The film you missed first time around

With the strength in depth of this cast and the critical acclaim the film received it is perhaps a little difficult to understand why so many people haven’t heard of it.
Curtis Hanson directed the film at the height of his powers shortly after L.A. Confidential had become a hit. Wonder Boys was completed at the start of 1999 but the finished product then became a victim of botched marketing and was a box office flop when it was released in the States in February 2000. This failure caused the Britsh release date to be pushed back to November 2000 whereupon the film again suffered from a lack of advertising. The film has since been re-released in the States but it appears your best chance of catching this now is on DVD.

Michael Douglas is the college professor struggling to finish his second book seven years after the success of his first. The film covers the weekend in which his wife leaves him, his mistress announces she is pregnant, his pushy editor arrives in town and his most promising student goes off on a monumental bender.

Choosing the right DVD isn’t as easy as it might be either. The British DVD buyer with a multi-region player will want to consider four versions of this release. The original British version was released in June 2001 and was an utter abortion of a DVD. It had absolutely no extras and featured only a standard screen 4:3 ratio edition of the film which had been formatted with very little attention paid to detail. In the meantime a Region 1 (USA) version was released which was hugely superior. A brand new British release (September 4th 2001) has brought the same quality of disc onto the Region 2 market and shares all the same features as it’s American cousin. The Region 4 Australian release shares the same specification as this new British disc. I plumped for the Region 1 release largely because I couldn’t wait and also because the latest Britsh release has sold at, or near, it’s RRP and it therefore works out cheaper to buy from an American or Australian DVD specialist on the Internet.

The menus on the latest releases are partially animated and scored. In addition to the illustrated scene access and theatrical trailer you have a composition made up of interviews from the major players in the cast. This lasts for about eleven minutes and isn’t bad but too long is spent with the cast talking up the director. There is an interactive map of Pittsburgh which has six separate shooting locations highlighted. Clicking on anyone one of these will have Curtis Hanson and friends telling you why they choose that particular location. Total footage of about six or seven minutes here but interesting and no doubt great fun if you have ever been to Pittsburgh.
A good proportion of the extras are involved with the music to the film even to the extent of including the soundtrack album track listing in full. Bob Dylan’s ‘Things have changed’ video is here in widescreen with pro-logic sound. The final feature, ‘Songs of Wonder Boys’, acts as an isolated score with commentary for the six main songs in the film and runs for more than 20 minutes in total.