With new HBO boxed sets like The Pacific and the incredible Deadwood: The Complete Series freshly unleashed upon the public it’s very possible to forget that the studio released some truly great gift-worthy titles earlier in the year. To make certain that you don’t overlook both the True Blood and Entourage Blu-ray season boxed sets, the studio has hit us with these fairly entertaining, if not mildly confusing ads. What do you think? Will you be putting either on your wish list this year or giving either as a gift?
READ MORE: True Blood: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Disc Review
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As I mentioned earlier in the week in our Top 5 Blu-ray disc column, I’ve only just started watching this series. My girlfriend and I burned through both the first and second seasons of True Blood in a matter of days. I can’t say for certain that the experience hasn’t clouded my judgment of the second series as a stand-alone set but I’ll do my best here to single these 12 episodes out of the bunch.
True Blood: The Complete Second Season gets off to a running start, picking up directly from the season one cliffhanger, and never looks back. There’s a new murder mystery in Bon Temps and telepath Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) and her 150-year old vampire lover, Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) are caught in the middle of it. Before they can escape the madness and have some time to foster their blossoming relationship, they come up against an army of God-loving vampire killers, a cult of frolicking Dionysian lust-worshipers and the eccentric, Yahtzee-loving Queen of vampires. It’s not easy for the couple to sneak in a few moments alone amongst the weirdo’s, rednecks and shape-shifters of Bon Temps! Especially with Bill’s new, young vampire ward, Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) tailing him around, making trouble at every turn and his powerful vampire Sheriff, Eric (Alexander Skarsgård) desperate to claim Sookie for his own at any cost.
The second season works fairly well, adding a genuine and original threat to the mix and further developing a lot of our favourite characters. Sadly, some interesting characters and plot-threads are introduced and left to twist in the wind (Eric’s 2000-year old “maker” comes and goes before you know it) while other personalities from season one either fail to make an appearance (the vampire magistrate!) or test your patience with a stream of unending (poorly written) shifts in attitude and loyalty (I don’t believe anyone in the real world would act as Tara (Rutina Wesley), Sookie’s best friend, did through this season.) All told though, the series is a light bit of fun. Like a modern day Dark Shadows - a supernatural vampire soap opera with fang planted firmly in cheek!
Much like everything HBO releases on Blu-ray (via Warner Home Video, of course) True Blood: The Complete Second Season looks absolutely stunning! A healthy, naturalistic veneer of film grain compliments a great deal of detail and wonderful contrast here. This is a fantastic looking set of transfers with an equally stunning and enveloping DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack.
True Blood: The Complete Second Season features a fairly plentiful yet mixed bag of extras, the best of which are the seven audio commentary tracks. They vary in quality depending on participants but are, generally speaking, the highlight of the set. I would, however, happily trade any or all of them in favour of a nice “making-of” documentary, the likes of which is nowhere to be found here. Instead, we’re offered several episodes with an “Enhanced Viewing Experience” – a picture-in-picture pop-up track that offers up the occasional trivia, detail or factoid and allows direct access to a couple of hours of “Character perspectives” and other content, most of which can be viewed outside of the “experience”. I didn’t like any of it. It’s all in-character conversations monologues, fake infomercials and news broadcasts which, to me, is so much less valuable than seeing behind the scenes of the production. Perhaps fans of the original Southern Vampire Mysteries books will appreciate this additional extended-universe content more than I did.
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]]>All right. I’m at an impasse here. When I make a Top 5 list should it represent the most important releases of the week, my favourite films, newly available on Blu that week or the top-quality Blu-ray discs of the week? I have no idea. The problem for me is that when new-release day rolls around every Tuesday, I haven’t necessarily seen everything yet. So how am I to accurately judge?! I guess I’ll have to keep shooting from the hip, as I have been doing, and list them as I feel appropriate, with caveats in place.
With that said, let’s dive into this weeks offerings…
1. The Twilight Saga: New Moon
I didn’t see the first Twilight film and I have no intention of checking out this sequel (unless, of course, it ends up in my mailbox!) That being said, I can’t deny the franchises following and I can’t deny that as a result of the mob’s of people drooling gobs of love upon these films, The Twilight Saga: New Moon Blu-ray needs to sit at the number one spot this week. Much as it might pain me.
I finally got around to screening The Princess and the Frog on Blu-ray last night. I have a hard time making a call on this film right now, as I nodded off several times during the 98-minutes it was playing. It’s not like it was late at night or anything but I had taken some antihistamines to quell the construction-induced allergy fiesta my nose was struggling with at the time. But I’ll tell you this, as beautiful as the 2D, cell-painted animation might be and as gorgeous as the Blu-ray presentation is, nothing can change the fact that there are way too many musical numbers in this film. And they are almost all dead boring. There, I’ve said it. Allergy pills and singing frogs put me to sleep.
I promise that I’ll give it another chance before I write up my final review, later in the week.
Amazon: $26.99 (3 Disc Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy Combo Edition)
I loved Broken Embraces. Not only does this look and sound fantastic on Blu but it’s a wonderful all-around film as well. By all rights, this disc should be number one on my list this week. But I understand that a Spanish-language art film will hold less interest than other, more North America-friendly discs for most, so I’ve demoted it to number three. I’m sorry, Broken Embraces. I hope you forgive me.
As per his usual, Almodóvar delivers a rich, finely textured tale of damaged people and, once again, provides the lovely Penélope Cruz an opportunity to break our hearts. Wonderful all around!
I admit, I’ve never seen Fallen Angels. And it kills me! I’ve been a fan of Wong Kar-Wai for years and years but have never had the opportunity to see this classic film. This new edition from KINO should, by all rights, be amazing. Wong Kar-Wai tends to make visually stunning films and KINO tends to release well-produced Blu-ray discs. So this title, for me, is a sure thing!
What a silly, silly movie. That said, Ninja Assassin looks awesome on Blu, stars the legendary Sho Kusugi as the evil Ninja Master, and has some of the best action sequences I’ve seen on film in ages! For those reasons, it sits in the number five slot this week.
Read my full review of the Blu-ray disc here: Ninja Assassin Blu-ray Disc Review
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:
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Holy crap! Didn’t True Blood: Season 1 just come out on Blu-ray, like, a few days ago?! And didn’t Season 2 just premiere on HBO last week?! Is Amazon jumping the gun by posting a pre-order for the Season 2 Blu-ray box, or what?
It’s no surprise that Amazon doesn’t offer up a single detail about the box set outside of the price: MSRP $79.98 (pre-order for $55.99). I think HBO is a long way off from an official announcement. They do, however, give us a nice look at some “fantasy” package art. Seems someone over at Amazon got their photoshop on and stuck HBOs promo art in a Blu-ray package border (there it is, on the left…looking nothing like the style HBO uses for their packaging…sigh…). That should tide you over until we get an official announcement from the studio, most likely this fall.
Via: TV Shows on DVD.com
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I’ve given this a think, since reading the news this morning that Twilight on Blu-ray would be available exclusively at Best Buy and Target from March 21st until May 5. I’ve got to tell you, it doesn’t make a whole heck of a lot of sense to me. The news broke over at Video Business with the announcement that Summit Home Entertainment would be focusing on selling the 2 disc Special Edition DVD, keeping the Blu-ray for exclusive sale and rental and the single DVD for the rental market. Steve Nickerson, president of the company seems to think that the best way to sell the film is to focus in on where and how it’s young female fan group consume media – DVD and downloads.
“This is an unprecedented place, where you have the size of the [Twilight] box office versus this targeted audience,” said Nickerson.
Is this a battle? How does limiting availability help anyone? Sure, the majority of Blu-ray buyers are statistically male, according to recent NPD Group surveys but how is ostracizing any part of a fan base good for business? I’ve had a passing interest in picking this up but seeing as how I live nowhere near a Best Buy (we don’t even have Target up here in the great white north) and I’m sure my enthusiasm won’t stretch into May (yes, I’m fickle) I can safely say that Summit has sacrificed one potential sale right here. I’ve got to imagine I’m not the only one…
Announced extras for this release include:
- Audio Commentary by director Catherine Hardwicke, and stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart
- 5 Extended Scenes with introductions by the director
- 5 Deleted Scenes with introductions by the director
- 3 Music Videos from Muse, Paramore and Linkin Park
- “The Adventure Begins: The Journey from Page to Screen” — A seven-part documentary
- Comic-Con Phenomenon featurette
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Teenage Vamp-land: Twilight hits Blu-ray Disc on March 21st
The box-office smash hit, Twilight, adapted from Stephenie Meyer‘s book of the same name hits Blu-ray disc on March 21st (that’s right, a Saturday!) courtesy of Summit Entertainment. No details of the Blu-ray release have been announced yet but the 2-disc Special Edition DVD will feature an audio commentary with director Catherine Hardwicke and stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, 5 extended scenes with director introductions, 5 deleted scenes with introductions, the 7-part The Adventure Begins: The Journey from Page to Screen documentary, the Comic-Con Phenomenon featurette, 3 music videos (featuring Muse, Paramore and Linkin Park) and more TBA.
Speaking at a press conference in November, Hardwicke addressed her hopes and plans for the Blu-ray release,
“I’ve seen the sparkle scene on Blu-ray, and it looks really great. I was worried how that would translate.”
“We are looking into to going back to ILM and pushing that scene a little further for the Blu-ray disc. We have about a dozen deleted or extended scenes to put on the DVD, and I made a couple crazy montages of all the times the vampires kiss or attack someone and of all the human hijinx, and I’ve done a visual remix of the movie for the DVD also.”