One of my major pet peeves is commercials and trailers on the Blu Ray and DVD format. Even worse are trailers and ads that you are FORCED to watch. If you’re going to show trailers, can’t the manufacturers at least let us skip directly to the Main Menu if we don’t want to see them?
The above picture [click it to enlarge] does a great job of explaining my point. If you want to watch a certain movie, sometimes it’s easier to pirate the thing. I really hope movie studios are listening to the grumblings of movie buffs like myself. We’ve paid money for the movies we own, let us watch them!
Buying movies is almost a dangerous obession with me. I love it, and probably have spent more money on movies in my lifetime than any sane person.  At least I’m not spending money on heroine.
New Movie Tuesday is my favorite day of the week. Here are this week’s releases as well as my recommendations.
Being the film snob I am, I will recommend the Blu Ray versions of these flicks if available.
Must Buy:
G.I. Joe: Resolute
List Price:
$19.99
Amazon Price:
$13.99
Average customer review:
Finally! A BADASS G. I. Joe story. This is Warren Ellis’ 60 minute PG-13 animated G. I. Joe that first aired as 7 minute shorts on Cartoon Network. Awesome.
Mandy Lane (Amber Heard) is an unattainable object of adolescent lust for all the boys in her highs school. Invited on a weeked away to a remote ranch, shy Mandy sees it as a chance to cement some newly formed friendships. The boys see it as a chance to finally get with Mandy. As night falls, joints are rolled, kegs are drunk and pills are popped, with Mandy maintaining a polite distance from all the debauchery. She things the drunken “come-ons” will be the worst of it, but she is horrifyingly mistaken. As events take a turn for the worse, it becomes clear that a secret admirer is harbouring some terrifying ulterior motives.
Review:
Originally released in 2006 at the Toronto Film Festival, winner of the Audience Award at Sundance Film Festival in 2008 and managed horribly by The Weinstein Company and sold to Senator Entertainment, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is STILL unavailable to American Audiences. It’s a shame, because this small and clever slasher flick starring Amber Heard deserves to be seen. Luckily, Optimum Releasing has the distribution rights in the UK and have offered us a Region Free Blu-Ray release of the film. All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is a clever, small budget slasher with some great performances in it.
Madeline Matheson is eight months pregnant and determined to deliver her unborn child, Grace, naturally. When an accident leaves Grace dead inside her, Madeline insists on carrying the baby’s corpse to term. Weeks later, when Madeline delivers, the baby miraculously returns to life… With an appetite. (Leomax Entertainment)
Review:
With all the derivative and brainless dreck that comes out every year in the Horror Genre, it’s always nice to see a film that operates as a good FILM as well as a good HORROR story. Â Paul Solet‘s debut film, Grace is a slow moving, disgusting, horrific, uncomfortable and disturbing film. Â It’s also one of the most beautiful films I’ve seen this year.
Earlier this year US Distribution company Magnolia Pictures dropped the ball and gave us a crappy release of a brilliant Swedish Horror flick called Let the Right One In. Long story short, they put a dumbed down Subtitle track in place of the nuanced Subtitles that people saw in theaters.
Deciding to wait until their current inventories ran out before fixing the issue and refusing any sort of trade-in program, Magnolia has failed to show any sort of concern for their customer. (Let it be noted that “fixed” DVD copies are slowly making their ways into stores, but not Blu Ray copies).
Enter UK’s Momentum Pictures. On August 3rd they released the finest Blu Ray you can purchase. Plus, it’s REGION FREE, DTS-HD Master Audio, and has a DIRECTOR’S COMMENTARY with novelist and screenplay writer John Ajvide Lindqvist and director Tomas Alfredson. Combine that with fairly cheap import costs via Amazon.uk and we all can give Magnolia Pictures the collective finger and send our U. S. Dollars overseas.
Warner Home Video is allowing HD-DVD adopters a chance to upgrade their current HD-DVD collections to Blu-Ray with the Red2Blu exchange program. It does cost $4.95 per Blu-Ray, but this is a very cool gesture and shows how much Warner cares for fans of their movies.
Found some info on Bloody Disgusting that made my day. Apparently, Michael Dougherty’s Trick ‘r Treat may be coming to Blu-Ray this year. The movie is on a list for a Buy 5-get-1-freepromotion for Warner Home Video. We’ll see how this pans out. Other notable titles on this promotion are: Ninja Assassin, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Watchmen, Observe & Report, Terminator Salvation, The Hangover and more. Looks like I’ll be stocking up later this year!
Cinematical has a pretty interesting look behind the scenes of a Netflix facility.
The gallery of images below provides a behind-the-scenes look at “an unmarked warehouse” in Northborough, Massachusetts, where about 50 Netflix employees “sort through and repackage more than 60,000 discs every day.”
Since I got my email about Netflix upping the price of my Blu-Ray rentals (from $1 to $3/month) I’ve been a bit peeved. To be fair, this is a pretty large operation, and for $18 a month, the service is still VERY economical to a movie buff like myself.
A mariner survives an attack from the dreaded pirates of the Black Freighter, but his struggle to return home to warn it has a horrific cost. (IMDB)
Review:
Kudos to Zach Snyder and Warner Brothers for releasing this psuedo-special feature to Watchmen. The fact that tons of care was put into this release is staggaring. Here we have 3 different features. Tales of the Black Freighter (25 minutes), Under the Hood (30 minutes), and Story within a Story: The Books of Watchmen(25 minutes).
First up, Tales of the Black Freighter is a stunningly animated short film. In the Watchmen graphic novel, a character is seen reading a comic book called Tales of the Black Freighter. We also get to read along with the character at certain points. This is an interesting concept in the comic, and will be in the extended cut of Zach Snyder’s Watchmen adaptation on Blu-ray/DVD.
Here we have it as a stand-alone and as a companion piece to Watchmen, it’s pretty amazing. Gerard Butler voices the mariner perfectly and it’s an interesting study on someone attempting to do the right thing while, in fact, bringing destruction on those they love. This is an interesting parallel to the main theme of Watchmen, so it will be interesting to see this in the context of the extended cut.
Next up we have 2 documentaries. Under the Hoodis a fictional documentary that parallels the book of the same name in the graphic novel and film. It gives interesting back story to the original Minutemen and is played out in interview form with the original Night Owl, Hollis Mason. Other character interviews appear as well. This is a well done companion to the film Watchmen as well. We’re brought in even further to this world and it showcases Zach Snyder‘s incredible attention to detail of this world.
The final documentary is a “making of” for the two features. It does a great job of tying everything together and helps us understand why these projects were so important for people to immerse themselves in the world of Watchmen.
This MAY be a part of a super boxed set in the future, with Tales of the Black Freighter confirmed to be spliced into an extended cut of Watchmen on Blu-ray. But, for now, it’s good to have these if you were a fan of the film. At only an 90 minutes, you may not like the price. Purchase it as cheaply as possible or rent it if you’re unsure.
Tales of the Black Freighter: Rated R for violent and grisly images.
I don’t know why you would want to own 5 dvds plus 1 blu-ray of the same movie, but Lionsgate seems to think the packagind may sway you. Behold, every possible release of Terminator 2 is available along with the Terminator 2 Skynet Edition blu-ray disc (not to be confused with the crap edition blu-ray available now at Walmart for $10).
The Limited Collector’s Set is a bit steep with a MSRP of $174.99, but is available for preorder on Amazon for $121.99. The Skynet Blu-ray edition will be available by itself for $29.99 ($19.99 on Amazon).
All that said, this would look AMAZING in my future “Film Lounge” I am in the process of designing for my future mansion.
