Blu-ray Highlights for 3/1/11: What Are You Buying?

No doubt hoping that the Academy Awards ceremony this past weekend will still be fresh in everyone’s mind, 20th Century Fox is releasing new movies on Blu-ray today starring Oscar hosts James Franco and Anne Hathaway. Meanwhile, Sony is releasing a major stink-bomb starring former Oscar winner Cher at the same time. Isn’t synergy a great thing?

You want to know what’s being released on Blu-ray today? This is what’s being released on Blu-ray today:

Although this post will run on Tuesday, I’m writing it in advance of the Oscar ceremony on Sunday. ‘127 Hours‘ is nominated in a bunch of categories, including Best Actor (James Franco) and Best Picture. I’m going to guess that it probably didn’t win any of the big ones. (Maybe I’ll have to eat these words? Stranger things have happened.) By all accounts, the movie is terrific. However, being the story of a guy trapped under a rock who has to cut his own arm off with a pocket knife, it’s a tough sell to a mainstream audience. The film didn’t do much business in theaters, but its Oscar acclaim will surely help it do better on home video.

How uninteresting must a movie look that even the promise of watching Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal frolic in the nude isn’t enough to convince anyone to go see it? That’s the question posed by ‘Love and Other Drugs‘, last year’s romantic comedy flop from director Edward Zwick. Perhaps Zwick should go back to making middle-of-the-road war movies? That seems to be the only thing he’s successful at.

Speaking of box office duds that somehow didn’t get nominated for any Oscars (despite several inexplicable Golden Globe noms), ‘Burlesque‘ stars Cher and Christina Aguilera in what appears to be a PG-13 remake of ‘Showgirls‘. Did someone really think that this could possibly be a good idea?

Let’s move on to better things, shall we? Disney gives us the Diamond Edition of ‘Bambi‘ today. Now this animated classic can traumatize a whole new generation of children in the glory of high definition! For some reason that no one can comprehend, the studio has authored the disc’s audio in the seldomly-used DTS-HD High Resolution format rather than the lossless Master Audio that has become an industry standard.

Finally, Universal ports over the Steven Soderbergh/George Clooney gem ‘Out of Sight‘, which it had previously released on HD DVD back in 2006. Better late than never!

3 comments

  1. HuskerGuy

    Bambi is the only purchase with 127 Hours and Love/Drugs (solely for seeing more naked Hathaway) being Netflix items.

  2. TJ Kats

    127 Hours was great but no real replay value so not a purchase. The only one for me is Bambi and hopefully UPS will be dropping it off shortly.

  3. EM

    The Complete Metropolis, Forbidden Planet, Hero, Miracle on 34th Street, and Play time. Yeah, I know none of those are new releases this week—but my Amazon order arrived yesterday and today, and I’m a happy camper now that I’ve caught up with these older releases. 🙂