Giant Two-Disc Special Edition

Product Description Giant: Special Edition (Dbl DVD) Additional Features The 2005 release of Giant is essentially the same as the 2003 release except that in comes in a keepcase rather than a digipack. The film is on a two-sided disc, and the bonus features are on a second disc. The transfer is strikingly beautiful, but the widescreen picture is not anamorphically enhanced due to its relatively modest 1.66 aspect ratio. (George Stevens Jr. mentions in the commentary track that his father liked a sense of height in his pictures and said that CinemaScope was only useful for the Last Supper.) The bonus features are as big as Texas. Most significant among various materials are three substantial (over 45 minutes each) documentaries: "George Stevens: The Filmmakers Who Knew Him," in which Warren Beatty, Frank Capra, and others reminisce about Stevens, and two making-of retrospectives, "Memories of Giant" and "Return to Giant," which have surprisingly little overlap considering they were made only two years apart, in 1996 and 1998. Especially poignant are the cast and crew's still-vivid reactions to James Dean's death in a car accident shortly after the completion of shooting. --David Horiuchi