July 23rd, 2015
It is a special week on the international chart, as we have an international film in first place. Monster Hunt earned first place in China with an estimated $72 million over the weekend and a total opening of $107.58 million. (This includes less than $1 million in early previews.) This movie is a romantic comedy, of sorts, set in a world of CGI monsters. This is the kind of film that could have appeal in many markets outside of the usual markets Chinese films play in. Additionally, this is the kind of opening that will make distributors here interested in obtaining the rights. It is too soon to tell if it will have a global run, but it will be worth keeping an eye on.
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May 6th, 2015
While summer is the worst time of year for the home market, there are actually two big first-run releases coming out this week, plus a handful of TV on DVD releases that are worth checking out. The biggest release is 50 Shades of Grey, but while it made more than $500 million worldwide, its reviews are just bad. On the other hand, Selma, the second biggest new release of the week, is clearly the best new release of the week and the DVD or Blu-ray Combo Pack is the Pick of the Week.
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February 20th, 2013
This week's list is a little shorter than usual, because of technical difficulties. I've been getting an average of one Blue Screen of Death per day for just over a week. It seems to happen most often when I open too many tabs in Firefox. Worse still, two of the sites that seem to set off the BSOD are YouTube and Rotten Tomatoes. Fortunately I've narrowed the problem down to a driver conflict for either my video or perhaps a Windows system driver. Or it could be bad RAM. Or it could be a bad power supply. Or perhaps a virus or other malware. So when I said I had it narrowed down the problem, I was lying. I don't have time to take the computer to get it fixed, not until the Oscars are over, but I promise to get caught up by the weekend. It is quite a good week for new releases with a number of contenders for Pick of the Week. The two main contender are Argo on Blu-ray Combo Pack and Game of Thrones: Season Two on DVD or Blu-ray Combo Pack. While Argo is cleaning up during Awards Season, I've given Game of Thrones the edge here.
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February 17th, 2013
This is not the first time I've reviewed The Terminator. It's not even the first time I've reviewed the Blu-ray. This is in fact the third time time the film has been released on Blu-ray, but the other two were greeted with mixed reviews. The movie still lives up to its reputation, but the picture quality was weak for high definition. This Blu-ray is being labeled Remastered, but is it worth the triple-dip?
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May 24th, 2011
While we have two first run releases coming out this week, the number one seller according to Amazon.com is a specialty release, and the bulk of the interesting titles are Blu-ray catalog releases. Granted, one of the first run releases nearly hit $100 million at the box office, but this is still a really bad sign in terms of overall sales. As far as the best of the best, that's a race between The Kids in the Hall: Complete Series Megaset and Platoon on Blu-ray. I'm going with the former for Pick of the Week, but make sure to check the price, as buying Death Comes to Town and the old Megaset might be cheaper.
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May 17th, 2011
This past couple weeks, several Fox films have been released on Blu-ray Digibooks, some of these were making their high definition debut, like The Hustler. Others are double-dips, like The Terminator and The Usual Suspects. So are these latter two worth owning on High Definition? If so, are these latest versions the better deal?
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