a little more lukewarm on it<\/a> but generally supportive. Directed by Lone Scherfig (‘An Education’), it sounds like a pleasant little feel-good crowd-pleaser.<\/p>\n‘A Quiet Passion<\/strong>‘ \u2013 Cythia Nixon plays famed poet Emily Dickinson in a bio-pic very artily directed by British filmmaker Terence Davies (‘The Deep Blue Sea’, ‘Sunset Song’). Critics went ga-ga for the performance and seemed to appreciate the movie around it as well.<\/p>\n‘Spark: A Space Tail<\/strong>‘ \u2013 Kids were decidedly not interested in this animated flick about a space monkey who saves the universe, or something. Shockingly, the PS2-quality animation and paycheck-cashing voice performances from Jessica Biel, Patrick Stewart, Hillary Swank and Susan Sarandon couldn’t lure anyone to the theater. Budgeted at $40 million, it was a massive flop and grossed barely half a million bucks in ticket sales.<\/p>\nUHD<\/h2>\n
Both ‘The Fate of the Furious<\/strong>‘ and ‘Smurfs: The Lost Village<\/strong>‘ debut on Ultra HD simultaneously with regular Blu-ray.<\/p>\nIn anticipation of Luke Besson’s upcoming movie ‘Valerian’, Sony upgrades ‘The Fifth Element<\/strong>‘ and ‘L\u00e9on: The Professional<\/strong>‘ to 4k. Although it has a reputation as home theater eye candy, I’m not sure how well the 1997 CGI in ‘The Fifth Element’ will hold up to higher resolution scrutiny.<\/p>\nIf the studio hoped to piggyback off Warner Bros.’ promotion for the video release of ‘Kong: Skull Island’, Universal must have gotten its release dates mixed up and unleashed a UHD version of Peter Jackson’s 2005 ‘King Kong<\/strong>‘ remake a week early. The disc contains both the agonizingly long theatrical cut and the even longer<\/em> “Oh Just Put a Bullet in My Brain Already” extended edition, as well as all 746 hours of Peter Jackson’s personal production diaries.<\/p>\nCatalog Titles<\/h2>\n
Unsurprisingly, Universal is using the release of the new film as a convenient excuse to rebundle the entire ‘Fast and Furious<\/strong>‘ franchise into an 8-movie collection box set. While car chases were still on somebody’s mind, the studio is also dropping a 40th Anniversary Edition of ‘Smokey and the Bandit<\/strong>‘ for good measure. <\/p>\nSony is likewise hoping to unload some old inventory with a 3-movie ‘Smurfs<\/strong>‘ collection. Good luck with that.<\/p>\nThe Criterion Collection follows a counterfeit bill as it passes from person to person in Robert Bresson’s 1983 French drama ‘L’argent<\/strong>‘. After that comes a box set of ‘Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy<\/strong>‘, containing the Neorealist classics ‘Rome Open City’, ‘Paisan’ and ‘Germany Year Zero’. <\/p>\nThe schlocky 1995 horror hit ‘Species<\/strong>‘ is really only memorable at all for its creature design by H.R. Giger. Well, OK, that and the gratuitous nudity from star Natasha Henstridge. Last released as a very early Blu-ray back in 2006, Scream Factory gives the movie the Collector’s Edition treatment with a new 4k film scan and a bunch of extras. <\/p>\nMore scares come from Arrow Video, which offers Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2001 J-Horror thriller ‘Pulse<\/strong>‘.<\/p>\nMeanwhile, the Arrow Academy label brings out the 1958 noir-ish Western ‘Terror in a Texas Town<\/strong>‘ with Sterling Hayden.<\/p>\nAlthough perhaps not as badly miscast as when he played Genghis Khan, John Wayne was certainly an odd choice to star as a Hitler-hating German boat captain in the WWII naval adventure ‘The Sea Chase<\/strong>‘. The early CinemaScope production comes to Blu-ray through the Warner Archive.<\/p>\nTelevision<\/h2>\n
On TV, Universal has the second season of Syfy’s ‘The Magicians<\/strong>‘ while PBS delivers the detective series prequel spinoff ‘Prime Suspect: Tennison<\/strong>‘.<\/p>\nMy $.02<\/h2>\n
I don’t know if I’ll necessarily get them during this month’s Barnes & Noble sale, but both of the Criterions will go on my expansive wish list. ‘Lost City of Z’ and ‘Their Finest’ also seem like worthy rentals.<\/p>\n
What gets your engine revving this week?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s a given which movie will top the Blu-ray sales charts this week. That’s a done-deal, a fate that cannot be altered. The question, then, is whether anything else is worth giving a spin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":85875,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140],"tags":[5239,67,6375,666,2862,3034,486,2591,9521,194,3722,9678,9677,3241,9522,7582,1428,8994,9392],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85871"}],"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=85871"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85896,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85871\/revisions\/85896"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}