The Weekend Blues: Blu

From crime-fighting Jesus to gimp-suit sex, from self-destructive lawyers to sword-fighting Snow White — these are the Blu-rays that you should be buying.

Fighting injustice, Person of Interest-style: it’s serious business.
(Credit: Warner Bros)

This week looks great for fans of good television, with a host of TV shows getting the Blu-ray treatment.

Warner Bros is giving us the first season of Person of Interest, which has the somewhat controversial plot of Jesus Christ teaming up with Ben Linus from Lost to fight crime using a combination of advanced technology and knee capping. OK, so it’s actually Jim Caviezel and Michael Emerson playing different roles, but Person of Interest has a slow-burning first season that quietly morphs into a very clever, very good action show that does absolutely nothing by the book. Buy it.

A shirt, Dylan. Buy a damn shirt.(Credit: Fox)

Equally against type, if not quite the same, American Horror Story reminded the world why we’ve loved Jessica Lange so much for so long. It also features Dylan McDermott as the world’s worst therapist and a man fighting to overcome his allergy to shirts, if his lack of wardrobe through the season is to be believed. Oh and gimp-suit sex. This show has more gimp-suit sex than you will be expecting. Make of that what you will.

(Credit: Roadshow)

ABC’s Rake has Richard Roxburgh slipping back into his good old Aussie accent and away from the some of the mush-mouthed masterpieces that he’s been doing over the years, such as “South African with a mouthful of marbles” in Mission: Impossible II, “incomprehensible Eurotrash” in LXG and, of course, “shrieking Transylvanian” in Van Helsing. It’s a smart and funny show about life and law, and has Matt Day, who is also smart and funny, and, honestly, it’s just nice to know that Matt and Richard are still talking to each other after Doing Time for Patsy Cline. Season 2 is out thanks to Roadshow.

On the movie front, Universal Sony is popping out more classics for Blu-ray, and we’d have to give Lawrence of Arabia the two-thumbs-up treatment. It’s one of those films that everyone’s heard of but bugger all people have seen, so pick it up and see what you’ve been missing. There’s also Snow White and the Huntsman out this week, but you can probably survive without that until glass monsters and axe fighting are essential to your happiness.

Hammer, axe — Chris is just happy to be working.
(Credit: Universal Sony)

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The Weekend Blues: Blu

From overly muscled aliens to horror meta-commentary, from zombie cats to lost-and-found babies — these are the Blu-rays you should be buying this week.

Remember, David: you break it, you bought it.
(Credit: Fox)

Ah, Prometheus: a bit like the actual Prometheus, you were a little divisive. You brought fire to humanity and angered the gods, but your filmic namesake just seemed to anger anyone who wanted an alien prequel.

(Credit: Fox)

In fairness, Prometheus had some baffling moments — seriously, was that guy a biologist or the staffer at a petting zoo, because that is one weird way to react to a [spoiler redacted] — but it’s a visually stunning flick, and we can all agree to that.

The two-disc Blu-ray release packs in seven hours of extras and a few deleted scenes that Fox believes will help people make a little more sense of the plot. (There’s a joke here about the fact that Prometheus had a brother called Epimetheus whose name roughly translates as “afterthought”, but we’ll leave it for the professors.) More importantly, as far as we’re concerned, it has a second screen app similar to the Avengers release. We’ll be playing with the app next week, and will give you our opinion then. In the meantime, get Prometheus from 17 October.

Another film that divided people — in this case bodily — was The Cabin In Woods. Billed in some advertising as “Joss Whedon’s Cabin in the Woods” it was actually directed and written by Drew Goddard, with Joss just flinging in some of his usual jokes and actors (we assume). It’s clever, compelling and finally got released after only two or so years of the studio sitting on it for no good reason. The Blu-ray from Roadshow might set you back AU$50, but it’s worth every penny as far as we’re concerned.

Speaking of Joss Whedon, the much-maligned Dollhouse is getting a Blu-ray release for its first season, thanks to Fox. The series had one or two stumbles, like so many Whedon projects, but ultimately proved to be crackingly good fun, especially in the second season, when everyone knew they weren’t getting renewed and everything got thrown to the winds. Big thumbs up from us for the fact that the disc has the unaired, original pilot on it. Hopefully, post-Avengers, one of the networks might actually cut Joss a break rather than just cutting up his work and hoping for the best.

(Credit: Roadshow)

While we’re on the topic of tenuously linking paragraphs, Pet Sematary has a lot of cutting in it, including a scene involving a scalpel and an Achilles tendon that we can still picture despite not having watched the film adaptation of one of King’s more “meh” books since 1991. It’s not the best King film, but Paramount is doing the right thing, pricing wise; it’s only AU$15 for the Blu-ray.

Moving from cheap films to cheap laughs (and resulting in a certain symmetry to this whole piece), Warner Bros has put together The Todd Phillips Collection, ensuring that you can have The Hangover, The Hangover Part II, Project X and whatever the hell Due Date is, all in one set. If that’s your kinda thing, then this is great value, and, in all fairness, it strikes us as the kind of thing that, when you arrive home fairly drunk in the wee hours with a few fellow closing-time refugees in tow, would be a blast to pop on the TV and slowly doze off to while continuing to drink. Actually, that sounds like a pretty good weekend — we’ll see you there.

Look, buy it if you want to — we’re not judging you.
(Credit: Warner Bros)

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(Credit: Madman Entertainment)

Men in Black 3 didn’t exactly set any box office records, but it was certainly a solid step forward from the disappointing second film. More importantly, it showed the world that Josh Brolin does an impeccable impression of Tommy Lee Jones. Seriously. The film is out on Blu-ray, thanks to Universal Sony Picture Home Entertainment, as is a box set of all three MiB flicks.

MiB 3(Credit: Universal/Sony)

Speaking of boxes, remember that all four of the Indiana Jones films can now be found in one Blu-ray set, thanks to Paramount, fully remastered with loads of extras. It’s OK — no one will judge you if you leave the fourth film in the box. We almost recommend it.

If you’re more of a fan of low-fi drama-comedy (shush, it is too a real genre) then Jeff, Who Lives at Home (also from Paramount) might be your speed. It’s a gentle, touching comedy that works extremely well, mostly because of some nice sibling chemistry between Jason Segel and Ed Helms, as well as stellar performances from Susan Sarandon and the chronically underrated and underused Judy Greer.

The Woman in Black(Credit: Roadshow)

In terms of horror, the Daniel Radcliffe version of The Woman in Black (Roadshow) hits most of the right notes, but may seem a little tame to audiences that are used to the gore-based thrills of Saw, Hotel and the like. We say: give it a go — it’s more chills and foreboding than splatter and torture, but there is a creeping fear that will stay with you after the film. For our money, however, the 1989 TV film version is actually a little more frightening and, in a nice bit of film trivia, stars Adrian Rawlins in the same role as Radcliffe — the same Rawlins who plays James Potter in the Harry Potter films.

Of course, if you must have your blood, then Madman has what you need — Battle Royale on Blu-ray. Yes, the magnificently violent cult classic is now out, with the same directors cut that hit DVD earlier this year. It’s got a host of great extras, as well including a making of doco, behind the scenes footage, rehearsal and audition tapes and much more. We’re saddened to hear that the inevitable Hollywood remake will be arriving in 2014, so go buy this before the sight of Elle Fanning beating someone to death with a saucepan lid makes you hate life.

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Flying Monsters 3D … at least you get Sir David’s soothing voice
(Credit: 2011 Atlantic Productions Ltd)

Arguably, it’s thanks to HBO and the show Oz that we have the current trend for well crafted, detailed TV series’ featuring some stellar actors. While Boardwalk Empire doesn’t have the cult following of, say, The Wire, it’s a powerful bit of story-telling from a truly fascinating time in American history. And the dialogue is probably a little easier to comprehend than the average sentence delivered in Baltimorese. The second season is landing on Blu-ray from Warner Bros ($69.95), or people new to the series can grab both season 1 and 2 for just $10 more.

Booze, broads and boardwalks
(Credit: Warner Bros)

Talking about good TV, Justified season 2 is also landing on Blu-ray, thanks to the awkwardly named Universal Sony Picture Home Entertainment (US, to its chums). This season pits Marshall Raylan Givens (Deadwood‘s Timothy Olyphant) against the crime matriarch Mags Bennet (Dexter‘s Margo Martindale, who scored a well deserved Emmy for the role). Justified is easily one of the best adaptations of Elmore Leonard’s writing — a list that includes 3:10 to Yuma, Out of Sight, Jackie Brown, Get Shorty and more. As with Boardwalk Empire, you can pick up either stand alone season 2, or both the first and second seasons as a package.

Back in the dim, dark ages, documentaries used to survive remarkably well without CGI. Walking with the Dinosaurs changed all that, which is why it’s ok to blame Kenneth Branagh for most of things wrong with the world. That said, if you have to watch a spin-off of Jurassic Park masquerading as an educational show, it should have Sir David Attenborough doing it. Flying Monsters 3D ($29 from Madman) specifically looks at the pterosaurs and how they even started flying — which, we have to confess, is pretty bad-ass for a doco, by anyone’s standards.

Finally, two mentions that are a little out of context. Firstly, our good friends at the aforementioned US are slowly putting out a few classic flicks on Blu-ray, and one of the recent releases was Jaws. Everyone remembers the music and the shark, but people tend to forget that Jaws is Spielberg at his finest — the film is a genuine masterpiece of direction and the quality of the Blu-ray version makes this a must-own film.

Jaws finally hits Blu-ray
(Credit: Universal Sony Pictures Home Entertainment)

Slightly less of a masterpiece of direction, and more in the “rollicking rollercoaster of cracking good fun camp”, the 20th Anniversary director’s cut edition of Bruce Campbell vs Army of Darkness (better known as just Army of Darkness to most of us) is something that should be on Blu-ray, but sadly isn’t. It’s easy to lose count of the number of different editions of Army of Darkness that have been released (standard Director’s Cut, Boomstick Edition, Screwhead Edition — the list goes on) but this latest does have the advantage of a few nice extras, such as the alternate ending and audio commentary from director Sam Raimi, and human chin Bruce Campbell for both the film and the deleted scenes. It’s only on DVD, but Evil Dead completionists should give this a good look.

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25 years ago…
(Credit: Paramount)

In the annals of history, 29 August will go down as an impressive date for science-fiction fans, as the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation (Paramount) hits Blu-ray. It’s been a staggering 25 years since the series started airing, and the episodes have been restored and upgraded from the originals to look better than ever on Blu-ray. The first box set has an impressive 1183 minutes of footage, including bonus footage. For AU$89.95, it’s worth getting — if only for scaring yourself with how young everyone looks. Just to hammer this home, it’s been 25 years since the first episode aired, but only 21 years had passed between the final episode of the original season and Next Gen‘s kick off…

Next Gen arrives on Blu-ray.
(Credit: Paramount)

Possibly also something for science-fiction fans (but not necessarily), the patchy-with-flashes-of-excellence Falling Skies season one arrives from Warner Bros also on 29 August. The show, set in a world where pockets of human resistance fighters battle alien overlords, has all the hallmarks of Steven Spielberg’s creative hand, being mostly about fathers, the success of fathers, the failure of fathers and fathers who are occasionally teachers. It’s not the greatest new show, but at AU$49.95, it’s worth a look.

Falling Skies: season one
(Credit: Warner Bros)

Anyone who didn’t buy The Lord of the Rings Extended Edition Blu-ray box set last year might be excited to learn that all three movies — in their extended format — are getting individual Blu-ray releases from Roadshow. Everyone else will probably shrug their shoulders, especially at the AU$49.95 price tag per film. That said, they do have a lot of extras, so if you’re the kind of LotR fan who’s keeping the box set in mint condition, these might be just the ticket.

Two mentions for a couple of films that are already out on Blu-ray, but definitely worth grabbing: Good Will Hunting got its 15th-anniversary Blu-ray edition, and remains an excellent flick from what were two brand new talents at the time. It’s AU$24.95 from Roadshow, and worth every cent. Secondly, The Raid (Madman Entertainment) is a high-kinetic Indonesian martial arts film that has to be seen to be believed.

That’s it for this week; enjoy.

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