director's and writer's commentaries, making-of documentaries, deleted scenes, alternative endings and other extras that appear on a second disc. Hence my quest last week in search of the two-disc edition of The Golden Compass.

It would seem that most buyers operate with the same motivations, judging by the top-sellers during April, as measured by market researchers GfK Australia. These are Australia's most purchased DVDs of the moment: 1. Bee Movie; 2 Stargate: The Ark Of Truth; 3 Dirty Dancing: 20th-anniversary edition; 4 Death At A Funeral; 5 Gilmore Girls: season seven.

But if extras are an incentive to buy a DVD, why do the distributors and the shopkeepers make it so difficult to find them? My interest in owning The Golden Compass began when I read this review by Ty Burr in America's Entertainment Weekly magazine: "Half the drama is in the EXTRAS, specifically reading between the lines of the two-disc set's commentary and 11 featurettes. In the former, writer-director Chris Weitz defends his adaptation of the first novel in Philip Pullman's fantasy trilogy. But in a making-of, Weitz looks like a man besieged by producers and his own insecurities. The film splits the difference: It's a visually awe-inspiring otherworld whose story is served up in awkward chunks. The kid (Dakota Blue Richards) is a find and Ian McKellen gives good bear, but this movie actually needed to be longer. B-.''

This led me to hope that screenwriter Weitz might address the controversy over whether the book is "anti-Catholic'' and whether he pandered to fundamentalists in removing Pullman's critique of religious dogma. My two local rental stores offered only the vanilla version (industry term for a DVD with no extras), as did the first two sales stores I approached, and I was beginning to think Australia had not received the full version when I finally discovered the two-disc set in J.B Hi-Fi, Pitt Street Mall.

In the extras, Weitz turns out to be terribly nice, revealing that Magda Szubanski (who appears for less than a minute) is an Australian actress from "a fantastic series called Kath and Kim'" and detailing how they did the fur on Nicole Kidman's monkey alter-ego.

He promises that "the last thing that I would ever want to do is a version that falsified the book", while admitting he held over the last three chapters to make a better beginning for the second film -- which is unlikely ever to be made, given the failure of TGC in America.

His only reference to the religious controversy is observing that The Magisterium (The Vatican) has "a patriarchal nature -- not to get too political''. He's missed the point. Getting political and backbiting and gossipy and vengeful is what we expect from directors when they make DVDs of their work. If Weitz wants to raise enough cash to make part two, he'd better issue a new three-disc set confessing what really went into (and out of) the movie. That would be a DVD worth buying.

What have been the best DVD extras you've experienced lately?

David Dale is the author of Who We Are -- A snapshot of Australia today (Allen and Unwin). To discuss Australian attitudes, go to http://blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare.