This Week on DVD & BLu-ray (11/05/13)

Americans have forgotten Thanksgiving apparently. At least that’s what marketing pros think, since all the orange and black candy has been replaced with red and green, here in the States. So, it comes as no surprise that a 30th Anniversary Blu-ray of “A Christmas Story” is out this week – even though there’s been countless other versions released since the HD format hit the streets. It’s also no shock that Peter Jackson inserted an extra 20 minutes into the already-bloated “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” from last year. Can’t say I’m all that interested in finding just where that extra footage shows up. On a lighter note, Roland Emmerich destroyed the nation’s capital once again this past summer in “White House Down”, which took a sillier more outrageous approach to a terrorist attack than the flat and violent “Olympus Has Fallen”. Let’s see what else came out….

Another film celebrating 30 years with a Blu-ray release is Philip Kaufman’s “The Right Stuff”, an adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s novel of the same name about the seven military pilots who were selected to be astronauts for Project Mercury, the first attempted manned spacecraft by the United States. The film features an incredible cast including Sam Shepard, Ed Harris, Fred Ward, Dennis Quaid, Scott Glenn, Barbara Hershey and more. This new version contains a 40-page booklet that commemorates the classic.

Also out this week is “Passion” the latest from Brian DePalma, an erotic thriller starring Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace, is a remake of the 2010 psychological thriller “Love Crime”.  It’s not the director’s first foray into the subgenre  (remember “Femme Fatale”) and it received mixed reviews, barely receiving a theatrical release, spending most of its run on VOD.  Speaking of eroticism, in the sub-subgenre, “Lovelace”, a movie focusing on Linda Boreman aka Linda Lovelace, was also released around the same time. It stars Amanda Seyfried as the titular character with supporting roles by Peter Sarsgaard, Sharon Stone, Wes Bentley, Robert Patrick and Eric Roberts, to name a few. It too was also met with mixed reviews and received a limited theatrical release last August.

That’s it for this week. Enjoy the Rundown….