Review of an unnamed DVD

Tuesday night, new releases. Seemed like a good night to hit the old video queue. I picked up a couple of movies (the identities of which have been hidden to protect the innocent) and headed home. Got things ready to go and sat down all comfy like. The movie in the machine was whirling about and I almost started it. Almost, because there was an old episode of The Office playing that I hadn't seen. So I figured, what's thirty minutes going to hurt?

So I watched the office, oblivious to the waste of a disc that spun merrily in the machine. When the show ended I clicked it over to the appropriate channel to watch the movie, only to find it had already started. Great, I thought. One of those stupid automatic starting discs. A hassle to be sure, but common enough of an issue to not truly get upset about. I simply clicked to the menu to restart.

Menu: Play movie.

Simple enough, except that the machine put it right back to where it was when I clicked menu. I somehow always manage to forget this fact. Back to menu I went. The obvious thing was to go to the chapters and start it again through there.

Menu: ...Erm?

No chapters. What the heck? I ran over the options again. Yup, just two choices, and chapters wasn't one of them. What kind of a DVD doesn't have chapters? Since the dawn of of the format every cheap .99 cent bin disc has had chapters. This was a major release I was trying to watch. Simply ridiculous. The only thing for me to do was to take out the disc and turn it off and on. My player has a memory feature so this is the only way to restart it.

The DVD kicked back in playing the previews. Sometimes I like to watch the trailers, but I was pretty frustrated by that point. I clicked the menu button. Denied. The DVD wants you to see Clint Eastwood's greatest hits collection. The fast forward only worked to an extent. Go too fast and once it hits the end of the preview it starts over. So I slowly made my way, fast forwarding and stopping to let it play towards the end of each preview. I began to hate Clint Eastwood. Seeing his grand collection just reminded me how average and boring of a director he is. Should have stuck to being a bad ass with a monkey. That was your true calling.

An hour and thirty-two minutes later (five minutes) I've made it through to the menu.

Menu: Play FRICKIN' MOVIE!

And it did.

It's worth noting that I rather love the movie. An enjoyable action blast. Pity the DVD was so dreadful. I don't want to scare people off from buying it, because the movie is worth it, and undoubtedly the version I rented was a stripped down version of what you can buy. So I won't speak the name of the movie here. I will simply refer to it by the first name of the lead character.

Next time Sherlock, take a little more time on the way the film is presented. Thank you.

The movie: Awesomeness out of Suh-weet!
The actual DVD itself: 11 out 11 hells.