Title: The Big Lebowski – Blu-ray Limited Edition
Directed by: Joel & Ethan Cohen
Starring: Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Julianne Moore and John Turturro
Running time: 117 min, Rated R
Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski is just a laid back guy who takes pleasure in the simple things, like White Russians and bowling. He gets mistaken for a millionaire with the same name by a pornographer’s thugs who want money he loaned to the Big Lebowski’s trophy wife, so they take it out on The Dude’s rug; the one that really tied the room together. So Dude goes to The Big Lebowski and manages to get a new-used rug, but is soon called upon for a favor to act as a courier to some German nihilists claiming to have kidnapped Bunnie Lebowski. Dude’s friend and bowling league member Walter, goes along for the ride and all goes haywire. Soon Dude is being persued by the nihilists, the pornographer’s thugs and Maude Lebowski, the daughter of The Big Lebowski – but it’s not money she’s after.
The Blu-ray Limited Edition is loaded with extras.
– Worthy Adversaries: What’s My Line Trivia. I was a little disappointed with this option because the trivia questions pop up maybe once every 20 minutes, and in order to see the lot of them, you have to select 2 players.
– An Exclusive Introduction. This was available on the standard DVD disc, and personally I thought it was rather boring.
– The Dude’s Life. Cast and crew interviews on the characters
– The Dude Abides: The Big Lebowski 10 years later. Cast and crew retrospective of the characters and what they’d look forward to in a possible sequel.
– Making of The Big Lebowski
– The Lebowski Fest: An Achiever’s Story. A documentary on the annual touring fan festival.
– Flying Carpets and Bowling Pin Dreams: The Dream Sequences of The Dude.
– Interactive Map
– Jeff Bridges Photo Book – a narrated promotion of the photo book Jeff Bridges put together from the set of The Big Lebowski. Money made from the sales go to charity.
– Photo gallery
The Big Lebowski is one of my top 10 best movies of all time and has quite a large cult following. The Limited Edition includes a 30 page mini booklet of various trivia, photographs by Jeff Bridges, an interview with Jeff Dowd – the inspiration for the character The Dude, character bios, and a recipe for a “Caucasian.” Also a much disputed bit of trivia – the F-word was spoken 285 times; not a record breaker, but it’s up there. I consider myself a fan of this film, and I feel it’s quite possibly the best Cohen Brother’s film so far. I wish I could put more details on what makes this movie so great into this review, but there’s just not enough time to list them all. If you haven’t seen this film yet, then you’re out of your element.
Total rating: A
Reviewed by: JM Willis
