Welcome back to your one-stop spot for all the DVD releases of interest. Well, the releases that I feel like writing about anyway. This week has plenty of interesting titles, but not all that many that are must haves. This comes in stark contrast to last week which featured such excellent titles as Sunshine, 3:10 to Yuma, and Zodiac, not to mention guilty pleasure releases like Death Sentence, Dragon Wars, and Frankenhooker. This week offers up releases that will tempt, but are a bit more suitable for rental than purchase.
This week's top pick was a relatively easy choice given the competition. It is none other than Family Guy: Blue Harvest. It made its debut just this past September, but it proved to be a hilarious hour as Seth McFarlane and his troupe aimed their sights on the Lucas Ranch with Star Wars as their ultimate target.
They succeeded in getting the okay from George Lucas to make a parody episode of the groundbreaking film. They even got clearance to use the original music, sound effects, and even some of the footage. Rather surprising, if you ask me.
The end result was an hour of television that was an absolute blast — classic Family Guy humor mixed with actual reverence for the source material. You will laugh until you cry. That is assuming that you like this type of humor, and if there is one thing I have learned about Family Guy is that you either like it or you don't, there is not much of a middle ground.
It is being released in two editions; I am leaning towards the standard edition.
Standard Edition
- More than four minutes of exclusive DVD material
- Animatics/commentaries
- Interviews with Seth MacFarlane and George Lucas
- Uncensored track
- Teaser of next Star Wars spoof, "Something, Something, Something Dark Side" --
Special Edition
- Family Guy Presents: "Blue Harvest" Standard Edition DVD
- Collectible packaging
- 3-D fight scene
- 3-D glasses
- T-Shirt
- Trading cards
- Exclusive brochure
Also out this week:
- Dragonlance: Dragons of the Autumn Twilight. An animated project that I heard of a while back that looks pretty interesting.
- Extras: The Complete Series. Have not seen any of this series, but Ricky Gervais generally delivers; this could prove to be worth a blind buy.
- Good Luck Chuck. Warning — this movie is awful, do nothing more than rent this.
- Mr. Woodcock. Surprisingly decent, but not worth owning.
- The Ten. Directed by Stella member David Wain, this is a series of shorts based on the Ten Commandments.
- Earth Vs The Flying Saucers. Classic science fiction, remastered.
- Suburban Girl. Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alec Baldwin, I know nothing else.
- Wedding Daze. I saw a test screening of this almost two years ago. It is a decent rom-com with Jason Biggs and Isla Fisher, directed by Stella member Michael Ian Black.
- Winger: Live. Go ahead, laugh. I am a Winger fan from way back.
- Henry Rollins: Live in the Conversation Pit. Rollins is a great spoken word performer, and this chronicles a tour of Australia.
- Red Eye. Not the Wes Craven film, but a Korean horror flick set on a haunted subway.
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