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Over on his blog, Augie mentioned that “The Office Christmas Special,” a two-part episode that aired on the BBC over Christmas last year, will be released on DVD here in the states on November 16th according to TV Shows on DVD .com. This is possibly my favorite finale to a television program ever and seriously worth the wait.

Edit: Interesting. BBC seems to have gotten smarter. In the states the Christmas Special comes out on November 16th. In the UK the Christmas Special comes out on October 25th. Generally speaking there’s a much longer lead time between British and American releases, but not for this highly anticipated DVD. Smart. I guess I’ll wait for the American version instead of purchasing the British Region 2 edition.

“Donnie Darko.”

It’s one of those movies that people seem to love to death or loathe with passion. I’ve not found anyone who belonds somewhere in between those two statements. Odd that a movie like this would generate that kind of reaction. I fall closer to the “love to death” category, but it’s certainly not in my top ten of films, if I were to make such a list.

Saw the Director’s Cut version of the film last night at the rather ghetto Pacific Sherman Oaks 5 Theaters. Some of the extra scenes can be found on the DVD with lots of extra effects added onto this theatrical release. On the whole, I didn’t like it. It’s one of those cases where it’s good the director didn’t have all the money he wanted for the effects and was told to pull it back. Some of the additional text from the time travel book written by Grandma Death was interesting, but they simply explained too much of the movie, as if the director suddenly stopped trusting his audience to figure it out on their own. Plus, the transition effects and final moment when Donnie makes his great journey make it seem more like Donnie’s a computer instead of a human being on a strange journey. There are a number of moments when we’re sort of “inside” Donnie’s mind and it looked too much like the heads up display of an Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminator.

It’s nice to see it up on the big screen again in a dark theater, but the much simpler and succinct original is much better than this reimagining or whatever you might call it.

Picked up an Olympus VN-240 PC today. It’s a digital voice recorder that’s going to come in very handy. I do a lot of live interviews for CBR and have been using a micro-cassette recorder I bought from Radio Shack about two years ago. It’s good, but transcription can be a bitch and the constant rewind/fastforward on mini-cassette’s is not only bad for the media, but also for the tape heads. This Olympus do-dad has a feature where it’ll play back your recorded audio at 20% slower speeds, making transcription much easier. Augie brought his to San Diego during Comic-Con International and I stole it from him for the weekend. Worked great for the live interviews I did during the convention.

If you do any sort of in-person interviews, or just need a handy way to leave yourself a reminder message with your next great idea, this little device is perfect.