{"id":66571,"date":"2014-11-24T06:00:35","date_gmt":"2014-11-24T14:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/?p=66571"},"modified":"2014-11-22T18:33:44","modified_gmt":"2014-11-23T02:33:44","slug":"bluray-highlights-nov-23-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/bluray-highlights-nov-23-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Blu-ray Highlights: Week of November 23rd, 2014 &#8211; It&#8217;s Turkey Week, All Right"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It seems to me that, with Black Friday coming up in a few days, this ought to be a really good time to release some major new Blu-ray titles. Instead, as so often happens, the studios have decided to dump a bunch of turkeys on us this week. Thankfully, the selection of catalog titles is more appealing.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<div id=\"polls-608\" class=\"wp-polls\">\n\t<form id=\"polls_form_608\" class=\"wp-polls-form\" action=\"\/blog\/index.php\" method=\"post\">\n\t\t<p style=\"display: none;\"><input type=\"hidden\" id=\"poll_608_nonce\" name=\"wp-polls-nonce\" value=\"2757418652\" \/><\/p>\n\t\t<p style=\"display: none;\"><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"poll_id\" value=\"608\" \/><\/p>\n\t\t<p style=\"display: none;\"><input type=\"hidden\" id=\"poll_multiple_ans_608\" name=\"poll_multiple_ans_608\" value=\"25\" \/><\/p>\n\t\t<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Which Blu-rays Interest You This Week (11\/25\/14)?<\/strong><\/p><div id=\"polls-608-ans\" class=\"wp-polls-ans\"><ul class=\"wp-polls-ul\">\n\t\t<li><input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"poll-answer-8415\" name=\"poll_608\" value=\"8415\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-8415\">'<a href=\"http:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/15408\/2014worldseriesfilm.html\">2014 World Series Film<\/a>' (A&amp;E Home Video)<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"poll-answer-8416\" name=\"poll_608\" value=\"8416\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-8416\">'<a href=\"http:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/13252\/amagamiss.html\">Amagami SS: Season One, Complete Collection<\/a>' (Sentai Filmworks)<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"poll-answer-8417\" name=\"poll_608\" value=\"8417\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-8417\">'<a href=\"http:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/13466\/lavventura.html\">L'avventura<\/a>' (Criterion Collection)<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"poll-answer-8418\" name=\"poll_608\" value=\"8418\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-8418\">'<a href=\"http:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/9675\/conformist.html\">The Conformist<\/a>' (RaroVideo)<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"poll-answer-8419\" name=\"poll_608\" value=\"8419\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-8419\">'<a href=\"http:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/13777\/dontbeamenacetosouthcentralwhiledrinkingyourjuiceinthehood.html\">Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice...<\/a>' (Lionsgate)<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"poll-answer-8420\" name=\"poll_608\" value=\"8420\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-8420\">'<a href=\"http:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/13470\/theexpendables3.html\">The Expendables 3<\/a>' (Lionsgate)<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"poll-answer-8421\" name=\"poll_608\" value=\"8421\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-8421\">'<a href=\"http:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/13490\/thegiver.html\">The Giver<\/a>' (Starz\/Anchor Bay)<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"poll-answer-8422\" name=\"poll_608\" value=\"8422\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-8422\">'<a href=\"http:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/9042\/inspector_lewis_s7.html\">Inspector Lewis: Series 7<\/a>' (PBS)<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"poll-answer-8423\" name=\"poll_608\" value=\"8423\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-8423\">'<a href=\"http:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/15410\/kiteliberator.html\">Kite Liberator<\/a>' (Anime Works)<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"poll-answer-8424\" name=\"poll_608\" value=\"8424\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-8424\">'<a href=\"http:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/13467\/lesblankalwaysforpleasure.html\">Les Blank: Always for Pleasure<\/a>' (Criterion Collection)<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"poll-answer-8425\" name=\"poll_608\" value=\"8425\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-8425\">'<a href=\"http:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/13264\/loghorizoncollection1.html\">Log Horizon: Collection 1<\/a>' (Sentai Filmworks)<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"poll-answer-8426\" name=\"poll_608\" value=\"8426\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-8426\">'<a href=\"http:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/13003\/thelonggoodbye.html\">The Long Goodbye<\/a>' (Kino)<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"poll-answer-8427\" name=\"poll_608\" value=\"8427\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-8427\">'<a href=\"http:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/15342\/amerryfrigginchristmas.html\">A Merry Friggin' Christmas<\/a>' (Phase 4 Films)<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"poll-answer-8428\" name=\"poll_608\" value=\"8428\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-8428\">'<a href=\"http:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/15336\/narutoshippudenroadtoninjathemovie6.html\">Naruto Shippuden Road to Ninja: The Movie 6<\/a>' (Viz Media)<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"poll-answer-8429\" name=\"poll_608\" value=\"8429\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-8429\">'<a href=\"http:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/14930\/thenovemberman.html\">The November Man<\/a>' (20th Century Fox)<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"poll-answer-8430\" name=\"poll_608\" value=\"8430\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-8430\">'<a href=\"http:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/13507\/nymphomaniacdc.html\">Nymphomaniac: Volume I and Volume II Extended Director\u2019s Cut<\/a>' (Magnolia)<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"poll-answer-8431\" name=\"poll_608\" value=\"8431\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-8431\">'<a href=\"http:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/13207\/sailormoonseason1part1.html\">Sailor Moon: Season 1, Part 1<\/a>' (Viz Pictures)<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"poll-answer-8432\" name=\"poll_608\" value=\"8432\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-8432\">'<a href=\"http:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/13205\/sailormoonseason1part1limitededtion.html\">Sailor Moon: Season 1, Part 1 (Limited Edtion)<\/a>' (Viz Pictures)<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"poll-answer-8433\" name=\"poll_608\" value=\"8433\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-8433\">'<a href=\"http:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/14574\/samuraicop.html\">Samurai Cop<\/a>' (Cinema Epoch)<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"poll-answer-8434\" name=\"poll_608\" value=\"8434\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-8434\">'<a href=\"http:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/12151\/shockwaves.html\">Shock Waves<\/a>' (Blue Underground)<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"poll-answer-8435\" name=\"poll_608\" value=\"8435\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-8435\">'<a href=\"http:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/13627\/thieveslikeus.html\">Thieves Like Us<\/a>' (Kino Lorber)<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"poll-answer-8436\" name=\"poll_608\" value=\"8436\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-8436\">'<a href=\"http:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/13718\/tylerperrysamadeachristmas.html\">Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas<\/a>' (Lionsgate)<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"poll-answer-8437\" name=\"poll_608\" value=\"8437\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-8437\">'<a href=\"http:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/13733\/whatif.html\">What If<\/a>' (Sony)<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"poll-answer-8438\" name=\"poll_608\" value=\"8438\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-8438\">Other (Tell us in the Comments)<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<li><input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"poll-answer-8439\" name=\"poll_608\" value=\"8439\" \/> <label for=\"poll-answer-8439\">Nothing for me this week<\/label><\/li>\n\t\t<\/ul><p style=\"text-align: center;\"><input type=\"button\" name=\"vote\" value=\"   Vote   \" class=\"Buttons\" onclick=\"poll_vote(608);\" \/><\/p><p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"#ViewPollResults\" onclick=\"poll_result(608); return false;\" title=\"View Results Of This Poll\">View Results<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n\t<\/form>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"polls-608-loading\" class=\"wp-polls-loading\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-polls\/images\/loading.gif\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Loading ...\" title=\"Loading ...\" class=\"wp-polls-image\" \/>&nbsp;Loading ...<\/div>\n\n<h2>New Releases<\/h2>\n<p>&#8216;<strong>The Expendables 3<\/strong>&#8216; \u2013 I guess the nostalgia factor only stretches so far for Sylvester Stallone&#8217;s testosterone-fueled, shoot-em-up franchise. Despite wrangling in even more aging former action stars (including Harrison Ford, somehow), moviegoers found the latest &#8216;Expendables&#8217; sequel to be pretty\u2026 well, expendable. Lowering the rating to PG-13 in an attempt to appeal to younger viewers was probably a mistake, as the core audience for this franchise all grew up in the 1980s and expect some hard-R violence and mayhem. If it has no other appeal, the Blu-ray is only the third title released so far with a Dolby Atmos soundtrack, which may pull in a few extra sales from home theater gearheads. <\/p>\n<p>&#8216;<strong>The November Man<\/strong>&#8216; \u2013 Hoping that people still remember that he used to be James Bond, Pierce Brosnan returns to the spy genre with an alleged action thriller that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/november-man-review\/\">our theatrical reviewer Phil called<\/a> &#8220;deeply, deeply mediocre.&#8221; The film was directed by Roger Donaldson, who has made some excellent movies like &#8216;No Way Out&#8217; and &#8216;Thirteen Days&#8217;, but also made some very bad movies like &#8216;Cocktail&#8217; and the misguided remake of &#8216;The Getaway&#8217;. Most accounts put this in the latter camp. The trailer explains the title with a line of dialogue stating: <em>&#8220;After you pass through, nothing lives.&#8221;<\/em> Ummm, what? That doesn&#8217;t make any sense at all. <\/p>\n<p>&#8216;<strong>The Giver<\/strong>&#8216; \u2013 All the publicity for the latest Young Adult, dystopian future sci-fi flick bent over backwards trying to convince viewers that, no, it&#8217;s not just a rip-off of &#8216;The Hunger Games&#8217; and &#8216;Divergent&#8217;. In fact, the Lois Lowry novel it&#8217;s adapted from actually predates those other franchises, which were largely ripped off from <em>it<\/em>. Nevertheless, the movie version would not exist if not for the success of &#8216;The Hunger Games&#8217; and &#8216;Divergent&#8217;, and quite frankly it does look like a generic copycat clone. <\/p>\n<p>&#8216;<strong>A Madea Christmas<\/strong>&#8216; \u2013 Tyler Perry is still cranking these things out? Really? Ugh.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;<strong>What If<\/strong>&#8216; \u2013 Also known as &#8216;The F Word&#8217;, Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan struggle to determine if men and women really can just be friends. Given that this is a rom-com, the answer is clearly no. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/what-if-review\/\">Phil says<\/a> that the movie is moderately charming despite its adherence to formula clich\u00e9s. <\/p>\n<p>&#8216;<strong>A Merry Friggin&#8217; Christmas<\/strong>&#8216; \u2013 It cannot possibly be a good sign that even containing one of the final screen performances from Robin Williams wasn&#8217;t enough to drag this Joel McHale comedy out of direct-to-video oblivion. <\/p>\n<p>&#8216;<strong>Nymphomaniac: Extended Director&#8217;s Cut<\/strong>&#8216; \u2013 Nearly six solid hours of cinematic torture from Lars von Trier. Count me out.<\/p>\n<h2>Catalog Titles<\/h2>\n<p>As I said in the intro, this week&#8217;s catalog releases are much stronger than the day-and-date titles. <\/p>\n<p>The Criterion Collection stares into the abyss of alienation and emotional despair with Michelangelo Antonioni&#8217;s beautiful, challenging &#8216;<strong>L&#8217;avventura<\/strong>&#8216;. The film was the first part of a thematic trilogy with &#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/9655\/la_notte.html\">La Notte<\/a>&#8216; and &#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/11632\/leclisse.html\">L&#8217;eclisse<\/a>&#8216; (both previously released by Criterion).<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not too familiar with documentarian Les Blank, but Criterion&#8217;s compendium of 14 of his films, called &#8216;<strong>Les Blank: Always for Pleasure<\/strong>&#8216;, sounds pretty interesting as well.<\/p>\n<p>RaroVideo brings us a new restoration of Bernardo Bertolucci&#8217;s early masterpiece &#8216;<strong>The Conformist<\/strong>&#8216;.<\/p>\n<p>Kino, meanwhile, remembers the great Robert Altman with his terrific revisionist noir &#8216;<strong>The Long Goodbye<\/strong>&#8216; and the period heist caper &#8216;<strong>Thieves Like Us<\/strong>&#8216;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>I will completely understand if most of our readers choose to sit this week out, but personally I find the trio of &#8216;The Conformist&#8217;, &#8216;The Long Goodbye&#8217; and &#8216;L&#8217;avventura&#8217; almost impossible to resist. Is anyone with me on that?<\/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>It seems to me that, with Black Friday coming up in a few days, this ought to be a really good time to release some major new Blu-ray titles. Instead, as so often happens, the studios have decided to dump a bunch of turkeys on us this week. Thankfully, the selection of catalog titles is&#8230;<\/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":66573,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140],"tags":[5011,67,6375,666,5111,1023,7817,2803,3994,7479,7253,194,1222,772,1708,7816,7561,1174,7554],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66571"}],"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=66571"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66589,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66571\/revisions\/66589"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}