{"id":26133,"date":"2011-11-29T06:00:15","date_gmt":"2011-11-29T14:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/?p=26133"},"modified":"2017-02-16T12:27:51","modified_gmt":"2017-02-16T20:27:51","slug":"bluray-highlights-nov-29-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/bluray-highlights-nov-29-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"Blu-ray Highlights for 11\/29\/11 \u2013 Oh, Smurf It"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We have quite an eclectic mix of movies coming out on Blu-ray this week. One of the big titles of the week stars an annoying singing gnome\u2026 and another stars the Smurfs. Ouch.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a look at the release slate, from now through Saturday:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"release_dates\">\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5714\/2011_world_series_highlight.html\">2011 World Series Highlight Film<\/a>&#8216; (A&#038;E \u2013 December 1st)  <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5857\/30_minutes.html\">30 Minutes or Less<\/a>&#8216; (Sony) <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5858\/30_minutes_combo.html\">30 Minutes or Less (Combo Pack)<\/a>&#8216; (Sony) <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5929\/5_days_war.html\">5 Days of War<\/a>&#8216; (Starz\/Anchor Bay) <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5689\/absence_malice.html\">Absence of Malice<\/a>&#8216; (Image) <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/6064\/adele_rah.html\">Adele: Live at the Royal Albert Hall<\/a>&#8216; (Sony) <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5875\/another_earth.html\">Another Earth<\/a>&#8216; (20th Century Fox) <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5949\/art_by.html\">The Art of Getting By<\/a>&#8216; (20th Century Fox) <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5849\/cave_dreams_3d.html\">Cave of Forgotten Dreams &#8211; 3D<\/a>&#8216; (MPI) <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5830\/chaos_complete.html\">Chaos Head: The Complete Series<\/a>&#8216; (FUNimation)  <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5904\/cc_4_films.html\">Children of the Corn 4 Film Series<\/a>&#8216; (Echo Bridge) <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5692\/chillerama.html\">Chillerama<\/a>&#8216; (Image) <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5905\/dracula_4_films.html\">Dracula 4 Film Series<\/a>&#8216; (Echo Bridge)  <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5783\/friends_benefits.html\">Friends with Benefits<\/a>&#8216; (Sony \u2013 December 2nd) <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5784\/friends_benefits_combo.html\">Friends with Benefits (Combo Pack)<\/a>&#8216; (Sony \u2013 December 2nd)  <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5906\/fdtd_4_films.html\">From Dusk Till Dawn 4 Film Series<\/a>&#8216; (Echo Bridge) <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5902\/hellraiser_4_films.html\">Hellraiser 4 Films Series<\/a>&#8216; (Echo Bridge) <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/3477\/horrorexpress.html\">Horror Express<\/a>&#8216; (MPI) <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5907\/chan_4_series.html\">Jackie Chan 4 Film Series<\/a>&#8216; (Echo Bridge) <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5883\/radioactive_wolves.html\">Nature: Radioactive Wolves<\/a>&#8216; (PBS) <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5985\/now_later.html\">Now &#038; Later<\/a>&#8216; (Cinema Libre) <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5948\/one_day.html\">One Day<\/a>&#8216; (Universal) <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5820\/idiot_brother.html\">Our Idiot Brother<\/a>&#8216; (Starz\/Anchor Bay) <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5798\/smurfs3d.html\">The Smurfs &#8211; 3D<\/a>&#8216; (Sony \u2013 December 2nd)  <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5796\/smurfs.html\">The Smurfs (3-Disc Holiday Gift Set)<\/a>&#8216; (Sony \u2013 December 2nd) <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5781\/tucker_dale_evil.html\">Tucker and Dale vs. Evil<\/a>&#8216; (Magnolia) <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/6036\/storytellers_dixie.html\">VH1 Storytellers: Dixie Chicks<\/a>&#8216; (Sony Music) <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5743\/stone_cold_steve.html\">WWE: Stone Cold Steve Austin<\/a>&#8216; (World Wrestling) <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5807\/yuyu_s4.html\">Yu Yu Hakusho: Season 4<\/a>&#8216; (FUNimation) <\/li>\n<li>&#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5427\/zebraman2.html\">Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City<\/a>&#8216; (FUNimation \u2013 November 30th) <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Poor Justin Timberlake. 2011 was supposed to be the singer&#8217;s breakout year as a movie star. Sadly, his silly sci-fi dud &#8216;In Time&#8217; was laughed off theater screens, and his romantic comedy &#8216;<strong>Friends with Benefits<\/strong>&#8216; was overshadowed by the year&#8217;s earlier &#8220;sex buddies&#8221; rom-com &#8216;No Strings Attached&#8217;, which had virtually the exact same plot. &#8216;Benefits&#8217; received some fairly favorable reviews, at least. Luke <a href=\"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/friends-with-benefits-review\/\">thought it was pretty good<\/a>, and the movie scored a respectable <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rottentomatoes.com\/m\/friends_with_benefits\/#\">71% aggregate rating<\/a> according to <em>Rotten Tomatoes<\/em>. While this clearly wasn&#8217;t the sort of thing that many people felt a compelling need to see in theaters, it may be worth a rental on video. <\/p>\n<p>Anne Hathaway had an even bigger disappointment this year with the romantic drama &#8216;<strong>One Day<\/strong>&#8216;. This one flopped big time with both critics and audiences. I don&#8217;t foresee a lot of interest in this, even as a rental. Your mileage may vary.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of movies that underperformed, the caper comedy &#8216;<strong>30 Minutes or Less<\/strong>&#8216; failed to deliver the box office bucks expected of it. The movie reunites the director and the star of &#8216;Zombieland&#8217;, which perks my interest. But it also co-stars the gratingly unfunny Danny McBride, which puts me off it right away.<\/p>\n<p>If you can believe it, the only movie arriving this week that was actually a box office hit in theaters is &#8216;<strong>The Smurfs<\/strong>&#8216;, which somehow pulled in over $550 million worldwide. This makes me a little sad for humanity. Sony offers up the movie on Friday in your choice of 2D or 3D Blu-ray options. Don&#8217;t your children deserve better than this?<\/p>\n<p>Things look a little more interesting on the indie front, where we have the existential sci-fi drama &#8216;<strong>Another Earth<\/strong>&#8216;, the quirky comedy &#8216;<strong>Our Idiot Brother<\/strong>&#8216;, and Werner Herzog&#8217;s fascinating documentary &#8216;<strong>Cave of Forgotten Dreams<\/strong>&#8216;. The latter is one of the few films to use 3D in an artistically meaningful way.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, the goofy horror comedy &#8216;<strong>Tucker and Dale vs. Evil<\/strong>&#8216; was practically abandoned by its distributor, despite great reviews and a lot of buzz on the festival circuit. It&#8217;s expected to become a cult item on video. You can find out for yourself by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/tucker-dale-contest\">entering our contest<\/a> to win a copy.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We have quite an eclectic mix of movies coming out on Blu-ray this week. One of the big titles of the week stars an annoying singing gnome\u2026 and another stars the Smurfs. Ouch.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_excerpt -->","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":26183,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3585,140],"tags":[3363,198,1734,2212,67,6375,1299,3240,1387,3371,1961,3241,3300,1300],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26133"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26133"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83297,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26133\/revisions\/83297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}