Avatar coming out on Blu-Ray and DVD

Avatar arrives on Blu-Ray and DVD April 22, which is a Thursday, but coming out on that day because it is Earth Day. It is available to pre-order on Amazon and Best Buy, and I am sure there are other video websites that have it ready to get. This release will not have any extra features, it will only be the movie, but I hear what they are trying to do is give the Blu-Ray the best audio and video quality possible, and of course, no 3D yet either, but none the less, a great movie to own, so I plan to order my copy very shortly. For those that want extra features, they will be re releasing Avatar as an multi disc Ultimate Edition in November, and as for 3D, rumors are it won't come out on 3D till next year or even later. I can't blame them, I'll be honest, Avatar is probably one of the best movies to use 3D effectively as an experience, and not a gimmick, but 3D HDTVs are brand new, and giving the new technology time to catch on is the smartest idea instead of releasing what could possibly be a bad copy of 3D Avatar this year, and then later have everyone re-buy it to get better quality, even though they usually do that a lot, but still. Anyway, I am excited for Avatar to come out on Blu-Ray, actually I am very excited. I will catch it one more time in theaters in 3D before it leaves the theaters.

Alice in Wonderland, 3D HDTV and Blu-Ray

First off, we have passed the Oscar season, and The Hurt Locker won the main prize. It was a pretty good movie, I ended up watching it a couple of days after, they did a pretty good job with it. There were some fun moments during the show, Ben Stiller was great when he came forth looking like one of the Na'vi from Avatar.

I saw Alice in Wonderland last week, and it was a really good movie. Very entertaining, and of course has caught the public's attention. I recommend seeing, whether you see it 3D or not, it is a fun movie to watch.

Now I wish to talk about 3D. As you may be aware, this month they will be releasing 3D HDTVs and 3D Blu-Ray players, I found them on display at Best Buy today, they looked kind of cool, but I will have to wait they get an actual 3D Blu-Ray disc, as they were playing Up (which was released in theaters in 3D, but on Blu-Ray it was released in 2D), and could see a small difference, but not a very dramatic difference as I have seen in theaters. It is cool to see them bringing the 3D technology to the home, but it will be a while for me to adopt this technology. I am sure there are many that feel the same way as I do. It will definitely be cool when they release Avatar on 3D Blu-Ray.

As far as DVDs and Blu-Rays are concerned, you can find The Blind Side and Fantastic Mr. Fox next week in stores, as well as Toy Story 1 and 2 on Blu-Ray. This week has The Princess and the Frog, and on Saturday, Twilight fans will probably want to make a stop at the store for New Moon. Oh yeah, look for Sherlock Holmes on March 30. I have picked up a few Blu-Ray movies lately. Where the Wild Things are looks great on Blu-Ray, and sounds really good. I also got Ponyo and Evangelion 1.11, I will have to give Ponyo a look at very soon, but Evangelion looks and sounds great. One more note on Blind Side, and I believe Sherlock Holmes will have a Blu-Ray and DVD combo set, so you can get them on Blu-Ray, and even though you may not have a Blu-Ray player yet, you have a DVD copy to watch till you actually get a Blu-Ray player. Oh yeah, Armageddon comes out on Blu-Ray at the end of April, I am excited. There is also going to be a lot of old movies that will make it to Blu-Ray this year besides new ones, like movies done by Steven Spielberg, so figure out the ones you really want the most and save money for those ones.

Big Windup!

There are a lot of TV shows out there that get a ton of attention, and they are really good. For example, Seinfeld had a lot of attention, mainly when it reached the middle of the series. There are also really good shows that don’t get a lot of attention, one of those that I discovered this past year is Big Windup!, it is an anime TV series that was released in Japan back in 2007 in a season of 26 episodes. It is about a High School Baseball team, mainly about one character, Ren Mihashi, who is one pitcher with a lot of bad luck in the past, he was the ace pitcher back in Junior High because his grandfather was the owner of the school, so he was made the ace pitcher, and his teammates didn’t like that so they wouldn’t help him or encourage him, he doesn’t have a lot of self-confidence, so he leaves the school and wants to quit baseball altogether, but he ends up meeting the new formed team at Nishiura High, and the catcher Takaya Abe who is willing to work with Mihashi and give him the confidence boost he needs to win. Mihashi actually is a really good pitcher, he can control his pitches and has a variety of different pitches, and Abe is able to know what he needs to throw to strike out the other team. It is a really great show, great characters, and I honestly have learned a lot about Baseball. Funimation picked it up back in 2008, and they started releasing it last year, they started off by putting episodes of the show on Hulu and their own website, and YouTube, at least the first 7 episodes. Then they released the series in two DVD sets, one in August and then the next in September. They are releasing a second season of the show in Japan this Spring, unfortunately, Funimation won’t be picking that one up because it wasn’t very successful here in DVD sales, which is too bad. Who knows, maybe people will find the series, and it will get licensed over here one day. However, you can watch the first four episodes of the series for free online here.

Seinfeld

In continuing about some of the shows I watch, one of them is Seinfeld. I am sure many of you have heard of it. I would say the show has become more popular since it entered repeats. I myself have become a fan after the show ended in 1998. It is a very funny show. So what is it about, well, in one word, "Nothing". That's right, it's about nothing. Seinfeld and a group of his friends going out in New York City, and usually end up causing havoc. They try to start relationships that in the end of the episode, they usually come to a brutal end. You know that once you start the episode, that you know that everything they try to accomplish doesn't go through. Why watch this show, because it's HILARIOUS. So many of the comments and so much of what happens is great. Seriously, if I am having a bad day, or I am not in the best mood, I will put this on and I will usually feel better. If you haven't seen it, I guarantee you don't have to look hard to watch one episode. Plus, all of the seasons are out on DVD, and they are starting to get cheaper every day. So check it out if you haven't seen it.

Avatar: The Last Airbender

I keep talking about all the different movies out there, and there were times when I talk about DVD releases that I mention a couple of TV shows. I decided to go through a few TV shows this week that are favorites of mine. Keep in mind that a lot of the TV shows that I will talk about aren’t ones I usually watch off TV itself, I usually find them on DVD or on the internet.

The first one I want to talk about is Avatar: The Last Airbender. Figured this would be a good one to bring up because they are doing a film adaptation of this show, and it will be hitting theaters July 2. The show was found on Nickelodeon, and I believe it is still on Nicktoons, if you have trouble finding it on TV, you can easily find the season sets on DVD, there are three seasons. This show is about Aang, who is known as the Avatar, who is suppose to bring balance to a world that is in darkness. This world is divided into four different tribes, water, earth, fire, and air. Each tribe can control one of these elements, for example, people of the water tribe can control water. The Avatar, however, can control all of the elements. The show starts off with a couple of kids in the water tribe that discover a boy in a big iceberg, they free him and he turns out to be the Avatar who had disappeared 100 years before, and they follow Aang on a journey to help him learn all of the different elements so he can face the Firelord, the leader of the Fire Nation who is taking over the whole world, and bring balance back into the world. What I really like about the show, besides a lot of the cool animation, is that it has a great story to it, and each episode has a great moral to it. Definitely something that I believe is worth checking out.

By the way, you can find the trailer for The Last Airbender movie by following this link. Looks promising, but I will have to wait till the movie arrives. The trailer can also be seen before Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. I haven't seen any of the new offerings yet, but this weekend Valentine's Day was number one making a total of $66 million throughout the long weekend. Of course, Avatar is still running strong, it is now standing at $661 million, impressive. Shutter Island arrives in theaters this weekend, and not much of anything else this week. Next weekend, Cop Out comes out in theaters as well, and then the following week we will see the release of Alice in Wonderland.

Valentine's Day Weekend

First off, Avatar is now the champion at the box office, in the United States, and around the world. It has sunk Titanic. Congratulations to Avatar. If you still haven't seen it, you should. As well, the Oscars have been announced, you can follow this link to see the complete list of what was nominated. They have some pretty good choices. Of course there are still plenty of good movies that didn't make it in the nominations.

Now moving on to this weekend, what else is there to do on Valentine's Day besides eating chocolate, you can go see a movie, as there are a few different choices this weekend, besides all of the previous movies that have come out. We have Percy Jackson and the Olympians, which is based on a series of books of the same name, then we have Valentine's Day which has a pile of well known actors, (remember He Is Just Not That Into You) but should be decent, and then we have The Wolfman, which was suppose to come out last year, but didn't. Seems like the movie that should come out during Halloween and not Valentine's Day, well it does give us a different choice. Plus there are a lot of other good movies that are out as well, When In Rome is actually a really funny movie, pretty cheesy but it really made me laugh in many areas.

As for DVD and Blu-Ray, one movie that I recommend is Zombieland, (it's rated R, but I saw it using a device called a ClearPlay DVD player, you can go to www.clearplay.com to learn more about it, but it's a DVD player that can skip through graphic violence and sexual content, and mute bad language, so I can enjoy a movie without all that stuff) Zombieland was hilarious, and it had a decent story. There are some more movies arriving on Blu-Ray and DVD this month, but nothing I would consider excited. In March will have plenty of good releases to choose from. Where the Wild Things Are arrives March 2, along with Ponyo (also three of Miyazaki's films will be rereleased on DVD, Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, and Kiki's Delivery Service) and also 2012, March 9 will see the release of Old Dogs, Planet 51, and Evangelion 1.0 You Are Not Alone will be released on Blu-Ray (which I really enjoyed). On March 16 we will see Princess and the Frog on the shelves, along with Did You Hear About the Morgans?, The Fourth Kind, Astro Boy, Armored, and that week Twilight: New Moon will arrive (for all the Twilight fans). March 23, look for Blind Side and The Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Toy Story will arrive on Blu-Ray. Then March 30, look for Sherlock Holmes. And I will throw in one more title to find, on April 6, Lord of the Rings trilogy will arrive on Blu-Ray (but in theatrical edition only, fans of the extended versions will have to wait a little longer), so there is much to look forward to.

January Update

Sorry, it's been way too long since I have last written on my blog. There has been plenty that has happened since. First off, Avatar is making a lot of money. Since the Friday estimates, it stands at $525 million, and by the end of this weekend, it should surpass The Dark Knight, which ended it's run with $533 million, and hopefully soon it will surpass Titanic which stands at $600 million, and become the number one movie of all time in the USA, and it's also coming close to becoming the number one movie in the world money wise. (Expect me to make an announcement when it finally surpasses Titanic) That's pretty impressive, if you haven't seen it yet, you should go see it. In fact, go see it in 3D, it is a great experience. Another good one that came out during the Christmas break was Sherlock Holmes.

As for the releases in January, there have been a few. One movie that got a wide release was The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, if you don't know what it is, it was actually the film that Heath Ledger was working on when he died in January 2008. They had to make some changes to the movie to deal with the big loss, which included bringing Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law to help fill in his role. It is a really bizarre movie, but it is very entertaining, in fact I want to go see it again. Another movie that got a wide release was The Lovely Bones, haven't seen the whole thing, but it looks good from what I have seen. Plenty of other releases this month, the first weekend had Daybreakers and Leap Year. The next weekend had The Book of Eli, which looks good in my opinion. And the kids movie The Spy Next Door. This weekend we have Legion, The Tooth Fairy, and Extraordinary Measures. I have heard the latter is really good. This month will finish with When In Rome, and Edge of Darkness. When In Rome looks like a decent comedy that should have a few laughs, it has a decent cast attached to it, so hopefully it will be good. Edge of Darkness stars Mel Gibson, who plays a father who loses his daughter, and she is involved in some conspiracy, it looks interesting. The following months have pretty solid movies that should be coming out, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief looks rather good, and it arrives in February, along with Shutter Island. We get Tim Burton's take on Alice in Wonderland in March, plus a remake of Clash Of The Titans. We have some pretty good movies coming.

As for DVD and Blu-Ray wise, there have been some pretty good releases. One that I did get on Blu-Ray was 9, and the quality is very good, both video and audio wise. This Tuesday, we will see the release of Surrogates this Tuesday, and also we will get Michael Jackson's This Is It. Plus Whip It! too. This year will hopefully have some really good catalogue releases on Blu-Ray, like Armageddon, which would look good on Blu-Ray. I will keep you posted on the main things that come out on Blu-Ray.