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Insights from home entertainment industry experts. Home Media blogs give you the inside scoop on entertainment news, DVD and Blu-ray Disc releases, and the happenings at key studios and entertainment retailers. “TK's Take” analyzes and comments on home entertainment news and trends, “Agent DVD Insider” talks fanboy entertainment, “IndieFile” delivers independent film news, “Steph Sums It Up” offers pithy opinions on the state of the industry, and “Mike’s Picks” offers bite-sized recommendations of the latest DVD and Blu-ray releases.


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25 Oct, 2016

Best Buy Touts 'Inferno' Ticket Deal


Best Buy has been promoting discounts for a theatrical ticket to Sony Pictures' Inferno available in select home videos.

The deal includes a $7.50 Movie Cash coupon in select titles, most notably new Blu-ray releases of The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons, the two predecessors to Inferno. The trilogy, based on novels by Dan Brown, stars Tom Hanks as a professor solving ancient mysteries by interpreting cryptic symbols and other clues.

Best Buy also touted sales of several Halloween titles, such as Hocus Pocus on Blu-ray for $9.99.

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11 Oct, 2016

'Ghostbusters' Remake Answers the Call for Retail Perks

Best Buy's 'Ghostbusters: Answer the Call' Steelbook
Best Buy's 'Ghostbusters: Answer the Call' Steelbook

Sony Pictures' Ghostbusters: Answer the Call landed on disc with a variety of retail incentives for shoppers. Each of the big three chains offered some form of exclusive.

Target offered the Blu-ray version with an exclusive bonus disc containing a featurette called "The World of Ghostbusters." Target also gave free M&M or Starburst candy packs with purchase of the disc.

Best Buy offered the Blu-ray versions in Steelbook packaging with special artwork by Project Pop Art. Best Buy also offered a $15 discount with the purchase of the 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray versions of the new Ghostbusters and the two 1980s movies on which it's based. Steelbook Blu-rays for the original two films were offered at $12.99 each.

Walmart offered a gift set of the Ghostbusters Blu-ray with Ghostbusters logo socks.

Fox's Ice Age: Collision Course was also linked to a few goodies. Target offered free popcorn with the Blu-ray, while Best Buy tacked a Halloween tote bag to the Blu-ray versions.

Walmart offered an exclusive DVD set of all five "Ice Age" movies for $26.96.

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10 Oct, 2016

New on Disc: 'Body Snatchers' and more …


Body Snatchers (Blu-ray)

Available via Warner Archive       
Street 10/18/16
Warner, Sci-Fi Horror, $21.99 Blu-ray, ‘R’ for violence, nudity and language.
Stars Gabrielle Anwar, Terry Kinney, Meg Tilley, Forest Whitaker, R. Lee Ermey.
1994.
Here’s the third and probably most obscure of four variations of Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers novel filmed from 1956 through 2007, in a Blu-ray that isn’t easy to resist.
Read the Full Review

La Moglie Piu Bella (The Most Beautiful Wife) (Blu-ray)

Available via ScreenArchives.com
Twilight Time, Drama, $29.95 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Ornella Muti, Alessio Orano, Tano Cimarosa.
1970.
Ornela Muti plays a 14-year-old in this fact-based fiction about a landmark 1966 Italian legal case in which a teenager sued a former fiancé who kidnapped and raped her after she broke off their engagement.
Extras: Includes about 45 minutes of bonus interviews carried over from the onetime NoShame standard DVD release.
Read the Full Review
 

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4 Oct, 2016

'Preacher' Holding Off Retail 'Apocalypse'

Target's 'X-Men' yearbook and Best Buy's Steelbook
Target's 'X-Men' yearbook and Best Buy's Steelbook

A couple of retailers offered exclusives for Fox's X-Men: Apocalypse on disc, but Sony Pictures' Preacher: Season One had more.

For the latest "X-Men" movie, Fox offered a Blu-ray combo pack with a digibook containing an Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters 1983 yearbook. Target also had free popcorn with select copies of the X-Men: Apocalypse Blu-ray.

Best Buy offered the X-Men: Apocalypse Blu-ray in Steelbook packaging. Best Buy also offered Steelbooks of previous "X-Men" movies for $14.99 each, with a $5 discount when purchased with the Apocalypse Steelbook.

For "Preacher," Best Buy offered a graphic novel with the Blu-ray of the first season. Target offered the Blu-ray with Steelbook packaging. And Amazon.com had a version of the Blu-ray with an exclusive bonus disc.

Target offered collectible cards with DVDs of Fox's American Horror Story: Hotel.

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3 Oct, 2016

New on Disc: 'Valley of the Dolls' and more …


Valley of the Dolls: Special Edition (Blu-ray)

Criterion, Drama, $39.95 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke, Sharon Tate, Susan Hayward.
1967.
This new release of the box office hit of Jacqueline Susann’s majestically trashy best-seller is nothing if not pressure-packed with bonus material.
Extras: The terrific Criterion extras, which include a brave guilty-pleasure Valley paean by Kim Morgan, go a lot into some tabloid history about Judy Garland’s firing from the film. Also included are screen tests, reflective interviews with writer Amy Fine Collins, a vintage documentary on Susann, a look at the film’s ship-board premiere, a half-journalistic/half-jokey commentary carried over from the original Fox DVD, an essay by Glenn Kenny, and an excerpt from a 2009 interview of Patty Duke by Bruce Vilanch.
Read the Full Review

Moby Dick (1930)

Available via Warner Archive      
Warner, Adventure, $21.99 DVD, NR.
Stars John Barrymore, Joan Bennett, Lloyd Hughes.
1930.
A good way to take in this not-quite-faithful adaptation of the Herman Melville novel is to block out the title and enjoy a surprisingly acceptable primitive talkie about whaling on which obvious production care was taken.
Read the Full Review
 

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27 Sep, 2016

'Warcraft' Wins the Exclusives Battle

Target's 'Warcraft' Blu-ray
Target's 'Warcraft' Blu-ray

Universal's Warcraft arrived on disc Sept. 27 with a few retail exclusives.

Target offered the fantasy film based on the World of Warcraft video game as a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack with exclusive packaging and eight collectible character cards.

Walmart touted a steelbook edition of the film.

Among other titles, Walmart offered another of its DVD variants, this time on Warner's Central Intelligence, which came with different box art and fewer extras.

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26 Sep, 2016

New on Disc: 1948's 'Road House' and more …


Road House (1948) (Blu-ray)

Kino Lorber, Mystery, $29.95 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde, Richard Widmark, Celeste Holm.
1948.
This is not the better-known Patrick Swayze gutter trash from 1989, but an earlier one with a notably name cast for its day — the one that starts out as an unlikely feminist drama and then turns noir-ish around the time Richard Widmark’s character begins to go over the brink.
Extras: Includes a featurette about stars Ida Lupino and Richard Widmark, plus a commentary by Eddie Muller and Kim Morgan, carried over from the DVD.
Read the Full Review

Tony Rome/Lady in Cement (Blu-ray)

Available via ScreenArchives.com
Twilight Time, Drama, $29.95 Blu-ray, NR (Tony Rome)/’R’ (Lady in Cement)
Stars Frank Sinatra, Jill St. John, Raquel Welch, Richard Conte.
1967-68.
Tony Rome is halfway-good grindhouse/drive-in fodder that remains guiltily entertaining, while Lady in Cement is a conspicuously ragged toss-off that arguably plays a little breezier than it did at the time.
Extras: Tony Rome includes an entertaining, factoid-filled commentary with historians Eddy Friedfeld, Anthony Latino, Lee Pfeiffer and Paul Scrabo.
Read the Full Review

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20 Sep, 2016

'Turtle' Exclusives Out of the Retail Shadows

The Walmart gift set, Target shell and Best Buy Steelbook for 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows'
The Walmart gift set, Target shell and Best Buy Steelbook for 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows'

Paramount's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows arrived at retail Sept. 20 with plenty of packaging configurations on its own, so adding several retailer exclusives into the mix certainly gave consumers a lot to keep track of.

The release included the film on DVD, a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack, a 3D Blu-ray combo pack, and a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray combo pack. The discs were packed with a set of reversable TMNT headband masks (though the 3D version wasn't stocked at all stores). The movie was also packaged with the 2014 original as part of a gift set that incuded a lunchbox shaped like the Turtles' truck.

Walmart offered a gift set of the Blu-ray packed with figurines of the Turtles and bad guys Bebop and Rocksteady.

Best Buy had the Blu-ray combo pack in a Steelbook case.

And Target had the Blu-ray combo pack in special shell packaging, plus an exclusive bonus Blu-ray disc that added featurettes called "Further Mutations," "Mutant Rides" and "Brazil Breakdown."

Target also offered Universal's Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising with a DVD bonus disc. In addition, for Disney's Beauty and the Beast: 25th Anniversary Edition, Target offered the Blu-ray in 32-page storybook packaging.

The previous week's Captain America: Civil War Blu-ray came with free popcorn at Target.

Best Buy offered both "Neighbors" movies on Blu-ray for $25 when purchased together.

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19 Sep, 2016

New on Disc: 'The Enemy Below' and more …


The Enemy Below (Blu-ray)

Street 9/20/2016
Kino Lorber, Drama, $29.95 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Robert Mitchum, Curt Jurgens, Theodore Bikel.
1957.
This intelligent, if not all-out stirring study in logistical one-upmanship, is something of a groundbreaking 1950s film due to Curt Jurgens’ characterization of the German counterpart to Robert Mitchum’s U.S. Navy captain amid their 97 screen minutes of cat-and-mouse between an American destroyer escort and a German U-boat that the former has the misfortune to encounter in the South Atlantic.
Read the Full Review

Love Me or Leave Me (Blu-ray)

Available via Warner Archive
Warner, Drama, $21.99 Blu-ray, NR.
Stars Doris Day, James Cagney, Cameron Mitchell, Robert Keith.
1955.
Doris Day, as Broadway/radio/recording notable Ruth Etting, goes fully toe-to-toe with James Cagney in one of the most rewarding of all show biz biopics, a socko achievement given that the latter’s third and final Oscar nomination was indisputably deserved in what is one of the essential films of his 31-year career.
Extras: Includes a couple of Etting’s Warner Vitaphone shorts (her voice never had the oomph of Day’s), plus an amusing 1955 CinemaScope featurette that deals with what was then MGM’s coming imminent release schedule: a 17-minute commercial called “Salute to the Exhibitors,” which rightfully touts Love Me.
Read the Full Review

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13 Sep, 2016

'Captain America' Blu-rays Fight Retail 'Civil War'

Best Buy's 'Captain America: Civil War' Steelbook
Best Buy's 'Captain America: Civil War' Steelbook

Retailers attached a couple of exclusives to Disney's Captain America: Civil War Sept. 13.

Best Buy offered the 3D Blu-ray combo pack of the latest Marvel film with a collectible Steelbook case.

Target offered the Blu-ray of the film with a couple of exclusive digital extras, featuring behind-the-scenes looks at Ant-Man and Winter Soldier in the movie, plus a one-month free trial of Marvel Unlimited, which allows fans to access more than 17,000 digital comic books.

The Disney store offered an exclusive lithograph set and $10 off any purchase of $40 or more.

For Warner's The Conjuring 2, Walmart offered an exclusive DVD version with different box art and the chain's typical no-extras configuration. Walmart also had a DVD two-pack of both "Conjuring" films.

Another title with a few exclusives was Universal's Barbie: Star Light Adventure. Target offered a free adventure pet with the purchase of the movie or a tie-in doll. Walmart offered a DVD two-pack that paired the new direct-to-video movie with Barbie Dreamtopia.

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