Blu Monday: July 26, 2011

Your Weekly Source for the Newest Releases to Blu-Ray

Tuesday, July 26th, 2011

THE BLUES BROTHERS (1980)

Synopsis: Jake and Elwood Blues endeavor to raise $5,000 for their childhood parrish by putting their old band back together uand taking their show on the road. While touring, they manage to wreak havoc on the entire city of Chicago and much of the midwest.
Special Features: Stories Behind the Making of The Blues Brothers: Go behind the scenes with Director John Landis, Dan Aykroyd and the Blues Brothers band; Transposing the Music: Highlights of the many spin-offs, tributes and merchandising developments, as well as stage shows, impersonators and pop culture inspired by the film; Remembering John: Friends, family and co-stars share their personal stories about the late great comedian; Theatrical trailer.

DANTE’S PEAK (1997)

Synopsis: Four years after the death of his fiancée in a volcanic eruption, vulcanologist Harry Dalton is sent to investigate minor tremors in the town of Dante’s Peak. He is attracted to the town’s mayor, Rachel Wando, meeting her family and staying to help celebrate the town’s Founder’s Day. Although Dalton discovers two corpses while visiting the hot springs in the wood, his seismic equipment does not indicate that anything is wrong. Only when he discovers that the town’s water supply is contaminated with sulfur does he realise that a lethal volcanic eruption is on the way.
Special Features: Feature Commentary with Director Roger Donaldson and Product Designer Dennis Washington; Getting Close to the Show: The Making of Dante’s Peak

DONNIE DARKO: 10th Anniversary Edition (2001)

Synopsis: The tradition of Urban Legends and Final Destination, Donnie Darko is an edgy, psychological thriller about a suburban teen coming face-to-face with his dark destiny. Jake Gyllenhaal leads a star-filled cast (including Drew Barrymore, Noah Wyle, Jena Malone, Patrick Swayze and Mary McDonnell) as a delusional high-school student visited by a demonic rabbit with eerie visions of the past – and deadly predictions for the future. This “excitingly original” (Entertainment Weekly) nail-biter will keep you on the edge of your seat until the mind-bending climax.
Special Features: Audio commentaries; Cast-and-crew bios; Trailers and TV spots; Donnie Darko Production Diary; They Made Me Do It Too: The Cult of Donnie Darko; Featurettes; Documentaries; Storyboard-to-screen; Deleted scenes; Behind the scenes interviews; Website gallery

DYLAN DOG: DEAD OF NIGHT (2010)

Synopsis: The adventures of supernatural private eye, Dylan Dog, who seeks out the monsters of the Louisiana bayou in his signature red shirt, black jacket, and blue jeans.
Special Features: Unknown.

HIGH AND LOW: The Criterion Collection (1963)

Synopsis:Toshiro Mifune is unforgettable as Kingo Gondo, a wealthy industrialist whose family becomes the target of a cold-blooded kidnapper in Akira Kurosawa’s highly influential High and Low (Tengoku to jigoku). Adapting Ed McBain’s detective novel King’s Ransom, Kurosawa moves effortlessly from compelling race-against-time thriller to exacting social commentary, creating a penetrating portrait of contemporary Japanese society. Criterion is proud to present High and Low in an all-new high-definition digital transfer.
Special Features: Audio commentary by Akira Kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince; Documentary on the making of High and Low, created as part of the Toho Masterworks series Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create; Rare video interview with actor Toshiro Mifune; Video interview with actor Tsutomu Yamazaki, who plays the kidnapper; Theatrical trailers from Japan and the U.S.; PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien and a reprinted on- set account by Japanese film scholar Donald Richie.

IRONCLAD (2011)

Synopsis: It is the year 1215 and the rebel barons of England have forced their despised King John to put his royal seal to the Magna Carta, a noble, seminal document that upheld the rights of free-men. Yet within months of pledging himself to the great charter, the King reneged on his word and assembled a mercenary army on the south coast of England with the intention of bringing the barons and the country back under his tyrannical rule. Barring his way stood the mighty Rochester castle, a place that would become the symbol of the rebel’s momentous struggle for justice and freedom.
Special Features: Unknown.

THE KING OF FIGHTERS (2010)

Synopsis: Live-action feature based on the video game “King of Fighters.” Directed by Gordan Chan. Starring Maggie Q, Sean Faris and Will Yun Lee.
Special Features: Unknown.

LEON MORIN, PRIEST: The Criterion Collection (1961)

Synopsis:Jean-Paul Belmondo dons clerical robes and delivers a subtly sensual performance for the hot-under-the-collar Léon Morin, Priest, directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. The French superstar plays a devoted man of the cloth who is the crush object of all the women of a small village in Nazi-occupied France. He finds himself most drawn to a sexually frustrated widow—played by Emmanuelle Riva—a borderline heretic whose relationship with her confessor is a confrontation with both God and her own repressed desire. A triumph of mood, setting, and innuendo, Léon Morin, Priest is an irreverent pleasure from one of French cinema’s towering virtuosos.
Special Features: Archival interview with director Jean-Pierre Melville and actor Jean-Paul Belmondo; Visual essay by French film scholar Ginette Vincendeau; Original theatrical trailer; PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic and novelist Gary Indiana.

LIFE DURING WARTIME: The Criterion Collection (2009)

Synopsis:In Life During Wartime, independent filmmaker Todd Solondz explores contemporary American existence and the nature of forgiveness with his customary dry humor and queasy precision. The film functions as a distorted mirror image of Solondz’s acclaimed 1998 dark comedy Happiness, its emotionally stunted characters now groping for the possibility of change in a post-9/11 world. Happiness’s grim New Jersey setting is transposed to sunny Florida, but the biggest twist is that new actors fill the roles originated in the earlier film—including Shirley Henderson, Allison Janney, and Ally Sheedy as alarmingly dissimilar sisters, and Ciarán Hinds hauntingly embodying a reformed pedophile. Shot in expressionistic tones by cinematographer extraordinaire Ed Lachman, Solondz’s film finds the humor in the tragic and the tragic in the everyday.
Special Features: Ask Todd, an audio Q&A with director Todd Solondz; Making “Life During Wartime,” a new documentary featuring interviews with actors Shirley Henderson, Allison Janney, Michael Lerner, Paul Reubens, Ally Sheedy, and Michael Kenneth Williams, and on-set footage of the actors and crew; New video piece in which Lachman discusses his work on the film; Original theatrical trailer; PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic David SterrittAsk Todd, an audio Q&A with director Todd Solondz.

THE MATRIMONY (2007)

Synopsis: Set in a beautifully recreated 1930’s Shanghai, Junchu (Leon Lai) has fallen into a profound state of depression after witnessing his girlfriend’s tragic death on the day he was set to propose. Unable to forget Manli, and living in a tortured state of denial and guilt, Junchun’s domineering mother decides to marry him off to Sansan (Rene Liu), a beautiful young woman who she believes will lift her son’s spirits. The marriage starts off loveless and unconsummated, but Sansan is determined to win his love. One day the ghost of Manli, still pining for her former lover appears to Sansan. The two quickly strike a deal; Manli will help the new bride, but only if she can temporarily enter Sansan’s body so that she can reconnect physically with her former lover one last time. The plan goes too well and as Junchu begins to fall in love with Sansan, Manli turns from friendly and helpful to jealous and vengeful.
Special Features: Interviews; Behind the scenes footage; Teaser trailers.

National Lampoon’s ANIMAL HOUSE (1978)

Synopsis: One of the most popular movie comedies of all time is also the film that made John Belushi a star. This raunchy, screwball comedy directed with madcap zest by John Landis offers a relentless spoof of 1960’s college life by following the hilarious adventures of the Delta fraternity. In addition to Belushi as Bluto Blutarsky, the outstanding cast includes Tim Matheson, Tom Hulce, Stephen “Flounder” Furst, Karen Allen, Donald Sutherland, Peter Riegert and Kevin Bacon, along with Otis Day and the Knights with their showstopping performance of “Shout.”
Special Features: Theatrical trailer; U-Control Scene Companion: Watch cast and crew interviews during key scenes with this picture-in-picture companion; U-Control, The Music of Animal House: Instantly identify the songs heard while watching the film, create a custom playlist of your favorites and even purchase songs from iTunes; The Yearbook, An Animal House Reunion: An original documentary featuring interviews with key members of the cast and crew, as well as behind-the-scenes footage and clips with John Belushi; Where Are They Now? A Delta Alumni Update: A mockumentary featuring the original cast; Scene It? Animal House: Relive all your favorite moments from your favorite fraternity through movie clips, trivia questions and an array of on-screen puzzlers with two interactive games.

RED PLANET (2000)

Synopsis: In the mid-21st century, the nations of a dying Earth look starward for a solution and set out to colonize Mars. But something no one could have expected awaits. Houston, we have big trouble. Val Kilmer, Carrie-Anne Moss and Tom Sizemore star in this taut adventure about humankind’s first mission to the mysterious Red Planet. Also on the mission is the multifunctional robo-assistant AMEE. In one mode, she’s a as loyal as a puppy. But a malfunction has locked her into a far different mode: a killing machine bent on destroying the crew. Yet that’s not the end of the expedition’s perils. Because Mars may be barren, but it’s not uninhabited.
Special Features: Additional scenes; Theatrical trailer.

S. DARKO: A DONNIE DARKO TALE – Anniversary Edition (2009)

Synopsis:Seven years after her brother’s death, Samantha Darko is on the run…from her shattered home, from her bizarre past, and even from herself. But when she and her friend Corey (Evigan) are stranded in a desert town, they witness a meteorite crash that fractures time…and beings a countdown to the end of the world. Now Sam must rely on the frightening visions that plague her dreams to overcome her own dark destiny and set time back on course before everything she knows is destroyed!
Special Features: Audio commentary; Deleted scenes; Utah Too Much; Making of featurette.

SOLDIER (1998)

Synopsis: After being defeated and left for dead by his genetically engineered replacements, Sergeant Todd must save a peaceful community from destruction by the same soldiers.
Special Features: Commentary by director Paul Anderson, co-producer Jeremy Bolt and co-star Jason Isaacs; Theatrical trailer.

SOURCE CODE (2011)

Synopsis: When decorated soldier Captain Colter Stevens wakes up in the body of an unknown man, he discovers he’s part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. In an assignment unlike any he’s ever known, he learns he’s part of a government experiment called the “Source Code,” a program that enables him to cross over into another man’s identity in the last 8 minutes of his life. With a second, much larger target threatening to kill millions in downtown Chicago, Colter re-lives the incident over and over again, gathering clues each time, until he can solve the mystery of who is behind the bombs and prevent the next attack.
Special Features: Audio Commentary with Jake Gyllenhaal, director Duncan Jones & writer Ben Ripley; Access: Source Code – activate dynamic “scene specific” features including interviews with the cast, expert opinions on time travel, trivia & more!

TRUST (2010)

Synopsis:A family is torn apart when Annie, their fourteen-year-old daughter, meets her first boyfriend online. After months of communicating via online chat and phone, Annie discovers her friend is not who he originally claimed to be. Shocked into disbelief, her parents are shattered by their daughter’s reaction and struggle to support her as she comes to terms with what has happened to her.
Special Features: Behind-the-scenes featurette; Previews; Digital copy.

WINTER IN WARTIME (2008)

Synopsis: During the last winter of World War II, Nazi occupied Holland lies under a blanket of snow. Living in a village near the town of Zwolle is 13 year old Michiel. Defiant in his hatred for the Nazis, he is eager to do something for the growing underground Resistance. His father, however, is anxious for Michiel to stay out of trouble. Michiel’s chance to prove himself arrives when neighbor Dirk asks him to deliver an envelope on behalf of the Resistance. Michiel discovers how precious trust is and how close together good and evil can sit side by side without anyone ever noticing. He also learns that to become a man, he must abandon childish beliefs and face the truth head on.
Special Features: The Making of Winter in Wartime.