Killer Bean Announced for Sept 3rd

[jw]

Killer Bean Blu-ray

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4_7-lYjLEI&fmt=22

[McCrutchy]

The post made me remember that I saw one of the Killer Bean shorts years ago on YouTube, and I went and looked them up again.

In the US/Canada, the DVD of Killer Bean Forever (the latest installment of Killer Bean, and the first one to be feature-length) is handled directly by the creator, Jeff Lew, through his web site here. I was therefore concerned that he was somehow at a loss from this German release given that it will be handled by a studio. Since the film apparently took years to create and render, I e-mailed him to see if he knew about it:

Thanks for emailing me. Yes, I knew about the German release, but I didn't know when the release date would be or if it was going to be blu-ray. Thanks for sending me the link. This will actually be the first Blu-ray release of Killer Bean Forever! Yes, it will be native 1080p and all of the bonus features that are in the US version will be in the German version.

I did get payment up front from Warner Bros. Germany, so we're all squared away

Best,
Jeff

The US/Canada DVD is stacked with extras:

• The 85 minute animated feature film: Killer Bean Forever
• Director/Producer commentary
• CG Animator commentary
• "The Making Of" Featurette - 1 hour and 28 minutes long
• Alternate action sequences - I played around with lots of different action scene ideas. These are all in previs form.
• Deleted scenes - a couple scenes that I thought were cool, but didn't make the final cut. These are in previs form.
• Lost Killer Bean 3 footage - an action sequence that was created well before the real movie production. I never released this to the public.
• Voice Recording Sessions
• Killer Bean Forever trailers 1 & 2
• Killer Bean 1 & 2 with audio commentaries

So I'm excited to see this release now!

[McCrutchy]

Just ordered this and will report back about the disc quality shortly. Here's hoping I enjoy the film...

[toddly6666]

Originally Posted by McCrutchy

Just ordered this and will report back about the disc quality shortly. Here's hoping I enjoy the film...

thanks! I hope this blu-ray doesn't have the same problem as the NTSC DVD - the DVD would freeze at the end of every chapter. I contacted the filmmaker and he said they were all like this. I almost imported the Australian DVD, but then I heard about this blu-ray, so I plan to pick it up when I go to Germany in April.

Great little animated action film by the way!

[McCrutchy]

Some notes:

Firstly, despite being a Warner disc, this Blu-ray is definitely Region B LOCKED. I assume this has to do with rights, which would seem to be owned by Jeff Lew in the USA/Canada (he sells the NTSC DVD mentioned above through his web site) to begin with.

The main feature is 1080p23.976, and does not have the freezing issues toddly6666 described about the NSTC DVD.

From what I can tell, all of the extras from the DVD are present, here in PAL format. The two Jeff Lew audio commentaries for the main feature are not subtitled at all, even though his commentaries on the shorts in the extras (along with all the other extras) are available with optional white German subtitles.

The film auto-starts in the German DUB, so you must go to the menu and change the language to English and disable the subtitles to stop German translation of on-screen text.

The German DUB apparently features Til Schweiger as Detective Cromwell (it certainly sounds like him), and to be honest, sounds much more pleasing than the original English track, which is voiced only by the director and three vocal artists. Credits for the German DUB can be seen on the back cover of the Blu-ray, but are not present in the feature, which has only the original English titles and credits.

[toddly6666]

Originally Posted by McCrutchy

Some notes:

Firstly, despite being a Warner disc, this Blu-ray is definitely Region B LOCKED. I assume this has to do with rights, which would seem to be owned by Jeff Lew in the USA/Canada (he sells the NTSC DVD mentioned above through his web site) to begin with.

The main feature is 1080p23.976, and does not have the freezing issues toddly6666 described about the NSTC DVD.

From what I can tell, all of the extras from the DVD are present, here in PAL format. The two Jeff Lew audio commentaries for the main feature are not subtitled at all, even though his commentaries on the shorts in the extras (along with all the other extras) are available with optional white German subtitles.

The film auto-starts in the German DUB, so you must go to the menu and change the language to English and disable the subtitles to stop German translation of on-screen text.

The German DUB apparently features Til Schweiger as Detective Cromwell (it certainly sounds like him), and to be honest, sounds much more pleasing than the original English track, which is voiced only by the director and three vocal artists. Credits for the German DUB can be seen on the back cover of the Blu-ray, but are not present in the feature, which has only the original English titles and credits.

thanks! i'll pick this up when I'm in Germany. There's no English subtitles on it - is there??

[McCrutchy]

Originally Posted by toddly6666

thanks! i'll pick this up when I'm in Germany. There's no English subtitles on it - is there??

No, just German, German SDH, and German for English text; the latter can be disabled by selecting "Aus" ("None") from the subtitle menu.