said my peace<\/a> about my feelings on this one enough already, and won’t dwell on it anymore. A lot of people seem to love this movie. I’m not one of them. <\/p>\nLast year’s part-prequel, part-remake of ‘The Thing<\/strong>‘ was a box office bust that was greeted with a lot of disdain from fans of the John Carpenter classic. However, it also has some defenders. I’m curious enough to give this a rent.<\/p>\nJapanese actor\/director Takeshi “Beat” Takano is a major cult icon that I have mostly remained blind to. The only of his movies I’ve seen was his reboot of ‘Zatoichi’, which I wasn’t too enthused about. I probably need to see some of his better films. His latest is ‘Outrage: Way of the Yakuza<\/strong>‘, but I have no idea where this one falls within his canon. <\/p>\nWriter-director Andrew Niccol has been treading on the cult status of his overrated sci-fi flick ‘Gattaca’ for the past decade and a half. Fans of that film seem to be willing to overlook the fact that he followed it up with the godawful ‘S1m0ne’ and the utterly disinteresting ‘Lord of War’. He came back again last year with ‘In Time<\/strong>‘, which may have the absolute dumbest premise for a movie in the history of cinema. (In a dystopian future, time is money \u2013 literally<\/em>!) The trailers were atrocious and the movie bombed, and I will never, ever see it if I can help it. <\/p>\nThe rest of the day-and-dates (‘The Big Year<\/strong>‘, ‘Dream House<\/strong>‘ and ‘Texas Killing Fields<\/strong>‘) are a dull bunch doomed to be forgotten quickly. I’m really surprised and disappointed that the dopey haunted house thriller ‘Dream House’ was directed by Jim Sheridan, who previously made quality movies like ‘My Left Foot’ and ‘In the Name of the Father’. How did he get stuck doing this one? <\/p>\nOscar Classics<\/h5>\n
Studios like to capitalize on Oscar season by opening their vaults and letting loose past Academy Award winners and nominees. Today alone we get ‘Adaptation.<\/strong>‘ (Best Supporting Actor, 2003), ‘Cold Mountain<\/strong>‘ (Best Supporting Actress, 2004), ‘The English Patient<\/strong>‘ (Best Picture, Director and a bunch of others, 1997), ‘Frida<\/strong>‘ (Best Makeup and Music winner, Best Actress nominee, 2003), ‘Grand Canyon<\/strong>‘ (Best Original Screenplay nominee, 1992), ‘Malcolm X<\/strong>‘ (Best Actor nominee, 1993), ‘The Piano<\/strong>‘ (Best Actress, Supporting Actress and Original Screenplay, 1994), ‘Shakespeare in Love<\/strong>‘ (Best Picture, Actress and more, 1999), ‘A Soldier’s Story<\/strong>‘ (Best Picture and Actor nominee, 1985), and ‘To Kill a Mockingbird<\/strong>‘ (Best Actor, 1963). <\/p>\nSome of these remain beloved classics (‘To Kill a Mockingbird’) while others have suffered from viewer backlash in the ensuing years (‘Shakespeare in Love’). I happen to be a defender of both ‘The English Patient’ and ‘The Piano’, but from this bunch, I’m most excited to get ‘Adaptation.’ on Blu-ray.<\/p>\n
Lionsgate has also thrown together a ‘Best Picture Academy Award Winners: 5-Film Collection<\/strong>‘ box set that compiles the new discs for ‘The English Patient’ and ‘Shakespeare in Love’ with the older Blu-rays of ‘Chicago’, ‘Crash’ and ‘No Country for Old Men’.<\/p>\n—<\/p>\n
Which titles will you buy this week?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The floodgates are really open now. This week sees another outpouring of new Blu-ray releases, including one that the Trekkies out there have been eagerly awaiting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":29222,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3585,140],"tags":[198,1668,3922,67,6375,3546,2348,3386,454,4575,2000,4555,302],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29219"}],"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=29219"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50483,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29219\/revisions\/50483"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}