In what universe is a weekend jail visit considered a “family emergency” when it comes to missing your job? Can anyone answer this for me? By all means, send your answers (or curious situations) to yours truly. I’m curious to hear what the responses are.
The big news in the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray battle is that Training Day, Rumor Has It and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang arrived on Blu-Ray this week, after being available in HD-DVD for a little while now. And the verdict? Well, at least according to Pet…r Bracke (of highdefdigest.com), the results appear to favor HD-DVD, but only on points. The response from the Blu-Ray camp appears to be along the lines of “well, the Samsung player had a faulty internal issue that we’re working on now”. The funny thing is that there have been some advance reports of demos with the Pioneer Blu-Ray player, and the early line on those appears to be better, however not earth shattering as Blu advocates would hope. However, there’s still a long way to go before someone actually sees (and pays over $1,000 for) one of these things, so we’ll see what happens.
Warner Brothers continues to releases more catalog titles from its catalog, announcing Caddyshack, The Searchers and Good Night and Good Luck (which was previously due to come out on 8/1) for release on 8/22. While on the other side, Blu-Ray gets the addition of Reservoir Dogs on 10/24 (day and date with the SD version). And Warner decided to play both ends against the middle and will be releasing The Lake House on 9/26 as a SD, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray release, so that should be fun comparing also.
In more recent release info, the new stuff coming out this week on the HD front is Unleashed, Ray and Animal House (Universal’s first combo release, if I recall correctly), and Paramount comes out with the remake of The Italian Job, U2: Rattle and Hum and Aeon Flux. Nothing new from Blu-Ray at this point, however Sony releases a pantload of films next week, including (and most interesting for me) Black Hawk Down.
Until next week, high definers, keep your brightness set low and your resolution set high!
