New 4K reviews, plus Kino reveals Kolchak: The Night Stalker Blu-ray plans, and a peek at Apollo 11: Quarantine & The Twentieth Century

Friday, 26 February 2021 15:05

New 4K reviews, plus Kino reveals Kolchak: The Night Stalker Blu-ray plans, and a peek at Apollo 11: Quarantine & The Twentieth Century

by Bill Hunt

All right this is just a quick post to round out the week...

We’ve posted a couple new disc reviews today. First up, Tim and I have given John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness a look in 4K Ultra HD from Scream Factory and found it to be pretty damn solid, with another great 4K film scan and remaster and all the extras you’ve come to expect from Scream (the new Blu-ray in the package features the same 4K scan too). You’ll find that here.

Also, I’ve taken a look at Anthony Spinelli’s Sex World (1977), as newly released on 4K Ultra HD by our friends at Vinegar Syndrome. Yes, it’s an adult title, but we’re not reviewing the film itself—just the disc quality. As this is one of the first such titles to appear in 4K UHD here in the States, the curiosity value makes it worth a look from our perspective. It’s actually a decent film remaster and the review is worth a laugh or two (there’s also nothing offense therein). So do give it a look.

And with a little bit of luck, I hope to have a review of Discotek’s new Lupin the 3rd: The Castle of Cagliostro – 40th Anniversary Collector’s Edition 4K Ultra HD up by the end of the day as well. (The review is up now; you can find it here.) [Read on here...]

Before we go, there’s one more big of release news worth reporting today...

Our friends at Kino Lorber Studio Classics have just revealed that they’re working on a Blu-ray release of Kolchak: The Night Stalker – The Complete Series that’s due in October, featuring new 2K scans of the original film masters. The 1970s cult classic starred Darren McGavin and Simon Oakland and was an inspiration for Chris Carter’s The X-Files. Bonus features will be announced at a later day. But very cool news indeed.

And in other news, Paramount has announced that their Paramount Plus streaming service is going to launch on March 4th. Let’s hope that provides a little more incentive for the studio to finally properly remaster all of their classic Star Trek feature films in 4K. You can read more here at Variety.

Also, Todd Douglas Miller’s Apollo 11: Quarantine short film is going to debut on CNN on Saturday, March 9 at 9 PM Eastern. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing it and it’s terrific, an excellent 23-minute follow-up to Miller’s excellent Apollo 11. You can view the trailer here...

And while we’re sharing YouTube links, here’s the trailer for Matthew Rankin’s new film, The Twentieth Century, which debuts on The Criterion Channel on Monday, March 1. It’s a campy and outrageous throwback to classic German expressionism by way of Hollywood Technicolor spectacle. And I can’t wait to see it. So here’s a peek at that...

And that it’s for this week. Not that there will be no news post here on Monday, as I’ve got some other work to do, but there are likely to be new Blu-ray reviews posted over the weekend, so do check back for those.

Have a great weekend! Stay tuned...

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New 4K reviews, plus Kino reveals Kolchak: The Night Stalker Blu-ray plans, and a peek at Apollo 11: Quarantine & The Twentieth Century

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