My Two Cents
All right, sorry for the late post today. It’s been a little nuts here at The Bits home office this afternoon.
In announcement news today, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment and DC have set the animated Justice Society: World War II for release on Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD on 5/11, with the Digital release expected on 4/27 (SRP $29.98 and $39.99). Extras will include the DC Showcase – Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth! animated short, the Adventures in Storytelling – Justice Society: World War II featurette, a sneak peek of the next DCU film (Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One), two Look Back featurettes (Justice League vs. Teen Titans and Wonder Woman: Bloodlines), and two episodes From the DC Vault (Justice League: Legends, Part One and Justice League: Legends, Part Two). [Read on here...]
All right, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover today. But first more new disc reviews...
Dennis has taken a look at Jacob Chase’s Come Play (2020) on Blu-ray from Universal.
And Tim has given Mario Landi’s Patrick Still Lives (1980) a spin on Blu-ray from Severin Films.
Watch for more reviews in the next few days.
Now then, we’ve got BIG 4K Ultra HD news for you today, some of it official and most of it unofficial but tentatively confirmed by our various industry and retail sources. So let’s get right into it...
First up, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment has officially set Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla (2014) for release on 4K Ultra HD on 3/23. It will feature HDR10 high dynamic range with Dolby Atmos audio. It will also include the previously released special features, among them the 3-part MONARCH Declassified documentary and the 4-part The Legendary Godzilla documentary. You can see the official cover artwork above left and also below. [Read on here...]
All right, we’ve got a few new reviews for you today...
I’ve taken a look at Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium (2013) coming to 4K Ultra on 2/9 from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. It’s a nice upgrade of the existing Blu-ray release. You’ll find that here.
Also, Tim has reviewed Park Chan-wook’s JSA: Joint Security Area (2000) on Blu-ray from Arrow Video.
More reviews are on the way this week, including 2012 and Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro both in 4K, plus more new and catalog Blu-rays, so be sure to watch for them.
Let’s start with some 4K Ultra HD news... [Read on here...]
All right, as expected today, the Digital Entertainment Group (DEG) held its January virtual expo and released a summary of its preliminary Year-End 2020 Home Entertainment Report. This expo is typically an in-person industry reception held at CES in Las Vegas, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic both CES and the DEG Expo have of course gone virtual this year. And as expected, this year’s report offers both good news and bad news, but also some rather dramatic big-picture observations.
Let’s knock out the bad news first: Sell-Through (read: physical media) consumer spending for 2020 was $2.45 billion, a drop of 25.6% from 2019.
A few days ago, we previewed the likely number for 2020 using the weekly Media Play News disc sales data here at The Bits, which indicated an overall drop in physical media sales of 20.46%. Well... it turns out that, based upon the official DEG data, the drop was about 5% more severe than we anticipated. As I mentioned a week ago (back January 20), that’s still in line with my general prediction from July, which was that 2020 would see a decline of anything between 9-30% in physical media sales. Obviously, there were just too many wildcards in the midst of the pandemic to be more specific. [Read on here...]
All right, we have a few interesting news items for you today. But first, another review...
Dennis has turned in his thoughts on Robert Siodmak’s 1944 film noir The Suspect, now available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber Studio Classics.
Now for the most surprising piece of news... Engadget has confirmed that Warner Bros. Home Entertainment has now completed a six-year effort to upgrade the classic 1990s J. Michael Straczynski science fiction TV series Babylon 5 for the digital age. Babylon 5 Remastered is now available for viewing on HBO Max, and it’s also available for download on iTunes and Amazon. The new HD presentation includes all five seasons of the show with live action film elements scanned in 4K from the original camera negative, digitally cleaned and properly color graded, with VFX upsampled from the original SD. The entire series is available in its original 4x3 broadcast format. The 1998 version of the series’ original pilot film, The Gathering, has also been included, though it’s unremastered and so in 16x9 (as the original film elements were lost during the Northridge earthquake in 1994). [Read on here...]