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SUBJECTHellboy II: The Golden Army

On November 11th, Universal Studios Home Entertainment threw a party at Element in Hollywood to celebrate the Blu-ray release of Hellboy II: The Golden Army, hosted by the incomparable visionary director of the movie, Guillermo del Toro.
Del Toro (who was joined by film-makers Mike Magnolia and Mike Richardson, and cast members Selma Blair, Jeffrey Tambor and Doug Jones) took us through a presentation of the new Blu-ray, demonstrating some of its interactive bonus features; here’s a selection of his amusing repartee…

“First of all, when I create the DVDs I start from the get-go - with Hellboy I started the first day creating the DVD, when there wasn’t even an office, recording the process of the creation of the movie in an obsessive, compulsive, sometimes horrifying way in order to provide behind-the-scenes content that is very thorough, but also very candid sometimes, and shameful to witness! The behind-the-scenes on Hellboy ll you see how the circumstances changed our mind, the budget changed our mind, weather changed our mind, and how we fought against those things, because I believe that aside from being the archival form of a film, in other words the only way most people will ever re-experience the movie, other than that, it’s also a way for a lot of young people, who have no money or access to a film school, to learn the graphed of storytelling on film. So we try to provide not a glamorous look, but a very thorough, very technical look at the way the movies are created.”

“The Blu-ray offers the possibility of much more content. Sometimes they are a pain in the ass to navigate, everybody knows that. They take a lot more time to load, but the benefit is the content can never look better, it looks as good as it would look in a theatre. We take great pains to scale down the theatrical experience sound-wise, so you can get as accurate a surround experience at home, and visually we spend as much time as we did in color timing and finishing the image theatrically when we do the Blu-ray and DVD transfers. So you get an incredibly beautiful experience with Hellboy ll in that sense.”

“A lot of times you get requests from friends and family, ‘Why don’t you invite me to the set?’ You tell them, ‘It’s boring as f**k!’ They think movie making is all champagne drinks and caviar [dreams] it’s not, it’s really gritty work; it’s like carpentry without the head injuries! So these set visits were done in a very you’re there kind of way. There’s no commentary, there’s no editorializing, there’s some swearing, and you can see the way the set is working for a few minutes. So you will be invited, but you won’t get catering and you are allowed to leave!”

Finally, I’d like to announce the momentous event on November 23rd at 6 p.m., PST, wearing black, there will be the first ever BD-Live chat with me, we will see the movie together; it will be like having a living commentary. There will be interaction through the internet. There will be people asking questions, and we will debut a couple of really cool Guy Davis film comic books where we expand on the mythologies of this character or that character or this moment or that moment. If you saw what we did on the Pan’s Labyrinth Blu-ray edition, where we did some of those comic books with Guy, it’s a really beautiful way to expand the universe of the movie.”

To participate in the BD-Live chat with Guillermo Del Toro on Sunday, November 23, 2008, at 6 p.m. PST, log on to www.UniversalHiDef.com to create a user name and password – or – login if already registered.

Once registered, in “My Account,” select the “Director's Chat” tab to submit up to three questions

Connect your Blu-ray player to the Internet and chat with Guillermo Del Toro on November 23rd.

Written by Judy Sloane. Back to top

Visit the official Hellboy II: The Golden Army site
Images above © Universal Home Entertainment
Feature © 2008 Visual Imagination.
Not for reproduction.

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