Blu-ray & Discs
 Posted by - April 17, 2012

Blu-ray Highlights for 4/17/12 – This Message Will Self Destruct in Five Seconds

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to buy one of the best action movies of 2011 on Blu-ray. Some other stuff might be worth looking at as well.

The following new discs hit the market today:

New Releases

The week’s two major new releases couldn’t be more different than one another. On the one hand, we have the blockbuster smash ‘Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol‘, which provided both a comeback for Tom Cruise (whose beleaguered career really needed a hit) and a very successful live-action directing debut for Pixar’s Brad Bird. This fourth franchise entry features a clever script and incredibly inventive set-pieces, and may be the best in the series so far. Our reviewer Mike Palmer says that the Blu-ray is a stunner, though some fans may be disappointed to learn that the disc doesn’t alternate aspect ratios (a la ‘The Dark Knight‘) like the IMAX theatrical run. Apparently, the decision to maintain a constant 2.40:1 aspect ratio was the director’s call.

[Note: Please direct further comments about the aspect ratio issue to our poll post. Thanks. -JZ]

Those who favor indie art films over action spectacle may head to the opposite end of the spectrum for the bleak drama ‘Shame‘. The movie reunites star Michael Fassbender with his ‘Hunger‘ director Steve McQueen (who is, obviously enough, not the late actor of the same name). Fassbender’s performance as a sex addict spiraling into depression was widely acclaimed and buzzed as a likely Oscar contender. His failure to land a nomination was later cited as one of the Academy’s biggest snubs of the year.

Catalog Titles

Catalog titles this week are an eclectic mix. The latest release from Universal’s 100th Anniversary celebration is the 1941 Abbott and Costello comedy ‘Buck Privates‘, which finds the pair joining the army to avoid jail time. As far as I’m aware, this is the first of the iconic duo’s films to hit Blu-ray.

Our reader EM will probably be pleased to see Kino release the 1972 British horror film ‘The Asphyx‘. He’s cited it as a favorite of his once or twice in the Comments section of this blog. (See, I pay attention!) In the strangely-titled movie, a scientist discovers an ancient Greek spirit that snatches a person’s soul at the moment of his or her death. He attempts to achieve immortality by capturing and imprisoning it. Given that this is a horror film, I assume that doing so will have some unintended consequences. This sounds like a neat premise. I’m interested enough to check it out.

Criterion adds two more titles to the venerable collection, one foreign and one domestic. The first is legendary Japanese director Jasujiro Ozu’s 1949 ‘Late Spring‘, about a wealthy man in post-war Japan who tries to marry off his only daughter. The other is American independent filmmaker Robert M. Young’s 1977 illegal-immigrant drama ‘¡Alambrista!‘, which won the prestigious Camera d’Or prize (the trophy for Best First Feature) at the Cannes Film Festival.

Of considerably less acclaim than either of those is ‘Roadracers‘, a quickie TV movie that Robert Rodriguez threw together in between his ultra-low-budget debut ‘El Mariachi’ and its respectably-budgeted sequel ‘Desperado’. While this may come from the period of his career where Rodriguez still seemed like an exciting talent (before he started churning out terrible kiddie flicks written by his own children), the movie stars David Arquette. Those two factors tend to balance each other out, which is probably why the picture has largely been forgotten. In any case, cheap-jack distributor Echo Bridge dumps this on Blu-ray today, no doubt with the terrible quality that the studio is so notorious for. I’m pretty sure that I saw this on the shelf at Best Buy a few weeks ago. Was it one of those unadvertised exclusives there first?

Try to follow this bit of convoluted history: In 1986, Jackie Chan starred in the Hong Kong action hit ‘Armour of God’ and then followed that up in 1991 with a sequel called ‘Armour of God II: Operation Condor’. However, when Miramax acquired the domestic distribution rights to the franchise, the studio decided to release the sequel first under the shortened title ‘Operation Condor’. After that was successful, the original movie was retitled ‘Operation Condor 2: The Armour of the Gods’. Thus, the first film in the series was turned into a sequel to its actual sequel, which now comes first. Confusing enough for you? Whatever you want to call it, ‘Armour of God’ is a breezily entertaining Indiana Jones knock-off in which Chan plays a treasure hunter searching for three parts of a valuable Middle Ages antique. Unfortunately, it’s now another dump-title from Echo Bridge. Given that the disc is called ‘Operation Condor II: The Armour of God‘, I’d have to assume that it’s also the badly dubbed and re-edited American version of the film. Sigh.

Speaking of Indiana Jones knock-offs, studio Hen’s Tooth gives us ‘High Road to China‘. As most fans know, Tom Selleck was almost cast in the iconic role in ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’. Realizing just how badly he missed out, the actor starred in this 1983 copycat about a 1920s biplane pilot and rough-and-tumble adventurer hired to rescue a wealthy man. While not nearly on the same level as its inspiration, this may qualify as a guilty pleasure.

Television

On the TV front, HBO brings us a complete second season box set of the acclaimed ‘Treme‘, while a studio called BFS Entertainment rolls out seven separate discs (each with two episodes approximately 100 minutes each) of ‘Sharpe‘. The latter stars Sean Bean as a British soldier in the Napoleonic Wars. (The final two episodes, called ‘Sharpe’s Challenge’ and ‘Sharpe’s Peril’, were already released on Blu-ray back in 2010.) Considering that the series ran from 1993 to 1998, and that Sean Bean was the lead the whole time, I will have to assume that the actor has a better fate in this one than most of the projects he undertakes.

—

Which discs will you pick up this week?

Tags

About Josh Zyber

Josh Zyber is a veteran movie and video disc reviewer from Laserdisc to DVD and beyond. He previously wrote for DVDFile.com, DVDTalk.com, and Home Theater magazine.
Facebook
Google+
Linkedin
Pinterest
Delicious

Related Posts

76 comments

  1. Drew
    April 17, 2012 at 10:42 pm -

    “The film’s director, the man whose job it is it make that decision, saying that the OAR is 2.35:1.”

    Exactly! And Bird decided that the OAR of the IMAX footage was 1.44:1. Otherwise, he would have never composed it that way, or he wouldn’t have shot it in IMAX at all. If he decided the OAR of that footage was 2.35:1, he would have just framed it that way, even for the IMAX screenings. After all, many films are shown in IMAX at 2.35:1 for their entirety. And let’s not forget, he only shot in IMAX for the enhanced sharpness and clarity. Right, Josh?

    He obviously intended for the OAR to vary, based on the scene. Case closed, for real this time.

  2. August Lehe
    April 18, 2012 at 6:59 am -

    OK….I want to be the first to hail the arrival of BUCK PRIVATES on Blu Ray. Sure, A&C were no Laurel and Hardy, but their Vaudeville/Burlesque-based routines hold up pretty well today. PLUS, you get the best of The Andrews Sisters (Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy! and Apple Blossom Time). I figured we were YEARS away from a release like this!

  3. William Henley
    April 19, 2012 at 6:13 am -

    Yeah, I am getting late into the discussion this week. So, something that looks interesting to me is The World’s Greatest Railroads. Sadly, it looks like this was just announced Monday, and I didn’t have time to budget this week. So that will be put off a couple of weeks, and I am afraid that, with it not being a major movie, I may end up forgetting about it all together.

    Born To Be Wild 3D also looks interesting. It is still playing in the Omni, so I have been wanting to see it there.

  4. August Lehe
    April 19, 2012 at 7:42 am -

    What are the odds we will see a Blu Ray of the Dog Breeds of the World, complete with AKC Show Winners and breeder contact info this year?

  5. KevinTRod
    April 21, 2012 at 9:25 pm -

    I actually had a personal conversation with Brad about this via Twitter, so my thoughts on the aspect ratio can be found here: http://unpredictableoscars.blogspot.com/2012/03/brad-me-our-mi4-aspect-ratio-debate.html

    However, I do want to add one thing here: That this is Brad’s film and if he wants you to see it this way, you should just suck it up and accept it. Well, if this is true…does that I should accept all the changes to the various Star Wars movies George Lucas has made? I mean, he keeps tinkering with the films to everyone’s disliking, but his excuse is always that they’re HIS films and we can pretty much go suck it!

    But I don’t want to suck it because it’s a BS argument. It’s one thing to update the graphics, but when he says he always intended for Han to shoot first, you know that it’s simply not true or else he would have made it that way the first time around. Likewise, if Brad had always intended the aspect ratio to never change, he would have made it that way from the start.

    Just some food for thought.

    • EM
      April 22, 2012 at 11:20 am -

      As I understand it, Josh’s argument is that Bird all along intended different presentations for different venues, and the presentation chosen for home viewing was intended all along and indeed uses the same aspect ratio used in a majority of the original theatrical screenings. This is different from George Lucas’ revisions, which are intended “all along” only ex post facto.