Happy March 13th (and a very special one at that)!
Well, your humble reviewer has gone through quiet a bit in the last several days. I’ll try to make it as brief as possible; work sucks ass. Let me count the ways; I came in at 1:30 in the morning once on a day I wasn’t working, I helped my boss repel some REALLY explicit propositions by one of his employees when we were in New York City on business, I get some medical attention to him when he has a stroke on ANOTHER trip to New York, and what do I get as re…urn for all these favors? I get assigned to something I don’t want to do, doing work that will get outsourced in a year, with management power I don’t have. So yeah, work sucks.
But there’s a silver lining to it all. As of Sunday night, your humble reviewer, yes, yours truly, is now a format neutral soldier in the next-gen video wars. As part of my new “assignment”, I get some severance money from the project I’m leaving (one I wanted to stay on for anyway), and I said ‘screw it, Bond is coming out soon’. And since now, according to Value Electronics’ Robert Zohn, the 2nd generation Samsung won’t come out until June (from the end of March) and won’t have as many bells and whistles as many would expect, why not do it, right? I’ll even still have some money leftover when I take my trip to Hawaii at the end of May. Now don’t get all hysterical on me, I only have Reservoir Dogs and Motorstorm right now and I’ve not even scratched the surface with it yet, but so far, I like what I’m seeing.
OK, so after that monumental bit of news (nay, an announcement), let’s get to even more announcements, shall we? DreamWorks jumps into the next-gen fray with Dreamgirls on both platforms on 5/1. Later that month, Paramount releases a two-disc Flags of our Fathers on both formats also, on 5/22 to be exact, while Special Editions of Coming to America and Trading Places get released on 6/5. Warner will be releasing The Fountain on 5/15, and Universal is getting off the proverbial schneid to release some HD-DVD titles on 5/29, namely Lost in Translation, The Big Lebowski, Midnight Run, The Frighteners, The River and Dragonheart. In more close to the now releases, Smokin’ Aces is due for an HD-DVD release on 4/17. As far as releases this week go, if you like Daniel Craig and have a Blu-Ray player, this is your week, as not only Casino Royale comes out, but his gateway film (and a good one at that) Layer Cake comes out on Blu-ray. The Holiday is set for release as well, along with the sports flick Hoosiers. HD-DVD is sans titles this week.
That’s all for this week, so if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta go pick up Casino Royale now. Until next time high definers, keep the brightness low and the resolution high!
