Displaying items by tag: Sarah Hunt

On this final day of 2022, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the past year and, really, on the past twenty-five years here at The Digital Bits website.

First though, our own Michael Coate has just delivered one final History, Legacy, and Showmanship retrospective for the year, a look back at Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in celebration of the film’s 40th anniversary. The piece features another epic and multi-page roundtable interview with film experts and historians. Note that the piece will also be updated early in the new year with additional images and information, but the interview as it is is thorough and well worth your time, so be sure to check it out.

Now then… it’s an extraordinary thing to look back at twenty-five years of this website, a site I first started back in 1997 to cover the advent of DVD and to introduce the appreciation of cinema to a wider audience. As a film student at the Universal of Wisconsin in Madison, I had the honor of studying the subject under two of the finest film historians and theorists working today, David Boardwell and Kristin Thompson, not to mention the pleasure of discovering not just the Hollywood classics but the wider world of international cinema. And it’s been my goal—both then and now—to share that love and joy of discovery with everyone who might be interested. [Read on here...]

We’ll be back to our regular Blu-ray, DVD, and 4K Ultra HD news and reviews work here at The Bits starting on Tuesday, but in the meantime we just wanted to drop in and wish you all a very Happy New Year and best wishes to your family and friends.

And if you’re looking for a little cinephile reading, be sure to check out Michael Coate’s recent History Legacy & Showmanship columns featuring anniversary celebrations of Casino Royale (1967), Camelot, Tomorrow Never Dies, The Dark Crystal, Die Another Day, and The Graduate, all of which have been posted in the last week or two.All right… be safe, be happy, and may 2018 bring better things for all of us. Peace out!

- Bill Hunt

(You can follow Bill on social media at these links: Twitter and Facebook)

[Editor’s Note: Be sure to like TheDigitalBits.com page on Facebook for breaking news, site updates on the go, discussion with our staff and other readers, giveaways and more!]

Well... the last 24 hours have been a little crazy for movie fans, haven’t they? I attended Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim yesterday for the big panel of the morning, at which the new Episode VII teaser trailer was revealed by producer Kathleen Kennedy and director J.J. Abrams. Some background on my personal experience: The night before, great friends both old and new gathered for a pre-convention dinner. My wife Sarah and I were there, along with veteran Blu-ray producers Charles de Lauzirika and Cliff Stephenson, and Alec Peters and Diana Kingsbury of Propworx and Star Trek: Axanar fame. (Unable to attend because of work, BD producer Robert Meyer Burnett was there in spirit.) We learned that fans had actually started lining up to attend the panel earlier that morning so, somehow or other, it was decided that we should probably get in line ourselves around 5 AM in order to make sure we made it into the room. And, somehow or other, everybody was game for it. So get in line we did, along with thousands of others: Myself, Alec, Diana, Charlie and Cliff, joined by Chris Gore of Film Threat. We posed for a selfie to commemorate the insanity (at left – taken by Alec).  [Read on here…]