After a slow announcement week over the 4th of July holiday, Shelf Space Weekly is back with a lot of big news. We’ve got a big summer movie, a complete horror franchise, some cinema classics and film festival favorites for an all around well-rounded Shelf Space Weekly. Get ready to clear some shelf space.
I missed this movie at Sundance 2012 and the following festival circuit, so I would already be interested in catching up with it on Blu-ray. Now it’s even more of a curiosity, as the publicity is sure to point out it is the last and only film Latina star Jenni Rivera made before she died in a plane crash last year.
Rivera plays Filly Brown (Gina Rodriguez)’s mother, Filly Brown being an aspiring hip-hop artist offered a chance at stardom. Both this press release and the Sundance guidebook keep it vague what exactly is compromising about this record contract, but they emphasize the dilemma that faces Filly.
The other Die Hard in the White House action movie, the one with Gerard Butler, the first one, the one that actually opened big, will also come to Blu-ray first. The Antoine Fuqua-directed violence and destruction should look pretty epic on Blu-ray. It’s also got five featurettes, primarily focused on the action but with one devoted to the ensemble of actors, and bloopers. Will Butler break badass character and goof off when he flubs his lines?
Beginning its North American journey at the Toronto Film Festival (following the Norwegian International Film Festival), I wanted to call your attention to the Norwegian true life adventure Kon-Tiki. Depicting Thor Heyerdahl’s 1947 raft voyage across the ocean. Filmed for real on the ocean, the cinematography is sure to look magnificent in HD.
When I saw Kon-Tiki at AFI Fest last year, it was overshadowed by the other raft movie Life of Pi. It turned out the real ocean couldn’t compete with Ang Lee’s digital ocean. Still, this is a true story and the directors Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg are doing the next Pirates of the Caribbean so do your research and check this one out.
The Star Trek sequel was perhaps the most divisive movie of the summer, at least until Pacific Rim. So now maybe we can argue about which one was more divisive. Paramount was sure to claim September 10 for the 3D and standard Blu-ray release of Star Trek Into Darkness. They don’t even have cover art for the Blu-ray yet, but included stills from the feature film.
The combination of 3D and Imax should make for an outstanding transfer no matter which format you watch Star Trek Into Darkness. Seven bonus features promise an elaborate package, although a featurette on keeping the identity of the film’s true villain a mystery seems erroneous. They didn’t really succeed on that front. Still, I think I think the Blu-ray should come with a replica of the massive brass balls it took for J.J. Abrams to pull the scene depicted in this screen shot.
Two Shelf Space Weeklys ago I wrote up the first official announcement of Curse of Chucky. Now comes the complete collection. This was a bit of a coup because the franchise switched hands. Child’s Play was an MGM release and the sequels were Universal. Surprisingly, none of the sequels have been on Blu-ray before, not even the popular Bride of Chucky or most recent Seed of Chucky.
Child’s Play, Bride and Seed include all the bonus features from previous releases, and Curse will have the same as the standalone release. Nothing extra on 2 and 3 but I’ll look forward to revisiting the early ‘90s sequels. Oddly, Universal Home Entertainment did not release art for the package. I’ve seen it on other sites, but I guess we’re not supposed to be running it yet so I’ll play by the rules.
I’ll tell you, when MGM released the 20th Birthday Edition of Child’s Play, I knew I had entered adulthood. I was 10 when my dad took me to see it in theaters. And that release was five years ago, but Chucky is my friend to the end.
In important historical movie news, The Best Years of Our Lives is coming to Blu-ray this November. It’s actually one of the many Best Picture Oscar winners I’ve never seen, so I will await this excuse to fill in my film history. The drama about WWII veterans returning home should remain poignant, as things have unfortunately changed very little on the war front.
On the same day, Warner Home Video is also releasing The Bishop’s Wife on Blu-ray. That one is best known as the movie they remade with Denzel Washington as The Preacher’s Wife. In the original, Cary Grant plays an angel visiting a bishop (David Niven)’s family to teach them what really matters, as the bishop struggles to build a new cathedral.
Interesting. I’m on Warner Home Video’s press list for important titles like The Best Years of Our Lives, but I was not notified about the Blu-ray release of Surviving Christmas. I had to find out from Blu-ray.com. Hmmmmm. Apparently, when Warner Brothers made a deal with Paramount to get involved with Interstellar and lend Paramount the Friday the 13th rights for five years, they scored the Dreamworks Ben Affleck/James Gandolfini holiday debacle.
Affleck plays a guy who pays the family living in his childhood house to play his family and give him a nice Christmas. Hilarity ensues, theoretically. If there was a worse reviewed movie in 2004 I don’t remember, but as a matter of historical record it must be preserved on Blu-ray.
Lastly, one more Warner Home Video bit of business. The Digital Bits did some digging to confirm The Right Stuff will make it to Blu-ray by the end of the year for the film’s 30th anniversary. This isn’t an official press release, but it’s news to get excited about. Director Philip Kaufman’s film about the NASA space program stars Dennis Quaid, Ed Harris, Sam Shepard, Fred Ward, many more and is responsible for the “group of guys walking in slow motion” shot.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
