Hard Boiled Ultimate Edition DVD $7.99 @ Circuit City Extreme YMMV

Haggar

Haggar

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Hey everyone-

Like many people last week, I bought the Dragon Dynasty 2 disc Ultimate Edition DVD from Circuit City because of the promo that was supposed to come with it, a Stranglehold mini strategy guide (boo) and a $10.00 off coupon for the Stranglehold game (yay).

As most (all?) people know, Circuit City did not have the promo. I bought the DVD 20 minutes after the store opened on the day it came out. My store never has promos. So I asked about it, and the clerk added onto my receipt that I didn't get the promo and I would come back for it.

So I went in tonight, and of course they knew nothing about it. One person said they never got it, while another said they gave them all out. Then they said they ran out, and I showed them the ad that didn't have a limited quantites listed. So the clerk ran in the back to the manager and then came out and said he was sorry, but they were all gone.

So I asked him how was I going to get the $10 coupon for the game, and he went into the back and came back out and said he would just refund me $10.00 off of the DVD since they had no coupon to give me. So after the refund, I got the DVD for $7.99.

If you purchased the DVD last week but didn't get the promo with coupon, if you feel like going back to Circuit City you might also get $10.00 back. Not sure if it is coming from corporate or I just got a good manager that wanted to make a customer happy.

Also, they were out of Xbox Live points cards, so the same clerk gave me a rain check for 4 cards.

I was very happy with how Circuit City handled it.
 
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I was looking forward to getting this DVD but I heard it was incorrectly matted and kind of squashed. Any opinion on how "fat" Chow Yun Fat looks?
 
[quote name='probablysober']I was looking forward to getting this DVD but I heard it was incorrectly matted and kind of squashed. Any opinion on how "fat" Chow Yun Fat looks?[/QUOTE]

I heard people complaining, too, but it looks fine to me. I had the Criterion and it looks better than that, so it's good enough for me.
 
My receipt says: “Customer is entitled to free copy of Stranglehold strategy guide” so when the actual guide comes out, I'm going back to get a free copy. No mention about the $10 off coupon though.
 
[quote name='probablysober']I was looking forward to getting this DVD but I heard it was incorrectly matted and kind of squashed. Any opinion on how "fat" Chow Yun Fat looks?[/quote]
The following excerpt was taken from The Running Man's review over at Asian DVD Guide forum (he's comparing five different transfers and has screen grabs of all five versions posted, so IMHO, his impressions are fairly comprehensive and detailed):

Regarding video quality:
The Dragon Dynasty disc, while using the same source as the German disc (and very possible the French disc) falls inferior to each disc. While the video is generally of high quality, the colors are darker and a bit murkier than than both the French and German disc. Also, the picture has less picture information on all four sides than either of those discs. But worse of all, is that the picture looks stretched. It appears that after the cropping was done, the video restoration team decided to cover the cropping by stretching the image out which makes objects and people like wider than they should be (something which was typical of HKL back when Brian White was running the label). The result is a picture that while better than what's out there in NTSC currently, is inferior to the French and German releases.
Click to expand...

Regarding audio quality:
Contrary to what the back of the box says, the Dragon Dynasty disc has the Cantonese track in mono, and 5.1 DD and DTS and the (horrible) English dub in 5.1 DD only.

The 5.1 mix for the (horrendous) English dub on the DD disc is a bit better mixed than both the Cantonese 5.1 mixes on it, with better separation of music and sound effects except that the vocals don't seem to sound as well mixed as they do on the Cantonese track...
Click to expand...

Regarding subtitles:
The new R1 DVD from Dragon Dynasty however takes up the challenge and delivers a set of subtitles that are actually worse than the Winstar subs. Unlike the Winstar subs, Dragon Dynasty's subs are 100% dubtitles through and through.

Because of the laziness of the DD, that means that there are only two DVDs that carry subtitles that are based on the Cantonese track and they are the remastered Meh Ai disc and the remastered Tartan UK disc.
Click to expand...
Keep in mind that a Blu-ray version of the film will be included with the Stranglehold video game for the PS3, but it's anyone's guess as to how good (or bad) the transfer is until the game is released. From what I've been reading on other DVD forums, Dragon Dynasty is doing a shoddy job on almost every film in their library, and they really botched Hard Boiled for R1 viewers, which is simply inexcusable in my book.
 
Had a horrible experience at my local CC with this deal. I went in on Tuesday when the DVD was supposed to be released. I go up to the register and pay for my DVD and they dont even know about the deal for the promo items. Had to show them the ad. The cashier walks to the CS area and the manager and they both said they havent received any of the items.

So I asked them if I could buy the DVD and have them call me when the items come in, they say yes. A week goes by and still havent gotten a call from them. So I go in Sunday (to get my 4 1600 Point cards deal) and they denied me saying it wasnt an accessory even though I showed them their own website saying it was. They give me the run around and won't honor their store ad. Returned the entire in-store pickup order. (Was able to PM @ the bestbuy across the street, thank god)

Anyway, at this point I'm pretty pissed off. So I ask them about the promo items and why havent they called me yet. They told me they had gotten them and sold out on the previous Tuesday. I told them I wouldnt even have bought the DVD if I had known that the promo items sold-out. They say they are "sorry" and I asked if I could return the DVD even though I had opened it. Luckily, they let me return the opened DVD. It was the only good news that they gave me.

Needless to say, I'm never shopping at Circuit City again. Such poor customer service, cant even honor their own store ad or give me straight answers.
 
[quote name='probablysober']I was looking forward to getting this DVD but I heard it was incorrectly matted and kind of squashed. Any opinion on how "fat" Chow Yun Fat looks?[/QUOTE]

I looked at a bunch of the comparison shots, and the matting is extremely minimal on each side. I tried really hard to notice Chow-Yun Fat looking fat while watching the movie and in the comparison shots, but I just didn't really notice it. Is it a perfect transfer? No. But will the average to slightly nitpicky DVD viewer notice it? No. To be honest, the only people who are really going to notice it are the anal retentive snobs who just have to run it side by side with another edition. Trust me, it looks fine.
 
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