I see a few interesting releases in Germany from Kinowelt, HMH Hamburger Medien Haus and Ufa.

Fight Club and Dances With Wolves are coming from Kinowelt on December 5th, 2008.

Both could be very popular imports if Fox doesn’t get their act together.

The Hayden Christensen movie Awake will be released by Kinowelt on December 12th, 2008

Anna Karenina (1997), Little Fish and Heavy Petting (2007) are planned by HMH Hamburger Medien Haus for October 16th, 2008.

HMH Hamburger Medien Haus also has Poor Boy’s Game and Da Block Party 1 & 2 Doppelpack coming on November 13th, 2008

Expect Penelope (2006) from Ufa on November 10th, 2008.

Germans will have to wait until June 30th, 2009 for Wall-E!

It was a bit of a surprise today to see a couple of imports listed on Amazon - one of which appears to be imported by them.

The Batman Begins - Bonus Figurine Edition has been listed for Blu-ray for August 5th, 2008, with the distributor listed as WEA Japan. Retail is listed as $299.98, while the Amazon price is $209.95.

(more…)

Among numerous new Blu-ray listings in Germany we see a couple of stand out titles, though English language support is doubtful on both of them.

Jet Li - Once upon a time in China and America is scheduled for release by HMH Hamburger Medien Haus on August 28th, 2008. This is a 1997 title, which has both English and Cantonese languages. Perhaps a good choice for Jet Li fans.

(more…)

Today I added a details page for both Amazon France listings and Amazon Germany listings.

Like the Amazon UK details page, this one will list a number of features as well as actors and director for titles where available from the Amazon database. This kind of information, as well as the cover art, can help a lot in identifying what the titles are.

I will add a details page for the US Amazon list also, giving some insight into the upcoming pre-order titles - details for US releases are not available in the main database before release day (though that may change also in the future).

Looks like Warner has been busy in Germany, adding a number of new titles including a couple of steel book releases.

First up though I wanted to mention the release of Anamorph - Die Kunst zu töten from Koch Media on July 11th, 2008. This title features Willem Dafoe, Scott Speedman and Peter Stormare and is a psychological thriller based on the concept of anamorphosis, a painting technique that manipulates the laws of perspective to create two competing images on a single canvas. Sounds kind of interesting.

Back to Warner - coming up in steel book editions, we see 10.000 BC from Warner Home Video on July 7th, 2008 and Keinohrhasen on August 22nd, 2008. There will also be a version of Keinohrhasen with 2 Blu-ray Discs and a DVD on August 22nd.

Other Warner releases coming to Germany include Zodiac on August 22nd, 2008 (a Paramount title in the USA), The Perfect Storm and The Wild Bunch are also on August 22nd, Fool’s Gold on August 29th, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest on August 20th, 2008.

Germans have quite a wait for Juno, which will be released by Twentieth Century Fox Home on December 31st, 2008.

I know what you are thinking. You just can’t get enough of those Uwe Boll movies.

BloodRayne was so awesome that you would give your left testicle to get that and the sequel on Blu-ray Disc, that 2.5/10 at IMDb be damned!

Well, you are in serious luck. For only a fraction of the value of you left testicle, Spendid Entertainment is bringing both BloodRayne and BloodRayne II: Deliverance to Blu-ray Disc on July 25th.

You know you want it!

Cinefacts is reporting that Kinowelt will have a nice selection of Blu-ray titles planned for the fall / winter 2008 time frame.

While there are no solid release dates yet, we note that a number of these titles are currently at least not available on Blu-ray Disc.

The title list is as follows:

• Basic Instinct
• Cliffhanger
• The Constant Gardener
• Dances with Wolves
• The Deer Hunter
• Fight Club
• Leon (The Professional)
• Mr. & Mrs. Smith
• Rambo - First Blood
• The Fog [1980]
• Total Recal

So far Saw is the only Kinowelt Blu-ray release that we know the Region Coding status of, and it is coded for all regions - so cross your fingers! Personally Fight Club and Leon would be on my list to import, assuming quality releases.

We see that Splendid Entertainment will be releasing Traffic on Blu-ray in Germany on May 30th 2008. Steven Soderbergh won an Oscar for Best Director and Benicio Del Toro won Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his performance in this film.

This release is interesting on a number of levels. Firstly Traffic is a Universal Studios title in the USA, which means no Blu-ray - in the near future at least. Secondly the HD DVD release of Traffic was widely criticized and was demonstrated to be clearly less sharp than even a 720p broadcast version, with many claiming that it was not true high definition but rather an upconverted standard definition master.

It will be interesting to how the German version on Blu-ray will compare to the HD DVD and whether it will be coded for all regions or Region B only.

May is also a busy month for distributor EMS, who have a slate of 10 titles coming out on May 5th 2008. The titles cover a range of titles, notably the Academy Award winning performance ofCharlize Theron in Monster, the Christian Bale film The Machinist and Jean-Claude van Damme in Until Death. The other titles are The Contract, Revenge of the Warrior, Running Scared, Born to Fight, Lady Vengeance, Highlander - The Source and Sky Fighters.

We read that German distributor Splendid Medien is planning 5 Blu-ray titles. The titles are all English language movies, from directors including Martin Scorcese, Steven Soderberg and our favourite German director Uwe Boll.

Most interesting to most will perhaps be Gangs of New York and Traffic - the latter having a controversial HD DVD release only so far, often being accused of being upconverted standard definition rather than a true high definition release. Also of potential interest is the British cult comedy horror Severance. Boll’s movies Bloodrayne and In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale round out the five.

On the down side, while these films all feature DTS HD 7.1 for the German dub, the original English will be presented in regular DTS 5.1. None the less it is interesting to see more titles coming from the smaller volume distributors moving forward.