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j99 wrote:

jbeall wrote:

manicsounds wrote:The UK DVD and BD have lots of extras. The DVD is 2 discs.

?
Can't speak for the blu, but I got the dvd from amazon.co.uk and it's only one disc, with no extras.

I got my copy from HMV and is one of their "exclusives". It's a 2 disc set with the extras the same as those on the BD.

Thought I'd replied to this before; thank you for that j99, I feel stupid for pre-ordering from Amazon without looking into this more carefully. I just assumed the extras-heavy edition would come out ages later. Massive bugger.

So are these extra features worth bothering with, or am I not missing much? The ones on my Beat My Heart Skipped disc are substantial but underwhelming; I don't think I'm likely to re-visit them.

By all accounts the big making-of documentary is a distinct cut above the norm.

It was only about a week or so before I finally ordered I noticed that the only way to get the bonus features was from HMV. I don't like it when these editions are exclusive to one retailer and I happened to come across it by accident.

I've only watched a couple of them; the 70 minute making of and the deleted scenes. The Making Of feature is certainly a cut above the usual featurette but personally I wouldn't spend extra money on it, and I doubt whether I would watch it again.

Finally received this from DD from their B1G1 sale a few weeks ago and put it in last night and was absolutely enthralled from the first minute. it was about 30 minutes in when I realized it never really felt like there was a "beginning" to the film, it just picks up Malik's story as he's going to prison and runs with it. The editing is so well done the pace just draws you in and demands your attention and doesn't let go at all. Very very impressive.

While I agree that Malik does feel a bit milquetoasty for a kingpin candidate, I think that's part of what makes the film work. He's just smart enough, works hard enough, and has a bit of luck along the way - which I suspect is the route most criminals who reach those positions take. It all felt perfectly realistic...and rather than being evocative of Scarface or whatever, I feel like it completely surpassed all but the original Godfather....and may be on par with it. In the same way the Godfather is truly epic in the way it weaves everything together and presents another world with such amazing clarity, A Prophet is filled with little moments of reflection that gives it a profound sense of realism. As others noted below...unpacking the DVD player, hanging the venison, making a coffee....all of this adds to the depth of the experience in a way that's extremely rare in a film today. I'm not the kind of person that rewatches films multiple times, but I already want to sit down with this again tonight. Amazing film.

My first thought was, "Oh, it might not be that bad." Then I looked at Neal Moritz's production credits.

My thoughts exactly!

There's actually no reason why A Prophet couldn't work very well in a US context - the prison movie is a strongly American genre to begin with, and it really wouldn't be hard to find wholly convincing parallels with the French/Arab/Corsican factions, as such things are commonplace in actual US prisons. But it does rather help if the remake is overseen by someone at least as talented as Jacques Audiard - which may be the sticking point.

I'm not concerned, just because there's no guarantee this will ever actually get made. It just reminds of of when there was an announcement that Ron Howard was remaking Cache, which, last time I checked, still hasn't happened.

Anyway isn't an idea of an American remake of a prison drama moot in world in which the Oz TV show exists? (Although to be fair I seem to remember that I may have made a similar "Do we really need another French prison drama in a world where A Man Escaped and Le Trou exist?" pronouncement on first hearing about A Prophet!)

However a Guantanamo Bay-set series would be interesting to see! Maybe in the guise of a biopic of Clive Stafford Smith if actually focusing on the prisoners directly would be too much of an issue.