I just finished watching the German 2-disc edition of Ratatouille.
Video and audio quality are superb, as usual. They really managed to get the maximum out of anamorphic PAL and 384 kbps DD-EX.
Unfortunately no pitch correction was done on any of the audio tracks, so the special treatment for “Cars” remains an exception.
The bonus features differ a bit from the initial announcement: they have moved all deleted scenes onto the second disc and there are fewer deleted scenes than initially announced (“deleted scenes” on disc 1 and “3 additional deleted scenes” on disc 2).
Bonus features on disc 1:
Lifted
Your Friend the Rat
Fine Food and Film
Bonus features on disc 2:
Building Paris
Character Profiles (Colette, Emile, Gusteau, Linguini, Remy, Skinner, Ego)
Deleted Scenes (Chez Gusteau, Meet Gusteau, First Day, Heist/Fantasy)
Progression Reel: Rapids
Behind the Scenes (Designing The Movie, Animating A Rat’s World, Animating With A French Flavour, Brad Bird: The Big Cheese, Cooking 101)
Remy’s Incredible But Edible
Ratatouille around the World (Something More (Latin American Spanish), Meet Remy (Latin American Spanish), What If Kids (Latin American Spanish), One World/Kids, Physical Fun, Japanese Teaser Trailer)
Sneak Peeks (various non-Ratatouille trailers)
Several podcast episodes are absent: Patton on Remy, Getting into Character, The Comedians of Ratatouille, The technical Ingredients, Parlez-vous Français? and Cooking up CG Food (some of them could be easter eggs, but I have yet to find any of those).
Also bit irritating is the fact that some bonus features were presented as windowboxed, anamorphic widescreen, i.e. with black bars all around the picture, even on a widescreen TV.
As far as I could see, seamless branching is only used for the “Walt Disney Pictures presents…” title, which is translated according to the selected audio language.
Aside from that, the text on the DVD is mostly like in the German theatrical version, except for Gusteau’s testament and Renata’s letter, which are now in English instead of French.
And of course the German DVD also has the modified ending with Remy wearing the toque blanche.
Miracle of miracles! The Australian DVD releases of Ratatouille did indeed come with some freebies - I just didn’t know about them. Oh, I’m so sorry Disney for doubting you and marketing abilities, but you really should have, say, advertised the Ratatouille DVD special offers…?
1. Big W: Free CD-rom included in the case, “packed with extra content.” Like so…
I included a picture of the front of the DVD so you can see the special sticker on the front, and also that obnoxious ratings yellow square on the bottom that couldn’t be any bigger, that we have to put up with our releases from now on… It almost covers Linguini.
Here’s a couple of screencaps from the CD-rom. It’s nothing special and as far as I know, it’s just about what you could do on Disney’s Ratatouille website, but it’s better than nothing… right?
2. K-Mart: Limited edition stationery set
I don’t think this was free (if it was - they should have advertised it!), but it was on the display stand with all the DVDs. It even says on the front “Available on DVD 16th January 2008”, so I think this is a Australian/New Zealand-only thing. It comes with a pencil case, pencil, eraser, pencil sharpener, and ruler. Sorry about the blurriness…
Thanks totoro, rachelcakes1985 and everyone else for detailing what the PAL DVDs are like.
A big disappointment for me to read that they didn’t do the pitch correction on these DVDs… I’m not going to bother to track them down now. Just wondering though: besides the normal bonus features, was there a running commentary included?
Such a great movie, and nowhere was the normal DVD handled properly (no pitch correction in the PAL countries, no decent extras or commentary in the NTSC US/Canadian or Japanese DVDs).
I wound up getting up a BluRay copy (even though I don’t have a player or PS3) because I could buy it for US$15 and figured it was cheap enough, but it may be years before I ever have a chance to watch it… I’m not a big BluRay fan, and now that BluRay won the war, the headline in the LA Times was “expect BluRay player prices to increase.” I guess I’ll have to settle for my US version and Canadian Steelbook versions (same as the US but with a nice steelbook case). For all those living in PAL countries though, just remember the audio is higher and faster than it’s supposed to be. But hey, at least you got a lot more bonus features than we did here in the US.
rachel - Well, at least you guys get something! It’s better than nothing. The bonus features that are included are, as you stated, similar to those on the official Ratatouille website, with a couple extra little additives that are, it seems, exclusive to that particular bonus DVD.
And yeah, that “ratings” sticker is huge. What the heck? Can’t you tear it off?
Thanks for all of the pictures, rachel!
Puh-ha! No offense, but that made me crack up for some reason.
Mitch - No, it’s not a sticker and it doesn’t come off. It looks even worse on the Pixar Short Films Collection… But I digress.
miafka - You’re welcome. No, the Australian PAL release is exactly the same as the US release except with the added “bonus” of having it at faster speed, and high pitched. So, it would be no use ordering the Aussie one.
Trust me, if we had a commentary track on ours down here, I would have uploaded the audio file and sent it to everyone, or something!
But I think the UK PAL release would be worth ordering if you wanted an English-language 2-disc with more extras (but no commentary). As far as I know that is the only English 2-disc of Ratatouille released right now, at least until we get ours in a few years’ time… There would the problem of the PAL DVD playing on your NTSC DVD player, and maybe even the TV, but if anything, your computer should play it fine. You’d still have the pitch and speed problem, but at least a few extras…
Yeah, it is disappointing, especially as I’ve played numerous NTSC DVDs on my TV and DVD player with no problems. They could have just shipped over the American Ratatouille DVD in the Australian case. I think the problem would have been the NTSC format DVDs playing on older TVs and DVD players, though. I don’t know. Yep, I think we can all agree that the DVD release of Ratatouille has been all over the shop…
The German 2-disc release also includes English audio, subtitles and menus.
As it looks identical to the UK edition in terms of bonus features, that could also be an option.
Well, uh… hello guys! this is my first post in, like, ages, and also my first one since my trip to Paris. I arrived yesterday, and I’ll tell you how the trip was later, ok?
But back on topic, while I was in France, guess what I came across with, in the exact same day I left Paris?
…
The French 2-Disc Collector’s Edition of Ratatouille! I simply had to buy it, otherwise I wouldn’t forgive myself.
I still haven’t seen everything the DVD has, but I have here some pics of it to show you
I’m just sorry if they’re blurry; these are not photos, I scanned them (lazy me! ). It has a very nice and fancy steel cover, and it has basically all the bonus that totoro said, except for the podcasts.
Click on the images to see the full view.
Maggie - Hey, Maggie! Welcome back! I trust that you had a wonderful time while in France. I’m rather jealous. Heheh.
Dude! I want it!!! stares at the French Ratatouille DVD cover and disks for years I’m glad that you got them, as well, otherwise you might never have had another opportunity to purchase them there… on the spot.
Ha-ha! You scanned them. Well, thank you for the images!* I enjoyed looking at 'em.
– Mitch
(Only one of them came out blurry; the others look perfectly fine.)
One thing I noticed with the Canadian version of Ratatouille was all of the previews and advertisements that are shown before the menu even comes up. With the Australian DVD it will show just one anti-piracy warning, then go straight to the menu.
To have to manually skip past advertisements just to get to a movie, especially one that you paid for, is quite odd. And it defies Disney’s policy of having a “one click DVD” for technology-illiterate parents and children (remember that this was supposedly their excuse for not having many bonus features?). But I did enjoy watching the WALL•E trailer, and the Pixar shorts advertisement, however.
Maggie - Thank you so much for the pictures of the Ratatouille French 2-disc. I think if you combined the normal 1-disc, the Target bonus disc, plus a few of the Internet podcasts, you would get what is on the French second disc. But that is quite a good deal you got there.
Y’know what, so am I… <img src=“{SMILIES_PATH}/grinandwink.gif” alt=“;-D” title="Grin and
Wink" /> I literally freaked out when I saw the DVD on the shelf… I was even afraid that I wouldn’t have enough money to purchase it, but fortunately I had… phew! xD
Oh, and by the way, forget what I said about the DVD not having the podcasts… ^^; It has all of the bonus that totoro mentioned, plus a few French exclusives… I wish my French wasn’t so rusty, because those are actually kinda interesting…
Oh that would be cool if you could put it on youtube Maggie, but I don’t think that is legal. I saw som stuff get taken out before, but some how, some viewers tend to miss a few things.
Mitch and TSS - I’m not sure, but I think it is illegal… Besides, even if it wasn’t, I don’t know how to “take out” videos from a DVD to a computer, if you know what I mean… ^^;
Maggie - Hmm. Yes, I see. Well, it’s better to be safe than sorry. I have no idea how to upload videos onto YouTube myself, but if it was illegal to display a certain video then I certainly would refrain from doing so. I wouldn’t want you or anyone else to get in trouble either…
So, it would be no use ordering the Aussie one.
