Fantastic Mr. Fox<\/strong>‘ had a terrific video\/audio transfer and a couple of pretty good bonus features. Of all the movies in need of rescue by the Criterion Collection, this one seems like a pretty low priority to me. Of course, Anderson has a close relationship with Criterion, and his fans tend to be obsessive completists. I can’t imagine that the new Criterion disc will look or sound much different than the prior Blu-ray from Fox, but in its favor, this one has a whole lot more supplements. Personally, I’d rather have seen Criterion direct its attention to ‘The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou’. (Yeah, I understand that it’s owned by a different studio, but it’s the only Anderson movie without any sort of Blu-ray release yet.)<\/p>\nIn addition to that, Criterion also offers Alfred Hitchcock’s second American movie (following the Oscar-winning ‘Rebecca’), 1940’s ‘Foreign Correspondent<\/strong>‘. Our reviewer David makes the case that this oft-forgotten effort is one of the master’s “most thrilling and perfectly executed films.”<\/em> When talking about Hitchcock, that’s saying quite a lot.<\/p>\nLong before he was handed the keys to the ‘Spider-Man’ franchise, director Sam Raimi tried his hand at creating his own comic book superhero with the 1990 ‘Darkman<\/strong>‘. The character isn’t based on an actual comic book, mind you, but the movie was made in clear imitation of ‘Batman’, ‘Dick Tracy’ and other comics-based films of the era. I saw this in the theater and thought it was a total piece of crap. That seemed to be the prevailing sentiment among others at the time as well. When it was released to the HD DVD format in 2007, I revisited the movie to give it another shot. Sorry, but I still think this thing is painfully stupid. Nevertheless, it somehow developed a cult audience attracted to its hyperactive stylistics and over-the-top camp. If you’re one of its fans and were disappointed by Universal’s Blu-ray release in 2010, the new Scream Factory reissue is something of a mixed bag. It recycles the same (crappy) A\/V transfer, but at least adds some new bonus features so you can learn all about how the movie’s atrocious blue-screen special effects were created.<\/p>\nTelevision<\/h5>\n
On the TV front, premium channel programming makes a strong showing this week, with the third season of HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones<\/strong>‘ and the fifth season of Showtime’s ‘Nurse Jackie<\/strong>‘. I stopped collecting TV content on disc when I realized that I’d never have time to watch any of the box sets I’d purchased, but ‘Thrones’ certainly makes a compelling case for investing both the money and time into rewatching its episodes.<\/p>\nAs if fans of Cartoon Network’s animated ‘Beware the Batman<\/strong>‘ weren’t already disappointed enough that the show has been canceled, Warner Bros. rubs salt in the wound by splitting its only season into two separate releases.<\/p>\n—<\/p>\n
‘Foreign Correspondent’ beckons me. Even though I already own the older Blu-ray, I’ll probably also add ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ to my wish list for Barnes & Noble’s next Criterion sale. Will you pick up anything, or are you sitting the week out?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Although President’s Day isn’t exactly one of the major holidays here in the United States, it was apparently excuse enough for most home video studios to take a little vacation. This week’s new Blu-ray slate is pretty sparse. In fact, one of the most notable releases is a double-dip reissue of a movie that already…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":60722,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140],"tags":[2241,707,67,6375,666,7193,2810,4691,194,1151],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60257"}],"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=60257"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60723,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60257\/revisions\/60723"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}