My Two Cents
Friday, 10 May 2024 15:05

Purple Rain 4K, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes in IMAX is worth your time, and more release news & disc reviews

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As always, we’re rounding out the week with more new disc reviews here at The Bits, including...

Tim’s take on producer Roy Huggins’s Colt .45: The Complete Series (1957-60) and Hanna-Barbera’s Yogi Bear and the Magical Flight of the Spruce Goose (1987), both on Blu-ray from the Warner Archive Collection.

Dennis’ look at Dorothy Davenport and Melville Shyer’s The Road to Ruin (1934) on Blu-ray from Kino Classics and Something Weird.

And Stuart’s thoughts on Paolo and Vittorio Taviani’s Allonsanfàn (1974), Pietro Germi’s The Facts of Murder (1959), and Damiano Damiani’s Goodbye & Amen (1977), all on Blu-ray from Radiance Films.

I’ve also just received Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two (2024) in 4K Ultra HD from Warner Bros., so watch for my in-depth review of that here at The Bits tomorrow sometime. [Read on here...]

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In announcement news today, Well Go USA Entertainment has set Jang Jae-hyun’s Exhuma (2024) for Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD release on 10/8. That’s quite a ways away still, so it’s possible that the date is a placeholder and could yet change.

We’ve got final cover artwork for Warner’s 4K Ultra HD release of Albert Magnoli’s Purple Rain (1984), which is expected to street on 6/25. Audio will be 5.1 DTS-HD MA. I see no indications of Dolby Vision on the back cover, so look for HDR10 high dynamic range only. You can see the cover above left and also below (clicking on this image will take you to the Amazon.com pre-order listing, which is up now but not yet live)...

Purple Rain (4K Ultra HD)

BTW, that listing we shared the other day for Ted Lasso: The Complete Series on Blu-ray immediately got pulled down, so watch for an official announcement any time now (probably next week).

In other news this afternoon, it looks like Studio Distribution Services has negotiated a deal for GameStop and Fred Meyer stores to carry Blu-ray, DVD, and 4K UHD tiles from Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment and Universal. You can read more here via our friends at Media Play News. There’s a nice bit of positive physical media news for a change!

And before we go today, I slipped out yesterday afternoon with a friend to see Wes Ball’s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes in IMAX, and I have to say: I think it might actually be my favorite film of the series so far.

The thing I enjoyed here more than the previous (and obviously quite good) trilogy is that for the first time it feels like this franchise is less about deconstructing our world and more about starting to build theirs—ape society, ape culture, even ape mythology (which, as you might guess, is just as spotty and prone to convolution and manipulation as our own).

Once you’ve seen Kingdom, it feels like there are a hundred more stories to tell and many possible directions in which the franchise can go. Plus the new characters are remarkably compelling, well developed, and startlingly well rendered.

Bottom line: Kingdom is a very entertaining film and an impressive achievement. It’s well worth your time, so be sure to check it out.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

All right, that’s all for now. Have a great weekend and don’t forget Mother’s Day on Sunday!

Stay tuned...

(You can follow Bill on social media at these links: Twitter and Facebook)

 

 

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