The New DVD and Blu Thread

[Ben]

Now that's just rushed to the top of my must haves for May!

I actually really like the Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines sequel (much along the lines of The Great Race), and Houdini was one of the Paramount-licensed-to-Legend films that I never got around to picking up, so that's a sale to me!

Thanks for noticing that and for pointing it out!


George PM'd me (getting back on the last topic of Vault Disney releases) and tells me that "Pollyanna" and "Swiss Family Robinson" are still out there, and often at sale prices. I hadn't thought that there would be any around and was disappointed eBay came up short - but George's note got me to thinking about regular stores and on checking Amazon I found both for less than $15 a pop*. Cheers, George!

Of course, the minute I added them to my cart, someone at Disney started the process to bring them to BD...


*For those interested, the other Vault Disneys are all going cheaper than list price too! I know I should have got them when they came out, but at least with the purchase of Pollyanna and Swiss Family Robinson I now have the full set, and they're still great releases.

[Randall]

I got Swiss and Polly for 9.99 each at WalMart a year or two ago, but haven't seen the others for a long time.

[GeorgeC]

To be honest,

I'm getting to the point where I'm really evaluating more and more what's worth getting on BD.

70-plus-year-old films are probably not worth it 85% of the time. Unless it's a Disney film, you can count on the film being in poor shape or having special effects and background drop-backs that are so obvious they'll just pop up in hi-def.

Remember all the complaints about the obvious visual FX in The Wizard of Oz --- how things were popping up that people never noticed before in the LAST pre-Blu ray DVD release????
King Kong (the original) also seems to fall into the not-BD-necessary category, too. I don't know that I'll bother with the Universal horror films if they ever get to BD, either.

Now, I don't count Star Trek: TOS in this category because CBS/Paramount went ahead and redid the visual FX for the Blu releases of the original series. (Haven't seen the episodes where they used puppets but the CG models and sequences are jaw-dropping at points on the BD sets. They really picked things up after a shaky start on TOS-Remastered.) You can bet, though, that this WILL be a problem for other shows that are not getting the red carpet treatment like the original Twilight Zone most likely isn't on BD. That series might get lucky... those episodes were mostly performance pieces with little in the way of optical effects. There has been confirmation that a remaster was done for that series before the season sets started being released on BD...



P.S. -- You're welcome, Ben. Good find on those Vault Disney DVDs!

They would probably also fall into "don't know if another dip is worth it" category from me, too.

$10 per title is hard to beat, and they'll still look decent at 480p and maybe 720p upscale if you tweak your Blu ray player right.

[Aaron_03]

There is a deal going on at Amazon.

You buy both Incredibles and Cars on Blu-ray which are 24.99 each. You get $10 off plus two Cars 2 free movie tickets. So your total would be about $40 for both movies and two Cars 2 movie tickets.

This is a great offer, especially for those of you who missed the other deal involving the DVDs.

[GeorgeC]

Confirmed for Blu ray --

Battle Beyond the Stars! (Or, "The Little Star Wars movie that could!")
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... italbit-20

(Forgot about some details in the film that are leaving me tittering! They sure show up on the poster art)

Anyhow, now that I get a look again at Nell she sure does look like the Enterprise-D from a few angles... but those aren't the angles that have modelers interested! Twin ports, indeed!

To think that this film might have been better written than the prequels were 20 years later!

[Randall]

That film may just start my Roger Corman Blu-ray collection.

[GeorgeC]

I dunno...

Battle Beyond the Stars is a weird movie!
(Not my first Corman collection piece, though. I have the Legend Films/Mike Nelson "Little Shop of Horrors" DVD that has restored B&W and colorized versions on it.)

John-Boy doing his best impression of Luke Skywalker. John-Boy Luke from a planet-full of a naive bunch of kids with no experience with outside contact and technology...!

(Who are these people -- Amish???)

And then you have that rag-tag eclectic group of actors including Sybil Danning, Robert Vaughn (post-UNCLE), John Saxon, and George Peppard as a space cowboy! (<== Han Solo's father...)

Then there are the other design features we can't speak of much other than to say Nell's chest was almost as impressive as Sybil Danning's!

[Randall]

Interesting! I'd sure be interested to know what other films were included in other sets (had a look online but couldn't find anything Costco-related).

Okay, I was back at Costco today, and looked at those other Disney three-packs again. The Apple Dumpling set has the special edition for the first movie, the plain release of the second (pan & scan, I think), plus The Adv. of Huck Finn. The Witch Mountain set also has The Young Black Stallion in it.

[EricJ]

That film may just start my Roger Corman Blu-ray collection.

And "Death Race 2000" on Blu, of course, should be next.
(Or anything else scripted by Charles B. Griffith, but "A Bucket of Blood" hasn't made it to the cheap public-domain labels yet.)

Battle was one of the six legendary early John Sayles B-movie scripts (after Alligator and Piranha, but before The Howling), but he'd only done four for Corman--Still, proves there's nothing cooler than a SMART B-movie writer.

(And not to quibble, but Battle wasn't directed by Corman: The "Roger Corman" Blu label are all the New Concorde/World productions x-produced by Corman after he left the Vincent Price Poe films at Amer. Int'l.
Battle was directed by Jimmy Murakami, of "Humanoids from the Deep", and who later went on to do...animation, to keep it on topic. )

[Ben]

The Apple Dumpling set has the special edition for the first movie, the plain release of the second (pan & scan, I think), plus The Adv. of Huck Finn. The Witch Mountain set also has The Young Black Stallion in it.

THANKS Rand!

Good to know, but nothing I haven't got (or don't really "need" ). Yep, second Apple Dumpling is P&S on disc...hope a Blu-ray sets that right (to be released, of course, when a certain place freezes over)!


Battle Beyond The Stars: love James Horner's prototype sci-fi score (for anything he wrote after this film)!

[Macaluso]

I can't seem to find a definite answer somewhere online, and there are a lot of pages in this thread. Is Finding Nemo getting released on Blu-ray at some point soon?

[Ben]

It's not been officially announced, Mac, but I'm not sure whether to expect it "soon".

The likelihood is that The Incredibles will have been this year's Pixar catalog title (with Cars 2 their next new one in the fall), so I would expect Nemo to be picked for its Blu-ray debut next year, to coincide with the 2012 release of director Andrew Stanton's first John Carter Of Mars film in March.

Of course, it could happen before then, but I would be surprised if it did given Stanton's current workload. It will come, but I'd be predicting early-ish next year.

Not want you want to hear, but hopefully a bit more realistic and helpful than rumors.

[Randall]

Unless Pixar promotes Nemo with Cars 2, Ben is likely right.

Nemo was the first Pixar film teased in Disney's Blu-ray promos, but ironically is going to be the last catalog title released.

[Randall]

*For those interested, the other Vault Disneys are all going cheaper than list price too! I know I should have got them when they came out, but at least with the purchase of Pollyanna and Swiss Family Robinson I now have the full set, and they're still great releases.

All this talk prompted me to pick up the Old Yeller and Parent Trap Vault Disney releases on eBay. Got them for about $7 each, used.

BTW, my kids picked movies off the shelf on the weekend, ironically going for The Love Bug and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, both de facto Vault Disney releases, and pretty good ones at that.

In other purchase news, I found Marvel's The Avengers to be surprisingly great (Canadian two-disc release: Season One, Part One), and also got the nice-looking Green Hornet steelbook from Future Shop.

[Ben]

Interesting aside: the Robinson and Pollyanna sets I received are newer-packaged slimline double-disc sets (as in the cases are the regular DVD keepcases and not the double-width originals), so I'm guessing all the previous Vault Disney and SE titles have now been "reduced" down in size. The design and package artwork is all the same, but I'm guessing they got re-done when Disney wasn't doing inserts, since they have lost the chapter cards.

But they have Movie Rewards points, so that was a nice "bonus". In a way I'm disappointed not to be able to line them up with the other two original releases, but in another they more closely match the later single-disc Apple Dumpling and Witch Mountains, so it's no great shakes. I'm just glad to have those two titles on DVD at last!