Home Video (VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, 4k)

The film will also include a 5 part making of documentary.

Chapter 1 - Prologue – Harrison Ford leaps back into action as Indiana Jones! Journey to 1944 as this featurette reveals the filmmakers, characters, stunts, locations, and incredible visual effects that make up the thrilling opening of Dial of Destiny!

Chapter 2 - New York – Blast off to adventure as James Mangold showcases the re-creation of 1969 Manhattan for the Moon Parade chase. This featurette spotlights Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) as John Williams conducts his beautiful new theme for this compelling character.

Chapter 3 – Morocco – The man in the hat is back! Explore Morocco as this featurette breaks down the white-knuckle stunts of the medina tuk-tuk chase and hotel brawl. Meet Teddy (Ethann Isidore), Indy’s precocious new ally in the hunt for the dial!

Chapter 4 – Sicily – Meet Renaldo (Antonio Banderas) as he guides our heroes on a perilous underwater treasure hunt! Catch up with Harrison Ford and Phoebe Waller-Bridge on location in Sicily and explore the caverns, traps, and bugs surrounding Archimedes’ tomb!

Chapter 5 – Finale – This featurette breaks down the thrilling climax to the Indiana Jones series. Cast and filmmakers James Mangold, Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall, John Williams, Steven Spielberg, and Harrison Ford bid farewell to one of the greatest heroes of all time.

I know this isn't strictly physical home media but I'm guessing that copy will be around 4-6 weeks later.

Well, it's twelve days late and I only write these because I want to show off my latest haul! 😁

I decided to visit a town over and came away quite well-stocked today.

I recently picked up The Making of Gladiator book from a charity shop so I thought I'd better refresh my memory. Containing both the theatrical cut and the extended versions, this bluray was just £1.50 from CEX. It's the 15th anniversary edition and that's eight years ago!

The British Heart Foundation, who seem to price their Blu-rays a lot higher than DVDs, had A Quiet Place (£2.50), a film I love and was still sealed.

The Expendables 3 (£1.50), a film I was really disappointed with after loving the first two, was purchased as (a) I'm giving it a second chance and I love watching the bonus extras and (b) I already have the first two films so I have to complete the set. Yes, I know a fourth film is incoming.

Looper was the biggest bargain, 50p from the RSPCA. Another film I thought was alright but I can't resist a cheap film and I'll give it another chance. Lots of extras too.

Finally, I recently traded in all my duplicate Blu-rays from my favourite films that I have upgraded to 4K. I was surprised to get £19 in credit, so for an extra £3, I picked up Arrow Video's Dune (4K).

It comes with a little book, replica lobby cards, poster and it still has the J card on the packaging. Luckily those awful CEX stickers came off without leaving a trace.

Finally, don't go to the Blu-ray.com forums and check out their charity shop finds. People are finding sealed Criterion Blu-rays! Bloody hell!

An astoundingly ambitious and riveting example of pure outsider cinema, Lycan Colony's reputation is well earned as every bizzare creative decision unfolds and you are dropped into its metaphysical alternate reality. Lycan Colony now enjoys its first time ever on Blu-ray and is packed with bonus features, including the full Rifftrax version.

Tech specs: blu-ray.com

As well as booklets included in limited and deluxe editions, Arrow Films also release books usually written by the authors of the booklets.

This month in books, we have all eight of the titles that our good friends at Arrow Video have released. For the uninitiated, Arrow Video have been releasing the ultimate home video editions of some of our favorite films for many years now. More recently, they decided to put their extraordinary talents to use creating beautiful and incredibly informative books about films and filmmakers that have been largely ignored by mainstream film studies.

They are:

• Unchained Melody: The Films of Meiko Kaji by Tom Mes
• Ghost in the Shell by Andrew Osmond
• The Hitcher by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
• The Blair Witch Project by Russ Gomm
• All the Colours of Sergio Martino by Kat Ellinger
• The Man Who Fell To Earth: Novel to Film by Samuel J. Umland
• Philip K. Dick On Film by Gregg Rickman
• Father, Son, Sword: The Lone Wolf and Cub Saga by Tom Mes

I'll do a more general Books on Films post at some point.

If you missed out on the previously available Ghostbusters 4K Ultra HD SteelBook, containing the classic 1984 comedy and its slime-filled sequel, pre-orders have just been listed through Amazon for what is advertised as a “limited edition reprint.”

Initially made available back in 2019, corresponding alongside the franchise’s 35th-anniversary, the 5-disc collection was noteworthy upon release, as not only were both films presented in beautiful 4K HDR10, but a treasure trove of then-newly added special features were included, among them deleted scenes, outtakes, audio commentaries, Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray’s ShoWest Exhibitor Reel, the cast of Ghostbusters II on The Oprah Winfrey Show, original EPKs, and much more.

As the Amazon listing page suggests, the reprint is an exact release of the 2019 4K UHD SteelBook, showcasing the same line-up of features and specs. For those who already picked up a copy during the 35th-anniversary celebration, there appears to be absolutely no reason to double-dip, especially for anyone lucky enough to have grabbed last year’s now-discontinued Ghostbusters: Ultimate Collection boxset, which included even more special features, paired alongside 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife.

Wes Anderson's new movie, Asteroid City, will be released digitally and on Blu-ray/DVD with bonus features including a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film.

The bonus feature includes Wes Anderson giving a tour of the Asteroid City sets and revealing details about the film's production and the cast's preparation and rehearsals.

at some point in the late 1990s, this all changed. Cuts to the BBC budget resulted in arts programmes, rarely ratings-grabbers, being denuded, while the onslaught of Sky meant that you had to pay a hefty subscription in order to see a lot of classic films. Late Review limped on in a much less rigorous fashion, a sign (I feel) of a growing anti-intellectualism in Britain.

And that’s where the DVD came to the rescue, filling in the gaps, allowing you to buy – often very cheaply – things that you’d heard about, but that had been unavailable. It may be unfashionable to praise Kenneth Clark’s unashamedly patrician 1969 series Civilisation, but the DVD box-set became a favourite of mine.

DVD companies were quick to tap into the nostalgia market. The market leader was Network DVD, a no-frills UK company that brought many widely loved TV shows of the 1970s and 1980s back into our living rooms. Among many other things, they released Arthur Hopcraft’s masterly 1977 adaptation of Charles Dickens’s Hard Times, which hadn’t been repeated in decades, and which I had long wanted to see.

Only this May, the company went into liquidation, and part of my sadness about their demise is that their catalogue almost certainly won’t end up somewhere such as Britbox. Like several streaming companies, Britbox seems to only purchase, or air, the shows that are algorithm-friendly: that people have actually heard of, or are searching for. The result is that streamers often promote an untruthful archive, one unrepresentative of the treasures of our past.

There are other reasons why DVDs are important: they’re superior as a product, often real things of beauty, with carefully-thought-out sleeve-notes and superb extra features. Some say that such add-ons are for nerds only, but I believe that an erudite director’s commentary or a tangential supplementary documentary can really enhance your enjoyment of a film or TV show. Firing up the latest series of The Crown on Netflix on the other hand, waiting for the data to stop buffering on your laptop, feels bleak in comparison.

...

One DVD among a carefully curated shelf is a tangible thing that you can revisit, leaving a little part of it etched into your brain; an endlessly-scrollable morass of streamable films just won’t have the same effect – and that is bad for all of us who constantly try to promote the importance of film and TV.

Archive of source

With the film recently passing the $400m mark, it's only a few weeks before the film arrives on digital (but not for free on Disney+ yet obviously) with physical media following six weeks later.

HMV has unveiled its own exclusive design for their Limited Edition 4K steelbook, which includes both a 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray disc in the set.

They are:

• The Desperate Hours 6k? (US and CA)
• Hellraiser Quartet of Doom 4k (UK)
• Hellraiser Quartet of Doom (UK)
• The House by the Cemetery 4k (UK)
• The House by the Cemetery (UK)
• The Iron Fisted Monk (US and CA)
• Witness 4k (US and CA)
• Witness (US and CA)

Tech specs: Blu-ray.com (although they seem to have copied and pasted some details from the 4k to the 2k without adjusting)

They are:

• The Blob 4k
• Night of the Demons 4k
• Night of the Demons 2
• Night of the Demons 3
• Pumpkinhead 4k
• Shaw Brothers Classics

Tech specs: pending

So, I thought to myself, "Why not scope out a new 4K Blu-ray player?" My browsing quickly led me to the damning reality – no one makes them any more.

Well, no one might be a bit dramatic. Panasonic seems to be working overtime to keep the market afloat, and Sony seems to be offering some backup in the form of a couple of models, but that's about it for the mainstream brands.

There are enthusiast brands, such as Magnetar, with its awesome reference 4K players that also happen to cost between £1700 and £3100 – so they will remain a pipe dream for now. Most of the manufacturers known for producing 4K Blu-ray players, such as Oppo, Pioneer, Samsung and LG, have all packed up production and stopped selling 4K players. Another sign of the streaming times?

Well, it doesn't seem entirely so. 4K Blu-ray discs have seen record sales figures as of late. This jump, reported by Media Play News, was mostly due to the success of Top Gun: Maverick, which created a surge of interest in 4K Blu-ray back in November 2022.

But whether it's new releases or 4K re-releases of classic movies, there's an abundance of new films coming to 4K Blu-ray, so where are the players that we need to, you know, play the discs?

Any prizes on offer anywhere?

Flag up if there are any regional restrictions.

the company plans to release a new Blu-ray/DVD title every month to their collection. What will their first entry be? None other than 1959’s The Giant Gila Monster, the film will come on a two-disc bundle with 1959’s The Killer Shrews. The two films were both produced by Ken Curtis and directed by Ray Kellogg, produced back-to-back and released as a double-feature.

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Following the initial release, Film Masters plans on releasing 1959’s Beast from Haunted Cove on October 24th, and 1934’s The Scarlett Letter on November 21st. Each release will feature a restored 4K 35mm scan with original film elements and aspect ratios. The discs will also be region-free with DTS-HD and Dolby AC3s sound. The releases will also feature original bonus content. Film Masters also has a Youtube channel with content ranging from clips to full feature films that are free to stream!

Tech specs at blu-ray.com

These are:

• Beach of the War Gods
• From Beijing With Love
• Pandora's Box

Tech specs from Blu-ray.com

Spreadsheet? App? Website?

In celebration of the show’s thirtieth anniversary, Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment (say that three times fast) is releasing the series on Blu-ray this December. All 110 episodes have been remastered in HD, and the set also includes Babylon 5‘s pilot movie, The Gathering.

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The set will be available December 5, 2023 at your favorite retailer and, in the U.S., will cost you $99.99 for 4,730 minutes of Babylon 5 goodness.