The Dark Crystal

Jim Henson will forever be remembered for Kermit the Frog, but it is his 1982 work "The Dark Crystal" that might very well be the defining moment of his career.\nThis mythic tale that treks through a world inhabited by the grotesque beauty of the Skekses and their peaceful counterparts, the Mystics, has been remembered by many as a grainy video of magic. This was finally changed with this DVD release, which features such a cleaned-up print that the many colors in the film's vast imaginary countryside shine through for the first time since the film's original release. \nThe DVD's extras include the deleted funeral sequence of the Skekses emperor that is borderline Satanic and features snippets of the Skekses language that was originally going to be featured in the film, Frank Oz's original voicing of Aughra and the 50-minute "The World of Dark Crystal" documentary. The most important extra of all, though, is the isolated score by Trevor Jones, which is one of the greatest fantasy soundtracks of all time and is impossible to find in any other format.