This week, if you’re lucky enough to be getting some stimulus money, read this column to figure how to use some of it to help build up your collection of movies on DVD and Blu-Ray. And if you’re not getting any money, you can at least see what you’ll be missing.
This week’s highest-profile recent release coming to DVD is the teen sensation High School Musical 3, available in a new “Extended Edition” from Disney on standard-definition and Blu-Ray. Other big-ticket releases this week include Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies (Warner, also Blu-Ray), Angelina Jolie in Clint Eastwood’s Changeling (Universal, also Blu-Ray), and the horror double feature Quarantine (Sony, also Blu-Ray) and The Midnight Meat Train (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray). Also this week: Sam Rockwell in Choke (Fox); Greg Kinnear in Flash of Genius (Universal); Bill Maher pulling a Morgan Spurlock in Religulous (Lionsgate); Simon Pegg in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (MGM); and Jiri Menzel’s I Served the King of England (Sony).
In classics, this week brings Warner’s “The Paul Newman Series”, which includes five first-time DVD appearances of five Newman films- his directorial debut Rachel, Rachel, plus The Silver Chalice, The Helen Morgan Story, The Outrage, and When Time Ran Out…. Also this week, Criterion is releasing David Lean’s Hobson’s Choice, and single-film re-pressings of two more John Cassavetes films, Faces and Shadows. And let’s not forget the High School Musical Remix Edition (Disney), for those kids who can’t get enough High School Musical.
This week’s TV on DVD releases include a pair of basic cable rerun favorites, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Eighth Year (Universal), and Murder, She Wrote Season 9 (Universal).
Finally, this week’s Blu-Ray only releases include a trio from Sony of Oscar favorites: the Best Picture winning Gandhi and Kramer vs. Kramer, and a package deal that includes both Capote and In Cold Blood. Also this week, just in time for Lent- The Passion of the Christ Definitive Edition (Fox).