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Genius Products and The Weinstein company has announced single ($29.95) and double-disc ($32.95) collector's editions of The Mist which stars Thomas Jane and Marcia Gay Harden. The Frank Darabont directed horror/thriller will be available to own the 25th March. According to those good chaps at Fangoria.com, the single-disc will include an audio commentary by writer/director Frank Darabont, eight deleted scenes with optional commentary, and A Conversation With Stephen King and Frank Darabont featurette. The two-disc edition will include all that, along with an exclusive black-and-white presentation of the film (as well as the colour version), and five featurettes (When Darkness Came: The Making of The Mist, Taming the Beast: Shooting Scene 35, Monsters Among Us: A Look at the Creature FX, The Horror of It All: The Visual FX of The Mist, and Drew Struzan: Appreciation of an Artist).

black-and-white presentation of the film (as well as the colour version)

Why?

Antoine Doinel wrote:

black-and-white presentation of the film (as well as the colour version)

Why?

Why, indeed. If you want a bw version of a color film, just turn the color setting on your screen down to zero. However, with certain video projectors, you can't do this. I guess that Darabont shot the film in color but wanted it to be shown in cinema in bw, but that the studio balked at the idea. But an agreement must have been made to provide a bw version for DVD.

This reminds me of John Boorman's, The General (1998) which was shot in color and Super-35 with the intention of it being presented in bw @ 2.35:1 but the DVD features transfers of the desaturated color 2.35:1 and a 1.78:1 bw! So, you just play the color version and turn down the color setting to see it as Boorman intended.

It's definitely kinda weird (but also sort of cool in my opinion), but I can see the logic behind presenting both versions on the DVD. Just turning the color/saturation down on your screen will convert it to a greyscale image, but there's probably some additional image manipulation happening for the B&W version (increasing contrast by boosting highlights or shadows, or making adjustments to the color before converting to B&W - like shooting B&W film through a red filter, or what have you).

Only slightly related, but I found it curious that in some parts of the world, The Man Who Wasn't There went out to DVD in both color and B&W versions - why anyone in the world would want to look at that film in color, I don't know.

Why would anyone in the world want to look at that film period.

This is one of the best DVD releases in a long time, to an excellent movie in my opinion. I know there are loads of people who seemed to have absolutely HATED this film and lots that love it just as much.

I haven't seen such a division of reactios in quite some time.
The film comes out in Japan on May 10th, so I will be showing it (Black and White) on the day of release to my English school and see what the reactions are for them.


I'm excited for it, who else loved/hated this film/DVD?

I adored it and was quite surprised to. I'm not a King fan by nature and I don't particularly like Darabont either (though you can count me amongst those who deeply value Shawshank). I also tend to hate flagrant CGI. Somehow though this managed to overcome all that which is part of the reason I took special note of my own reaction. The bevy of great actors helped sell the stock "types" and the seemingly contrived situation actually helped emphasize the internal dynamics of the group and contributed the necessary hot house atmosphere to make believable the resultant series of confrontations. The CGI was also used primarily as accent which, at this stage, is probably best; also appropriate given the story. I found the end wonderfully bleak (the opposite of Shawshank's) but not nihilistically pat at all.

Darabont's commentary was no benefit, however, as it was tech heavy and full of boring rounds of self-congratulation. Too bad as there's much here to talk about and consider. I did like his ideas on the ending though. I haven't seen the B & W version but I'm looking forward to it. I have to also put in a word of praise for the original, simply sublime and excellent theatrical trailers ( though not the less successful DVD advertising which evidences a less confident approach in the determination to give the whole game away).

This was one of my favorite movies of 2007, especially after seeing the black and white version. All the gloss and artificiality of the CGI work disappears when the color is removed, making the whole experience more believable. Blood looks like chocolate sauce. Everything has a surreal edge. Brilliant.

Maybe it's just my penchant for old horror, but having seen the color version in the theater (which I gave four-out-of-four stars on my site, here), the lasting affect of the b&w version doesn't fade. It just works so much better. I kept thinking of The Thing from Another World... an atmospheric, Lovecraftian horror picture that's as entertaining as it is intelligent. And yeah, the ending, ballsy.

I was really beginning to think smart horror movies like this were dead until this movie came along. Cronenberg's moved on to more dramatic fare (though wonderful). Carpenter has all but officially retired. Romero is winding down, though he's putting up a reasonable fight. I really hope Darabont continues with further King adaptations, but with visceral ones comparable to The Mist.

bjeggert82 wrote:This was one of my favorite movies of 2007, especially after seeing the black and white version. All the gloss and artificiality of the CGI work disappears when the color is removed, making the whole experience more believable. Blood looks like chocolate sauce. Everything has a surreal edge. Brilliant.

Maybe it's just my penchant for old horror, but having seen the color version in the theater (which I gave four-out-of-four stars on my site, here), the lasting affect of the b&w version doesn't fade. It just works so much better. I kept thinking of The Thing from Another World... an atmospheric, Lovecraftian horror picture that's as entertaining as it is intelligent. And yeah, the ending, ballsy.

I was really beginning to think smart horror movies like this were dead until this movie came along. Cronenberg's moved on to more dramatic fare (though wonderful). Carpenter has all but officially retired. Romero is winding down, though he's putting up a reasonable fight. I really hope Darabont continues with further King adaptations, but with visceral ones comparable to The Mist.

I couldn't agree more. I loved this film as well. As Darabont has said in interviews, it was a loving homage to classic monster movies of the past but with one helluva ending -- gutting doesn't even begin to describe it. What I also thought was interesting was the flawed nature of Thomas Jane's character. He gets scared and makes mistakes but rises to the occasion when needed. Is he any less of a hero for doing what he does in the film? Darabont raises some fascinating questions about the notion of heroics in The Mist.

I enjoyed the DVD as well. Including a B&W version was a nice touch and the extras were fairly interesting. I really liked how he tried to have physical effects whenever possible and worked with a relatively low budget.

Fletch F. Fletch wrote:What I also thought was interesting was the flawed nature of Thomas Jane's character. He gets scared and makes mistakes but rises to the occasion when needed. Is he any less of a hero for doing what he does in the film?

Spoiler

I love that Darabont's ending essentially equalizes everyone in the car (especially "the hero" Thomas Jane ) with the paranoid reactionaries in the store, like Marcia Gay Harden's zealot character. She was ready to kill because of her belief, and those in the car were willing to die because of theirs. Granted their actions were rooted in two different belief systems, but they end with the same wild, panicky result of resorting to death in the face of the unknown. Really clever on Darabont's part...

For the most part, I think I enjoyed the film, but I didn't buy the ending at all... I didn't at all believe that his character would have done what he did. And it's not that I found it too dark or depressing or something (in fact, I didn't really find it depressing at all, as I didn't believe it).

bjeggert82 wrote:

Spoiler

I love that Darabont's ending essentially equalizes everyone in the car (especially "the hero" Thomas Jane ) with the paranoid reactionaries in the store, like Marcia Gay Harden's zealot character. She was ready to kill because of her belief, and those in the car were willing to die because of theirs. Granted their actions were rooted in two different belief systems, but they end with the same wild, panicky result of resorting to death in the face of the unknown. Really clever on Darabont's part...

I also thought it was interesting that everything Harden's character said basically came true. Oh, the irony...

Morbii wrote:For the most part, I think I enjoyed the film, but I didn't buy the ending at all... I didn't at all believe that his character would have done what he did. And it's not that I found it too dark or depressing or something (in fact, I didn't really find it depressing at all, as I didn't believe it).

Spoiler

I think that after Thomas Jane's character saw what had happened to the world outside, and also the paincrushing blow that he couldn't save his wife, he lost all hope. If his wife had somehow survived, I'm quite sure he would've gone on without shooting them.

I loved the ending. For the film, incredible.
For the book's ending, the ambiguity was great, but would not have worked for the film as much, I think.