I like the first cover
And guido, Thanks for sharing the covers 
Ooooh, the covers look aboslutely cool. THanks for sharing guido. Welcome to Pixar Planet dude!
The UK DVD release for Ratatouille is February 11. As a bonus, if you pre-order the DVD at any UK Disney Store or website, you will receive a mini snowglobe:
Ugh, still a whole month to go…But that little snowglobe looks so sweet! I’d pre-oder it if there was a Disney store anywhere near around here. I guess living in the middle of nowhere has its disadvantages.
Thanks for the information, Rachel! 
rachel - Ah! I want it! Blast these plane ticket prices…
Thanks for the picture and information, rachel. 
– Mitch
I cannot access the file, I only get this message: “Account Error: Account IDisk Inactive”
Rachel- Yup, but with a lovely delivery charge added on! 
Sorry had to change servers, should work again now!
I hope this has not already been posted:
According to Amazon.co.uk there are going to be limited editions of Ratatouille in the UK which include the Pixar Shorts disc: 3-Disc DVD / 2-Disc Blu-ray
totoro- That’s actually awesome! I haven’t got the short films DVD, so I’m so gonna get that! Thanks for the information.
Oh wicked! The packaging for the Ratatouille and Pixar short films set is really nice. I would love to know what is on that elusive 3rd disc… Thanks for that totoro!
Similarly, there is the option of buying Ratatouille from Amazon.co.uk and receiving a free set of magnets. link
It should be more or less identical to the second disc of the 2-disc special edition to be released in Germany.
totoro - Wow. How cool! Thank you for the information.
rachel - Magnets? I want 'em! Thanks for ze news! On to Amazon.com…
– Mitch
rachel: Magnets huh? Well, they do look cool.
Well, after much waiting I finally got my hands on the Australian DVD of Ratatouille…
Menus and Extras: The 2-D menus were great. I thought the bonus features section was a bit scant, seeing as there were only two. I mean, the Target bonus disc had more than this for goodness sake. But we all know what Disney-Pixar are playing at, in regards to the less than impressive features. It’s just that I haven’t quite gotten used to being finished with the extras in under 20 mins, when compared to the past DVD releases which you could watch for hours.
However, the Thomas Keller and Brad Bird interview was very good. I never knew there were so many parallels between cooking and animation. The way they both have such passion for their respective crafts is inspiring. I laughed when they showed Brad being really nitpicky, but hey, it gets results! At the very end of the interview, the one where Brad kept referring to it as a medium he paused at the end and I expected him to add, “which isn’t a genre.” 
The presentation of the Feature Presentation: Now onto the presentation of the movie… I won’t talk about the movie per say, that’s for another thread, but I will talk about the way it is presented on the Australian DVD.
In case you didn’t know, Australia’s television format is PAL. Now when you play a movie that was originally created on screens that are of the NTSC format, the movie is adjusted for the PAL TV screens. But there are side effects.
The first with Ratatouille is that, according to Wikipedia, the movie is played 4% faster than the original theatrical release we all know and love. That might not seem like much, but in some places of the film it makes people move around too fast which in turn, makes the character movements unnatural. For a company like Pixar that prides it self with natural-looking body language and movements, it looks rather laughable to see people moving around quickly, but it is not a good representation of Pixar’s work at all.
Also, the pauses that were between each scene are virtually non-existent, leaving the audience no real time to reflect on what just happened. I know Brad Bird is a fan of having silent parts of the film to balance out the action scenes, so the audience can take a breather, so he wouldn’t be happy with with the DVD I watched, that’s for sure.
The second problem with the conversion is that it raises the audio about .66 of a semitone. I don’t know much about music, but to my delicate little ears, everyone sounded like chipmunks. Probably 'cause I am so used to the original audio from the cinematic release, that I can pick up the differences. But Skinner doesn’t sound anywhere near as threatening as he should sound, and neither does Ego.
le sigh Yes, it really is as bad as I am making it out to be.
It’s a shame as well, since people who didn’t get to see the movie in cinemas, or didn’t see the “original version” enough times to pick up on the PAL DVD differences, might take the higher pitched audio and rushed character movement as a reflection of Pixar’s standard of work.
I don’t even want to watch it again until I get my paws on the American DVD somehow. I might make a video to illustrate the differences to you guys. From now on, I think I’ll just order the DVD when it’s available in America so I don’t have to wait so long to watch the movie again (saving me money on movie tickets, at least), and so I won’t have to watch another horrid PAL conversion. >_<
Speaking of differences between the theatrical release and DVD release, I did spot a few more differences that were added in by Brad, but didn’t make it in time for the reels… I know you guys might have already spotted these, but if you’d like to dispute any of these, or have any others to add, please let me know.
- Linguini’s cheeks are red the morning after he got drunk…
- … and Colette leaves a nasty-looking handprint when she slaps him.
- Most text has been changed to French (but the poster in Gusteau’s office is still in English)
- And Remy’s chef’s hat at the end.
That’s all I spotted on the first viewing. But, is it just me going crazy, or was there extra audio added in? Like background noises, and such? The last time I saw Ratatouille in the cinema, it was very clear audio but I’m pretty sure some extra background noise was put in there.
Anyway, I’m happy I got to watch Ratatouille again, but I wish it was in the original format, like the film makers intended. Hopefully there won’t be this sort of problem when the US and everyone else goes HD so we can avoid this kettle of fish altogether. 
Well, when it comes to Pixar, don’t trust Wikipedia. (Sorry, but I had to say it. 
)
Hmmm. The American DVDs won’t play in Australia? 
I wonder why that is.
rachel- I’m sorry to hear about the poor quality of the DVD. Ratatouille is a work of art that needs to be appreciated in its full form, and I’m sure the people at Pixar would be disappointed that something they’ve worked long and gard on isn’t being presented at its best.
A113- As far as I’m aware, it’s something to do with different regions, so the region that America is in is not the same as the region that Australia is in, and unless you have a region-free DVD player, you can’t use one in the other.
At least the audio pitch problem could have been avoided.
I don’t know about other PAL-countries, but (as I already mentioned a while ago) in Germany they released “Cars” with a pitch-corrected English language audio track. The German track still had the “chipmunks”, though.
Many players can be made regionfree. There is an extensive list of hacks at [url]Missing page (404 Error).
Back in the US, y’all.
Picked up hebrew dub DVD, and it’s quite good (always fun to spot the differences, so far, I’ve noticed most of the text changed to French (like the spinning newspaper) with a subtitle, and of course some dialogue adaptations. Notably, they call Remy a mouse, largely because (I’m guessing reason here) it would add a syllable every time ruining the rhythm. All the VOs are pretty good (though Anton Ego’s not as good, but then, who would by as good as Peter O’Toole, really).
Bonusage: I also get 5 other language dubs here!
Besides English and Hebrew, I’ve got Russian, Romanian, and Greek here. Granted, I only know English and Hebrew, but still neat.
Extra bonusage:
Fine food and Film is on here with the original dub.
Word.
edit: Your friend the rat does use the term for rat.