This week is a no-brainer for me, as the number one pick is one of my all time favourite films! The rest of the Blu-ray discs out this week are a bit of a mixed bag, though, with some decent, new Hollywood fliks (and some truly awful ones), some catalogue titles and a couple of pretty decent anime releases.
1. WALKABOUT
My old Criterion Collection edition of Walkabout has been one of the most treasured DVDs in my vast collection for years now. It’s one of my favourite films of all time. I’m so excited to be able to retire that worn, aged non-anamorphic disc and replace it now with this new pristine Blu-ray edition of the film, hot off the printer from Criterion!
It’s always seemed to me that everything director Nicolas Roeg touches is gold. Whether focusing his lens on the steely eyes of David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth or adapting the children’s book, The Witches, Roeg’s work always seems to stand apart from the crowd as that of a true auteur. And Walkabout, to me, has always been his finest work – the story of a couple of young children lost in the outback of Australia, guided to safety by an Aboriginal boy on his “walkabout”. Stunning photography, wonderful, rich performances and a gripping yet simple tale told brilliantly. Walkabout is the Blu-ray I’ve most been looking forward to these last months. Don’t miss it!
2. INVICTUS
I really wasn’t looking forward to watching Invictus. I don’t care for sports films and I’m not very attracted to movies that portray political figures as gods or gurus. And Invictus has both sports and gods. But despite this preachy, predictable nature of this picture of a rugby team’s struggle to win the cup and unite a South Africa under newly elected President/Buddha Nelson Mandela, I actually managed to enjoy the story! What is it with these sports films winning me over lately?! Invictus shouldn’t have worked for me but the filmmaking and the performances won me over. The Blu-ray is packed with some nice features as well, including an exclusive picture-in-picture track with director Clint Eastwood and all the major players involved.
Do you, like I, have a soft spot for the often borderline exploitation films of director Brian DePalma? Yeah…his movies feature a lot of scenes and characters that are quite often in bad taste but are packed full of amazing feats of inhuman camer-work. And Carlito’s Way is no exception. While perhaps not the best DePalma film, this one does stand out for a couple of reasons – it marked DePalma’s reunion with his Scarface star, Al Pacino (again playing a latin charactrer for the director) and it features one of the most electric Sean Penn performances on celluloid! It’s just a shame that Universal didn’t hold off on issuing this Blu-ray for a couple of years in favour of giving us a fully-loaded twentieth anniversary edition in 2013! I guess I won’t be surprised if we see a double dip, when the time comes…
Are you a fan of anime? More specifically, are you a fan of the Dragonball franchise? If so, be certain not to miss out on this revolutionary, revitalizing release for the property – the first part of the Dragonball Z series revised, now with cleaned up animation, tightened plot and storytelling and an all new voice-cast recording featuring the original actors! Toei Animation are celebrating the 20th anniversary of Dragonball by taking the unwieldy 291-episode series, dragged out by numerous multi-episode battles that forgo plot progression in favour of never-ending scenes of violence, and crunching it down to a more well-paced and palatable 100 episode run. The first 13 episodes are presented in this 2-disc set, not looking as shiny-perfect as the Evangelion redux I reviewed last month, but certainly the best all-around presentation Dragonball Z has ever seen.
5. DOGORA
Dogora is no Baraka, though it tries very hard to be. But on its own, it’s a fine effort – an 80-minute Cambodian travelogue of a sort, featuring some absolutely stunning photography set to a driving musical score. There is no narrative to be found here and as such, the film is not for everyone. I haven’t had a chance to screen the Blu-ray, but if it’s up to the standards of the Baraka disc, this could be a superb showpiece for your home theatre setup!
ALSO AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY THIS WEEK
Clicking an image will take you to Amazon.com where you can learn more about and purchase the Blu-ray disc:
i so want to get walkabout this week but i just bought the criterion disc of m and thats my bluray budget for this paycheck. i hate having to wait until next week but i cant afford both right now. did you get walkabout yet? is it amazing?
Not yet. It hasn’t shown up in Canadian shops as yet (we’re usually a few weeks behind on Criterion releases here, unless we go the Amazon route) but rest assured, I’ll be grabbing up Roeg’s ‘WALKABOUT’ as soon as I see it!
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