New Releases On Blu Ray & DVD: 10/1/13

One of the raunchiest and funniest films of this year, Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen’s THIS IS THE END tops the list of new releases this week on Blu ray and DVD. The film, which features Rogen and his fellow graduates of Apatow High (and I do mean *High*), including James Franco, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, Danny McBride, and Jay Baruchel deal with doomsday while partying at Franco’s fortress of a homestead in the Hollywood Hills, is available in a Two Disc Combo (Blu-ray / DVD + UltraViolet Digital Copy) and a single disc DVD.

A bunch of Special Features enhance the package: Audio commentary with Goldberg and Rogen, a smattering of featurettes (“Directing Your Friends,” “Meta-Apocalypse,” “Let’s Get Technical,” “Party Time,” “The Cannibal King,” “The Making of "The Making of Pineapple Express 2”), the original “Jay & Seth vs. The Apocalypse” short that inspired the film, Line-O-Rama segments, “This is the Gag Reel,” deleted scenes, and “This is the Marketing,” a collection of satirical shorts promoting the movie.

Kirk De Micco and Chris Sanders’ prehistoric family comedy from DreamWorks Animation, THE CROODS, featuring the voices of Nicholas Cage, Emma Stone, and Ryan Reynolds, releases today in a Blu-ray 3D + Blu-ray + DVD + UltraViolet edition, a Blu-ray / DVD + Digital Copy + Toy edition, and a stand-alone DVD. Special Features include “Belt’s Cave Journal,” “Croods Cuts (Lost Scenes),” “World of DreamWorks Animation,” “Be An Artist!,” “The Croods Coloring & Storybook Builder App,” and “The Croodaceous Creatures of Croods!”

Other new titles out today: Scott Walker’s straight-to-Blu ray thriller THE FROZEN GROUND starring John Cusack as a serial killer and Nicholas Cage in non-animated form as the cop on his trail, the wilderness documentary miniseries North America narrated by Tom Selleck, and Luc Besson’s 2010 French fantasy film THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF ADELE BLANC-SEC, based on Jacques Tardi’s acclaimed series of historical fantasy comic books.

On the older films new to Blu ray front, there’s the 75th Anniversary Limited Collector’s Edition of THE WIZARD OF OZ (Blu-ray 3D / Blu-ray / DVD / UltraViolet + Amazon Exclusive Disc Drive), THE LITTLE MERMAID (Two-Disc Diamond Edition: Blu-ray / DVD + Digital Copy), and Fred Zinneman’s 1953 classic FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, the Vincent Price classic HOUSE OF WAX (also 1953) available in both 3D and standard formats, and the 1925 silent World War I epic THE BIG PARADE.

Also out this week: THE AMITYVILLE HORROR Trilogy box, which contains Stuart Rosenberg's 1979 original, starring James Brolin and Margot Kidder, packaged with the first ever Blu ray releases of AMITYVILLE II: THE POSSESION and AMITYVILLE 3-D - 2 movies that the horror community will be thrilled to finally have on the fancy format, right?

TV season sets releasing today: How I Met Your Mother: Season Eight, Beauty & the Beast: The First Season, Glee: The Complete Fourth Season, New Girl: The Complete Second Season, and the late '80s Vietnam war drama China Beach Season 1.

More later...

THE RAVEN: The Film Babble Blog Review

THE RAVEN (Dir. James McTeigue, 2012)

The questionable casting of John Cusack as Edgar Allan Poe is the least of this film’s problems.

Basically what director McTeigue (V FOR VENDETTA), along with screen-writers Ben Livingston and Hannah Shakespeare (that’s right), have done here is just like what Roland Emmerich and co. did in last year’s ANONYMOUS - they’ve taken the broken shards of centuries-old speculation and made pure modernized malarkey out of it.

Set during the last week of Poe’s life, the film depicts him as a broke drunk, unable to produce works anything like the ones that made him semi-famous. As Cusack’s Poe plods through the foggy Baltimore streets of 1849, a madman has been committing a series of murders based on methods described in Poe’s published work.

The detective on the trail of the killer (an intense unsmiling Luke Evans), doesn’t believe Poe to be a suspect so he gets him to join the investigation, because he knows all the gory details of the stories being severely re-enacted, you see?

There’s a love story wrapped up in all of this with Alice Eve as Poe’s fiancé who gets abducted by the man in black, who is always disappearing into the shadows and fog no matter how many policemen are about. Eve's father (Brendan Gleeson, who really works a lot) had previously disapproved of the Master of the Macabre, but now that his daughter has disappeared, he's on Team Poe.

Though he wrote detective fiction, I’ve never thought of Poe in the role of crime-solving sleuth, and I sure won’t after this fades from my memory. I’m already hearing comparisons to the superior Guy Ritchie/Robert Downey Jr. SHERLOCK HOLMES movies, and they are indeed apt, but the only plus here is that there are no overly stylized slow-motion fight scenes.

There is, however, a sewer chase scene involving gunplay that cribs so heavily from THE THIRD MAN that it made me roll my eyes way back into my brain. But maybe seeing how it goes down here might help discourage the proposed remake of that 1949 Carol Reed classic so maybe that will rank as another plus.

The more convoluted THE RAVEN got, the less it held my interest. There are too many twists on top of twists with NATIONAL TREASURE-style mechanics, and a narrative that often cheats with its handling of the mystery.

It’s competently crafted, with okay to fair cinematography by Danny Ruhlman, but this film so wants to have an engulfing gothic atmosphere and it just can’t cut it.

I also dislike that the Poe they portray is apologetic about the contents of his work. They throw in instances of gore (you can guess what the pendulum sequence is like), presumably to sate the SAW kids, so then why do they give us a meek guy who is guilt ridden about the effect of his writing?

Seems like it would’ve been more interesting if Poe had a dark twisted sensibility (you know the one the actual guy had?), and was secretly turned on by the atrocities foisted upon him.

That might be the real problem this film has - it has plenty of plot twists yet it’s far from twisted enough to really do justice to its subject.

More later...