DVD Trek: The Search for “Shutter”
As I wrote yesterday, the Thai horror film Shutter has been released domestically. I also wrote about how the Borders store I was at on Saturday purportedly had a copy (in fact, according to Borders Online, it was the only Borders within reasonable driving distance to even have one copy). So today, in an impulsive move that recalled times in the past when Chief Oddball, Reaper and I would drive all over Southeast Michigan looking for places that might sell Sailor Moon merchandise (or any anime merchandise, really), I decided to drive back out to said Borders to pick up Shutter. With Kaela Kimura blasting out of my car’s speakers, I was off (resisting the temptation to stop at Donutown along the way - since I had just eaten Donutown last Saturday before initially heading out to Borders).
After a rather uneventful trip to Borders, I was hot on the trail of Shutter. Even according to the in-store inventory system, the DVD was in stock. However, I searched though pretty much every single section in the DVD area, and the movie was nowhere to be found. So I did what I hardly ever do, even as a last resort: I asked a clerk for help. You see, I’ve done my fair share of retail work in the past, so I’m pretty well-versed in where to look for things, even if they’re not in their right place. However, a clerk could tell me if the disc was behind a counter somewhere, or something. So I explained what I was looking for.
Of course, she couldn’t find it either. Her helpful advice? “It was either sold or someone has it on hold.” Gah!
The moral of this story? Always call ahead.
So I headed home. On the drive home, I wondered if Great Buy Best Buy might have the disc, even though the last few times I’d been there it looked as if they’d purged their entire inventory of Asian horror. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I checked Great Buy’s Best Buy’s website when I got home - lo and behold, it says they’ve got it in stock. And for a few bucks cheaper than Borders, to boot!
The moral of this story? Always check Great Buy Best Buy. (But not really, since their selection isn’t really that great.)
Ignoring the moral of the first story (because the Great Buy Best Buy isn’t too far from my house, unlike the Borders), I drove out to Great Buy Best Buy. Upon entering the store, I made a beeline for the Horror section (because Great Buy Best Buy has all of their Asian films mixed in with everything else, which is a bit of a pain) and began searching the shelves. However, the selection went from approximately twenty copies of See No Evil to about ten copies of Silent Hill. No Shutter. Double Gah!!
But wait! For the second time today, I decided to go against the odds and ask for help (mainly because this time, the clerk approached me - as they are wont to do at Great Buy Best Buy and places of the sort). Intriguingly, the clerk was actually a guy that I went to high school with - let’s call him Barry, since he was fairly well-known for singing Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana” whenever our high school had karaoke lunch periods (no, I’m not making that up). I explain to Barry what I was looking for, and he recognizes me. “You used to go to (hellhole high school), right?” he asked. “(Pooch), right?” I replied in the affirmative, and we made small talk for a few minutes. We then went back to the horror DVD rack, and he confirmed what I already knew - Shutter wasn’t there. But wait! “Let me check in the back,” he says, something I used to tell customers all the time to placate them when places I worked at were out of stock.
But this time is different - Barry comes back with a brand-spanking new copy of Shutter. Score! In addition, while I was waiting for Barry to come back, I spied a two-pack consisting of the Japanese horror films One Missed Call and its sequel. I’d seen the original One Missed Call before, and really liked it - but I’ve never seen the sequel. However, I’d also never even seen the first film for sale anywhere, so I decided to pick up the two-pack while I was there. Then, spying Audition for $10, I very nearly grabbed that, too - until I realized that would be a little silly to walk out with four movies when I originally meant to buy only one. And besides, there were five copies of Audition there, and if Great Buy Best Buy ever runs out, Borders usually has the movie in stock, too. But I digress.
I popped Shutter into my DVD player upon returning home, to see what sort of extras are on the disc (since I’ve already seen the film, I’ll watch it later). Mostly bare-bones stuff, including: 1) four behind-the-scenes looks at some of the different scenes in the movie, narrated by the film’s directors, 2) interviews with the directors and cast members, and 3) previews for four or five other Tartan Film releases, all but one of which I’ve seen. Not the best bonus features, but I’m more into the movie than the bonus materials, anyway. Definitely not a bad pickup at $20.
I’m not really sure if there was a point to this post, other than to say “Hey, I bought Shutter on an impulse today, and you should too.” Oh well. Vhat do you vant? Wiolins?
Categorized as Media, Media/Movies
“Mister Chekov, you will not address me in that tone of VOICE!!!”
That post was a true pleasure to read. Yeah, it sure did remind of all the gallivanting around town we used to do in the old days, in search of some rarified goodness of one type or another. Particularly before we found Doug’s.
Jesus, I can’t believe you saw that “Barry” dude at
Great BuyBest Buy. That’s totally funny. Seems lucky you ran into him, and after checking in the back he found the DVD you were after! (If you’d happened instead across some random employee who didn’t know you, he might have not given enough of a shit to go check in the back.)The extras on the domestic release of Shutter sound similar to what came on the Singaporean disc, which is where our copy hails from. With one possible exception; it seems like we also had a feature on the whole concept of “ghost photography” along with closer looks at some of the famous examples they showed us in the movie (some of which I had actually seen before while researching the subject some years prior). There wasn’t a ton of extra content, but that didn’t matter to me, because as you said, I was more into the movie anyway!
I’m not too much of a horror film monger — in the sense that I won’t actually go to a cinema to see them, most of the time — but seeing Shutter in a huge, stadium-like theater (packed with shrieking Thai girls, who startled me more than the movie at times) was great fun.
“For your information, sir, I have a wery high efficiency rating!”
Yeah, it was kind of weird seeing “Barry” there; actually, I thought I’d recognized him before when I was at that particular
Great BuyBest Buy, but I never actually bothered to see if it was him. I mean, I barely talked to the guy at all in high school, so I wasn’t about to go up to him for no reason and say, “Hey! Aren’t you so-and-so?” But, we’ve all got to make a living somehow. And it’s cool he actually checked the stock to find the film for me.I’d have to actually check the bonus stuff again to see if the ghost photography feature is there - I seem to recall something like that listed on the menu. I know there’s a brief (like, one minute long) thing where the directors talk about some of the odd pictures taken on the set during filming, at least. Again, though, the film matters more.
Oh, and something else I neglected to mention: the box has the subtitle “The Original” under the main title of the film, which makes me think of the whole “Real Ghostbusters” vs. “Filmation Ghostbusters” cartoons from the ’80s. Heehee. Actually, it seems there’s going to be a U.S. remake of Shutter, starring one of the dudes from Dawson’s Creek.
I used to hate horror films, but now I really like them - or at least the Asian ones, which aren’t quite as gore-focused as Western. Though I recently saw a South Korean horror film called Bloody Reunion, which was a slasher borefest (See! Someone get their eyelids stapled open!). If Asian horror films start copying their Western counterparts - and start focusing on buckets of blood and gore above all else - I’ll be very sad.