Mill Creek Entertainment Has Targeted May 13 For The DVD Debut Of The Directing Team Of Jeremy W. Brown And Mick Strawn’s Solitude

It might be a little premature, but is Brownspace Films the next Blumhouse Productions? 

Genre hit after genre hit — Wolf Man, Afraid, Imaginary, Night Swim, Five Nights at Freddy’s, the Insidious series … and on and on!  Those are just a few examples of Blumhouse’s genre films … and there are many, many more.   Blumhouse is a brand that genre fans flock to!

When we saw Brownspace Films’ Friday the 13th: Vengeance, the reaction was, that’s interesting!  That’s impressive!!  What’s next?

The “what’s next” question has been answered. 

It is the directing team of Jeremy W. Brown and Mick Strawn’s Solitude, starring the seductive Sam Wren Vincent as Kara Chase, a self-absorbed participant in a survival challenge with a finalist payday of a cool million dollars.

Mill Creek Entertainment has selected May 13 as the street date for the DVD debut of Solitude.

The film made its debut at FrankenCon 2024 and the buzz was instant.  In short, WOW!

When you see indie genre films, you almost expect a cookie-cutter approach.  Nothing wrong with that, archetypes work.  The haunted house (or some variation), the victim pool, the crazed killer and the final girl … that’s a winning combination, if handled right!

As a genre fan, if that is what you are expecting, then you are in for a treat in that Solitude is more of a mind-trip as our protagonist, Kara Chase, has taken to the woods — alone — and is responsible for recording her moment by moment attempts to win the game. 

There is just one problem.  Well, maybe more than just one problem.  When you are dealing with the human mind, isolate in the wild and carrying “baggage” from the past, anything is possible.   Nature is tough, but when the mind begins to bend to the supernatural it can become a horrific and even deadly combination.  

As time passes, and the competition becomes more intense, Kara’s past begins to overtake her sanity … it becomes a race against time to win the competition or lose a connection with reality.  Or, perhaps, there is something else at play in this lonely section of the forest.

The directing team of Jeremy W. Brown and Mick Strawn’s Solitude is a horror mind trip that sneaks up on you.  You expect one thing, but as the third act unfolds something more sinister is at play (no spoilers) as Kara struggles to maintain sanity … and win the game!!

If you are a genre fan, then Mill Creek Entertainment’s May 13 DVD release of Solitude is a must!!

Arrow Video Preps 4K Ultra HD Edition Of Director Renny Harling's The Long Kiss Goodnight For Release On Apr. 08

Arrow Video, with domestic sales and marketing support provided by MVD Entertainment Group, has tabbed Apr. 08 as the street date for a 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo Pack presentation of director Renny Harlin’s The Long Kiss Goodnight.

This is a new 4K film restoration from the original 35mm negative.

Geena Davis, as Samatha, is the perfect mom, a school teacher in a forever relationship with Hal (Tom Amandes) … life is good.   She washed ashore pregnant — eight years ago —without any memory of how she got there.   

Her plan, which hasn’t had much success, is to hire incompetent private eyes to investigate her past.  Her latest hire, Mitch Henessey (Samuel L. Jackson), is starting to have some success, which (without giving things away) is starting to unluck some very disturbing memories.   Teacher or a highly skilled assassin?   Hmmm.

Bonus goodies include two commentary options (both newly-minted) … the first is with film critic Walter Chaw (“A Walter Hill Film”) and second teams “Bloodhaus” podcasters Drusilla Adeline and Joshua Conkel. 

On the companion Blu-ray disc there are deleted scenes, an archived “Making Of” featurette and archived behind-the-scenes footage.   There are also five newly prepared featurettes — “Symphony of Destruction,” “Girl Interrupted,” “Amnesia Chick,” “The Mirror Crack’d” and “A Woman’s World.”

Shout! Studios Readies A Six-Film 4K Ultra HD Collection Titled Blaxploitation Classics, Volume 1 For Delivery On May 20

Shout! Studios will be doing what the legacy “Hollywood” studios seem unwilling to do these days with their vast theatrical catalogs.  Case in point, the May 20 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray collection titled Blaxploitation Classics, Volume 1, which showcases six Blaxploitation gems from the 1970s in an absolutely must-have collection of action films that introduced and transformed the likes of Yaphet Kotto, Fred Williamson and Pam Grier into silver screen stars.   

That is what is promised (and delivered), with a second volume (YES!) already planned for release later this summer.   

What is in this collection?

We begin with director Barry Shear’s Christmas-season of 1972 film adaptation of the Wally Ferris 1970 novel “Across 110th,” which was released theatrically as Across 110th Street.  Anthony Quinn and Yaphet Kotto topline in this film that critics of the time declared was excessively violent.  

Barry Shear (Wild in the Streets, The Todd Killings, The Deadly Trackers) was both the director and producer, who shot his film on location in New York City, which makes Across 110th Street something of a time capsule.   

The next two films in the collection are from writer, director and producer Larry Cohen, a filmmaker who became a genre-fan favorite with the It’s Alive trilogy, Q: The Winged Serpent and The Stuff.   Just about the time that Shear’s production of Across 110th Street was being wrapped in New York City, Cohen took his film crew there as well and delivered Black Caesar, starring Fred Williams as Tommy Gibbs, a lowly shoeshine boy (younger version played by Omer Jeffrey), who is beaten and framed by a bigoted cop on the take (Art Lund) and packed off to reform school.   

He “graduates” a harden criminal and decides to take back what is his by working for the mob as a hitman … Tommy speaks Italian and is able to impress Cardoza (Val Avery) into taking him up on his offer.   

The film opened in February of 1973 and was a huge success, so much so that Tommy was resurrected — he is clearly dying in the final scenes from wounds and a vicious beating by a teenage gang (full circle, so to speak) — and by the Christmas season of 1973, Fred Williams and Larry Cohen (writer, director and producer) had delivered Hell Up in Harlem, which cleverly reworks the ending of Black Caesar to allow Tommy to survive his wounds and continue his rise to power (he controls accounting records that detail corruption at the highest levels in New York).

As a bonus, there are archived commentaries for both Black Caesar and Hell Up in Harlem by auteur filmmaker Larry Cohen.

The next two films in the Blaxploitation Classics, Volume 1 from Shout! Studios on May 20 showcase the talents of Pam Grier, who stars in writer/director Jack Hill’s May of ’73 film release of Coffy (which was doubled-billed with director Michael Campus’ The Mack).   

Pam Grier’s day job is that of a nurse (filmed in Los Angeles), but when not “on duty” she has “duties” of another kind … assassin of drug dealers, small fry at first, but she works her way up the ladder, exposing massive corruption and dealing with the worst of the worst (always in peril herself)!!

After reteaming with Jack Hill for Foxy Brown in April of 1974, Grier fulfilled her film contract with American International Pictures (AIP) with two final films in 1975, Friday Foster and writer/director William Girdler’s spring of 1975 film release of Sheba, Baby, which is the fifth film in this collection.

Both Coffy and Sheba, Baby feature vintage commentaries from filmmakers Jack Hill and William Girdler respectively.

Rounding out this six-film collection is director Jonathan Kaplan’s summer of 1974 film release of Truck Turner, starring Isaac Hayes as a bounty hunter named Truck, who is partnered with Jerry (Alan Weeks).   

A bail-skipper contract goes south and Truck is forced to kill the man, which sets in motion a revenge scheme cooked up by a woman named Dorinda (played by none other than Star Trek’s Uhura, Nichelle Nichols), who runs a well-organized prostitution ring.

A series of punks go down at the hands of Truck, before Dorinda ends up making a deal with the notorious “Blue” (Yaphet Kotto) to murder Truck.   This eventually leads to third-act shootout where the bodies pile up and Truck ends up taking out the trash!!

Director Jonathan Kaplan provides commentary on Truck Turner.

Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment Tabs Apr. 29 As The Street Date For 4K Ultra HD Editions Of Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry, The Outlaw Josey Wales And Pale Rider

There was stunning news from Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment this past week on the 4K Ultra HD front.   Mark it down, Apr 29 will be the street for three new 4K Ultra HD film classics celebrating a 50-year relationship between the studio and Clint Eastwood.

Yes!  The lead title in the mix is director Don Siegel’s Christmas-season of 1971 film release of Dirty Harry, which teamed Clint Eastwood with his mentor Siegel and the move of Eastwood’s Malpaso production company from Universal (Coogan’s Bluff, Two Mules for Sister Sara, Play Misty for Me) to Warner Bros.

The teacher, Don Siegel, showed Eastwood how to shoot fast and get it done on time and under-budget … he also encouraged him to take a shot at being a director with Play Misty for Me.   The results that followed speak for themselves.

Dirty Harry arrives on 4K Ultra HD with a vintage commentary track by film critic Richard Schickel, two newly-prepared featurettes — “Generations and Dirty Harry” and “Lensing Justice: The Cinematography of Dirty Harry” — two vintage featurettes — “Dirty Harry’s Way” and “Dirty Harry: The Original.”

There is also an extensive “interview gallery,” featuring the likes of Andy Robinson, Hal Holbrook, Patricia Clarkson, Eastwood and more, plus three “retrospectives” — documentary filmmaker Bruce Rider’s 2000 feature-length presentation of American Masters Career Retrospective: Clint Eastwood: Out of the Shadows, documentary filmmaker Bruce Riker’s feature-length film titled Clint Eastwood: The Man from Malpaso and the 2021 mini-series titled Clint Eastwood: A Cinematic Legacy.

The other two Eastwood films getting the 4K Ultra HD treatment from Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment on Apr. 29 are The Outlaw Josie Wales and Pale Rider, both directed by Eastwood.

The Outlaw Josie Wales (1976) co-stars Sondra Locke along with John Vernon, Chief Dan George and Bill McKinney and comes loaded with extras.   There is a vintage commentary from film critic Richard Schickel, two new featurettes — “An Outlaw and an Antihero” and “The Cinematography of and Outlaw: Crafting Josie Wales” — and four additional featurettes: “Clint Eastwood’s West,” “Eastwood in Action,” “Hell Hath No Fury: The Making of The Outlaw Josie Wales” and “Clint Eastwood: A Cinematic Legacy – Reinventing the West.”

And lastly, a 40th Anniversary Edition of Pale Rider, which features two newly-prepared featurettes — “The Diary of Sydney Penny: Lessons from the Set” and “Painting the Preacher: Bruce Surtees and Pale Rider” — plus three vintage pieces: “Clint Eastwood: A Cinematic Legacy – Reinventing Westerns,” “Eastwood Directs: The Untold Story” and “The Eastwood Factor.”

The Criterion Collection Scores With Writer/Director Sean Baker's Best Picture-Winner Anora (Full-Spread Physical Media Rollout On Apr. 29 And Preps Five New 4K Ultra HD Releases In May

The Criterion Collection scored a major physical media coup with producer/writer/director Sean Baker’s Best Picture Oscar-winner, Anora, which not only grabbed the gold statute for Best Picture, but Baker hit the trifecta with directing and writing wins as well.   

And Mikey Madison, as Sadie in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood, won the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Anora “Ani” Mikheeva, a stripper who finds her “Prince Charming” (Mark Eydelshteyn) only to run afoul of Russian mob elements (his parents) who are willing to buy her off … but if that fails, there’s always Igor (Yura Borisov)!

Criterion will be delivering a full-spread physical media rollout on Apr. 29.   

The ARR is a long-in-the-tooth 193 days and the domestic box office take currently stands at $18.9 million.

A premium VOD window opened on Dec. 17, which has given the “Helper” community ample opportunity to peddle Blu-ray editions of their own to unsuspecting consumers.   To add insult to injury, HULU begins streaming Anora on St. Patrick’s Day.

Still, it is good to see an indie film win the gold … and it is nice to see Criterion handle the physical media distribution.    

Perhaps, they could also convince Apple TV to let them do the same for another Best Picture-winner, writer/director Sian Heder’s CODA, which has yet to see the light of day as either 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray or DVD product offerings (legitimately, of course the “Helpers” have had a field with mainly Blu-ray copies of their own)!

As to bonus features, there are two separate commentary options — one featuring filmmaker Sean Baker with producers Alex Coco and Samantha Quan, plus cinematographer Drew Daniels and the second teams Baker with cast members Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Yura Borisov, Karren Karagulian and Vache Tovmasyan.

There are also deleted scenes, audition footage, a Q&A session with Madison and stripper-consultant Lindsey Normington, a making-off documentary and video sessions with both Baker and Madison.

In other release news from the Criterion Collection, the May release slate has been reveal, which features new 4K Ultra HD editions of director Norman Jewison’s In the Heat of the Night (May 6), director Jacques Demy’s 1964 film release of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (also May 6), writer/director Bruce Robinson’s Withnail and I (May 20), director Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers (a double-feature on May 27) and indie filmmaker Charles Burnett’s 1978 experimental film, Killer of Sheep (May 27).

2024 Was A Recording-Breaking Year For Both The Blu-ray And 4K Ultra HD Formats • Ninth Consecutive Year For Blu-ray Of New Record Release Totals!

2024 was a record-breaking year for both the Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD formats.   That is a simple statement that seems to belie the Studio-centric view of the physical media world as it played out in 2024.   The question is why?

Let’s start with Blu-ray.   There were 9,392 new Blu-ray releases in 2024 — a preliminary total subject to revision as below the radar sources are found and added to the various databases over the days and weeks ahead.   This count was up from the previous record of 8,316 new titles posted in 2023.

In fact, since the launch year of the 4K Ultra HD in 2016, the Blu-ray format has set a new record for titles released every single year.   

Let that sink in!  If you are under the impression that physical media is in decline … every single year since 2016 the Blu-ray format has set a new all-time release record!!

For example, in 2016 the total number of Blu-ray titles released was 2,116 … by 2021 the count had more than doubled to 4,857.   And the 2021 count was almost doubled again this past year (9,392) … and that doubling may still come to pass as late arrivals are posted.

So what is driving this dramatic increase in the number of new Blu-ray titles each year?   
There are three factors that are spurring growth — one is of a technical nature, which in turn has “juiced” the other two title growth sources.   The knee-jerk is that this sounds like gibberish, but it actually makes sense when you understand the “technical” factor that is driving Blu-ray to higher and higher release counts.

Go back ten years to 2015 and you will find that there were 2,163 traditionally replicated Blu-ray titles and 278 manufactured on demand (MOD) releases.   Since then, the number of replicated Blu-rays has “crabbed” sideways (with a slight downward trend) to 1,797 in 2024.    

However, the MOD count has exploded to 7,595 in the latest reporting period.   That’s up over 1,000 from 2023!

When Blu-ray was launched in 2006 it was for the hi-def elements (over DVD), but that all-important factor has (in recent years) been sacrificed for the bandwidth (capacity) of Blu-ray over DVD.   Blu-ray, in other words, has become a workhorse for the delivery of programming — especially episodic series — that favors running time over all other factors.   
This rapid switch to MOD for Blu-ray distribution mirrors that of DVD.   Once you average consumer accepted DVD as MOD, it was only a matter of time before Blu-ray followed.    
And, in the wake of this shift from replicated to MOD traditional “big box” retailers could not make the adjustment — there’s no technical means to do MOD at retail, no kiosk system, no on-site manufacturing.   The same held true for traditional distribution … gone are the warehouses, replaced by rows and rows of MOD equipment.  Get an order, stamp it out, ship it.

Yes, this one shift in how discs were being manufactured has changed everything.

This brings us to the other big growth factors in the number of new Blu-ray titles arriving in the domestic marketplace at an ever-quickening pace.   41.70 percent of all new releases last year were pirated, and this excludes — repeat EXCLUDES — the seemingly countless number of Blu-rays being sourced from China (and other “exotic” locations).   These are all manufactured on demand.

When we did the 2024 recap for DVD we questioned the relationship between eBay and China … it is a simple question, are they in business together?   

Movie after movie, series after series are being offered on eBay (and other similar platforms) that are clearly stolen intellectual properties.   

The moment a new movie streams on one of the major services, or it is offered-up as a premium VOD, a pristine master is delivered to the “Helper” (our term for bootleggers, pirates, thieves, etc.) community for MOD distribution on DVD and, more importantly for bandwidth, Blu-ray.

The same holds true for complete episodic series programming.   The instant the entire season has completed its streaming cycle, it is ready for distribution on Blu-ray — for the format’s bandwidth, not its hi-def qualities. 

And to that point, why do Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, the legacy “Hollywood” studios and other rights’ owners tolerate eBay, Etsy and other similar consumer delivery systems that are selling their intellectual properties from “unlicensed” suppliers (“Helpers”)?

The legacy “Hollywood” studios and all of the boutique and independent labels combine for 31.1 percent (3.50 and 27.59 respectively) of the Blu-ray release pie in 2024.   This is the world of physical media that the various industry analysts and reporting services (trade, consumer, blogs and other platforms) talk about … 2,920 new titles.

If you do the math, that leaves a whopping 27.21 percent of all new Blu-ray releases in 2024 unaccounted for.   

There were 2,556 Blu-ray titles released by Public, Educational and Governmental (PEG) access organizations — we call them “Microbroadcasters.”

The Alliance for Community Media (allcommunitymedia.org) monitors 1,690 such PEGs, of those, 103 offer their programming — high school sports, local concerts, how to garden, graduations and public/local government meetings — for sale on DVD.    Of this group, 25 have discovered that Blu-ray gives them bandwidth options that are much easier to work with — that Friday night football game that might clock in at three hours can easily be presented on one Blu-ray disc.

 

On average, each of these PEGs/Microbroadcasters delivered 100 titles on Blu-ray in 2024.  In contrast, the legacy “Hollywood” studios churned out 47 new releases each … that’s less than one new Blu-ray per week from each of the legacy “Hollywood” studios.   How sad is that?

What is the dollar volume for these PEGs?   

No clue, but consider this … the programming costs are already sunk (the camera crew is at the game or recording the concert in the park, or recording the graduation ceremony at the local high school) in terms delivering content to the local access channel community.   So why not offer MOD copies on DVD and Blu-ray to anyone who wants that local hockey game or graduation ceremony?   Every nickel counts.  

And when you look at the numbers, the strategy appears to be working.
Breaking down what each of the four groups — studios, boutiques, PEGs and “Helpers” — we find the following.

The legacy “Hollywood” studios concentrate on New Theatrical, series programming and movies in general (theatrical catalog, foreign, MOWs and direct to video).   Children’s programming does not show up on the Blu-ray from this source, which is a surprise when you consider how much is in inventory.

The boutique and independent labels are far more diverse in their Blu-ray product offerings. 

Direct to video releases on Blu-ray is the largest single line item, followed by foreign language and theatrical catalog (often licensed from the legacy “Hollywood” studios).   They also out-gun the studios by a two-to-one margin when it comes to New Theatrical releases (although the box office numbers are very different).

The PEG/Microbroadcaster community dominates the special interest and sports categories and also delivers a surprising number of music on Blu-ray releases.

Lastly, the “Helper” sources tend to mirror the release patterns of the boutique and independent labels, however the huge focus for them is on series programming.   1,691 Blu-ray releases from this source alone … the studios and boutiques, in contrast, combined for just 114 series releases on Blu-ray in 2024.   If you have a favorite series, such as Bosch, Only Murders in the Building or Running Point, you won’t find it from a legitimate source. 

The great irony in all of this is that the programming is from the legacy “Hollywood” studies and the various streaming platforms (often overlapping) … “Helpers” don’t produce anything, they just “help” themselves to what is offered up and profit from it!

The “Helpers” also dominate in New Theatrical knock-offs (and this excludes China and the like) and they are the number one source for concerts on Blu-ray.

Shifting to the 4K Ultra HD format, 2024 was a record year with 583 new releases.   This is a much easier snapshot … there are three sources for 4K Ultra HD releases … and one of those is highly suspect.

The legacy “Hollywood” studios owned a 30 percent share of the 4K Ultra HD title pie with 175 titles in 2024.   The boutique and independent labels are carrying the load here with 52.5 percent of the title count … 306 new product offerings in 2024.

And sure enough, the “Helper” community is active here as well with 102 4K Ultra HD titles of their own in 2024.   However, we suspect that if a group will steal intellectual properties, why wouldn’t they also lie about the 4K standard they say they are delivering to the consumer?    

As to what the focus is for the format, it can be summed up in one word … MOVIES.   The legacy “Hollywood” studios and the boutique and independent labels combined for 372 theatrical catalog and new theatrical releases in 2024, or 77.5 percent of their entire output.   That pretty much says it all!

How will 2025 play out?    Good luck on figuring out that with the legacy “Hollywood” studios focus on “other things” and not traditional theatrical distribution and physical media.