We’re finally out of the dog days of August. As September rolls in, so perhaps do a few Blu-ray titles actually worth buying. Let’s take a look.

First off, I feel the need to admit the error of my ways. In last week’s post, I said that there was nothing to buy and that I’d be sitting out the week. Well, it turns out that I made my way to Best Buy and picked up a few discs after all. Thanks to the correction from one of our fine readers, I learned that the “Rich Mahogany” Blu-ray edition of ‘Anchorman‘ is in fact a notable improvement over the old HD DVD release. The Best Buy exclusive version also comes packaged with a very funny copy of Ron’s Private Diary and some goofy trading cards. That was certainly worth a purchase.

Best Buy also has an exclusive early release window on several Lionsgate titles that won’t hit general retail until October. I mentioned ‘The Blair Witch Project‘ last week. (I didn’t buy that one.) At the time, I wasn’t aware of the other discs such as ‘Bad Lieutenant‘, ‘High Tension‘, ‘Open Water 1 & 2‘ (double feature), ‘Secretary‘, and ‘Wonderland‘, most of which are very reasonably priced around $9.99.

Of those, I wound up with ‘Secretary’ and ‘Bad Lieutenant’. Funnily, I didn’t even like ‘Bad Lieutenant’ when I saw it in the theater back in 1992. But for $9.99, I figured it was worth a second look. ‘Secretary’, on the other hand, is a very kinky and entertaining black comedy that I’m quite happy to own on Blu-ray.

With that out of the way, let’s look at the new release slate:

• ‘The Black Dahlia‘ (Universal)
• ‘Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam‘ (Disney/Buena Vista)
• ‘A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving‘ (Warner Brothers)
• ‘Chuck: The Complete Third Season‘ (Warner Brothers)
• ‘Forbidden Planet‘ (Warner)
• ‘Hatchet: Unrated Director’s Cut‘ (Starz/Anchor Bay)
• ‘In Cold Blood‘ (Sony)
• ‘It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown‘ (Warner Brothers)
• ‘Killers‘ (Lionsgate)
• ‘The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond‘ (Screen Media Films)
• ‘Lost in Space (1998)‘ (Warner Brothers)
• ‘MacGruber‘ (Universal)
• ‘Mars Attacks!‘ (Warner Brothers)
• ‘Megadeth: Rust in Peace Live‘ (Shout Factory)
• ‘Numb‘ (Image)
• ‘The Office: Season 6‘ (Universal)
• ‘The Phantom (2010)‘ (Vivendi)
• ‘The Player‘ (New Line)
• ‘Poltergeist (Non-Digibook)‘ (Warner Brothers)
• ‘Pulse‘ (Vivendi)
• ‘The Skeleton Key‘ (Universal)
• ‘Smallville: The Complete Ninth Season‘ (Warner Brothers)
• ‘Solitary Man‘ (Starz/Anchor Bay)
• ‘StarCrash‘ (Shout! Factory)
• ‘Stardust‘ (Paramount)
• ‘Supernatural: The Complete Fifth Season‘ (Warner Brothers)
• ‘That Evening Sun‘ (Image)
• ‘That Evening Sun [Night Cover]‘ (Image)
• ‘Thomas and Friends: Misty Island Rescue‘ (Lionsgate)
• ‘THX 1138: The George Lucas Director’s Cut‘ (Warner Brothers)
• ‘Tommy‘ (Sony)
• ‘Wonders of the Solar System‘ (BBC)

The week’s two big day-and-date titles are ‘MacGruber‘ and ‘Killers‘. I haven’t seen either one. I’ve heard that ‘MacGruber’ is funnier than expected, but I have an aversion to watching 3-minute ‘SNL’ skits stretched out to feature-length movies. I’ve been burned too many times in that regard. This one might be worth catching up with by rental, though. I also have an aversion to watching pretty much anything starring either Ashton Kutcher or Katherine Heigl. Word of mouth on ‘Killers’ has been especially scathing, so that should effectively rule this one out.

On the TV front, we’ve got several notable box sets, including ‘Chuck‘, ‘Smallville‘, and ‘Supernatural‘. Our contest results for that copy of ‘The Office: Season 6‘ that we’re giving away will be posted later today, so stay tuned for that.

Science fiction dominates the catalog titles this week. Warner has finally gotten around to porting its excellent HD DVD edition of the sci-fi classic ‘Forbidden Planet‘ over to Blu-ray. No elaborate collector’s tin packaging this time, unfortunately.

At the time ‘Mars Attacks!‘ was released to theaters, I was a huge Tim Burton fan. This was the first of his movies that I found crushingly disappointing. As I recall, I laughed exactly once during the entirety of the alleged comedy. (The Martian spy girl bit is fairly inspired.) But the movie has its defenders, so maybe I should give it another shot.

On the opposite end of that spectrum, we have ‘Lost in Space‘, which is almost universally reviled but I find passable enough in a guilty pleasure sort of way. I suppose it helps that I have no attachment to the original TV series. It’s certainly not a good movie by any means. It’s quite stupid, and some of the CG visual effects (like that dumb monkey thing) are astoundingly shoddy. Yet other of its VFX are really well done, its Euro-flavored production design reminds me a little bit of ‘The Fifth Element‘, and the movie was made in good goofy spirits. It’s worth checking out for Gary Oldman’s entertaining performance as Dr. Smith, if nothing else. Perhaps not a purchase, this one, but maybe a rental.

Then we have ‘THX 1138‘, the feature directorial debut of a little guy named George Lucas. Perhaps you’ve heard of him? This minimalistic, dystopian sci-fi drama started out as a 15-minute UCLA student film (found as a supplement on the disc). Lucas later remade the story with a new cast and expanded it to feature length. Its success allowed him to make ‘American Graffiti’ and (eventually) ‘Star Wars’. The Blu-ray unfortunately contains only “The George Lucas Director’s Cut.” Is there another phrase in all of filmdom that can fill movie lovers with more dread than that? The changes Lucas imposed on this are not quite as severe as the atrocity he inflicted on ‘Star Wars’, but he’s certainly foisted on it a fair amount of mediocre videogame-quality CGI that doesn’t even remotely blend with the live action footage shot in 1970. It all stands out like a sore thumb, and does absolutely nothing to enhance or improve the movie in any way. I wish Lucas would learn to leave his old movies well enough alone.

That’s enough sci-fi for one week. In other news, Warner is re-releasing ‘Poltergeist‘ in a standard keepcase for those of you Digibook haters. Sony has also granted ‘In Cold Blood‘ its own individual Blu-ray edition. (The movie was previously only available in a double feature with ‘Capote‘.)

After establishing his auteur credentials in the 1970s, Robert Altman spent a long decade lingering in near-obscurity on the fringes of the art house circuit. His scathing “bite the hand that feeds him” Hollywood satire ‘The Player‘ finally brought the director back to prominence in 1992 and launched a very successful career comeback. I prefer Altman’s next film ‘Short Cuts’ over this one by quite a considerable margin, but ‘The Player’ is still a very good and entertaining movie.

Also of note is Ken Russell’s psychedelic freak-out adaptation of The Who’s rock opera ‘Tommy‘. Appreciation for this one will be greatly aided if you were a teenager in the 1970s and dropped a lot of acid. I fit neither description, so we’ll leave it at that. Russell is a very visual filmmaker, however. I might be interested to see how well his work translates to high definition.

Finally, there’s ‘Stardust‘. Ugh. The fantasy concoction based on a book by Neil Gaiman has a tiny but positively rabid cult following that will countenance no disagreement with their rapturous love for the movie. I found it to be a cinematic embarrassment, personally. Robert De Niro’s swishy gay caricature is cringe-worthy and offensive. I’m amazed that the movie even made it to theaters in the first place, much less played for a whole week. My negative review of the HD DVD edition was greeted with about 30 pages of pure vitriol in the site’s forums. Someone else on staff here will be reviewing the Blu-ray. May God have mercy on his soul if he doesn’t looooooooooove it enough to satisfy Gaiman’s fans. And he if does love it… well, may God have mercy on his soul for entirely different reasons.