| Title | DVD Release(s) | Blu-Ray Release(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Action | ||
| El Mariachi / Desperado | Amazon.com | |
| Gun | Amazon.com | Amazon.com |
| Machete | Amazon.com | Amazon.com |
| Mannix: Season Four | Amazon.com | |
| Once Upon a Time in Mexico | Amazon.com | |
| The Supreme Swordsman | Amazon.com | |
| A swordsman is cutting a swath through China, killing every swordsman he can find so he can call himself the best. Only two men stand in his way – the one known as the “Supreme Swordsman”, and the son of one of the men he killed. | ||
| The Sword of Swords | Amazon.com, rightstuf.com | |
| Shaw Brothers film. When a young swordsman is betrayed and blinded, he must use his other senses to track down the man who maimed him and took his sword. | ||
| Anime | ||
| Gravitation Complete Collection | Amazon.com, rightstuf.com | |
| A Shonen-ai (Boys Love – gay romance) series about a pop star who falls for a novelist. | ||
| Hayate The Combat Butler – Vol. 8 | Amazon.com, rightstuf.com | |
| Kohime Musou Complete Collection | Amazon.com, rightstuf.com | |
| Kurokami Vol. 5 | Amazon.com, rightstuf.com | |
| Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle OVA Collection | Amazon.com, rightstuf.com | Amazon.com, rightstuf.com |
| Contains the 3-episode OVA Tokyo Revalations and the 2-episode OVA Spring Thunder | ||
| Comedy | ||
| Dinner for Schmucks | Amazon.com | Amazon.com |
| The Ricky Gervais Show: Season One | Amazon.com | |
| Drama | ||
| Big Love: Season Four | Amazon.com | |
| Camille | Amazon.com | |
| Doctor Zhivago | Amazon.com | |
| Howl | Amazon.com | Amazon.com |
| JFK | Amazon.com | Amazon.com |
| Family | ||
| Coraline | DVD/Blu-Ray/Blu-Ray 3D combo | |
| iCarly: Season Two, Volume Two | Amazon.com | |
| Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends: The Complete Series | Amazon.com | |
| Horror | ||
| Case 39 | Amazon.com | Amazon.com |
| Devil’s Rejects / House of 1,000 Corpses | Amazon.com | |
| Science | ||
| Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking | Amazon.com | |
| Science Fiction | ||
| Battlestar Galactica (2003): Season Four | Amazon.com | |
| Blade Runner: The Final Cut | Amazon.com | |
| The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Complete Third Season | Amazon.com | |
| Superhero | ||
| Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8 Motion Comic | Blu-Ray / DVD combo | |
| Includes the first 19 numbered issues. The final issue (#40) is due January 19. Season nine comes to comics later in 2011. | ||
| Super Hero Classics – Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe | Amazon.com | |
| Super Hero Classics – Green Archer | Amazon.com | |
| Blaine: No, this isn’t a rip-off of the Green Arrow. It’s a 1940 movie serial based on a 1926 novel by one of the era’s most popular authors. Oliver Queen first appeared in comics in 1941, which may or may not have been coincidence. | ||
| Super Hero Classics – Green Hornet Strikes Again | Amazon.com | |
Finally, the picks of the week. Blaine says, “I haven’t actually seen any of this week’s major releases yet. I definitely want to carve out time to watch that season of Battlestar Galactica, and some of those old Super Hero Classics movie serials sound interesting, but they tend to be cheesy. I don’t see an undiscovered gems this week.”Alex says, “Having grown up on Rocky and Bullwinkle (and having some of the show recently and finding that it still holds up), I’m going for the Rocky and Bullwinkle collection.”
In the absence of any decent titles coming out this week, does anyone have any opinions on affordable Blu-Ray players with built-in Wi-Fi? I’ve been looking at the LG BD570, Magnavox MBP5130/F7, and the Sony BDP-S570.
By most user accounts, the Sony seems to be the superior model, but a network-savvy user discovered that it does quite a lot of usage tracking; It phones home just about everything you do back to Sony for who knows what purpose, and if you try to block it, it claims the network is down.
The LG looks good, but has some reviews that say it has issues with speed, spotty playback with certain discs, and a poorly designed flip-down front panel.
The Magnavox is cheap, but lacks some useful features found on the others, though there are some negative reviews, many of them are from confused people who bought the 5120 instead of the 5130 and are complaining about that, so it’s hard to really say for sure what the issues with the 5130 might be.
I have a Samsung BD-P6500 (Canadian model. The US models are C6500) and am very impressed with the menu system and quality of the playback.
I had a BD-P3600 which had a very subtle, but still noticeable, stuttery playback on the Bluray and no Netflix Canada support, so the 6500 was a big improvement. With the 6500 I’m also able to play files off of my NAS using DLNA/UPNP, something the 3600 couldn’t do.
The player is getting heavy use for Netflix and music streaming in our living room more than the BluRay functionality :)
That one looks nice, but at $200+ is a bit more than I was hoping to spend on a player. I’ll keep it in mind though, it may be worth the extra money to avoid the problems on other players.
We’ve probably by now all watched at least two versions of Blade Runner, but if you haven’t, this week sees another. I like what I’ve seen of Sarah Jane Smith, Coraline is out on DVD/Blu-Ray, and some people consider Dr. Zhivago one of the greatest films of all time.
Not exactly a light weak, though not a week for everyone.