overyourhead

Superman...
In 1999 I bought Mark a DVD player. To be exact an Hitachi DVD DV-P250. It has worked perfectly since then - but with one slight problem. It would only play region 2 DVDs. So we couldn't watch DVDs that we had bought or been given from the States or the Far East. Well last night this annoyance got the better of me so I started trawling around on the Interwebnet to try and find a solution. And I did. I downloaded two disk images that contained a ROM eraser and a cracked updated ROM. I burnt them on to two CD-RWs and armed with a short list of instructions set about hacking the Hitachi's region 2 ROM. Two minutes later I had a fully working 6 region DVD player! Fantastic. I love the Internet.

The first DVD I watched was one that Kit had lent me sometime ago but I'd been unable to watch until last night: a DVD of the original "You'll Believe a Man Can Fly!" movie: Superman

Great film. Still stands up after 24 years believe it or not. The DVD was final released last year and is a treasure trove of trivia and features. The most revealing for me was the the casting documentary and in particular all the actresses who read for the part of Lois Lane before Margot Kidder was finally chosen. These screen tests were recently discovered in London and were edited into a montage for the documentary so almost each shot has a different actress reading a line. Amongst the unsuccessful hopefuls were Stockard Channing, Leslie Ann Warren, Ann Archer... the list goes on and on. Catch it if you can.