I usually quite enjoy British films, and Cemetery Junction, released on Blu-ray by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on August 17th, is no exception.

This engaging little movie is a coming of age film set in a small British town in the seventies.

Three friends, Freddy, Bruce and ‘Snork’, are stuck in the rut of their small town lives.

Freddy for one has had enough, and aims to escape through a job selling life insurance.

While his friends remain stuck in their dead end low class jobs, Freddie finds that selling insurance is harder than he imagined.

When the boss’s daughter turns out to be a childhood friend, they rekindle their friendship and Julie turns out to be somewhat of a breath of fresh air.

The three lads struggle with their respective challenges and weaknesses on their personal journeys to a ‘better life’.

The film is a very enjoyable watch that has a lot of wit and charm, and great chemistry between the characters and actors.

The essence of the seventies has been authentically captured and the performances are all excellent and believable.

The cast includes three relatively unknown actors Christian Cooke, Tom Hughes and Jack Doolan in the roles of the three friends, along with well known British actors Ralph Fiennes, Emily Watson and Ricky Gervais.

Cemetery Junction was directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, who are most famous for creating the TV Show The Office in the UK.

While Gervais was an actor in the film, I think it was great to see him focus on the directing side and to make a film with someone else in the main roles.

The movie has been fairly well received by the critics, with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 62% and an IMDb score of 7.2/10.

The video on the disc is an AVC 1080p encode at 26 Mbps, and is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1.

The film definitely carries the look of film from the seventies, and this style is well preserved in the video presented here.

Find full resolution PNG screen captures taken directly from the disc at the details page for Cemetery Junction.

The main audio is lossless DTS-HD Master Audio with 5.1 channels - 24 bits resolution at 48 kHz.

The disc is a dual layer BD50, with 38.3 GB used and is coded for both Region A and Region B.

Supplements for this title incorporate BD Live Network features, including the MovieIQ feature that presents film facts while viewing the movie.

The movie features a pair of audio commentaries, one with the directors and a second with the cast.

Additional footage is presented in the form of both a selection of deleted scenes and a blooper reel.

There is also a fairly extensive set of behind the scenes segments, including an interview with the directors Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

The Lads Look Back features and interview with the main cast for the movie.

The challenges of shooting a film set thirty years ago are studied in the Seventies Style: Production and Costume Design featurette.

Additional production featurettes present a lot more of the hands on film making experience for Cemetery Junction.

I very much enjoyed Cemetery Junction and am happy to recommend it, especially for folks who like Ricky Gervais or British film in general.

The Blu-ray release has a great set of supplements and is another strong release from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

The retail price is $30.95, or order it right now at Amazon for $23.49, saving 24%!

Extras:

• Watch The Directors
• Audio Commentary with Director
• Audio Commentary with Cast
• Deleted Scenes
• Bloopers
• The Lads Look Back: The Stars Discuss Cemetery Junction
• Seventies Style: Production And Costume Design
• Additional Featurettes

Synopsis:

Cemetery Junction tells the funny, touching and universal story of being trapped in a small town and dreaming of escape. In 1970s England, three blue-collar friends spend their days joking, drinking, fighting and chasing girls. Freddie (Christian Cooke) wants to leave their working-class world but cool, charismatic Bruce (Tom Hughes) and loveable loser Snork (Jack Doolan) are happy with life the way it is. When Freddie gets a new job as a door-to-door salesman and bumps into his old school sweetheart Julie (Felicity Jones), the gang are forced to make choices that will change their lives forever.

A bit of a slow week for Blu-ray releases is revealed by the Blu-ray Cover Art Gallery for this week.

New day and date releases are Marmaduke, Harry Brown and Why Did I Get Married Too?.

It is a big week for television releases though, with House: Season Six, The Vampire Diaries: The Complete First Season, Sons of Anarchy: Season Two and NCIS: Los Angeles - The First Season.

Perhaps the highlight for Sam Raimi fans is the release of the original The Evil Dead.

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Hot Amazon sale titles this week include a set of spaghetti westerns featuring Clint Eastwood and directed by the legendary Sergio Leone.

You can pick up The Man with No Name Trilogy on Blu-ray Disc for only $27.99, less than $10 per movie, and a saving of 60% off the retail price.

The set includes A Fistfull Of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad And The Ugly.

Amazon has also listed new Sony Blu-ray titles for $10 or less, including Ghostbusters, Rudy, Hancock, La Femme Nikita, National Security and Secret Window.

Certainly an excellent opportunity to pick up Ghostbusters at over 65% off!

Amazon has added some new promotions featuring recent Fox and MGM Blu-ray releases.

You can currently save over 62% on Hot Tub Time Machine, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, Crazy Heart and Our Family Wedding - all only $14.99.

Also you can get Little Miss Sunshine, The Pink Panther or My Life in Ruins for only $9.99, saving over 71%.

Additionally I see that Sony titles We Own the Night and The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep are discounted 74% to $10.

Some great bargains to be had - no doubt all for a limited time.

Lots of new releases in the Blu-ray Cover Art Gallery for the week, though few are high profile.

Perhaps the highlight for the week is the release of Lost: The Complete Sixth Season, rounding out the popular series on Blu-ray Disc.

Also on TV we have The Simpsons: The Thirteenth Season, which seems like an unusual choice given that we are 20 seasons in on this show.

The day and date release of Jennifer Lopez in The Back-up Plan is one of the few studio movie releases for the week.

Fans of  Bob Hoskins may want to check out Image Entertainment releases Mona Lisa and The Long Good Friday.

Other British notables from Image include Withnail and I and Time Bandits, though Time Bandits has a 1080i encode for some weird reason.

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While the Blu-ray market share was still in double figures, it was down to 11% for the week ending August 15th, according to Home Media Magazine.

The $14.42M revenue for the week was not a terrible number, however it was down again compared to the same week a year ago.

Date Night from Fox took the top of the chart, ahead of last week’s top seller Kick-Ass from Lionsgate and Clash of the Titans from Warner in 3rd place.

New release Death at a Funeral from Sony Pictures managed 4th place, ahead of Avatar from Fox in 5th position.

Recent Fox releases Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief took 6th place and 11th place on the chart respectively.

Buoyed by  promotional pricing at Amazon, Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Series from Universal appeared on the chart in 12th position.

Other sale priced  titles to make the chart included Gangs of New York from Disney in 17th place and Terminator 2: Judgment Day from Lionsgate in 18th place.

Date Night had a fairly decent 20% market share, while the other major new release Death at a Funeral had only 15% Blu-ray market share.

Kick-Ass continues to live up to its name with 41% market share, edged out by Avatar with 42%.

On the other end of the scale, mark up a 10% market share for Diary of a Wimpy Kid and 12% for The Bounty Hunter.

More typical market share is in the 20% range, with Hot Tub Time Machine from MGM at 25%, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief at 23% and Warner’s Cop Out at 21% Blu-ray market share for the week.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment gives us another Day and Date Blu-ray release with Death at a Funeral, which hit shelves August 10th, 2010.

This movie is a remake of the British film with the same title, and features some of the top African American comedians in a dark, often bad taste comedy.

Aaron Barnes’ father recently passed away and the funeral starts off badly when the wrong body is delivered, and only goes down hill from there.

Challenged with sibling rivalry, acid masquerading as Valium, an extortionist, a naked man on the roof and a wife that needs to conceive a child, Aaron can only hope to deliver a great eulogy.

The comedy of errors continues its downward spiral as Aaron goes from crisis to crisis, attempting to keep the funeral sane and respectful.

The film started off a little slowly for my liking, but once things got rolling it certainly picked up.

The movie has a remarkable ensemble cast that includes comedy stars Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence, Danny Glover, Tracy Morgan and Luke Wilson, along with Loretta Devine, Regina Hall, Keith David, Ron Glass, Kevin Hart, James Marsden, Zoe Saldana and Columbus Short.

Interestingly enough, Peter Dinklage reprises the role that he had in the original film.

Death at a Funeral was directed by Neil LaBute, the man behind Lakeview Terrace and the remake of The Wicker Man.

The movie received a pretty cold reception from the critics, with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 38% and an IMDb score of 5.0/10.

Death at a Funeral had a fairly decent run at the cinema however, reaching $42.7M at the US box office.

The video on the disc is an AVC 1080p encode at 30 Mbps, and is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1.

The movie was shot digitally and the Blu-ray looks both sharp and clean.

For full resolution PNG screen captures taken directly from the disc you can check the details page for Death at a Funeral.

The main audio is lossless DTS-HD Master Audio with 5.1 channels - 24 bits resolution at 48 kHz.

The disc is a dual layer BD50, with 44.8 GB used and is coded for All Regions.

Supplements for this title include BD Live Network features, including the MovieIQ feature where you can see IMDb movie details along while screening the movie.

The disc also features ‘traditional’ features like an audio commentary with the director, along with additional footage in a gag reel and a selection of deleted scenes.

The behind the scenes featurette Last Rites, Dark Secrets covers the production of the movie along with interviews with the cast and crew.

The Family Album featurette highlights the characters in the movie, featuring interviews with the actors that play them.

The cast and crew’s feelings on the topic of death are presented in the Death for Real featurette.

This release includes a Digital Copy for both iTunes and Windows Media, as well as a PSP digital copy that can be transferred off the Blu-ray Disc from a Playstation 3.

Death at a Funeral is a fairly entertaining movie that for me didn’t really live up to expectations given the talent involved.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment’s Blu-ray release has a decent set of supplemental features and looks and sounds the part.

The retail price is $34.95, or order it right now at Amazon for $21.99, saving 37%!

Extras:

• Gag Reel
• Deleted Scenes
• Behind The Scenes
• Audio Commentary

Synopsis:

Death At A Funeral is a hilarious day in the life of an American family come together to put a beloved husband and father to rest. As mourners gather at the family home, shocking revelations, festering resentments, ugly threats, blackmail and a misdirected corpse unleash lethal and riotous mayhem.

Kick-Ass propelled the Blu-ray market share to a healthier 14% for the week ending August 8th, according to Home Media Magazine.

Blu-ray revenue was $22.89M for the week, up over 40% compared to last year after two weeks of lagging 2009 figures.

Lionsgate’s Kick-Ass was easily to top seller for the week, ahead of Clash of the Titans from Warner in 2nd place.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid from Fox, Anchor Bay’s The Crazies and Avatar from Fox rounded out the top five on the chart for the week.

New release Roman Polanski’s The Ghost Writer from Summit took 9th position, ahead of Disney title James and the Giant Peach in 11th place.

Recent release Repo Men from Universal came in 12th place, ahead of another recent release Batman: Under the Red Hood from Warner in 14th position.

Kick-Ass was a very strong seller for Blu-ray Disc with 49% market share, while Diary of a Wimpy Kid was at the other end of the scale with just 12% of sales on Blu-ray Disc.

Other top sellers with strong Blu-ray performance include Clash of the Titans with 36%, Avatar with 42% and Hot Tub Time Machine with 40% Blu-ray Disc market share.

However even these were beaten by bargain priced titles The Crazies with 74% and Brooklyn’s Finest with 60% Blu-ray market share.

Market share for other new releases included The Ghost Writer with 23% and on the TV side  Heroes: Season 4 had 18% market share on Blu-ray Disc.

The Blu-ray Cover Art Gallery for this week reveals a pretty slow week for Blu-ray titles.

Perhaps the top release for the week is the latest season release of Dexter with Dexter: The Fourth Season.

New Day and Date releases include the latest Ricky Gervais production Cemetery Junction and the Miley Cyrus vehicle The Last Song.

Over to classic cinema we have the Criterion release Black Orpheus and Warner adds another Digibook title with Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

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Quite a few titles of interest in the Blu-ray Cover Art Gallery for this week.

We have a couple of day and date comedy release, with the Steve Carell in Date Night and Niel LaBute’s Death at a Funeral from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

On the catalog side, classic National Lampoon Chevy Chase movies National Lampoon’s Vacation and National Lampoon’s European Vacation hit the shelves today courtesy of Warner Home Video.

The Criterion adds another new title today with the release of Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb and The Weinstein Company has a selection of new Dragon Dynasty titles, including early Jet Li movies Tai Chi Master and The Legend.

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