Archive for the ‘Out Today on DVD’ Category

Jason Reitman’s Academy Award nominated Up In the Air comes out on DVD and Blu-ray today.  I thought this was a pretty solid movie.  George Clooney was good in the film, as well as Vera Farmiga.  And Jason Reitman is certainly a director to watch.  His dad, Ivan, may have directed Ghostbusters, but I think Jason might end up being a better director.  Anything’s possible.

Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story comes out today.  Though I don’t think it’s his best filmmaking, I think everyone should see this movie and get pissed off about things.  That’s always what Michael Moore does best, riling people up into doing something, and this film is no different.  See it.  Watch it.  Know it.

Another documentary I’m incredibly keen on seeing came out on DVD today: The Brothers Warner.  It’s a history of the Warner Brothers and produced by Cass Warner, a direct descendant.  It looks incredible and I love old Hollywood History, so this one is a must have.

I would mention that Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day comes out today, but I hated the first one because it was terrible and I don’t see how this one would be any different.

The top pick today is Spike Jonze’s delightful live action take on Where the Wild Things Are.  It was sad and incredible.  I know some people didn’t like it and found that it wasn’t their cup of tea, but I thought it was a really great film about how hard it is grow up.

Next on the list is a classic from our youth.  Clash of the Titans, starring Harry Hamlin, Laurence Olivier and Burgess Meredith, among others.  This is one of my favorite movies from when I was a kid.  It was an incredible take on greek mythology and between the Gorgons, Medusa, and the Kraken, I had many a nightmare.  Harryhausen’s effects still hold up well and I’m excited to get it on Blu-ray in the special Book version.

Hayao Miyazaki’s latest animated effort, Ponyo, comes out today in a Blu-ray/DVD combo from Disney.  I’m really happy to see Disney buying into Miyazaki’s films so much.  They’re as good or better than most of the average Disney fare and are top notch.  Ponyo is based loosely on the Hans Christian Anderson story of The Little Mermaid and is geared more toward kids than his more recent fare.  I watched it with my kids and they loved it, they were laughing hysterically the whole way through.  Also from Miyazaki and Disney today are the 2 disc DVD sets of Castle in the Sky, Kiki’s Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro. For Castle in the Sky and Kiki’s Delivery Service, these are excellent versions and I would recommend getting them.  Totoro, on the other hand…  Disney went and fixed wasn’t broken and redubbed the audio and I would have to say that until they restore the original English language dub that Fox put out, you should avoid this one.

Another classic from my childhood that I am terrified won’t hold up is getting a Blu-ray release today: The Neverending Story. I’m hoping it holds up better than I think it will, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

Also out today on DVD:

• 2012
• Eureka Seven: Good Night, Sleep Tight, Young Lovers
• Gentlemen Broncos

I think perhaps the most important release today is the Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths disc that I wrote a review of last week. (You can read that review here.)

Next on the list is the first 10 episodes of Flash Forward. I posted a separate review of that as well and you can read that here.

On Blu-ray today is a great steal: A single-disc version of Presumed Innocent and Roman Polanski’s masterpiece Frantic. I’m pretty lukewarm about Presumed Innocent, but Frantic makes me sick in all the right ways just thinking about it. It’s an incredibly tense thriller and sticks with you.

Scott Soderbergh’s latest is out on DVD today. I meant to see this one but never got a chance. I’m definitely going to have to check it out: The Informant. It stars Matt Damon in a true story about a bipolar guy who feeds the government information about his corporation that’s pretty damaging. It’s been described as a mix between The Informant and Duck Soup. Sounds interesting to me.

That’s about it for this week, see you next time.

The first film on the list this week is the special 20th anniversary Blu-ray edition of Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece Goodfellas.  Aside from the fact that it’s a little disconcerting that films from the 90s are getting 20th anniversary editions, this is a genuinely exciting release and one I’m going to snatch up as soon as possible.

The second film on the list today is the Blu-ray re-release of Akira Kurosawa’s Ran.  This is a disc I’m both keen and wary to check out.  Criterion, who always does an incredible job with film transfers, announced this title last year, but were unable to get all the proper rights in order and had to back out.  Lions Gate stepped up to do it and word around the campfire is such that I’m wary.  It seems as though it’s a better transfer of this film than has been released, but it is more akin to an upconversion than the sort of frame-by-frame restoration that Criterion would have done.  I don’t know how it looks, but if I get my hands on a copy, I’ll certainly pass the word along to you.

Next we have Criterion’s release of Lola Montes.  Expect a full review tomorrow.

From the unnecessary nostalgia department: Small Wonder season 1.  For those of you whipper-snappers who don’t remember, this is a show about an inventor who creates a mind-bogglingly creepy robot girl who lives at the house with them.  It was on every day after school at some point in my youth and I watched it on alo occasion along with Mr. Belvedere.  Since it’s robot oriented, expect a full review soon.

For you Halo fans out there, the Halo Legends disc is coming out on Blu-ray and regular DVD.  I know next to nothing about Halo, but talking to Halo fans, this seems like something you must own if you care at all about the mythos.  I’d like to hear some more opinions about this one since it does look pretty cool, but I have no context for it.

The last release I’ll mention today is something I haven’t seen but it has been recommended to me so many times, I imagine there must be something to it.  The satirical blacksploitation film Black Dynamite.

See you next week!

The Coen Brothers hit another home run with their perfectly handcrafted latest effort, A Serious Man, which comes out on DVD and Blu-ray today.  If you’re a fan of the Coen brothers (and seriously, if you read this website and you’re not at least a fan of The Big Lebowski, you must have been living in a cave for the last decade) then this movie is a must own.

Next on the list is a 10 DVD set of Chaplin films that I’m pretty keen on getting for myself.  It includes City Lights, The Kid, Modern Times, The Gold Rush, and The Great Dictator, among others, and is priced to move at $20.  This is both a steal and a must see for anyone interesting in films or great comedies.  In fact, I watched City Lights over again last night and it once again proved to me that it’s perhaps one of the best movies ever made.  (In fact, it was #5 on Stanley Kubrick’s list of best films ever.)

I wish there were more, but aside from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Running Man on Blu-ray, there isn’t much of note to mention.

Until next week.

Today is a big day with lots of interesting things to check out .  First we have the excellent Zombie parody film, Zombieland.  Though not as good as Shaun of the Dead, this is still and incredibly entertaining piece of zombie satire.    And let’s be honest, Bill Murray’s cameo is one of the best cameos in film history.  It belongs up there with Orson Welles in The Third Man.

One of the best and most important films to ever grace the silver screen is getting an affordable Blu-ray release today.  Casablanca is coming out now for only $16.99.  This is easily one of my favorite films and I’m dying to get my hands on it to see it in glorious high definition.  If you haven’t seen this film, now is the time.

Another classic to hit Blu-ray today is Martin Scorsese’s sprawling epic Gangs of New York.  This picture was tremendous, please don’t make me explain why you should check it out any more than that.  Forget for a second that Cameron Diaz is in it and just get it.  Seriously.  You won’t regret it.  And if you do, I’m not sorry.

Next we have Planet Hulk, another surprise gem from the Marvel/Lions Gate partnership.  If there’s one thing I’ll be sad to see go because of the Disney/Marvel acquisition, it’s that Lions Gate will have to stop making these animated films.  Clang! Boom! Steam! will be around with a full review of the DVD, but rest assured, I enjoyed it immensely.  And it reminded me why I like Beta Ray Bill so much.

Terry Gilliam’s masterpiece Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas comes out on Blu-ray today.  Though it seems as though no one has ever heard of this movie anymore, maybe Johnny Depp on the cover will bring in some new blood and extend the fan base of this film.  This was in the batch of the first 20 movies I bought on DVD and I’ll be happy to add it to that same number on Blu-ray.

The House of the Devil comes out today.  I haven’t even really heard of it, but Budgetron gave it an incredibly stunning review here.

Last on the list this week is the release of all of David Tennant’s Dr. Who specials.  I haven’t known much about Dr. Who at all, but I was tricked into watching The Water of Mars and The End of Time Part 1 and 2 and I haven’t been the same since.  I really, really enjoyed these and they got me in the mindset enough to want to seek out more Dr. Who.  So, I still don’t know much about the whole Dr. Who thing, but thanks to most of that box set, I’m going to find out.

I think that by far and away the most interesting release this week is World War II in HD.  It is an amazing thing to see moving images from World War II both in color and high definition and this is no exception.  For any history buff, this disc is essential viewing.

Next on the list is the incredibly interesting, but ultimately cheesy, Bruce Willis vehicle: The Surrogates.  Bruce Willis stars as a cop in a world where no real person leaves their homes, but lives their live through a lifelike avatar.  It seems as though stories involving these sorts of caricatures of humans are coming to full fruition lately.

There’s also a Blu-ray version of Highlander out today, though it’s preposterously expensive and even out of stock.  A bit of google-searching yielded no results as of to why this would be.

Michael Jackson’s This is It came out today as well.  I’d be interested in seeing this, though I’m not sure if I’m interested enough to buy it on my own.

One of the best movies of 1999 and easily one of the ten best of the decade is coming out on Blu-ray today.  I’m quite excited to say that PT Anderson’s masterpiece  Magnolia is out today.  All of his films are masterpieces, but this one in particular.  When I first saw it, it hit me like a ton of bricks.  Upon repeated viewings in the last 10 years, it’s continued to wow me and offer increasing layers of depth and complication to the story.  Budget-tron once said that he can easily judge people based on their opinion of Shaun of the Dead, and while I think that’s also true, I think it’s true in the case of Magnolia, too.  If you don’t like it, I’m going to assume something is wrong with you.  Don’t take it personally, it’s just the truth.

It’s also important to note that Boogie Nights was released in Blu-ray also.  While this film is a masterpiece, it’s just slightly not as good as Magnolia to me.  That being said, it is a perfect 10.

Next we have Steven Soderbergh’s Che, out from the Criterion Collection on Blu-ray and DVD.  I’ve been mulling over this disc for the last week and I have to say that the transfer is amazing.  Soderbergh set out to make a film that looked and felt period, almost as though it was shot on period cameras and broadcast on television and it never seems more crisp or apparent than on this Blu-ray transfer of the film.  Now for me to finish watching it.  The film is divided into two 130 minute parts and I’ve made it through one so far.  Now I need to get through the rest.  Expect a full review soon.

The last thing I will mention is the Blu-ray/DVD flipper disc set of the Jason Bourne saga.  I think this is a great idea and one that will yield the industry a lot of money if they embrace it quickly, but this takes all of the guess work out of the format wars for people.  And for people still on the edge of converting, it gives them a reason to convert faster.  I really liked the first movie in this series and the second gave me motion sickness.  I haven’t seen the third yet, but I think I might watch all three of these with this release and let you know what I thought.  And give a side-by-side comparison of the DVD/Blu-ray since I’ll have them both.

There’s a lot of interesting things this week, but we’ll start with the Blu-ray of Fellini’s 8 1/2 by the Criterion Collection.  This is perhaps one of the greatest films ever made and there’s something to behold when black and white is properly transferred to HD.

Next we have Rian Johnson’s follow-up to his masterpiece Brick in The Brothers Bloom.  Sure, it had some problems with the script, but it was one of the best 5 act movies I’ve seen in a long time.  It was funny and smart, well-acted and generally a treat.

And while I didn’t think Moon was a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, I did find it to be a very competent and entertaining piece of sci-fi.  Sure it had some plot holes and the ending didn’t work all that well and barely made sense, but Sam Rockwell really knocked this one out of the park.  This is a must for any sci-fi fan or fan of independent cinema.

The Simpsons Season 20 comes out today which, to me, says one of two things.
Either they skipped over seasons 13-19 because Fox admits that the quality of the show dropped off, or because they were just too damned excited to make some money off of a Blu-ray Simpsons release.  In either case, we have it now.

The last one I’ll mention today is The Hurt Locker.  I haven’t seen it, but it’s making everyone’s Top Ten lists and is something I’ve been meaning to see. Now I’ll have a chance.

This is an incredibly light week with only a couple of things worth noting.  The first release I’d like to point out is Shane Acker’s 9.  (Buy “9″ on Amazon).  This was an amazing film to look at and if you want to watch it, you pretty much have to do it on Blu-ray.  The story was pretty limp, but the visuals were stunning.

Next on the list is Paranormal Activity.  I didn’t see it and horror movies aren’t my thing, but I had a lot of fun making a parody video of it with the comedian Marcus (which you can watch here.)

The last thing I’d like to point out today is a cheap knock-off version of Princess of Mars.  They’re marketing it as “Based on the story that inspired Avatar” though I figure they’d make more money releasing it near the time Pixar’s John Carter movie comes out and confusing people with a similar logo.  In any case, Antonio Sabato Jr. is the lead and it looks wonderfully terrible.