CHRISTMAS DAY
Merry Christmas. We're taking the day off. But hey, we don't want to just leave you hanging. Here's a new review for you until we return tomorrow. Jeff McNeal examines the artful INCOGNITO.

CHRISTMAS EVE 1998
The BIG Picture's first annual Twelve DVDs' of Christmas promotion has concluded, with our hearty congratulations and thanks to Nick Sutter of Appleton, Wisconsin. Asking our readers to point out this web site's flaws was tantamount to going out on a date with a Supermodel and asking them to point out all your flaws. Nick's list of errors was brutal. But you know what? We don't mind, becauser it will help us make The BIG Picture an even better site for you. It's fitting that on Christmas eve, our special gift to you this holiday season will be a site that's faster loading and easier to navigate, with far fewer disappointments. We're eager to please -- and this final phase of our promotion will help us achieve that desire.

It wouldn't be right to not thank several others who spent a great deal of time and effort tracking down our errors to help us improve. Honorable mentions and special thanks go to Nathaniel Lloyd, Michael Sauers, Christy Bishop and Louis Pope, among many others. I wish we could award DVD's to all of them, but you still have our sincere thanks and deep appreciation.

To you, our reader and friend, we wish to extend our warmest wishes for a wonderful holiday and a happy new year. If you're traveling, please be sure to wear your seatbelts and make sure the kids are buckled, too. I know that sounds corny, but it's a heartfelt wish of mine, after losing my mother in a car accident just under five years ago. Merry Christmas and may the touch of magic you felt as a child bless your heart again this year.

Jeff McNeal, editor & publisher
The BIG Picture

Wednesday, December 23, 1998
11:11pm PST - Check out the top ten DVD content providers and witness their impressive recent sales numbers.

11:00pm PST - The Orange County Register features an in-depth review of Metallica's "Cunning Stunts" concert DVD and can't hurl enough superlatives at it. Cool, man.

10:32am PST - As we prepare to put the final wraps on our "Twelve DVDs' of Christmas" promotion (the deadline for the final phase is twelve noon today Pacific time), we'd like to thank all who participated in our five, unique and creative ways to win. We hope you had fun. We'd also like to thank every studio that offered to support this promotion with free discs -- including a few that unfortunately didn't make it onto our list this time. We also need to provide a belated thank-you to Columbia Tristar for their support of this promotion, as well as the other studios that we heard back from immediately: Warner Brothers, MGM, New Line, Image, Universal and Fox. We're just waiting for two of the twelve titles to arrive in our hands -- the other ten are already here. Then, we'll immediately turn them around and ship our five winners their set of the twelve DVDs' each. Merry Christmas. Oh, and by the way -- we'll be announcing the name of our final winner tomorrow, Christmas eve.

10:08am PST - The ever-prolific Bob Banka provies a review we can really sink our teeth into today... Read about Criterion's FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN. It's our review of the day! Be sure and check to see what our new featured review from the archive is today, also!

9:28am PST - "DVD production is exploding and demand from our customers for trained, qualified operators is skyrocketing"... An outfit in Northern California is preparing to teach Generation X the fine and noble art of DVD production. Let's hope they take the class on a field trip to Columbia Tristar and Laser Pacific (you've seen their work on LOST IN SPACE and BLADE to name just two) to take a primer in the "art of compression". The class should also take a field trip to Madacy to learn how NOT to produce a DVD.

9:17am PST - The venerable VHS recorder is still chugging along, with stronger sales than ever in '98. The article also keys in on Digital TV and DVD. The data originiates from TWICE.

9:00am PST - DVD - the adult Furby of '98... According to Reuters, Holiday DVD and Divx sales are strong... We're seeing claims like "Divx now controls 20% of the digital market". However, since no actual hardware or software sales statistics have been offered by Divx or parent company Circuit City as proof to bolster this surprising revelation, we find the claim as thin as the paper the stats are printed on. We also recall a distant message from the infamous, enigmatic, supposed Divx-insider "Trillium 9" several months back, that stated a 20% market share was the "goal" of Circuit City chairman Richard L. Sharp -- and if that goal was not attained by this holiday season, Divx would be scrapped. We smell a fish. Before you get too worked up about this, consider that no hard data reflecting actual Divx sales has been made available to the media -- so this 20% number being thrown around now, amounts to nothing more than rumor, conjecture, hyperbole or speculation. Wheras the data regarding DVD is documented and solid. Go DVD!! We can't wait until recordable DVD hits the market. It should be noted that Divx owners will not be able to record DVD media on their "Divx-enhanced" players.

Tuesday, December 22, 1998
2,400,00 shares can't be wrong... Image Entertainment released another 2,400,000 shares of common stock yesterday at five bucks a pop. Might make a nice stocking stuffer.

In-Focus and Faroudja have teamed to produce a a quiet, lightweight LCD video projector to compete with the excellent Sony VPL-W400Q. But at over three times the cost, can it effectively compete? Time will tell. There's bound to be quite a buzz about this new projector on The Sony VPL-W400Q Forum.

You may have already heard that Image Preview magazine (a favorite pick-me-up at many video retailers) is going by the wayside after this month. Not to be outdone, after 20 years on the newsstands, Video magazine says ta-ta, as well. Looks like December will a month of fond farewells and new beginnings.

EXCLUSIVE BREAKING STORY Hello?....Hello?... We've been receiving word from purported Divx sales insiders at The Good Guys! that several Divx machines have been returned for problems relating to the telephone hookup. One problem is the wireless phone jacks being sold to Divx buyers that balk at installing another phone line. Seems that the things work fairly well for voice communications, but data transmission doesn't work reliably. Here's the real kicker. Seems that at least one person bought a Divx player that refused to yield back their phone line. They wondered why their teenagers weren't receiving any phone calls and discovered that their new Divx player had siezed the line. The silver lining in all of this of course is that they were ringing up charges on Divx's toll-free number for several hours. The Divx player had to be disconnected from the phone line before they could use their telephone again. This could prove to be a major Achilles heel for Divx.

Here's a new review for you -- Bob takes an in-depth look (and examines the psychology) of THE GRADUATE. This review provides the newcomer to The BIG Picture with the kind of quality and perspective that you can expect when reading one of our reviews. Don't forget to check our review section on our menu strip. Each day, there's a new "Featured Review" from our growing archives, plus our "Latest Review". The "Recent Reviews" section will take you to a list of our most recent reviews in the last month or so.

In case you missed the last HUGE wave of title announcements, check out Laserviews. We were thrilled to see that Universal is releasing DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID on DVD March 16th. It was no more than three or four weeks ago that we lamented how great it would be to see that clever film-noir comedy on DVD. Thanks for the early Christmas present, Universal!

Jingle all the way... DVD video sales surge as holiday shoppers snap up titles... Records are being broken... Holiday DVD software sales have jumped 22%! Music to our collective ears, isn't it? I had occasion to wander through our local Wal-Mart yesterday and noticed the DVD section was really picked through... Several titles, like MOUSEHUNT, TOMORROW NEVER DIES:SE and LOST IN SPACE were sold out! Others like MASK OF ZORRO were in short supply.To see the latest chart of DVD best-sellers, check out the DVD Group's page.

Have you entered the final phaseof our "Twelve DVDs' of Christmas" giveaway? Remember, the deadline to receive your entry is tomorrow at 12noon PST. One entry per person - the best HTML sleuth is going to win over $300 worth of some of the nicest titles to own on DVD!

Monday, December 21, 1998
Whoops! We've already had to revise the rules slightly in the final phase of our 12 DVD giveaway. So if you've already read the page, please take another look...

Well, we were going to wait until after the holidays -- but by now, you should know that if we get an idea into our heads at TBP, we move fast. Beginning today, you'll find an exclusive, original, new feature at The BIG Picture: The Big Pic Tip is a banner that appears at the bottom of our DVD ratings and review index pages. There are currently about 70 individual home theater and Big Picture-related "factoids" that are designed to help DVD and home-theater newcomers quickly get up to speed with DVD, Home Theater, Front Projection -- and yes, even Divx-related issues. Here's an example of what a BIG PIC TIP looks like:

We'll be adding more BIG PIC TIPS and should have over 100 by tomorrow. Have a good tip you'd like to share that might help a newcomer? E-mail it to us!

Bob Banka has written a very thorough review of D.W. Griffiths' controversial, 1915 silent epic, THE BIRTH OF A NATION.

We're ready to announce the fifth and final phase of our "Twelve DVDs' of Christmas Giveaway" -- and we think you'll agree that there has NEVER been a contest like THIS before! Check our special promotion page, meet our first four winners and find out how YOU can make us ALL winners in this unique contest! Caution, this page is a slow-loader...But hey, it's temporary.

Weekend Update
Ah, just enjoying my second mug of some holiday cheer (Irish Coffee) and just back from taking the kids to see PRINCE OF EGYPT. I wanted to be sure to have a good basis for comparing the DVD to film whenever the DVD is released by Dreamworks. There was some incredible animation at play -- and as I was watching one of the greatest stories ever told (with the requisite artistic license renewed for another term), I was struck by the profound irony of Disney's withholding their A-list animated classics on DVD. Well, guess what? MGM, Fox, Warner Columbia Tristar and Dreamworks are all creating their own "classics" and we're able to enjoy them - without restriction at home with our families on DVD. Sure, we haven't seen anything yet that enthralls us the way BEAUTY & THE BEAST did, but we're seeing LOADS more than BEAUTY & THE BEAST: ENCHANTED CHRISTMAS could ever hope to deliver. We hope that Disney doesn't continue to address the burgeoning DVD community with such disregard. Our wish is that Disney will come to realize that their second-tier animation simply can't compete with the outstanding animation that the aforementioned studios are beginning to turn out for our families. We know you're out there, Disney. As of today, Disney.com has accessed The BIG Picture 2,862 times this month alone.We're glad that you're visiting The BIG Picture -- but are you "getting" the big picture? We sure hope so. And we're not alone.

Good news. We have completely re-tooled our massive Ratings Index and Review Listings, making disc ratings and reviews easier to access and quicker to load than ever before. Kiss those "page too large to load" error messages goodbye! And this is just the beginning. Look for a special new Home Theater-related feature (not seen anywhere else!) to enhance your visits to The BIG Picture starting in the new year!

Now here is something fresh, exciting and unusual. Steve Tannehill has created a special "rant and rave" page for all the critical e-mail he receives over at DVD Resource from disgruntled readers. And for whatever reason, Steve receives a fair amount of... uh... feedback of this nature. This move is a bold gambit on Tannehill's part and even though we may not always agree with his politics or opinions, we have to admire his verve. And one more thing... One lucky reader is going to win a $#@!-load of DVD's in a a promotion going on over there right now.

Oh yeah. We've been getting some e-mail alterts. It seems that Prodivx.com is (yawn) back. Yippee...

We're going to ammend our review of DIVAS LIVE to point out the printing error on the disc itself that is causing some concern and confusion. The disc is labeled as a "Video CD", when in fact, it is most definitley a DVD -- and a great-sounding one at that.

Wired.com has a follow up with some very interesting site statistics regarding the now-defunct Prodivx website. Special thanks to Dana, our special field correspondent whom we don't that nearly enough for all the great content he sends our way. So.. thanks, Dana!

It makes us feel kind of kinky to even bring this up... Recently, we were contacted by Vivid DVD (the makers of adult features) through an intermediary (one of our sponsors), asking if we would be willing to add a review section for adult-oriented DVD content on The BIG Picture. We have our own opinions, but to make sure that we're not completely out of touch and incorrectly second-guessing our readership, we decided to ask for your input through our latest news poll. We'll take the results of this poll under advisement. We encourage everyone who has an opinion to participate. Your feelings and thoughts are important to us as we attempt to provide objective consideration to this rather... ah... unconventional request.

As a reminder, The BIG Picture will be without updates on Friday, December 25, 1998 in honor of Christmas.

Joseph DeMartino e-mailed us this clever parody on the infamous Divx flyer by Circuit City that we received from another reader last week.

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