DVD Review: Chinatown Special Collector's Edition (1974)

Paramount Pictures is releasing Chinatown: Special Collector's Edition DVD on November 6, 2007, and we managed to get an advanced copy to examine. The DVD of this Roman Polanski classic includes the theatrical trailer and four featurettes:

• Chinatown: The Beginnng and the End!
• Chinatown: Style
• Acting Chinatown
• Chinatown: The Classic

As you can judge from the titles of those featurettes, they're all about Chinatown. While the amount of special features isn't anything to get excited about, the quality of the featurettes are quite good. They go in-depth to how Chinatown was conceived by screenwriter Robert Towne, who, as it turns out, was good friends with Nicholson. According to him, he was tired of seeing his friend struggling to make a living, so he wrote this movie with Nicholson in mind. Since the character Jake is sharp-tongued and sarcastic the entire movie, that's really not that surprising.

Some of the featurettes even include interviews with Nicholson himself, which was a bit surprising. I was expecting him to be "a bit too big" to do interviews for DVDs these days.

All that being said, this special collector's edition isn't worth buying, unless you don't own Chinatown at all.

Of course, Chinatown is a classic. You can read my full Chinatown movie review here.