I love the picture quality of Blu-ray. Love the sound, love the fact that they can cram untold extras into the massive storage capacity. It’s a movie-lover’s dream format. So why am I getting ready to chuck my Blu-ray player out a third-story window?

It’s because Blu-ray is so damned consumer-unfriendly these days. I don’t know if the movie studios are trying to punish us for participating in that whole HD-DVD/Blu-ray format war, or if they’re tired of shelling out for HD transfers of their movies and they hope we’ll switch back to standard DVD, but they clearly don’t want us to enjoy watching our Blu-rays. Exhibit A: a little something I like to call Leadershit.

You’ve all experienced Leadershit. You pop in a disc and then have to sit through a slew of trailers, studio logos, THX and Dolby pimp screens, Blu-ray rah-rah shorts, and all sorts of other crap. Disney specializes in this sort of thing: Coming soon to theaters; Coming soon to DVD; Coming soon to Blu-ray; Now playing in theaters; Now available on DVD; Now available on Blu-ray; Soon returning to DVD; Soon retiring from DVD; and on and on it goes. And while you can, thankfully, skip through much of this mess, each trailer is its own chapter stop, so you have to hammer the Chapter Skip button roughly thirty times before you can even get to a menu.

Ah, the menus. If ever there was a case of “Look at the cool stuff we can do,” it has to be Blu-ray menus. 3-D animation! Internet connectivity! Multiple levels of navigation, each with its own 3-D animation and internet connectivity! And it all only takes twenty minutes to load and play! If I sit down to watch a movie, I just want to watch the damn movie. I don’t want to have to waste half my time waiting on all the whiz-bang graphics some studio paid for and, by God, we are going to watch. Case in point: I recently picked up Terminator 2: Judgment Day-Skynet Edition to replace my earlier T2 Blu-ray which I discovered did not have the extended cut of the film on it. (I have now officially purchased T2 more times than Star Wars.) Popped it in, and waited. And waited. And waited. I could not believe how long it took to actually get to the start of the film. I was so annoyed that I actually restarted the disc, grabbed a stopwatch and a pen, and took some notes. Here’s the tally:

• Load time to first frame of anything: 30 seconds
• Skynet Locating Our House animated menu: 20 seconds (minimum)
• Lionsgate 3-D studio logo animation: 30 seconds
• Black screen/load time: 10 seconds
• Skynet loading screen: 15 seconds
• Main menu open animation before you can make a selection: 7 seconds
• Time it takes to input Extended Cut unlock code and watch remaining animation: 18 seconds
• DTS Audio pimp screen: 20 seconds
• THX Certified pimp screen: 50 seconds(!)
• Studio Canal Studio 3D animation: 25 seconds
• Black screen/load time: 10 seconds

There you have it. A whopping four minutes before you can even see a single frame of the actual film. And out of all of that delay, the only things you can skip through are the THX and Dolby animations. The rest you’re locked into for at least a minimum amount of time before you can continue or, in the case of the studio logos, the entire damned thing. At no point can you hit Main Menu or Pop-up Menu on your remote. You are going to sit there and watch every last frame of this crap. Maybe not so bad once, but it is if you have to watch it all repeatedly, which brings me to my biggest beef with Blu-ray: resume play.

My wife and I don’t usually have an entire night to sit and watch a movie start to finish. We have to watch it in chunks before real life intervenes and we have to go get busy with something else. So we’ll watch a movie over the course of several nights, stopping the disc each time we have to return to reality. On DVD, that’s never a problem. Sit down, press play, pick up where you left off. Blu-ray doesn’t do that. Blu-ray will return you to the main menu every single time you turn on the player. And when you have to wade through three to five minutes of Leadershit before you can even select the chapter where you stopped the night before, I start eyeing the balcony, plotting trajectories, and wondering just how far I can hurl ten pounds of plastic and circuitry.

So what’s the deal? Why is “the ultimate movie format” so hostile to actually watching the movie? Why can’t we skip straight to the menu? Why can’t we resume play in the middle? Why don’t we get all the extras that were included on the original DVD release when we rebuy the movie on Blu-ray? What’s the deal, movie studios? Did Blu-ray run over your dog or something? It’s gotten to the point where I’m seriously considering giving up on Blu for a while, stop rewarding studios for turning out this kind of crap, and just contenting myself with standard DVD. Or maybe just bagging on home video all together for a time. Go outside. Take a walk. Enjoy some sunshine.

While keeping one eye out for falling Blu-ray players.

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Apparently having not read any reviews, heard any criticism, or watched the actual film, George Lucas is, according to Harrison Ford in a recent Los Angeles Times interview, in “think mode” for a fifth Indiana Jones movie, based on the financial success of the last one.

And the destruction of all my childhood film nostalgia marches forward another step…

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Don LaFontaine died today at the age of 68. If you’re wondering who in the hell Don LaFontaine is, just imagine yourself in a darkened movie theater, watching a trailer where Bruce Willis will soon be blowing up lots of stuff, and the gravel-voiced announcer intones “In a world…”

That was him.

I know, it’s probably a little odd to post about the passing of a guy I’ve never met, couldn’t pick out of a lineup, and had to check the Internet to be sure of his name. He wasn’t a celebrity. He was familiar but not famous. So why the post? Because I’ve seen a lot of movies, probably even more trailers, and I always enjoyed—in a sort of background way—LaFontaine’s work. There were times I saw trailers for movies that I just knew were going to be utter crap, but hearing him sell it, I kind of thought, “Well, maybe…” And while there are plenty of other great announcers out there, it’s sad to think that I’ll never again see a trailer with his deep rumble behind it.

Rest in peace, Don.

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Sounds like David “I’m Not Mulder, Dammit!” Duchovny has checked himself into rehab to combat sex addiction. Wow, a guy who’s addicted to sex. I think I personally know at least eighty-five guys who would fit that definition.

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The Digital Bits is reporting there’s a new batch of Star Wars DVDs—prequels and originals—on the horizon, slated for release just in time for holiday shopping. I kind of perked up when I read that. Could this at long last be the original non-SE trilogy, fully remastered on DVD the way it should be? Have they found some new behind-the-scenes footage or deleted scenes? Or could it be… The entire saga on Blu-ray? Star Wars in high definition?!

Nope. What it is is a shameless cash grab by Lucas to try and milk a few more bucks out of his rapidly tiring franchise from unwary shoppers. These discs, according to the Bits, are the EXACT SAME discs that were released previously, just in different packaging. That’s it. No new content. No new transfers. No new extras. But if they make them look different, people might just buy them, thinking there’s something new.

So, George, if you’re reading, do me a favor. Step away from the computer, go to the nearest mirror, look yourself deep in the eyes, and repeat this phrase: “I have enough money.” Keep doing that until you believe it and you stop asking fans to keep re-buying the same stuff over and over.

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Hollywood lost a legend Sunday with the death of effects wizard Stan Winston at the age of 62 after a seven-year battle with multiple myeloma, a cancer of blood plasma cells. Winston was responsible for some of the most memorable creature effects in modern cinema, including Aliens, Predator, the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, Terminator, Edward Scissorhands, and most recently Iron Man.

I’ve always loved movies and still have a penchant for sci-fi and horror. If I saw Winston’s name on the credits on the latest film I’d just plunked down my cash to see, I knew, if nothing else, I’d be getting some quality effects work. I even dragged a few friends to a midnight showing of his creature-feature directorial debut, Pumpkinhead, just based on the fact that Winston was directing. Not a great film, but we still had a lot of fun, and isn’t that why you go to a movie in the middle of the night?

So from that dorky teen who once sat in a darkened theater and watched a metallic killing machine, an intergalactic hunter, an army of xenomorphs, and a park full of dinosaurs–who watched, was amazed, entertained, inspired, and believed every second of it all–thank you, Stan, and rest in peace.

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