Mill Creek Entertainment Announces Its First Wave Of DVD And Blu-ray Priced-To-Collection Release For 2018 (Jan. 16)

Mill Creek Entertainment announced its first wave of 2018 priced-to-collect DVD and Blu-ray product offerings this past week.

The street date will be Jan. 16 for the first group, which is top-lined by both DVD and Blu-ray editions of America's Treasures: A 12-Part National Monument Documentary Series (a double-disc collection featuring Digital Copy).   Over 25 historic locations are featured here in different chapter titles that range from “Fossil Worlds” and “Ancient Cemeteries” to “Symbols of Liberty,” “Road to Equality” and “The Incredible Pacific Coast.”

On the DVD release front from Mill Creek Entertainment on Jan. 16 look for a three-film tribute to the late Jerry Lewis that is titled Comedy Triple Feature.   Included in the collection are director Jerry Paris’ 1968 film adaptation of the Max Wilk novel, Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River, which teams Lewis with British comedian Terry-Thomas, with Jacqueline Pearce playing Jerry’s long-suffering wife.   From the summer of 1969 we have director George Marshall’s Hook, Line and Sinker, which co-stars Peter Lawford and Anne Francis and Jerry Lewis both stars in and directs 3 on a Couch, with Janet Leigh as his co-star.

For fans of stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood, there’s the four-disc collection titled Hollywood's 50 Greatest Screen Legends, which features biography documentaries on the screen greats, ranging from Bette Davis, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Judy Garland and Mae West to Clark Gable, John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Gregory Peck and Humphrey Bogart.   50 in all, which makes this a must for movie fans of all ages!

For fans of Charles Starrett, who is perhaps better known as The Durango Kid, Mill Creek Entertainment has the double-disc, ten-film collection ready to own on Jan. 16 that is simply titled, The Durango Kid Collection.

Included in the mix are The Fighting Frontiersman (1946, with Helen Mowery as Dixie King), Blazing Across the Pecos (1948, co-starring Patricia Barry), Laramie (1949), Trail of the Rustlers (1950, with future Annie Oakley star Gail Davis), Streets of Ghost Town (1950, co-starring Mary Ellen Kay), Lightning Guns (also from 1950 and featuring Gloria Henry), Snake River Desperadoes (1951), Bonanza Town (1951), The Hawk of Wild River (1952, with co-stars Jock Mahoney and Clayton Moore) and last, but not least, director Fred F. Sears’ 1952 film release of The Kid from Broken Gun, once again with Jock Mahoney and co-starring Angela Stevens.

Cinema Libre Readies Documentary Filmmaker Thomas Huchon's Trumping Democracy For A DVD Launch On Dec.5

French journalist and documentary filmmaker Thomas Huchon’s look at the 2016 election of Donald Trump as the 45^th President of the United States, Trumping Democracy, will be making its DVD debut on Dec. 5 courtesy of Cinema Libre.

While candidate Hillary Clinton was busy doing victory laps, Donald Trump and his campaign team were making four or five campaign stops per day during the final weeks of the campaign in states that were considered safe for Clinton.  

Huchon, through a series of interviews featuring the likes of Sanders for President senior advisor Tad Devine and The Atlantic’s Rosie Gray, shows how psychometrics — the use of data, from such sources as Google, Facebook and more, was gathered and used to target specific voting groups to manipulate and flip them to the Trump camp.

In addition to the aforementioned Rosie Gray, the White House correspondent for The Atlantic, and Sander campaign advisor Tad Devine (who also served on Al Gore’s 2000 and John Kerry’s 2004 Presidential Campaigns and is the president of the D.C.-based media consulting firm, Devine Mulvey Longabaugh), Huchon interviews both Stanford professor Dr. Michal Kosinski, who was profiled on CNN as to the role of big data in the 2016 campaign and has testified before the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on the implications of the use of “big data” for equal employment opportunity, and Brendan Fischer, of The Campaign Legal Center, where he focuses on federal regulatory agencies, including the Federal Election Commission.

They point to the role of hedge fund manager and political activist, Robert Mercer, in funding the Trump campaign and inserting both Bannon and Conway into key positions.  On election night, Hillary Clinton … “never saw it coming.”

Arrow Video's 4K Restoration Of The Apartment Heads to Blu-ray On Dec. 12

Arrow Video, with domestic sales and distribution expertise provided by MVD Entertainment Group, has a new 4K restoration (from the original camera negative) of director Billy Wilder’s 1960 Best Picture winner, The Apartment, ready for a Limited Deluxe Edition Blu-ray release on Dec. 12.

Bonus goodies include a 150 page hard cover book, commentary by film producer and historian Bruce Block (“The Visual Story”), selected scene commentary by film historian Philip Kemp (“Cinema: The Whole Story”) and a newly prepared video session with actress Hope Holiday.   

There are also four featurettes —  “The Flawed Couple,” “Inside the Apartment,” “Magic Time: The Art of Jack Lemmon” and “Billy Wilder ABC.”

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Announces November Film Catalog Selections • Stephen King's Dolores Claiborne Blu-ray Nov. 21

First it was amazon.com and it’s all too familiar habit of jumping the gun on official announcements to collect as many pre-book orders as possible.   It was touting Dec. 5 as the street date for writer/director Christopher Nolan’s sure-to-be Best Picture nominee, Dunkirk.

Amazon subsequently pulled the offer and a whole week went by without Warner Bros. Home Entertainment making an official announcement.  Nothing.   Crickets.   

Then on Friday, Oct. 13, Best Buy jumped into the battle for its fair share of the sales action by offering up Dunkirk on Dec. 19.   The entire week slipped by and come Friday, Oct. 20, still nothing official from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.

But that doesn’t mean that it was quiet over in Burbank as there was plenty of catalog action, so let’s get that … the turf war over Dunkirk between Warner and Amazon can wait for now.

On the Blu-ray front there are three new releases heading home in November.  Chief among these is the Nov. 21 Blu-ray launch of director Taylor Hackford’s 1995 film adaptation of the Stephen King novel, Dolores Claiborne, teaming Kathy Bates (who also shined in another King adaptation, Misery, five years earlier) with Jennifer Jason Leigh as mother/daughter involved in what may or may not be a murder.

The other two new-to-Blu-ray releases from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment in November are Summer of ’42 (Nov. 7) and Doc Hollywood (Nov. 28).

More “un-bundling” of previously released films as part of collections continues in November with stand-alone DVD releases on Nov. 14 of Eleanor Powell, Ann Sothern and Robert Young starring in the 1941 film release of Lady be Good (part of a double-feature release in 2008), Jane Powell and Ann Sothern lead an all-star cast in the 1950 musical comedy, Nancy Goes to Rio and Jane Powell stars in the 1950 romantic comedy, Two Weeks With Love (these two films were part of a double-bill released in 2008).

The following week, Nov. 21, we have two unique double feature collections … Kind Lady Double Feature, which includes the original 1935 version (with Aline MacMahon and Basil Rathbone) and the 1951 remake (featuring Ethel Barrymore and Maurice Evans), and Strictly Dishonorable Double Feature, which showcase the 1931 original adaptation of the Preston Sturges stage play (with Sidney Fox and Paul Lukas) and the 1951 remake starring Janet Leigh. 

And finally, Nov. 28 brings us three Doris Day films from the 2009 box set titled TCM Spotlight: Doris Day Collection  — April in Paris, The Tunnel of Love and Starlift — and Old Maid (originally released as part of the Bette Davis Collection, Volume 3 in 2008) Renegades of the West (1932, starring Tom Keene) and Kid from Texas (1939, starring Dennis O’Keefe and Florence Rice).

Now back to waiting for an official announcement for Dunkirk.

MVD Entertainment Group Tabs Dec. 12 For The DVD Debut Of 6 Bullets to Hell

MVD Entertainment Group will be guiding the directing team of Tanner Beard and Russell Quinn Cummings’ homage to the Spaghetti Western genre, 6 Bullets to Hell, to the DVD marketplace on Dec. 12.

Not only did Cummings and Beard deliver a genuine throwback to Spaghetti Western classics — films that spawned the likes of Django, Death Rides a Horse, For a Few Dollars More and Once Upon a Time in West — but they filmed this new production in the same style and have tossed in two “Grindhouse” trailers before the flick unspools.

The plot has cowhand Billy Rogers (Crispian Belfrage) setting out to avenge the rape and murder of his wife by a gang led by the notorious Bobby Durango (played by filmmaker Tanner Beard).    He hunts them down, in true Spaghetti Western tradition, one … by one … by one … until justice is finally served!!!

Bonus features include a behind-the-scenes featurette, a mini-documentary on the making of the film, character profiles, a stills gallery and the featurette titled “On Set with the Cast of 6 Bullets to Hell.”

   

Paramount Home Media To Release Girlfriends: The Complete Series On DvD On Jan. 16

Paramount Home Media will open its 2018 home entertainment product campaign with the release of the 25-disc collection of Girlfriends: The Complete Series, on Jan. 16.

All 172 episodes from the show’s eight-season run — starring Tracee Ellis Ross, Golden Brooks, Persia White and Jill Marie Jones — will be available on DVD.

Bonus features include featurettes exclusive to each of the eight seasons.

The Criterion Collection Kicks Of 2018 On Jan. 2 With A 4K Restoration Of Director John Hughes' The Breakfast Club

The Criterion Collection begins the New Year on Jan. 2 with a new 4K restoration of director John Hughes’ 1985 “Brat Pack” gem, The Breakfast Club, which will be available as both a double-disc DVD release as well as a Blu-ray edition.

Bonus features include a vintage commentary track (2008) featuring Brian (Anthony Michael Hall) and John (Judd Nelson), newly-minted video sessions with Claire (Molly Ringwald) and Allison (Ally Sheedy), the 2008 feature-length making-of documentary titled Sincerely Yours, a featurette with Judd Nelson reading John Hughes’ production notes, 50 minutes worth of “never-before-seen” deleted and extended scenes and more.

The following week, Jan. 9, The Criterion Collection is back with both DVD (double-disc) and Blu-ray editions of auteur filmmaker John Ford’s 1939 film release of Young Mr. Lincoln, starring Henry Fonda as future president Abraham Lincoln, with Marjorie Weaver as Mary Todd.

This new 4K restoration sports a new commentary option featuring author and film scholar Joseph McBride, who has written two books on the film career of John Ford — “Searching for John Ford: A Life” and “John Ford” — vintage audio interviews with both Henry Fonda and John Ford conduced by Henry Fonda’ grandson, Dan Ford, a radio dramatization and more.

On Jan. 16 look for the double-disc DVD and Blu-ray debut of director Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake, starring stand-up comedian Dave Johns in his award-winning feature film debut as the title character, who finds himself in a no-win battle again the British health care bureaucracy.   

The ARR works out 228 days and domestic box office receipts for this British import’s arthouse run were $258,168.

Bonus goodies include commentary from screenwriter Paul Laverty, deleted scenes and two feature-length documentaries — How to Make a Ken Loach Film and Versus: The Life and Films of Ken Loach.

Rounding out the January of 2018 release calendar from The Criterion Collection are DVD and Blu-ray editions of German filmmaker G.W. Pabst’s early 1930s film releases, Kameradschaft and Westfront 1918 (both are in German with English subtitles and will be available on Jan. 30) and a four-film collection on DVD being released under the Eclipse Series titled Claude Autant-Lara: Four Romantic Escapes from Occupied France (these are: Le Mariage de Chiffon, Lettres D'Amour, Douce and Sylvie et le Fantome) … they are presented in French with English subtitles.