Sony взялась продвигать Video8 как новый стандарт home video и хочет втиснуться в свободную от VHS, Betamax, и Laserdisc нишу (буде, таковая имело место быть); начало бума на широкоэкранные лазердиски, которые пока выпускаются только в Японии, в США до этого дойдут аж в самом конце 80-х; первый блокбастер с использованием защиты от перезаписи Macrovision; вошли в моду "боевики про самолёты" -- на экранах "Iron Eagle" и "Top Gun"; свежие хиты на VHS продаются по цене в 80 баксов; лазердиски, в среднем, в два раза дешевле аналогичных изданий на VHS и Beta; заря мультимедиа -- выпуск фотогалерей на LD... ah, those were the days.
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NEW FORMAT VIES FOR VIDEO SPACE
Eight millimeter video, which was introduced by Eastman Kodak in January 1984, is a very compact, portable video system that was designed to replace 8mm home movies. Considerably smaller than 1/2-inch VHS or Beta standards, the 8mm videocassette is only slightly larger than an ordinary audiocassette. Nothing would make Sony or Kodak happier than to have 8mm video accepted as the new consumer standard. In order to ensure the new format's growth, two home video companies have been enticed to release feature films in 8mm.
Just this past summer, Eastman Kodak began distributing the first 10 movies from a group of 46 Embassy Home Entertainment titles. The 10 titles include only one SF thriller, Blade Runner, the others having been selected to appeal to the upscale yuppie market, including: Kiss of the Spider
Woman, A Chorus Line, The Emerald Forest, The Graduate and This Is Spinal Tap.
In addition to the advantage of compactness, 8mm video features digital sound. According to Kodak, more than 125 companies have agreed to a standard set of 8mm manufacturing specifications. The idea is to have any 8mm videotape fit into any 8mm machine, no matter who the manufacturers are. Movies on 8mm videocassette are also cheaper than their bigger 1/2-inch brothers: $29.95. At this price level, they'll also compete with laserdiscs.
The only other major source of 8mm software is Paramount with 15 initial releases, including: Beverly Hills Cop, Teen Wolf, Star Trek III, The Bad News Bears, Harold & Maude, Play it Again, Sam, The Jazz Singer, Witness, Uncommon Valor, Trading Places, Footloose, Airplane!, Flashdance, Foul Play and Summer Rental.
Home video users with large investments in 1/2 -inch equipment shouldn't worry about the imminent demise of the format. Even the most generous estimates give the new 8mm format only an 18% share of the market over the next three years. Both Beta and VHS are too heavily entrenched to be replaced so quickly.
In response to the last Videolog on widescreen films, it was reported that the hottest selling laserdisc import is the Japanese CAV version of 2001. This five-sided release is in full widescreen with black bands at the screen's top and bottom. Japanese subtitles have been placed in the black area below the widescreen image. It sells for 15,000 yen, about $90 American.
In a continuing effort to discourage those who rent tapes, only to duplicate them at home, MCA Home Video's Back to the Future is mastered with the Macrovision anticopying process, which was first used by Embassy on their Beta release of The Cotton Club. More on the plus side, MCA released Back to the Future on Scotch brand EXG Extra High Grade HiFi videocassettes. This is the first time a major video title has been manufactured on such high-quality tape; the plastic shell is grey instead of the usual black, which MCA hopes will make it easier to spot pirated cassettes.
The big end of the summer video releases from CBS/Fox Video are two action-adventures starring Academy Award winner Louis Gossett, Jr. (STARLOG #104). In TriStar's Iron Eagle, Gossett portrays a retired Air Force colonel who helps a young hotshot pilot rescue his father from a Middle East garrison. Iron Eagle is rock & roll gung-ho, $79.98 VHS/Beta HiFi stereo.
Gossett and Dennis Quaid (STARLOG #79) are two crash-landed aliens in combat on the fiery, barren planet Fyrine IV. The stranded enemies learn to trust and finally love each other when they come to realize it is the only way to survive. Enemy Mine, based on the story by Barry Longyear, has a running time of 108 minutes, $79.98, VHS/Beta HiFi from CBS/Fox.
The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, the nation's treasure house of the history of flight, has released a new videodisc containing 100,000 photographs documenting the overseas activities of the U.S. Air Force during World War II. Many one-of-a-kind images of early American aviators and airplanes are included, as well as military photos taken before, during and after World War ll. The wartime photos of the European and Pacific theaters are vivid and varied; about 700 are in color. Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Jimmy Cagney entertain the troops. Germans land their Messerschmitt Me262s on the Autobahn, their air bases having been bombed. Pre-war photographs taken in the United Stages show 1930s aviators Amelia Earhart, Gladys O'Donnell and Frances Marsalis. While early photos of aircraft include views of the Wright brothers' 1903 Flyer, the post-World War II images include U.S. and foreign military aircraft and air bases, as well as nuclear testing in Nevada and the Pacific.
The photo videodisc is the third unveiled by the Air and Space Museum. Eventually, all the museum's pictures will be transferred to videodisc. The first disc contains 100,000 of the most often requested photos of - aircraft; the second, images of major air and space personalities and other aerospace-related subjects. A single disc can store the equivalent of 33 bulky file cabinets. Users can find in seconds any photo on the disc.
The three videodiscs are currently available for sale at $39.95 each. To purchase one, specify NASM Archival Videodisc 1, 2 or 3 and send a check or money order for $41.45 (includes $1.50 handling charge) to Smithsonian Institution Press, Customer Services, P.O. Box 4866, Hampden Station, Baltimore, MD 21211.
For those of you not yet equipped with laser videodiscs, Twin Tower Enterprises has released a videotape that features the Navy's spectacular precision stunt flying team, The Blue Angels. Well-known "flyer" Christopher Reeve takes the viewer inside the cockpit for maneuvers at more than 550 miles per hour. In addition to heart-stopping aerial footage, the film profiles the men with the "right stuff" who pilot the aircraft. This close-up look at the Angels includes conversations with families of the pilots, and interviews with stunt flyers who accompany the Blue Angels Airshow. Touch the Sky is a 60-minute VHS/Beta HiFi program, $39.95.
It started out as an OK update of Mark Twain's classic time travel story with the title A Spaceman in King Arthur's Court. It starred Jim Dale as Sir Modred, Ron Moody as Merlin and Dennis Dugan as the time trapped astronaut. It was released with a new title -- Unidentyied Flying Oddball (1979) -- and played to empty houses everywhere. Now you can find out why, from Walt Disney Home Video, VHS/Beta, $69.95.
Also from Disney are Moon Pilot (1962) starring Brian Keith, Edmond O'Brien and Tom Tryon as a reluctant astronaut; and, One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing (1975). The latter film has nothing to do with fantasy or SF. It begins when a secret microfilm is hidden on the massive skeleton of a museum dinosaur in London. Helen Hayes gathers a batallion of British nannies who hijack the boney artifact before the formula can fall into the hands of Peter Ustinov and his ruthless gang of London-based Chinese intelligence agents who are running a sleazy nightclub as a front. Both Hayes and Ustinov have some truly funny bits, which are played up for adults instead of down for the kids. These
three Disney titles are $69.95. VHS/Beta.
Volume Two of The Ray Bradbury Theater, starring Nick Mancuso in "The Crowd" has just been released by Buena Vista Home Video, VHS/Beta, $39.95. Bradbury enthusiasts can save $40 by purchasing Volumes One and Two at the special price of $69.95 for the set. Volume One, available separately at $69.95, contains two tales of horror and mystery: "Marionettes, Inc." with James Coco; and "The Playground" with William Shatner.
MCA Home Video has released Terry Gilliam's Brazil ($39.98) on three sides of a laser videodisc set. Sound is digital stereo surround, CX-encoded. Also from MCA Home Video are laserdisc releases of two top Alfred Hitchcock titles. Saboteur (1942), starring Robert Cummings, is MCA's most recent installment in the Encore Edition series. Look for the original theatrical trailer on side two. Rod Taylor (STARLOG #l08) and Tippi Hedren star in The Birds.
This laserdisc release on three sides contains a bonus of six classic Hitchcock trailers, each marked by a chapter stop on the third side: The Birds, Vertigo, Rope, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Rear Window and Psycho. Both titles are CX encoded.
Former STARLOG staffer Ed Naha scripted a film for Charles Band's Empire Productions, Troll, now available from Vestron Video on videocassette or laserdisc. Starring Michael Moriarty, Gary Sandy, Sonny Bono and Tune Lockhart as a 2,000-year-old sorceress. It's trolls vs. humans in this mystical fantasy.
Media Home Entertainment has dropped the prices on 44 of its top Nostalgia Merchant titles to $19.95 each, matching the suggested retail prices of the other films in the 83-title Nostalgia Merchant catalogue. Included are Destination Moon, Invaders from Mars, Rocketshin X-M, Kronos, Flight to Mars, Plan 9 from Outer Space, Tales of Tomorrow, Vol. I & 2 and Mighty Joe Young.
The "sci-fi" bomb of the month is Planet on the Prowl. You've heard of spaghetti Westerns? Well, this is spaghetti SF. Originally titled War Between the Planets (1965), the story gimmick involves a fiery renegade planet headed on a collision course with Earth. It announces its arrival by causing all manner of natural disasters-floods, earthquakes, bad movies, etc. Eighty minutes and $39.95 from Monterey Home Video. Where do they find them?
-- David Hutchison
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