Blu-ray Highlights: Week of April 14th, 2013 – Let’s Go Get Sushi and Not Pay

In terms of volume, this may seem like another slow week in April for new Blu-ray releases. Fortunately, a major new hit movie and some more cult flicks are here to spice things up.

Which Blu-rays Interest You This Week (4/16/13)?

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New Releases

I’m sure that Quentin Tarantino’s Blaxploitation Western mash-up ‘Django Unchained‘ will be many people’s most exciting title of the week. The film was the director’s biggest box office hit yet, and scored him a second Best Screenplay Oscar, as well as another trophy for supporting actor Christoph Waltz. I didn’t make the trek out to see this in theaters and have been waiting for Blu-ray. I have a feeling that its two-and-three-quarter hours are better suited to watching at home than in an uncomfortable commercial movie theater.

A prime contender for the prize of worst movie title ever is ‘The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia‘, which, as far as I know, has no scenes at all that take place in Connecticut and has absolutely nothing to do with the first ‘Haunting in…’ movie. Why didn’t they just call this ‘The Haunting in Georgia’? For that matter, was the previous movie really enough of a hit that it needed to be franchised?

Catalog Titles

This week, the Criterion Collection inducts the utterly surreal and endlessly quotable 1984 dark comedy ‘Repo Man‘. This is one of only two Alex Cox movies that I’ve ever enjoyed (the other being ‘Sid and Nancy’). Don’t make the mistake of trying to watch the much-belated sequel, ‘Repo Chick’, a movie I’m fairly certain Criterion will never touch.

A note of warning about the double-bill of Jackie Chan’s first two ‘Police Story‘ movies: Early word has it that Shout! Factory has ported the video transfers from previously-released Blu-ray editions in Hong Kong that were merely upconverted from standard definition and look terrible. That’s a real shame, because the movies are a lot of fun.

In other developments, Twilight Time brings us a limited edition of the Sam Peckinpah Western ‘Major Dundee‘, while Kino Lorber unwraps Mario Bava’s giallo shocker ‘A Bay of Blood‘ (a.k.a. ‘Twitch of the Death Nerve’).

Even though I wasn’t quite as enthusiastic about ‘Inglourious Basterds’ as most fans, I have enough faith in Quentin Tarantino that I’ve preordered the Target exclusive SteelBook of ‘Django Unchained’. The Criterion edition of ‘Repo Man’ is also a must-buy for me. What will you spend some money on this week?

13 comments

  1. William Henley

    Django is a rental for me. Other than that, nothing. Gotta save – the next rest of April is going to be expensive for me

  2. Dave T

    Saw Django – It’ll have to dip below $20 for me to buy. Repo Man is a blind pre-order – never saw it all these years & looking forward. Unfortunately my resolve has been crumbling and I’m slowly buying up all the ones I planned to save for the B&N Criterion sale in July (fingers crossed).

  3. NJScorpio

    First and foremost, I’m interested in Police Story 1 & 2. The issue is, I hear it’s a poorly done HD transfer, and that scenes are missing from the original release. This may just be speculation, so we’ll see what we get when it is released.

    Django, I’ll be buying at some point, but not at new release prices.

    Repo Man is up there with the Criterion titles I’ll jump on when the price is right (or I have a B&N coupon).

  4. EM

    Not that I have high hopes for it, but A Monster of Paris looks interesting enough that I’ve been on its wait list at my public library. It has a monster, Paris, and animation—I like all those things, and so maybe it’s worth a try.

  5. Timcharger

    Josh, it should be a contest; name the next Haunting title: The Haunting in Connecticut 3-
    Rumble in Rhode Island
    Spectres in Sri Lanka
    Madagascar Mayhem
    Apparitions in Anaheim Stadium
    Witches in Walla Walla, Washington
    (You can send me the blu-ray prize now; I’ll take your Django steelie, since Haunting 3 is not out yet.)

      • Heard it last night, at 11 PM, on the radio (yes, first headline in Belgium; we’re very concerned). I immediately thought: “Boston! That’s Josh! Hope he’s OK”.

        Glad to hear that is the case.

      • I have to leave the TV on all day at work on Fox News. Shortly after the news broke, we had to start doing business projections, figuring out how far away our Boston branch was, if it will affect business, if we need to put disaster recovery plans into play, while at that time trying to figure out if friends and loved ones are safe.