A Separation<\/a>‘ with a French-language drama that explores some similar themes. B\u00e9r\u00e9nice Bejo from ‘The Artist’ stars.<\/p>\nCatalog Titles<\/h2>\n
The Criterion Collection inducts three new titles this week. Two are classics: Harold Lloyd’s silent comedy ‘The Freshman<\/strong>‘ and Ingmar Bergman’s existential drama ‘Persona<\/strong>‘. Despite the latter’s reputation as one of cinema’s greatest masterpieces, I had a lot of trouble getting into it when I last watched it many years ago. Like many of Bergman’s works, the film is deliberately alienating. I suppose I need to give it another shot. The more recent title is this year’s Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film. The Italian comedy ‘The Great Beauty<\/strong>‘ is said to evoke the spirit of Fellini’s ‘La Dolce Vita’, which doesn’t sound like a bad thing.<\/p>\nTimed to piggyback off Paramount’s promotion for ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’, Fox brings out one of Martin Scorsese’s most underrated films, ‘The King of Comedy<\/strong>‘, in which Robert De Niro plays a celebrity stalker obsessed with a late night talk show host. At the time of its release in 1983, the film was largely dismissed as a retread of themes from ‘Taxi Driver’, but the picture stands very well on its own and has a deliciously ironic ending. <\/p>\nFrom the grindhouse, a label called New Video Group offers up the gritty revenge thriller ‘Ms. 45<\/strong>‘ from Abel Ferrara, the king of ’80s exploitation sleaze.<\/p>\nDistributing for itself, New Line and Paramount, Warner Bros. rolls out a number of catalog title reissues this week. Although the listings at Amazon don’t mention anything about SteelBook packaging, those at some other retailers do. Based solely on price, I’m inclined to assume that they probably are metal cases.<\/p>\n
Television<\/h2>\n
TV box sets this week include the second seasons respectively of HBO’s brilliant political satire ‘Veep<\/strong>‘ and Syfy’s sort-of-OK time travel drama ‘Continuum<\/strong>‘. For an almost astoundingly low asking price, Lionsgate has a high-def edition of the classic family drama ‘Little House on the Prairie<\/strong>‘, said to be restored from the original film elements. <\/p>\n—<\/p>\n
I’m in for ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’, ‘The King of Comedy’, ‘The Freshman’ and ‘Persona’. Did I fail to mention something this week that interests you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week’s new Blu-ray release slate is overrun with wolves, dinosaurs and babies. I’m not sure which is more dangerous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":61296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140],"tags":[67,6375,6275,666,6993,7259,6513,4067,7258,7260,733,194,1428,7082,5021,7034,6606],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61348"}],"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=61348"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61384,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61348\/revisions\/61384"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}