Weekly Digital Disc Picks – November 24, 2009

First, the DVD picks:

Now, the Blu-Ray picks:

  • Air America
  • Angels and Demons Gift Set with Bookends
  • Angels and Demons
  • Blood the Last Vampire: This is the anime film that inspired the recent live-action movie.
  • Cujo (25th Anniversary Edition)
  • Four Christmases
  • Frailty
  • Funny People
  • Gamorrah (Criterion Collection)
  • Ghost in the Shell v2.0: Alex: This is sort of a a “Special Edition” in the Star Wars/Blade Runner: The Final Cut sense for the Mamoru Oshii film. Mainly, this consists of re-mastered video, as well as the CGI graphics being re-done, and some of the shots that were done in cell animation (like The Major on the roof ledge at the start of the film) being done in CGI as well. Though, from what I’ve heard on the Anime News Network podcast, the new extras from the Japanese Blu-Ray release weren’t carried over – instead we get upscaled versions of the extras from Manga Video’s last DVD release (which were dated at the time, and are even more so now), plus an upscaled version of the original theatrical cut. This particularly bears mentioning because the box says that we are getting the extras from the Blu-Ray release. Manga Video has yet to issue an statement to explain why this is happening, but the running theory is that Bandai in Japan put their foot down and refused to licence the bonus features, because Blu-Ray movies in Japan and in the US have the same region coding, and apparently US Blu-Rays are cheaper than Japanese Blu-Rays, cheap enough that some consumers were starting to import the US releases rather than buying them domestically (and rumor, also from ANN and Anime Vice, has it that future Blu-Ray releases of anime will be Dub only because of this).
  • Ichi the Killer
  • The Monster Squad (20th Anniversary Edition)
  • My Bloody Valentine
  • New Police Story: Alex: A new release of the latest installment of the Police Story series of martial arts films.
  • Santa Buddies
  • Shorts
  • Sopranos: Season One
  • The Way of the Gun

Finally, the picks of the week. Alex says, “On Blu-Ray, I’m going with Season 1 of the Sopranos if you don’t have it already. For DVD, I’d reccomend continuing with Blade of the Immortal if you picked up volume 1 when that came out, or waiting until next week.” Blaine says, “it’s hard to decide between Alfred Hitchcock Presents, the animated Superman and Air America, not because any are particularly great (though all are good), but because there are no titles that clearly stand out as being even better. It may be worth holding out for December 8 instead.”