Transcript: Latest audio described DVDs

11 December 2011 Interview with Ally Woodford

Roberta:  Ally Woodford from Media Access Australia is joining us today to update us on the latest DVD's with audio description that have been released to the Australian market. Welcome Ally.

Ally:  Thank you Roberta.

Roberta:  I always like to start with and find out what the big name titles are that are on the DVD shelves at the moment. So what do we have?

Roberta:  Well we’ll start with an Oscar winner. It's from early this year and it's called “The Fighter” and it's a true story. The movie, it picked up the two Supporting Actor awards at the Oscar’s this year and it's quite an inspiring yarn.

But there’s also “True Grit” by Coen Brothers and it's a powerful story of vengeance that’s set in the wild west in the 1880’s. It had a lot of Oscar nominations; unfortunately it didn't pick anything up this year though.

 In the big name titles, I’m also going to put “I am Number Four” in this group and it's a Sci Fi movie and there’s a young adult fiction book of the same name. And I’ve seen it and I must say I really loved it. I think it's going to pick up the same audience as maybe the Harry Potter fans that grew up with that series. And they can now move onto something a little older, still the teens, but something new and the movie itself it's screaming for a sequel. So hopefully there’s more of that to come. So that’s one for the teens.

There’s some others there for the older kids. We’ve got two in, well two of them in “Rango”. It's about a loveable chameleon and it's voiced by Johnny Depp and there’s the 2010 remake of the ever popular “Yogi Bear”. And they’re both animated those two.

Roberta:  I love the animated ones now and I think I’ve said this before, that they’ve got real voices. It makes them much more interesting. Now what’s one for the older kids, are there others do you think?

Ally:  Yeah, we’ve got some comedies, like “Big Mamma’s House”, “Like Father Like Son”, that sort of, I think it's M rated, so the older kids are going to like one as well.

Roberta:  What other titles do we have to fill out this month’s selection then Ally?

Ally:  For the comedies we’ve got “Hall Pass”, we’ve got one called, and I love the name of this movie, it's called “Happy Thank You More Please”.  Haven’t seen it but I just love the name of it.

Roberta:  I was going to say, it just says, “Come and see me” doesn’t it?

Ally:  Mmm, “Happy Thank You More Please”. There’s another one called “From Prada to Nada” which I haven’t seen, but it's charted as a Latino version of Jane Austin’s “Sense and Sensibility”.

Roberta: Oh what are they doing?

Ally:  I don't know, but I think we’ll have to rent that one to find out.

Roberta:  I think we will.

Ally:  There’s a black comedy in the English movie of “Tamara Drewe”. For the action hero fans, there’s “The Green Hornet”, straight out action fans might like “Faster”, “Season of the Witch”, “The Mechanic”, “Sanctum” and lastly there’s “Unstoppable” and that stars Denzel Washington.  Sci Fi fans, they might want to check out “The Adjustment Bureau” which stars Matt Damon and Emily Blunt.  We’ve got a couple of Australian’s.  Russell Crowe starts in the drama “The Next Three Days” and Nicole Kidman stars in the acclaimed “Rabbit Hole”.  Horror fans will enjoy Sir Anthony Hopkins at his scary best in “The Right” and there’s also, it's an Australian horror movie called “Wasted on the Young”. 

Rounding out we’ve got a fantasy drama called “Beastly”, a couple of romantic comedies in “How do you Know” which stars Reece Witherspoon and “No Strings Attached” which stars Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher.  And lastly there’s a romantic drama which is “The Romantics” and it's stars Anna Paquin and Katie Holmes.

Roberta:  You were talking before about Anthony Hopkins. I mean it was bad enough seeing him in a scary movie as a young man, what the heck is he like as an older man?

Ally:  Mmm, scarier, yeah. I’ve seen the DVD cover of it and it's a close up of his face in this funny kind of mask, but just those eyes, those piercing eyes that he has and you see them on the cover and go, no, that’s not for me. ’m just not into horror, so that went straight back onto the shelf for me.

Roberta:  So well Ally that’s quite a selection. Are there any titles that we’re missing out on?

Ally: There’s one and I’m really disappointed about this one. Sony in Australia missed out on importing the audio described version of “127 Hours”. It was described internationally in both the UK and in America, but Sony in Australia, it imported it from Passe, which is a British independent distributor. So usually with Sony, they import their own product from their international offices, so I just think Sony got a bit lazy when it was dealing with an external company to import a title from. And they didn't question the accessibility. So really disappointed about that.

Roberta:  Well that is a shame because that would have been a perfect one to view with audio description.

Ally:  Fantastic and the only thing I can suggest for those that are really keen to see it and I know the majority of DVD players in this day and age are multi-regional, you know you can buy it on Amazon and just make sure you get the two or region one version of it.

Roberta:  I would say absolute to that one because it would be perfect I think. Well, Media Access Australia has a searchable DVD data base on its website at mediaaccess.org.au and all these titles plus hundreds more can be found there. The website will answer many of your questions about audio description but alternatively, Ally and the MAA team always happy to take your call I know on 02 91 26 242 or reply to your email at info@mediaaccess.org.au. Thank you Ally for all of that today and I know we’ll be talking soon.

Ally:  Thanks Roberta.

Roberta:  I’ve been speaking with Ally Woodford from Media Access Australia and Media Access Australia are supporters of this program.