Nightbreed – The Director’s Cut (Blu-ray Review)
Within in two months’ time, Scream Factory has brought horror fans two holy grails of their fandom. Last month it was the legendary producer’s cut of Halloween: The Curse Of Michael Myers which had been circulating on ratty VHS bootlegs for almost two decades. This month, its one that fans haven’t really been able to get their hands on but had heard about for years; Clive Barker’s intended version of his critical and box office disappointment, Nightbreed. Scream Factory, along with Barker and restoration producer Alan Miller have got on board to put together the film from recently found elements to put together the definitive cut of the movie. In this review I am only covering the release of the Director’s Cut standalone release. There is also a limited edition (limited to 10,000, still available as of writing this review) that contains the theatrical cut as well as a disc dedicated to more bonus material. Continue reading ‘Nightbreed – The Director’s Cut (Blu-ray Review)’
Summer blockbusters are always a thing to look forward to. Big movies are like events to hit up. Well, the small screen now has its own movie event tradition in the summer. Sharknado took viewers and social media by storm last July. A second film was inevitable. This past July, Ian Ziering, Tara Reid and director Anthony C Ferrante returned for Sharknado 2: The Second One. This time SyFy was ready and had this thing ready to be the social media viewing experience of the year. They even named the film from their contest to tweet them your idea for a title. They went with this one, even though I thought Patton Oswalt’s Shaknadeux was far more fun and clever. For a third go around, I’d like to throw my idea for it to be called Sharknado! Sharknado! Sharknado! into the basket. 
Pee-wee’s Playhouse was very much an integral part of my childhood viewing. I was the prime audience back in the day. Every Saturday morning I would get up, have my marshmallow-y cereal and watch my cartoons. Pee-wee’s Playhouse was always the very last show on in the morning. The networks usually transitioned by having some live action stuff on at the end of the morning, like say Saved By The Bell and California Dreams. Pee-wee’s Playhouse was all sorts of things to me. It was wild, hilarious, fun and even some of the things on the show made me uneasy and creeped me out. It was jam packed and loading me with all sorts of emotion. Watching the show was equivalent to a massive sugar rush. Everybody my age had themselves a Pee-Wee Herman doll with the pull string and we also constantly quoted him and had our own impressions of him finely tuned ready to dial up at the right moment. And now I get to relive all of that through this fantastic new Blu-ray release from the amazing folks over at Shout! Factory. 
Last October, Scream Factory ghoulishly delighted everyone for Halloween with the release of The Vincent Price Collection. Six of the iconic horror actor’s works in one set with some definite gems of bonus features. Of those, there were the introductions and parting words for many of the films from the Iowa PBS archives from the 80s that had price discussing each film before and after it in a haunting library like setting. This year, Scream Factory is back with another volume of Price, up’ing the ante to now seven titles. This box set also has more commercially appealing titles to it as well, as it contains classics like The Raven, The House On Haunted Hill, Return Of The Fly, The Comedy Of Terrors and The Last Man On Earth to name some. It is with great pleasure that I return to these and share my experience. 
Penny Dreadful The Complete First Season is a title that I’m very excited to have received this week to review on Blu-ray. I was able to check out the first episode of Penny Dreadful utilizing Showtime On Demand this summer, but due to my hectic lifestyle and work schedule I was never able to follow up on the rest of the series even though I really wanted to. Life’s not always rainbows and puppies, but I digress. I’m just overjoyed that I finally now have the chance to watch and hopefully enjoy all eight episodes in glorious 1080p on my favorite format. It’s a series that NPR calls “scary, seductive, surprising and smart” and Variety claims that Penny Dreadful is “solidly entertaining, well casted and oozing with atmosphere.” Although I did not need them to make my mind up for me those two critiques alone are encouraging enough to make me want to watch this, but if you need more reasons, try this one on for size. The series stars the wildly popular Eva Green, famous for her sexy wardrobe or lack of in most recent roles such as 
What seems to be little known is that there were actually two versions of Halloween: The Complete Collection back on September 23rd. Most every bit of press and excitement wen toward the Deluxe Limited Edition that came with 15 discs. And rightfully so. There was another, more basic edition, released as well. That one is only 10 discs and is pretty much just the discs with the regular cut of the movie and that’s it. So, gone are your original Anchor Bay release of the original, the TV Cut of Halloween II (1981), The Producer’s Cut of The Curse Of Michael Myers, Rob Zombie’s 4 hour making of documentary from his remake and disc 15 which included the extended cut of the original and the retrospective documentaries on Return and Revenge Of Michael Myers. This edition runs a bit cheaper and I guess is for someone who is more concerned with saving shelf space (its much more condensed packaging) and doesn’t care all too much about alternate cuts or bonus material. Let’s take a look at what it does include. 
Scream Factory’s latest dip into the modern era of horror comes to us from Columbia in the form of the film The Squad. It revolves around a military group in search of what caused some lost communication at a base that has gone dark. I really got to go into this film completely blind, as I really couldn’t find many stats on it in my research. Looking for stats or a production history on this thing sort of came empty from the normal generic information places (Because I’d like to avoid spoilers. But, since its got the Scream Factory brand label to it, you know they saw something in the film and it’ll be pretty much worth the watch. 
Disney is bringing back Sleeping Beauty with a new Diamond Edition. You’ll remember it was previously released in a 50th Anniversary Platinum Edition back in 2008. That version was also the first of their animated fairy tale films of any era to be released on Blu-ray. That was back during my last year of doing Quality Control for Blu-ray and DVD, and that release was a big deal as Disney was trying their best to squeeze everything possible out of the format even back then. There were many a sleepless nights over Sleeping Beauty. But, in the end, they released a pretty fantastic product. This new edition isn’t quite as elaborate as the previous one, but does provide most of the essentials and brings some new bonus features to the table as well as foreign audio tracks that weren’t available before. To get it out of the way, and make a long story short before we start the review; if you own the Platinum Edition of Sleeping Beauty, hang on to it. 
The fourth season of Cartoon Network’s hit show Adventure Time comes to Blu-ray this Tuesday from Warner Bros Home Entertainment. This show has proven to be a ratings champion for the network and is currently in this sixth season. Adventure Time will go longer than that, though, as its been renewed for a seventh season next year. By that time the show, still early in its life (premiered in 2010) will impressively have collected over two hundred episodes. The show produces its episodes in eleven minute increments which allows it to climb to such a eye poppingly large number. However high that number is currently (172 to be exact), this show has shown no real signs of losing and steam and continues to keep its audience invested as shown by its solid and increasing ratings. 
Lukas Moodysson directs We Are The Best!, a film adapted from the graphic novel Never Goodnight authored by Coco Moodysson. Coco just so happens to be the wife of Lukas, so I’m sure this was an easy deal to make. The film screen as a special presentation at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2013. It was released in limited capacity in the United States at the end of May this year, following releases in its homeland of Sweden and one in Denmark. We Are The Best! has received high marks from critics as well as scoring very well on popular films sites like Rotten Tomatoes and MetaCritic.
Robert Rodriguez’s episodic version of he and Quentin Tarantino’s classic From Dusk Till Dawn seems like it fulfills many trends going on in television at the moment. Easily, it covers the fascination with vampires. That’s a given. And with that it also is another horror television show which is all the rage. Thirdly, its taking a feature film and elongating it into a television series, attempting to enrich a familiar story with more patience, plot and character development. It was the flagship program for Robert Rodriguez El Rey network that launched this year. El Rey is a sort of network devoted to many things Grindhouse. Or, the type of obscure or exploitation films that inspired and continue to fuel he and Quentin Tarantino’s film careers. Seriously, watching commercials for some of the movies they air on the network just makes me want to sit and watch a lazy Saturday marathon of the cult classics they’re showing. From Dusk Till Dawn the series definitely wants to fit into that mold. 
Edge of Tomorrow, not to be confused title-wise with the Blu-ray’s cover art tagline “Live, Die, Repeat,” is the movie we’re here to discuss in length today and I’m not sure who it was, either Aaron or Gerard here, but I remember it like it was only yesterday (no pun to the subject matter of this film), when one of them recommended to the Why So Blu clan members that they needed to check out the trailer for Edge of Tomorrow. Come to think of it, Aaron probably had a leg up on us all last year with his coverage of three Warner Bros. titles 
Religious films having been making their presence felt at the box office lately with the likes of films like God’s Not Dead. There seems to be a stronger audience than ever that’s willing to bust out their wallet for films with that kind of theme at the box office. Persecuted comes in the form of a religious political thriller. The film was shot in Albuquerque, New Mexico and then premiered at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville, Tennessee in February of this very year. It was also shown at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington DC. The film impressively sports actors James Remar, Bruce Davison and Dean Stockwell. 
