This week’s Blu-ray releases kick ass! Well, at least one of them does. Let’s take a gander at the release slate and see if we can’t find anything else interesting, shall we?

Here’s what’s coming out this week:

• ‘After.Life‘ (Starz/Anchor Bay)
• ‘Blood Simple‘ (MGM/UA)
• ‘The Breakfast Club: 25th Anniversary Edition‘ (Universal)
• ‘Bull Durham‘ (MGM)
• ‘Charlie’s Angels‘ (Sony)
• ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid‘ (20th Century Fox)
• ‘Elvis on Tour‘ (Warner Brothers)
• ‘Elvis: Blu-ray Collection‘ (Warner Brothers)
• ‘Escape from New York‘ (MGM/UA)
• ‘The Ghost Writer‘ (Summit)
• ‘Heroes: Season Four‘ (Universal)
• ‘Humanoids from the Deep‘ (Shout! Factory)
• ‘James and the Giant Peach‘ (Disney/Buena Vista)
• ‘Kalifornia‘ (MGM/UA)
• ‘Kick-Ass‘ (Lionsgate)
• ‘Open House‘ (Lionsgate)
• ‘Piranha‘ (Shout! Factory)
• ‘A Prophet‘ (Sony)
• ‘Road to Perdition‘ (DreamWorks)
• ‘Splinter (2006) ‘ (Image)
• ‘To Save a Life‘ (Sony)
• ‘Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music: 40th Anniversary Edition‘ (Warner Brothers)

‘Kick-Ass‘ has turned out to be one of the year’s biggest “love it or hate it” movies. Personally, I’m in the “love it” camp. I thought it was one of the best, and certainly one of the most purely-entertaining movies I’ve seen this year. Nate agrees. (Check out his review by clicking the link above.) Meanwhile, Roger Ebert called it “morally reprehensible” because the movie features comic book-style violent scenes of a pre-teen superhero girl killing bad guys. And yet he loved ‘Let the Right One In’, which features a young girl the same age who rips people’s throats out with her teeth, and is about a thousand times darker and more disturbing. Whatever. If you saw the trailers for ‘Kick-Ass’ and thought it looked cool, you’ll probably like the movie. If you didn’t like the trailers, ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid‘ comes out this week too. So there you go.

Controversial filmmaker Roman Polanski returns to the director’s chair with the political thriller ‘The Ghost Writer‘, based on a novel by Robert Harris. The film is set in Massachusetts, but was shot entirely in Europe (for obvious reasons). Drew called it, “smart, twisty little thriller that would have done Hitchcock proud.”

Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis is in the building. Warner Bros. has issued the 1972 concert documentary ‘Elvis on Tour‘ on Blu-ray in Digibook packaging.

I know very little about the French film ‘A Prophet‘ except that it’s a crime drama and was nominated for the foreign-language Oscar this year. I’ve heard it’s good (and not just because of the nomination). Might be worth a look.

The fourth and mercifully final season of ‘Heroes‘ also limps its way to Blu-ray this week. Now that it’s all behind us, can we move on and pretend that the show never had more than one season?

MGM continues to dribble out catalog titles. This week, the studio gives us the John Carpenter classic ‘Escape from New York‘ (which reportedly has a much better transfer than the Blu-ray released in Europe previously), the winning sports comedy ‘Bull Durham‘, and Brad Pitt’s early starring role in ‘Kalifornia‘. We also show a listing for the Coen Bros.’ debut feature ‘Blood Simple’, but I’m pretty sure that’s been delayed.

Other notable catalog titles include ‘The Breakfast Club‘ from Universal, ‘James and the Giant Peach‘ from Disney, and ‘Road to Perdition‘ from DreamWorks.

All in all, it’s not a bad week on the Blu-ray front. Next week looks a little drier, unfortunately.