Megan Leavey

Blu-ray Highlights: Week of September 3rd, 2017 – Ruff and Ready

As the long Labor Day weekend comes to an end, we begin the laborious process of digging through the huge volume of new Blu-rays scheduled for release this month. You may have a rough time finding something worthwhile, but keep your eyez peeled and, umm, leavey no stone unturned.

Yes, please groan. I’m sorry about that and will try to do better next week.

Which Blu-rays Interest You This Week (9/5/17)?

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New Releases (Blu-ray)

Rough Night‘ – Scarlett Johansson’s second box office disappointment of 2017 is a raunchy comedy clearly pitched as ‘Bridesmaids’ crossed with ‘Very Bad Things’. A group of girlfriends wind up in deep trouble after accidentally killing a male stripper during a wild bachelorette party. Despite a great cast also including Ilana Glazer, Kate McKinnon and Jillian Bell, audiences apparently got enough of this sort of thing with last year’s ‘Bad Moms’.

All Eyez on Me‘ – The huge success of ‘Straight Outta Compton’ paved the way for a Tupac Shakur bio-pic next. Newcomer Demetrius Shipp, Jr. bears a striking resemblance to the real man and is said to deliver a pretty great performance, but the film as a whole was criticized for feeling overstuffed and unfocused. The real Jada Pinkett-Smith, who was a friend of Tupac’s and is portrayed in the movie by another actress, called its embellishment of the facts “deeply hurtful.” 50 Cent had some harsher language for it.

Megan Leavey‘ – Kate Mara stars in the (undoubtedly heavily fictionalized) true story of a Marine corporal who, after being wounded and discharged, fought to have her bomb-sniffing service dog retired to her care rather than put down. Oh, the feels! The feels! Can’t you feel those tears flowing already?

Score: A Film Music Documentary‘ – The title pretty much tells you what you need to know, doesn’t it? John Williams, Danny Elfman, Thomas Newman and other notable composers are interviewed about their profession. Whenever any of them starts to speak, Hans Zimmer drowns out their dialogue with a BRAAAAAHHHHHHMMMMM…

UHD

Of the day-and-date titles, only ‘Rough Night‘ gets an Ultra HD Edition.

More importantly, Ridley Scott’s sci-fi landmark ‘Blade Runner‘ makes its 4k debut with a new HDR transfer and Dolby Atmos soundtrack that our reviewer Matthew was blown away by. Unfortunately, only the Final Cut is included. If you want the older versions of the movie, you’ll have to hang on to your regular Blu-ray copies.

Other catalog titles getting upgraded to UHD include ‘The Cabin in the Woods‘, ‘Minions‘, ‘RED‘ and ‘RED 2‘.

Catalog Titles

Alfred Hitchcock’s first American feature and his only Best Picture Oscar winner, ‘Rebecca‘, was released by MGM on a pretty respectable Blu-ray back in 2012. The Criterion Collection hopes to do that one better with a new 4k restoration and a bunch of new supplements.

The Cohen Media Group took over the rights to the Merchant-Ivory catalog recently and put out a Blu-ray of ‘Howards End’ last year. The label follows that up by backtracking a little to 1987’s ‘Maurice‘, also adapted from a novel by E.M. Forster.

Sydney Pollack asked ‘They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?‘ in his acclaimed WWII danceathon drama, now available via Kino.

Arrow Academy makes a big cut with Robert Aldrich’s 1955 noir ‘The Big Knife‘.

Shout! Factory pampers the 1983 Michael Keaton comedy ‘Mr. Mom‘ with a Collector’s Edition Blu-ray.

In anticipation of the impending sequel, Fox is reissuing ‘Kingsman: The Secret Service‘ in a so-called Premium Edition that comes packaged with a book and some art cards. The exclusion of the Ultra HD copy of the movie (released last year) makes this seem a lot less “premium” than it could be.

Television

This week brings another big batch of TV product. New box sets include the second season of ‘Narcos‘, the third season of ‘The Flash‘, the twelfth season of ‘Supernatural‘, and the twentieth season of ‘South Park‘.

Also available is the HBO TV movie ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks‘, starring Oprah.

My $.02

I’m still not equipped for Ultra HD yet. If I were, ‘Blade Runner’ would surely be a must-buy. In the meantime, ‘Rebecca’ and ‘Maurice’ will go on my wish list.

What do you have your eyez on this week? (I know! I can’t help it!)

16 comments

  1. Chris B

    I’ll second the statement “if I were equipped for UHD Blade Runner would be a must-buy”. Who knows when that will be though. These days my disposable income has been whittled down to a shadow of it’s former self.

    A Dark Somg sounds interesting, will probably rent it in the future.

    As much as I love 2Pac, I’ll avoid “All Eyez on Me” simply for the same reason I avoided the Biggie documentary “Notorious”….it’s just too sad to watch.

  2. Deaditelord

    Since I vastly prefer The Final Cut of Blade Runner (the original cut’s BS happy ending is a huge cop out), prordering the UHD was a no-brainer for me. I hear the 4k HDR transfer for the movie is incredible. However I do think WB took the lazy route by not remastering the original cut to 4k HDR. I’m also annoyed that WB didn’t provide an HD version of the excellent Dangerous Days documentary. (It is supposedly in SD.) Still, I can’t wait to watch this tonight.

    I’m also interested in the UHD for The Cabin in the Woods, but will wait for a sale.

    • Bolo

      The only thing I don’t like about ‘The Final Cut’ is the weird changes/additions to Batty’s dialogue during his confrontation with Tyrell. Everything else, all the continuity error fixes, are a step up.

          • And, if I’m not mistaken, the ‘father’-line was already in the ‘European Cut’ with more violence? Or did Rutger Hauer record new dialogue in 2007 for the Final Cut?

          • Josh Zyber
            Author

            Scott and Hauer shot the line both ways originally. “Father” was used in the workprint and TV versions, but it was “fucker” in the theatrical releases, both domestic and international. The Final Cut changed it back to “father.”

          • Ah, thanks, Josh.

            Regarding your sentiments, Bolo, I think ‘The Final Cut’ is one of the few ‘new cuts’ that is actually an improvement. Or at least not an embarrassment 🙂 So many director’s cut negatively impact the original cut, but Blade Runner’s Final Cut is on the money. You’re entitled to your own opinion, of course.

        • Bolo

          I prefer “fucker”. More hostile, less thematically on the nose.

          Also, the final cut adds some dialogue at the end when Batty kills Tyrell and Sebastian runs off in horror. They’ve inserted a line of Batty calling to Sebastian saying “Sorry, Sebastian. Come, come.” And it sounds awkward to me. Hauer’s line delivery there is a bit wonky and the way they’ve looped in the line doesn’t really fit with the way his body is moving and his position relative to the camera. It sounds like he’s whispering right into a microphone.

          These are really minor gripes, they don’t bug me in a huge way and I doubt they would stand out to most viewers. I just prefer the way the scene plays in the 1992 cut (which is the one I’m most familiar with).

          • I’m sure we’re all partial to certain scenes in certain movies. Imagine, in the future, to be able to make your own seamless branching version of the movie, so you can have ‘The Final Cut’ with ‘fucker’, and I can have it with ‘father’ 🙂

    • JudasCradle

      The source for Dangerous Days may only be SD. I’m assuming that they would upgrade if it was possible. But you can’t turn an SD source into High Definition.

  3. Blade Runner for me! Very excited about this.

    On a side note, did anyone else snicker when they read “RED 4k Ultra HD”? I had to remember what it was I was reading, my first thought was “Isn’t RED up to 8k now, why are they advertising a 4k camera?”

  4. DaMac80

    Blade Runner, Red 4k and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? are all about to be delivered by Amazon. Blade Runner’s UHD getting such rave reviews really excited. Horses was a blind-buy based on acclaim and the trailer, seems up my alley and the price was right. Wife will probably make me Redbox the army dog movie.

    • William Henley

      You know, in the opening shot of Blade Runner 4k, I was thinking “What were they talking about, there are huge issues in the blacks here”. Then I realized that the issue was not with the transfer at all, but rather issues in the optically filmed matte painting and minatures. Kind of like when they cleaned up Wizard of Oz and Lost in Space, and suddenly you see harness wires in some of the shots. It has just been cleaned up so well!

      The movie looks and sounds amazing, and I am looking forward to seeing future classic-film movies make their way to UHD disc! I cannot praise this disc enough!

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