I’m not sure about my ability to sit down and really watch Watchmen again when it comes out on DVD and Bluray a little more than two months hence. With my full undivided attention, I mean. I suppose I could half-watch it — i.e., write the column while running it in the adjacent living room as a kind of white-noise distraction, eyeballing it from time to time. But I do that all the time anyway.
The Bluray Director’s Cut edition (out 7.21) contains an extra 25 minutes of footage (including “more Rorschach” and “a scene of Hollis Mason‘s death”) for a grand total of 186 minutes. But the big attraction is an expanded capability sidelight called Warner Bros. Maximum Movie Mode along with a live Bluray/Facebook hookup that I don’t want to know about.
The MMM thing, however, includes (a) director walk-ons (i.e., Zack Snyder) with scene analysis, (b) picture-in-picture video from the cast and crew, (c) side-by-side comparisons of the graphic novel and the film; (d) timeline comparisons of our world events to those from Watchmen; plus (e) intersting docs and photo galleries. At least it’s a full-load package. Not bad for $36 and change.
(I would have included art of the Watchmen Bluray, but the wifi in the apartment is so weak and crappy that file transfers don’t work.)