Welcome to ComingSoon.net’s look at all the major releases hitting this week on Blu-ray and DVD! Check out the gallery viewer below for a look at all the major new releases, TV season sets and catalogue titles.
New releases this week begin with Annabelle, a spinoff of James Wan’s critically acclaimed The Conjuring, which itself also became a rather sizable box office hit. Next up is The Boxtrolls, a charming stop motion tale and LAIKA’s third animated feature film (which brings the studio three-for-three when it comes to Best Animated Picture Academy Award nominations). Then there’s Luc Besson’s action-intense Lucy, starring Scarlett Johansson, which took in an impressive $458 million worldwide.
Recent indie hits include The Mule, a darkly comic crime drama starring Saw‘s Leigh Whannell as a drug mule who gets arrested his first time out. White Bird in a Blizzard hails from director Gregg Arraki, who adapts Laura Kasischke’s powerful 1999 coming of age drama with Shailene Woodley (Divergent, The Fault in Our Stars) in the lead. The Zero Theorem, meanwhile, delivers the latest work from Terry Gilliam with a dystopic tale in a similar vein to Gilliam’s classic Brazil, starring Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds, Big Eyes).
Hitting DVD only this week are William H. Macy’s directorial debut, Rudderless, a smart, musical melodrama with a clever plot twist, starring Billy Crudup (Almost Famous, Watchmen) and Wolves, a supernatural actioner written and directed by X-Men and Watchmen scribe David Hayter.
The Criterion Collection, meanwhile, offers the first-ever HD presentations of Preston Sturges enduring screwball comedy classic The Palm Beach Story and Guy Maddin’s deliriously laugh-out-loud tour of dreams and half-memories, My Winnipeg.
Shout! Factory rounds things off with On Golden Pond, the 1981 drama that took home three Academy Awards and represented the final big screen pairing for the incomparable Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda.
You can check out all the cover art in the gallery viewer below alongside a listing of each release’s special features (where applicable):
This Week on DVD and Blu-ray - January 20, 2015
-
Annabelle
- "The Curse of Annabelle"
- "Bloody Tears of Possession"
- "Dolls of the Demon"
- "A Demonic Process"
- Deleted Scenes -
The Boxtrolls
- "Voicing the Boxtrolls" – The tremendously talented cast members of The Boxtrolls discuss what it's like to voice an animated puppet, what each actor brought to his/her role, whether their personalities were similar to their characters, and more.
- "Inside the Box" – The directors, producers, and creative supervisor of character fabrication Georgina Hayns share the challenges of crafting characters who are inside a box.
- "The Big Cheese: Allergy Snatcher" – The directors and producers are joined by Brian McLean, director of Rapid Prototyping, to discuss how the animation studio LAIKA creates the faces for their puppets. The big story here – literally! - is how Snatcher's face changes shape due to his cheese allergy.
- "Deconstructing the Dance" – Discover how LAIKA combined traditional stop-motion animation with visual effects in order to create the beautiful ballroom dance sequence – and how costume designer Deborah Cook met the challenge of creating costumes that could flow during a dance scene.
- "Think Big: The Mecha Drill" – Standing 5 feet tall and weighing over 75 pounds, the Mecha-Drill is the largest stop motion puppet/prop ever created by LAIKA. Follow its creation from design to completion.
- Commentary with Directors Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable
- Preliminary Animatic Sequences, with Commentary by Stacchi and Annable:
- "Baby In The Trash"
- "Eggs In The Underworld"
- "Man On A Horse"
- "Trubshaw's Inventorium"
- "Cheese Shop"
- Tea And Cheese"
- Production Featurettes:
- "The Nature of Creation"
- "Trolls Right off the Tongue"
- "Allergic to Easy"
- "Let's Dance"
- "On the Shoulders of Giants" -
Lucy
- "The Evolution of Lucy"
- "Cerebral Capacity: The True Science of Lucy" -
The Mule
- Deleted Scenes
- Behind the Scenes Featurettes -
My Winnipeg
- New conversation between Maddin and art critic Robert Enright
- "My Winnipeg" Live in Toronto, a 2008 featurette
- Four 2014 cine-essays by filmmaker Evan Johnson and Maddin on various Winnipegiana
- Five Maddin shorts, the first three with new introductions by the director:
- "Spanky: To the Pier and Back" (2008)
- "Sinclair" (2010)
- "Only Dream Things" (2012)
- "The Hall Runner" (2014)
- "Louis Riel for Dinner" (2014)
- Trailer
- An essay by critic Wayne Koestenbaum -
On Golden Pond
- Audio Commentary with Director Mark Rydell
- "Reflections on Golden Pond" Documentary
- "A Woman of Substance: Katharine Hepbunr Remembered" Featurette
- Theatrical Trailer -
The Palm Beach Story
- New interview with writer and film historian James Harvey about director Preston Sturges
- New interview with actor and comedian Bill Hader about Sturges
- "Safeguarding Military Information," a 1941 World War II propaganda short written by Sturges
- Screen Guild Theater radio adaptation of the film from March 1943
- An essay by critic Stephanie Zacharek -
Rudderless
- "Hear This Song"
- "Hold On" Music Video with Selena Gomez and Ben Kweller
- Deleted Scenes -
White Bird in a Blizzard
- Audio Commentary with Director Gregg Araki and Actress Shailene Woodley
- Deleted and Extended Scenes
- Interview with Director Gregg Araki
- Interview with Actress Shailene Woodley
- AXS TV: A Look at White Bird In A Blizzard
- Theatrical Trailer -
Wolves
-
The Zero Theorem
- Behind the Scenes Featurette
- Visual Effects Featurettes
- Original Trailer
