Displaying items by tag: Anchor Bay Entertainment

Our friends at the Criterion Collection have just closed out the week by announcing their August slate of Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD titles, and it’s interesting indeed. There are few, what one might call, major titles this month, but there are some interesting art house gems. The slate includes...

Kon Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain (1959) (Spine #378 – 4K + Blu-ray and Blu-ray) and The Burmese Harp (1956) (Spine #379 – 4K + Blu-ray and Blu-ray) on 8/5, Youssef Chahine’s Cairo Station (Spine #1273 – Blu-ray and DVD) on 8/12, A Confucian Confusion / Mahjong: Two Films by Edward Yang (1994-96) (Spine #1275 – Blu-ray) and Vittorio De Sica’s Shoeshine (1946) (Spine #1272 – 4K + Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD) on 8/19, and finally Maura Delpero’s Vermiglio (2024) (Janus Contemporaries – Blu-ray and DVD), Alice Wu’s Saving Face (2004) (Spine #1276 – Blu-ray), and Zeinabu irene Davis’s Compensation (1999) (Spine #1274 – Blu-ray and DVD) on 8/26.

Curiously, there aren’t a lot of 4K titles in this batch, but I strongly suspect it’s because they have many more in the works. In any case, you can read more about these titles on Criterion’s website here. And don’t forget that they’re running their Spring Sale until 5/26, offering 30% of all discs. [Read on here...]

Today’s Retro Release Day title here at The Bits is none other than Disney’s The Black Hole (1979), directed by Gary Nelson and released by Anchor Bay Entertainment on DVD back on March 30, 1999.

The film stars Maximilian Schell, Robert Forster, Joseph Bottoms, Yvette Mimieux, Anthony Perkins, and Ernest Borgnine, and features a terrific score by composer John Barry.

The single-disc release was a much-dreaded (and double-sided) DVD-10 release, a disc configuration known as a “flipper” to DVD veterans.

The reason for this was that the release included the film in both non-anamorphic (letterboxed) widescreen on one side, and full frame on the other.

Both sides of the disc also includes the film’s theatrical trailer and a gallery of images. Each version of the film also included Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. [Read on here...]

Welcome to a new edition of Pick-Ups!

This week I managed to catch a screening of Rifftrax Live! Mothra, which was a lot of fun and well-worth your time if you want to see the encore showing Tuesday. I also had a birthday this past Saturday, so I got stay home, eat lots of food, lay in bed all day, and watch movies with my gal. To say the least, it was a pleasant day, but more like a relaxing and fun day. It’s funny how when you start getting older you want to do nothing more than to kick back and do nothing as much as you can... that or I’m just getting lazier.

On a related subject, I just wanted to quickly apologize for not getting a third review up last week. I had one in the works, but due to many real life activities getting in the way, I wasn’t able to meet my Friday deadline. It’s a title that you’ll definitely sometime down the road, that’s for sure.

Anyways, let’s move on to some reviews.  [Read on here…]

All right, lots of stuff to share with you today…

First though, here at The Bits our own Todd Doogan has turned in a new Doogan’s Queue/Gripe Soda column running down this week’s latest releases on Blu-ray and DVD. Doogan has also reviewed a new DVD only movie release from MPI – Raze. Do give it a look.

Also today, Dr. Jahnke has posted his latest Burnt Offerings: MOD DVD column covering new deep catalog titles available from the Warner Archive, so be sure to check that out. [Read on here…]