Weekly Digital Disk Picks – August 23rd, 2011

Here’s a question for regular readers this week: given the popularity of DVD/Blu-Ray combo packs, digital downloads, and Amazon instant videos, another format change to the column may be in order. Instead of having DVD and Blu-Ray columns with both retailers listed, we could have retailer columns and have the editions described in the columns just as we currently do when more than one DVD or Blu-Ray edition is available. Thoughts?

Title DVD Release(s) Blu-Ray Release(s)
Action
Blitz DVD/Digital copy Blu-Ray
Little Big Soldier Amazon.com DVD/Blu-Ray combo
Stars Jackie Chan
Lion vs. Lion Amazon.com
Shaw Brothers martial arts film.
Anime
Eden of the East: Paradise Lost (DVD/Blu-Ray Combo) Amazon.com, rightstuf.com
Samurai Girls Complete Collection Amazon.com, rightstuf.com Amazon.com, rightstuf.com
Sgt. Frog: Season 3, Pt. 2 Amazon.com, rightstuf.com
Art House
Eclipse Series 28: The Warped World of Koreyoshi Kurahara Amazon.com
Includes “Intimidation,” “The Warped Ones,” “I Hate But Love,” “Black Sun” and “Thirst for Love.”
Secret Sunshine (Criterion Collection) Amazon.com Amazon.com
Classics (Cult)
Roger Corman’s Cult Classics: Sword and Sorcery Collection Amazon.com
Includes Deathstalker, Deathstalker II, Barbarian Queen and The Warrior & The Sorceress.
Roger Corman’s Cult Classics: Women in Cages Collection Amazon.com
Includes The Big Bird Cage, Big Doll House and Women in Cages.
Classics (Traditional)
Comedy
Henry’s Crime Amazon.com Amazon.com
Win Win Amazon.com Amazon.com
Documentary
Drama
Barry Lyndon Amazon.com
Blaine: Though not bad, I find it to be Kubrick’s weakest film. It’s a rerelase.
The Beaver Amazon.com Amazon.com
Brothers and Sisters: Fifth and Final Season Amazon.com
Gossip Girl: Complete Fourth Season Amazon.com
Lolita Amazon.com
Blaine: A rerelease of one of Kubrick’s better films.
The Threat Amazon.com
A gangster film
Family
The Angry Beavers: Seasons One and Two Amazon.com
Bambi II DVD only Blu-Ray/DVD combo
Phineas and Ferb: The Movie: Across the Second Dimension Amazon.com
Fantasy
Horror
Troll Hunter Amazon.com Amazon.com
Blaine: The Internet could use a few more of these. Seriously, though, this Norwegian horror flick did well on the art house circuit.
Music / Musical
Mystery
NCIS: Season Eight Amazon.com
NCIS: Los Angeles Season Two Amazon.com
Road to Nowhere Amazon.com Amazon.com
Reality
Romance
Science Fiction
Sports
Amazon.com Amazon.com
Superhero
Suspense
Alfred Hitchcock – Legacy of Suspense Amazon.com
Blaine: Includes The Lady Vanishes, The Thirty-Nine Steps, Secret Agent, Jamaica Inn, Juno and the Paycock, Sabotage, Number Seventeen, The Man Who Knew Too Much (presumably the original, not Hitchcock’s remake), and 12 other films that have not been named. I assume one of those 12 is the documentary promoted on the cover. The other 11 are probably more of the poorly preserved British era silent films he made. Good stuff, but not terribly marketable these days given how many other such sets have been released.
The Event: Complete Series Amazon.com
Follow Me Quietly Amazon.com
Early film noir
Hostage Amazon.com Amazon.com
War
One Minute to Zero Amazon.com
Western

Finally, the picks of the week. Blaine says, “I’d hold off. There’s nothing truly spectacular this week, and the annual flood of TV-on-DVD product will start in earnest in the next couple of weeks. We’ve got new House next week, Office, Fringe, and X-Men: First Class the week after, Thor, Big Bang Theory and Star Wars on Blu-Ray the week after that, and Castle the week after that. This week’s products are not priorities.” Alex says, “I second what Blaine says.”

6 replies on “Weekly Digital Disk Picks – August 23rd, 2011”

  1. Alright, I love the Weekly Disk Pick feature, but I seriously want to open it up and redesign the hell out of it because this table is just… well it ain’t good! Adding any MORE to it would just make it even uglier…

    I honestly don’t think you really need to list formats AT ALL unless there’s some awesome special note about it. Just the name of the release is probably enough. It looks like you might be doing affiliate stuff with amazon and that other place, so you’ll probably want to keep those links in there, and definitely have your notes in, but really, everything’s probably coming out on everything now.

    • We list formats because the affiliate programs we use link to specific editions. So, if we link to Blu-Ray, there’s no affiliate payment for DVD and vice versa. Dave tells me that the affiliate payments we get (through reviews and these columns) pretty much keep the site at financial breakeven so we can keep running, so I still intend to list all formats. However, maybe a two column format would be better. Column one is the title, and column two is a list of format descriptors with relevant links and sites, given that Rightstuf is pretty much used for anime only. Perhaps the best solution is to drop the tables and go back to unenumerated lists like we used to have.

      • That’d be pretty good (two-column). If you can figure out how to shade alternate rows that’d be super-awesome. It’s not that complicated but it’s a bit annoying to do manually and not that easy to do NOT manually…

  2. The title with some linked keywords afterword for each format would be fine, no need for columns. The columns are really only useful if you want to see only what is new on on a specific format at a glance.

    I know it would be a lot more work but I’d wager that some of us would to see a list of new things on Netflix streaming as well, though that would be a bit US-centric. It mostly skews toward older titles, but it could be an interesting feature. I typically browse the new/upcoming/expiring lists via http://instantwatcher.com so I know the data is out there somehow.

    • Yeah, as a Canadian, I can’t see what’s on the US Netflix without getting a US credit card, and that’s a hassle I don’t intend to go through. I am, however, looking at the comiXology affiliate program to have “buy in digital” links right from the weekly comics column, not that that’s terribly relevant here.

  3. I remember going to the movies with my parents to see Barry Lyndon in it’s original theatrical release.
    It was so bad, people were getting up and walking out midway through the movie.

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