Happy Halloween, folks! Hope you’re all enjoying this spookiest of days on the calendar each year. Here at The Bits today, we’re celebrating in a couple ways…

First, the good Dr. Jahnke has delivered the coup de grace in this year’s Hell Plaza Oktoberfest with a review of Criterion’s new Rosemary’s Baby on Blu-ray – just the perfectly creepy film to end the Fest-ivities with and it’s a great release to boot. And hats off to Adam for another successful Oktoberfest celebration – his sixth in a row!

Also today, we’re kicking off a new regular column here at the site – Tim Salmon's Dailies! This first installment features another Halloween-appropriate topic with Tim's in-depth appreciation of the Friday the 13th franchise. We hope you enjoy it!

In release news today… 20th Century Fox has set House at the End of the Street for release on Blu-ray and DVD on 1/8/2013. Both will include an unrated cut of the film. The BD will exclusively add the Journey into Terror: Inside the House at the End of the Street featurette and the film’s theatrical trailer.

Warner and the BBC have set Red Dwarf: X for Blu-ray and DVD release on 1/8/13 (SRP $39.98 and $34.98). This is the brand new series. No word yet on extras if any, but all 6 episodes will be included.

Magnolia Home Entertainment has set the ‘Claymation’ animated film The Adventures of Mark Twain for release as a Blu-ray and DVD Collector’s Edition on 12/4 (SRP $19.98 and $14.98). Extras will include director’s commentary, 2 featurettes (Story of Claymation and Behind the Scenes), soundtrack selections, crew interviews, a gallery and the film’s trailer.

Magnolia also has V/H/S coming to Blu-ray and DVD on 12/4 (SRP $29.98 and $26.98). Extras will include deleted scenes, 3 featurettes (Visual Effects, Behind the Scenes and AXS TV: A Look at V/H/S) and trailers.

And Shout! Factory has revealed the extras to be included on their Deadly Blessing: Collector’s Edition Blu-ray and DVD (due 1/22/2013). Look for an all-new audio commentary with director Wes Craven, 4 interview featurettes (Say Your Prayers!, Secrets Revealed, Rise of the Incubus and So It Was Written), radio and TV spots, and the film's theatrical trailer.

Also today, I wanted to let you know about a couple changes we’ve made here at The Bits based on some of your reader suggestions about the new website. A number of you had mentioned that you missed the way you could read an entire week’s worth of daily My Two Cents news columns in one glance just by scrolling down the home page. Some of you had also expressed a dislike for the way the new site made you click into a post to read the whole thing, then click back out and into the next one, etc. I totally agree with both points! So what we’ve done is:

• On the home page, you can now read an entire week’s worth of My Two Cents posts in their entirety without having to click in and out of individual posts.
• To read back beyond a week, we’ve added a link at the bottom of the home page: READ MORE MY TWO CENTS>> Clicking on that will take you to the My Two Cents column page where all the columns are archived.
• On the My Two Cents column page, I’ve also altered the formatting so you can scroll through a full week’s posts in their entirety without having to click in and out of individual posts. What’s more, going back to read older columns is easy – all you have to do is navigate back a page at a time using the links at the bottom of the page or you can access all the posts for a particular month using the MY TWO CENTS ARCHIVES links on the right-hand column.

So there you go! Hopefully, that will make the experience of reading my daily news update here on the new updated Bits similar to that of the old site.

All right, we’ll leave you with a look at more new cover artwork. Here’s the updated BD Book art for Warner’s Empire of the Sun (now set for release on 11/13), Warner and the BBC’s Red Dwarf: X and Shout! Factory’s Deadly Blessing: Collector’s Edition…

Have a happy and safe Halloween and we’ll see you back here tomorrow! Stay tuned…

- Bill Hunt