Worth the Upgrade? Reservoir Dogs (1992)

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Those who fancies themselves to be cinephiles expect quality and quantity on their shelf of cinematic encyclopedia. Devout collectors of laser disc, beta max, HD DVD and blu-rays, in particular, hope to find easter eggs and other bells and whistles that mandate an upgrade in format. However, occasionally, the new format can omit or alter past releases and render themselves pointless despite the change in picture quality.

Case in point is the blu-ray release of Reservoir Dogs. Being the 15th anniversary should entail that the special features would include a new retrospective from the ensemble cast and maestro filmmaker Quentin Tarantino. Also it would be assumed that the comprehensive featurettes on the tenth anniversary special-edition DVD would be ported over due to the capacity of blu-ray. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case…

Instead Lionsgate completely extracts the new interviews by Tarantino, Tim Roth, Chris Penn and many others. They stripmine the commentary tracks from Tarantino and respected critics like Peter Travers. Anyone who has heard Tarantino speak at length about his projects knows what a knowledgeable and giddy raconteur he can be and it’s truly disheartening that Lionsgate has deprived us of what Artisan Home Entertainment so readily gave us.

As an olive branch, Lionsgate offers us the “Playing It Fast and Loose” feature that details how ‘Reservoir Dogs’ influenced other grindhouse-fed filmmakers and society as a whole. Nowhere to be found during this is anyone actually associated with the production itself. To Lionsgate, I quote a feature from Siskel and Ebert to give them the “wagging finger of shame”.