This week’s Blu-ray announcements include some cinematic landmarks making their Blu-ray debuts, along with some new releases that already came and went at the box office. I’ll help you decide which ones deserve some space on your Blu-ray shelves, so start clearing shelf space for these:
Archival label Cohen Film Collection has a remastered Blu-ray first for D.W. Griffith’s silent film. You may know Griffith. from such racist propaganda as The Birth of a Nation. Intolerance is his follow-up to the KKK epic, telling four stories of prejudice throughout history: ancient Babylon, Judea, the French Wars of Religion and then modern day America. Go figure, Griffith’s attempt to make good after criticism of the blockbuster Nation was itself a flop, but also a historical milestone.
I’m looking forward to discovering the three plus hour silent epic for myself for the first time in this 2K restoration. As Franchise Fred, I’m especially curious about the bonus features including two feature length films pulled out of Intolerance, The Fall of Babylon and The Mother and the Law. That must be where Tarantino got the idea to split Grindhouse into two films, must be!
Hey, there’s a new Jay Chou movie coming out in the States. He was supposed to be the next big thing when he was cast in The Green Hornet, but it looks like he just went back home to sing and make crazy movies.
This is described as a genre bending action/comedy with 11 musical numbers, so I’m sold.
Look, the One Direction movie exists and we’re all going to have to accept it. I could pretend it’s not coming out on Blu-ray this December, but I am a realist and it’s not going to do us any good to not make shelf space for it. The Blu-ray even includes an extended cut with 20 more minutes, including four additional songs.
The 3D version of the film will be available. I can just see this as the Best Buy 3D TV demo disc, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Blu-rays include 10 featurettes if you count the five spots of each One Direction member visiting home separately. Extended scenes and a music video too.
Since when do mafia witnesses get relocated to France? Since Luc Besson is directing their movie. The Family, starring Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer as mobsters turning state’s evidence, comes home just before the end of the year, only three months from its theatrical release.
It seems they’re having fun with a bonus feature called “The Many Meanings of FU*%.” Otherwise there’s the basic sounding “Making The Family.”
I saw You’re Next twice on the film festival circuit, first at the premiere Toronto International Film Festival screening and then again at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Now comes the real test. Can I make it through the home invasion horror while watching in the supposed comfort of my own home?
Bonus features include two audio commentaries featuring director Adam Wingard and SImon Barrett. Having interviewed them several times over the past two years, I know they can fill those commentaries, and one also includes stars Sharni Vinson and Barbara Crampton. I’ll be interested to see the behind the scenes featurette too, because I wonder if the gang were shooting DVD extras while they were indie, or if Lionsgate put it all together later.
Scream Factory has two more horror classics, separated by decades, for release at the beginning of the new year. Cat People is Paul Schrader’s 1982 remake of the 1942 film, with all the sexuality overtly on display in the ‘80s. Special features include new interviews with Schrader and stars Nastassja Kinski, Malcolm McDowell, John Heard, Anette O’Toole and Lynn Lowry, plus composer Giorgio Moroder!
Die Monster Die stars Boris Karloff in an H.P. Lovecraft adaptation. I haven’t read “The Colour Out of Space,” but the movie is about a mad scientist creating giant plants using a meteorite from space. No bonus features announced.
Odd. I usually hear about Warner Home Video’s anniversary editions, and this is a pretty big one, but I found out about it through Blu-ray.com. The 40th anniversary of Charles Bronson’s vigilante classic is coming to Blu-ray. No bonus features announced as yet.
As Franchise Fred, I’d like to see the four sequels available in a Blu-ray set too, but that may be difficult as several of them were produced by Cannon Films. This one only comes about because of Warner’s deal with Paramount. I like that contemplative new cover too.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
