Ah, winter, time of interesting wrinkles in the movie-video continuum. It's usually five or six months before a major-studio release appears on tape, but this is the season of delightful exceptions, as those twin lodestars, Christmas and the Oscars, distort Hollywood space-time. Low-trajectory late-summer movies like The Parent Trap get pulled into the black hole of early December; high-flying titles whiz into 1999. For example, June's The Truman Show comes to tape Jan. 12, Mulan and There's Something About Mary hit the street Feb. 2, and July's Saving Private Ryan is nowhere in sight — unless you count the theaters that will stage its pre-Oscar rerelease next month.
Duplicating a strategy that worked last January for Soul Food, the Jackie Chan-Chris Tucker action-comedy Rush Hour, (which opened Sept. 25) is hurrying to a Jan. 26 tape date. And after seeing Disney's A Bug's Life climb to the top of the box office, DreamWorks announced that its own insect cartoon, the $87 million-grossing Antz, will hit stores on Feb. 9, just four months after its big-screen opening. ''We want to create a constant stream of consumer awareness,'' is how a DreamWorks spokesperson explains the quick march.
Disney doesn't seem too worried. A spokesman at Disney's Buena Vista Home Video says that the Bug's Life date is set but top secret (April would be six months post-premiere; October would fit the leisurely Toy Story template) and that Antz ''was a consideration.'' The source adds that in the interest of competition, Disney will reprice another bug title: The French documentary MicroCosmos will soon be available for $9.99.
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