One day we'll all laugh that
there were such things as DVD "regions". The DVD Forum
should be ashamed for strong-arming the world into their
regional straitjackets. Don't let them stop you! It's not
illegal, no matter what they say.
Nick Wrigley of
Masters of Cinema
Hello!,
My name is Gary W. Tooze
and I am webmaster and owner of this non-commercial website
called
DVDBeaver.
However, the site is far from being "my own". It survives
and thrives with the help of numerous like-minded film and
DVD aficionados
around the world. We essentially share information of both a
factual and subjective nature. This site is a resource for
that information.
We have come along way
since our un-ambitious beginnings of 6 or 7 members of the
Movies Section of
Home Theater Forum. We would converse in and out of the
Forum often relying on the extensive knowledge of
Pascal Acquarello for
advice on World Cinema. Rich, Brook,
Darren,
Bill and a few others would converse in a "Reply to All"
fashion through e-mail till one day I set-up a
Listserv through Yahoo.
Other Film/DVD Forums
began to arise and with many of us thirsting for more
information, we began to explore them.
Criterion had a wonderful
Forum where we met
Gregory Meshman and
Nick
Wrigley who in turn brought on people like Trond
Trondsen of
Nostalghia.com. Eventually as word spread and DVDBeaver
evolved, others like writer/director
David Tausik and restorer
Robert
A. Harris joined us to further enhance our information
network. We are now over 400 members strong sharing around 700 e-mail messages a month.
Our weekly e-newsletter has 1600 subscribers.
Ted Todorov, a member of
our ListServ and
Home Theater Forum persuaded me to purchase a
Multi-Region DVD player, which probably had the biggest
effect in the evolution of DVDBeaver (Thanks Ted!).
With the help of people like
Ole of DVDBasen and a variety of individuals around the
globe we are able to make very
detailed comparisons of DVDs of the same film to help
determine the definitive version to own.
Macleans Magazine article Feb 4th, 2008
HERE (.jpg) or
HERE (.pdf)
Film Comment (Jan/Feb 2008 issue)
HERE (.jpg) or
HERE (.pdf)
Quoted in book The DVDStack II
HERE (.jpg) or
HERE (.pdf)
Cinematical Article on DVDBeaver's DVD of the Year balloting
from January 3rd, 2008
HERE
Michael Philip's article in Chicago Tribune Oct 31st, 2007
HERE
March 07' Article in The Mississauga News
HERE
Feb 5th, 2007 Article in Star Tribune on DVDBeaver
HERE
DVDBeaver quoted liberally in Montreal Gazette Dec, 9th 06' issue
HERE
DVDBeaver mentioned in Premiere Magazine's Oct 06' issue
HERE
DVDBeaver mentioned in Fred Kaplan's July 06' NY Times article
HERE
DVDBeaver interviewed in 06-06 issue of
KinoDigest see
HERE
Beaver tops Timeout listing of Best website 2005
see
HERE
Chicago Tribune (Jan 13th, 2006) article regarding
Region-free quotes DVDBeaver liberally
HERE
Beaver mentioned again in
NY TIMES (Sept 05')
CLICK HERE
DVDBeaver
mentioned in Star Tribune article
CLICK HERE to read
DVDBeaver is proud to be nominated for The Annual
Cinemarati Awards for BEST FILM WEBSITE.
CLICK HERE to find out more.
From a Forum post:
"Jonathan Rosenbaum"
<jrosenbaum2002@y...> wrote:
Sorry I haven't been contributing to the latter portions of
this discussion. The fact is, I bought a $300 multiregion
player before the prices went down, and others in this group
seem to know a lot more about the subject than I do from an
updated perspective. But I can at least alert members to a
couple of valuable web sites that are excellent guides for
keeping up with what films are or are becoming available
overseas:
The former is more comprehensive, but the latter has the
irreplaceable feature of comparing frame enlargements from
separate versions of the same film, and offering expert
advice about which versions are better from other
standpoints. The new UK version of Lang's M, for example,
which is much superior to Criterion's, was something I
learned about from DVD Beaver. It may also be worth
mentioning that one can now get a superb version of the
restored PLAYTIME in stereo from France, issued by the same
people responsible for the Tativille web site.
Jonathan
DVDBeaver mentioned in Chicago
Tribune article
HERE