Amazon UK SteelBook<\/a> is the all-around best package with Blu-ray, 3D and UHD.<\/p>\n‘Good Time<\/strong>‘ \u2013 Robert Pattinson has struggled for a while to shed his image as the vapid ‘Twilight’ hunk, to mostly mixed success. He may have finally had a breakthrough with an indie thriller in which he plays a lowlife criminal having a very bad night as he frantically tries to keep his mentally ill brother out of prison. Not only were reviews for the movie much stronger than expected based on the plot description, nearly every single one of them singled out Pattinson’s performance for praise. Perhaps it’s time to get back on Team Edward?<\/p>\n‘Birth of the Dragon<\/strong>‘ \u2013 1993’s ‘Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story’ wasn’t a particularly good movie, but at the very least director Rob Cohen had the basic sense to let Bruce Lee be the main character in his own bio-pic. Two decades later, George Nolfi (writer\/director of the moronic ‘The Adjustment Bureau’) attempts another bio of the kung-fu legend and, by nearly all accounts, fails miserably. A festival cut of the film was torn to shreds by audiences and critics, who complained that it sidelined Bruce Lee as a supporting character, in favor of making one of his white students (Billy Magnussen) the hero instead. This certainly didn’t play well right in the middle of Hollywood’s whitewashing controversy. Nolfi later recut the movie to shift the balance more toward Lee, but that doesn’t seem to have helped much. The film was still overwhelmingly rejected by everyone who saw it. <\/p>\n‘California Typewriter<\/strong>‘ \u2013 Tom Hanks and John Mayer get to show off their hipster sides in a documentary about the nostalgic joys of using manual typewriters while the rest of the world has moved on to computers. How precious.<\/p>\n‘Leap!<\/strong>‘ \u2013 Here’s Dane DeHaan again, having a really bad year (or couple of years, since this was released overseas in 2016). He voices a role in a very cheap-looking animated family flick about a ballet troupe in Paris. Elle Fanning is the other lead. The movie tanked at the box office, and given that anything associated with The Weinstein Company is totally toxic now, will not likely make up any ground on video. <\/p>\nUHD<\/h2>\n
‘The Hitman’s Bodyguard<\/strong>‘ and ‘Valerian<\/strong>‘ are the week’s only 4k offerings. <\/p>\nCatalog Titles<\/h2>\n
The medieval farce ‘Jabberwocky<\/strong>‘ was Terry Gilliam’s first feature as a solo director. Though technically not a Monty Python production, Michael Palin stars in the lead and Terry Jones appears as well. This also marks Gilliam’s fifth movie to get a Blu-ray edition from the Criterion Collection (and his seventh Criterion title in all, counting Laserdisc and DVD). It’s an early work for Gilliam and generally not regarded as one of his best, but his wit and inventiveness are on display, and it’s an interesting example of his development as an artist. Gilliam always puts together good supplements for Criterion, which should be a selling point for the disc as well. <\/p>\nWith renewed attention on Stephen King this year following the success of ‘It’ (and the failure of ‘The Dark Tower’), the Warner Archive digs up Taylor Hackford’s 1995 adaptation of ‘Dolores Claiborne<\/strong>‘. <\/p>\nKino compiles a pricy 12-disc box set of all of Fritz Lang’s silent films called, simply enough, ‘Fritz Lang: The Silent Films<\/strong>‘. Of the 11 features, I believe four are new to Blu-ray. Fans who’ve collected the previous standalone editions of the others may find this a little galling.<\/p>\nThe GKIDS reissues of Studio Ghibli titles continue with 1992’s ‘Porco Rosso<\/strong>‘ and 2010’s ‘The Secret World of Arrietty<\/strong>‘.<\/p>\nTelevision<\/h2>\n
Beyond the anime that I can’t speak to, the most prominent TV releases this week come from the UK. The third season of the serial killer drama ‘The Fall<\/strong>‘ may or may not be the show’s last. You can buy that individually or as part of a so-called Complete Collection that will seem a lot less complete if a fourth season eventually happens. <\/p>\nIf that’s too bleak for you, the sci-fi comedy ‘Red Dwarf<\/strong>‘ is now up to its twelfth season, and it only took 29 years to get there.<\/p>\nMy $.02<\/h2>\n
Even with all the negative buzz, I kind of want to give ‘Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets’ a shot. I just don’t think I can bring myself to blind-buy the 3D edition from the UK. Perhaps I’ll do a streaming rental first. <\/p>\n
‘Good Time’ looks interesting. I’ll rent that if I can. ‘Jabberwocky’ and the two Ghibli titles will go on my wish list. I’m sure I’ll probably catch ‘The Hitman’s Bodyguard’ on cable in a few years. <\/p>\n
What’s your pleasure this week?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Holiday weeks are usually slow for home video, but with Black Friday imminent, the Blu-ray studios offer us a couple of major titles. Yes, one of them was a huge bomb, but I’m sure it’ll look awfully pretty in 4k. Also of interest is a notable indie that scored surprising buzz for a star many…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":88462,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140],"tags":[5239,9748,67,6375,666,421,9727,1771,9739,9933,9761,194,3753,4674,1428,1066,1697,9692],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88459"}],"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=88459"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88552,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88459\/revisions\/88552"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}