High Definition Optical Discs (Blu-ray and HD DVD)

Note:  Warner Brothers,Universal and Fox titles which  have the 30-day Netflix/Redbox rental window imposed on them are noted with ** next to the title.

What a great week of options for you today, as if last week's Avatar wasn't a pleasantly fast surprise! A ton to choose from this week after a couple slow weeks. If you are looking for a fun, action packed movie and don't mind subtitles, France's District B-13 is fantastic (the sequel not nearly as good but still entertaining). Then we have quite a few classics in there as well. Imagination of Dr. Parnassus was of course Heath Ledger's last film, and...well, it's weird. Very weird. Lots of cameos from some famous actors couldn't save it for me however as it was just all over the place. But hey, might be your thing. Five Minutes of Heaven was solid by the way--although not nearly as intense as Taken, Liam Neeson delivers a fine performance as usual. 

MissingRemote's Pick of the Week

Tombstone  Had to go with one of my all time favorites in Tombstone. For being such a long movie, I've seen this as much as any other. Val Kilmer as a great Doc Holiday, and a great supporting cast, if you haven't seen this by now....well, you're probably much younger than I am. This is a great film and I'm looking forward to seeing it in high definition and replacing my abused DVD finally.

• Armageddon
• Bayadere
• Beethoven: Fidelio
• Berlioz: Les Troyens
• Buddha
• Disgrace
• District 13: Ultimatum
• District B-13 & District 13: Ultimatum
• Dune **
• Elizabeth **
• Elizabeth: The Golden Age **
• Five Minutes of Heaven
• Frederick Ashton's Tales of Beatrix Potter
• Handel: Acis and Galatea
• The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
• It's Complicated **
• The Jackal **
• La Bayadere
• Mascagni: Cacalleria Rusticana & Leoncavallo: Pagliacci
• Out of Africa: 25th Anniversary **
• Pride & Prejudice
• Ride With The Devil
• Romeo and Juliet
• Tombstone
• Traffic
• Violin Concertos

Reminder:  Warner Brothers,Universal and Fox titles which  have the 30-day rental window imposed on them I am placing ** next to the title.

A healthy amount of releases this week. 44 Inch Chest is a goodie with all sorts of older British actors I quite enjoyed. Crazy Heart was a good one as well, of course it being Jeff Bridge's Oscar-winning performance. I didn't think it was that amazing but it's still worth a watch to be certain. Same thing for Lovely Bones, a fairly sad movie that received a lot of positive reviews that underwhelmed me. Pick of the week however is a no-brainer.

MissingRemote's Pick of the Week

Avatar (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo)** Technically this doesn't come out until Thursday the 22nd, but it's still within the week so I had to give it the nod. I wasn't head over heels like a lot of people, but the movie was incredible nonetheless. 3D fans will be disappointed to not be able to get it (yet), and I'm sure we'll see about 10 more versions of this on Blu-ray before the end, but for now this is a great movie and its a ridiculously fast release schedule given how long it was dominant in the box office. I know I didn't mention anything about the film, but I figured you all already watched it at least once :-)

• 44 Inch Chest
• American Experience: Earth Days
• Basketball Diaries
• Batman
• Batman & Robin
• Batman Forever
• Batman Returns
• Battleship Potemkin
• The Big Gay Musical
• Cheech & Chong's Hey Watch This Blu-Ray
• Crazy Heart **
• Fist of Legend
• A Fork in the Road
• The Lovely Bones
• Minority Report
• Summer Hours
• Telling
• Vivre Sa Vie

This is pretty cool, but I'd imagine a complete showstopper is not being compatible with today's Blu-ray players. Hopefully that will be remedied by the time it hits consumer level.

The new BDXL specification describes High Capacity Recordable and Rewritable discs which will write up to 128GB of content on each disc. These are write-once capacities, with the rewritable discs allowing for 100GB of storage. For now it's just for commercial usage, but the BDA will be launching consumer BDXL discs, which will be handy for those of us planning on investing in a Blu-ray recorder in the near future.

[Gizmodo]

Interesting stat here, as DVD continues to be a dominating force, although no surprise that Blu-ray continues to climb.

it's still interesting to note that for the 1st quarter fo 2010, sales were up 68.5 percent over the same quarter last year. Overall packaged media was up 3.1 percent, which isn't saying that much since overall sales were hit pretty hard last year.

[EngadgetHD]