The Blu-ray Cover Art Gallery for the week of the 7th of March 2010 features the first Paramount title in a little while - Up in the Air is a great little film and well worth a look.

Other day and date titles for today from Sony and Disney both include DVD and Digital Copy, though neither Planet 51 nor Old Dogs were well received by the critics.

On the more dramatic side, Lionsgate has Precious and The Stoning of Soraya M., while Sony goes with a family movie Hachi: A Dog’s Tale and ultraviolence with The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day.

Click on any cover to see the details for the title.

Best Buy has a number of new Blu-ray promotions this week, including Half Off, Oscar titles and movies from $10.99.

Titles at $10.99 include Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, Dark City, Blow, The Perfect Storm, The Lost Boys and Final Destination.

As always you can order online and have them shipped or pick them up in store.

The Blu-ray market share was back up to 13% on a revenue of $20.96M for the week ending February 28th, according to Home Media Magazine.

While it was good to see double figure market share and revenue over $20M, it was a bit of a strange week, perhaps with significant sales promotions for certain titles.

Law Abiding Citizen from Anchor Bay was again in 1st place, ahead of Pixar’s Up in 2nd place - and hint that promotional pricing was in play.

The best selling new title was Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths from Warner in 3rd place, ahead of Star Trek from Paramount and Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian from Fox in 4th and 5th.

Other new titles didn’t fare quite as well, with The Informant! from Warner in 10th place,  Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant from Universal in 12th place, and The Box from Warner down in 15th position.

Looking at per title market share, we see almost the exact opposite of last week.

Top selling Law Abiding Citizen had a strong 41% Blu-ray Disc market share while Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths also performed well with 29% share.

New Warner titles The Informant! and The Box sold19% and 18% on Blu-ray Disc respectively, while Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant had 21% share.

Strong signs of promotional pricing were evident with a number of titles outselling their DVD counterparts.

Up had 55% market share, Star Trek an amazing 77% market share, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian had 68% and Inglourious Basterds from Universal squeaked in with 52% Blu-ray share.

I was a little surprised that Everybody’s Fine from Disney/Miramax didn’t get a Blu-ray Disc release, so no market share for that title at all.

Amazon has recently reduced the pricing on a number of television season box sets.

Perhaps the best deal is a saving of 69% on the Star Trek: The Original Series - Season 3 box, now only $39.99.

Additionally you can save 64% on Fringe: The Complete First Season and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - The Complete Second Season, both only $24.99.

Further savings on Warner titles include Supernatural: The Complete Fourth Season for $26.49,  Nip/Tuck: The Complete Fourth Season for $26.99 and Smallville - The Complete Sixth Season, Smallville: The Complete Seventh Season or Supernatural - The Complete Third Season for $27.99.

A great chance to add some television titles to the collection!

The Time Traveler’s Wife, released on Blu-ray by New Line Home Video on February 9th, is an interesting fusion of a love story with science fiction.

The film follows Clare and her unusual relationship with the time traveling Henry, who mysteriously travels through time and space when he becomes emotional.

When Henry travels he finds himself naked in his new location, and has to find the nearest shelter and clothing, never sure when he will return to the present time.

Henry has no control over when he travels, where and when he ends up, nor how long he stays, and he travels into both the past and future.

The film mostly follows Henry’s time line, with occasional flash backs to help establish Clare’s time line also.

When Henry first meets Clare, he does not know who she is, though she has already fallen in love with him through his many visits into the past.

The truth of the time line in the movie is well maintained, and the characters struggle with the facts that they know from the future and the possibility of changing their destiny.

Personally I found the concept intriguing and the movie to be quite enjoyable, though it fits into the thought provoking side rather than the action side of science fiction.

The cast features Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana in the lead roles, as well as Ron Livingston, Arliss Howard, Stephen Tobolowsky, Jane McLean and Brooklyn Proulx.

The Time Traveler’s Wife was directed by Robert Schwentke, the man behind the thriller Flightplan.

The movie had a mixed reception from the critics wiith a Rotten Tomatoes score of 38%, and a much better IMDb score of 7.2/10.

I would tend to side towards the IMDb score for this one.

The Time Traveler’s Wife did fairly well in the cinema though, reaching $63.4M at the US box office.

The video on the disc is a VC-1 1080p encode at 17 Mbps, and is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1.

You will find full resolution PNG screen captures taken directly from the disc at the details page for The Time Traveler’s Wife.

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

The disc is a single layer BD25, with 23.6 GB used and is coded for All Regions.

Along with a couple of featurettes, his release includes a Digital Copy for both Windows Media and iTunes.

An Uncoventional Love Story features Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams and their views on the characters they portray.

The other featurette - The Time Traveler’s Wife: Love Beyond Words - is a 20 minute behind the scenes ‘making of’ documentary.

I quite enjoyed The Time Traveler’s Wife myself, though I can see that this style of movie is not for everyone.

The Blu-ray release from New Line Home Entertainment is another fairly light weight release from parent company Warner, though the movie itself gets a fairly decent presentation.

The retail price is $35.99, or order it right now at Amazon for $23.99, saving 33%!

Extras:

• An Uncoventional Love Story
• The Time Traveler’s Wife: Love Beyond Words

Synopsis:

Lose yourself in timeless love with this gloriously romantic story of the journey of two hearts. Artist Clare Abshire (Rachel McAdams of The Notebook) shares a deep emotional bond with Henry De Tamble (Eric Bana of The Other Boleyn Girl), a handsome librarian who travels involuntarily through time. Knowing they can be separated without warning, Clare and Henry treasure the moments they have together, imbuing them with the yearning and passion of two people imprisoned by time - and set free by love. Based on the #1 bestseller, The Time Traveler’s Wife weaves together destiny and devotion, past and future to turn an extraordinary love into an extraordinary love story.

The Blu-ray Cover Art Gallery for the week of the 28th of February 2010 reveals a few bigger releases this week.

Sony steps it up with no less than two versions of the Roland Emmerich distater movie 2012 and the 2012 2 Disc Edition that also includes a Digital Copy.

Warner has Spike Jonze’s much anticipated adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are, again with Digital Copy.

Warner is also releasing a Digibook version of the original Clash of the Titans while Fox has the latest Jared Hess film Gentlemen Broncos, that features Jermaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords.

Click on any cover to see the details for the title.

The Blu-ray market share was at a 2010 low of 8% and the for the week ending February 21st, according to Home Media Magazine.

On the other hand the weekly revenue was still a fairly healthy $18.58M - up from last year and not bad for a week with no big releases.

The top sellers for the week were new releases - Law Abiding Citizen from Anchor Bay, followed by Halo Legends from Warner in 2nd place.

Recent releases Couples Retreat from Universal, Zombieland from Sony Pictures and last year’s Up from Disney filled out the top 5 on the chart.

The market share by title list shows why the market share was so low.

While Law Abiding Citizen managed a healthy 28% market share on Blu-ray Disc, other typically strongBlu-ray titles did quite poorly, like Up with 4%, The Hangover with 3% and Star Trek from Paramount with only 9% market share on Blu-ray Disc.

It seems likely that promotional DVD pricing helped skew these titles strongly towards DVD for the week.

Halo Legends and The Hurt Locker from Summit market share were in the 30% to 31%, which is more in line with my expectations.

Zombieland also continues to have a solid 29% market share on Blu-ray Disc

Mostly smaller releases this week in the Blu-ray Cover Art Gallery for the week of the 21st of February 2010.

Directors Richard Kelly and Steven Soderbergh have new films out this week with The Box and The Informant! respectively from Warner Home Video.

On the cult movie side we have the first Troma title Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead, and television related titles in the form of Trailer Park Boys: Countdown to Liquor Day and Nurse Jackie: Season 1.

Click on any cover to see the details for the title.

The Blu-ray market share was only 9% for the week ending February 14th according to Home Media Magazine - the first time it has been single figures this year.

On the other hand, the revenue was a healthy $20.15M for the week.

Top seller for the week was Couples Retreat from Universal, ahead of Zombieland from Sony Pictures in 2nd place.

New release The Time Traveler’s Wife from Warner took 3rd place ahead of strong sellers Michael Jackson’s This Is It from Sony Pictures and Star Trek from Paramount.

New releases A Serious Man from Universal, The Stepfather from Sony and Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic from Anchor Bay placed 12th, 13th and 15th place respectively.

Looking at per title market share, the top sellers were a little lower this week, with Couples Retreat at 19% and The Time Traveler’s Wife at 10% Blu-ray Disc market share, while Zombieland had a healthier 27%.

The Hangover from Warner was also lower than previous weeks with ‘only’ 20% Blu-ray Disc market share.

Top performers were Inglourious Basterds from Universal with 45% market share, and Star Trek with an awesome 56%.

Looking at other new releases, The Stepfather took only 13%, while A Serious Man had 27%  and Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic 34% Blu-ray market share.

Two Top 20 DVD releases that had an adverse effect on the overall market share were The Penguins of Madagascar: Operation DVD Premiere and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse: Minnie’s Bow-tique, which had no Blu-ray release at all.

A good month for quality cinema sees the Blu-ray release of Mystic River from Warner Home Video on February 2nd, 2010.

This dark crime drama set in Boston chronicles three friends, Jimmy, Sean and Dave, starting with a kidnapping incident in their boyhood that changed their lives.

The three are brought together again by the disappearance of Jimmy’s daughter, where Sean becomes the lead investigator and Dave a potential suspect.

The movie follows Sean’s investigation, and also Jimmy’s underworld investigation of his own.

The performances in the film are very powerful and won Oscars for both Sean Penn and Tim Robbins for their portrayal of Jimmy and Dave respectively.

Additionally the cast includes Kevin Bacon, Marcia Gay Harden, Laurence Fishburne and Laura Linney.

The film is excellent all round, with a strong story and excellent cinematography.

Director Clint Eastwood has many great films under his belt now, including Gran Torino, Million Dollar Baby, Unforgiven, Letters from Iwo Jima and Pale Rider.

The movie has a strong critical reception, with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 88% and IMDb score of 8/10.

Mystic River was also a big in the cinema for a crime drama, earning over $90M at the US box office.

The video on the disc is a VC-1 1080p encode at 25.5 Mbps, and is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.40:1.

I am happy to see Warner give this release a decent bitrate to accurately capture the look of the film.

See the details page for Mystic River for full resolution PNG screen captures taken directly from the disc.

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.

This release comes with a selection of supplements, including a commentary with Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon.

There are a pair of behind the scenes featurettes with cast and crew interviews - Mystic River: Beneath the Surface and the Bravo special Mystic River: From Page To Screen.

Three interviews from the Charlie Rose Show featuring Clint Eastwood, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon are also included, as is the Theatrical Trailer and a Teaser Trailer.

Mystic River is an excellent film and a great release from Warner Home Video.

The retail price is $28.99, and it is available right now at Amazon for $17.99, saving 38%!

Extras:

• Commentary By Tim Robbins And Kevin Bacon
• Mystic River: Beneath the Surface
• Mystic River: From Page To Screen
• The Charlie Rose Show Interviews Clint Eastwood, Tim Robbins And Kevin Bacon
• Theatrical Trailers

Synopsis:

Jimmy. Dave. Sean. Friends who grew up in working-class Boston, they drift apart after a terrible tragedy. Years later, brutal events reconnect them. Jimmy’s 19-year-old daughter is coldly murdered. Dave is a suspect. And Sean, now a cop, scrambles to solve the crime before volatile Jimmy takes the law into his own hands. Working from Brian Helgeland’s adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s novel, director Clint Eastwood shapes a masterwork, a brooding thriller built on family, friends and innocence lost. Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon play the pivotal threesome, joining Lawrence Fishburne, Marcia Gay Harden and Laura Linney in one of the most powerful casts ever. The river has many depths. Let it wash over you.