redhorsejacket

I would also suggest finding boutique retailer you vibe with. The Criterion Collection is oft cited, but it's not the only game in town. I was looking at what was out there last year and these were a few of the retailers that stood out to me.

Kino Lorber: Similar to Criterion in its seniority (started in 77) and art house focus. However, it seems as though their collection has become fairly diverse over time. I saw a 4k of Ben Affleck's Reindeer Games listed next to a Blu-ray of an Italian film I'd never heard of from the 70s, so who knows what you might find.

Arrow Video: UK based company, seems to operate in the same sort of genre space as Shout Factory in the US, with an emphasis on premium box art and pack in bonuses like posters and other bits and bobs. Runs a 2 for $60 UHD Bundle promo pretty consistently on their website. Seems like it's 2 for £40 on the UK version of the site.

Indicator Films (I swear this used to be its own label, but it seems to have been purchased by an entity called Powerhouse Films Ltd.). Another UK based label, seems to have themes for its offerings. Currently, they categorize their catalog in to Film Noir, Hammer Films, Ray Harryhausem, Mexico, Ozploitation, and Jean Rollin. So, covering a lot of bases there lol.

Severin Films, Vinegar Syndrome, American Genre Film Archive, and many others, specialize in the sort of schlock that gave rise to the Video Nasties, a reference I make having never lived in the UK, nor been alive during the time period that term was originated, so forgive me if I'm off the mark on its usage lol. To greater or lesser degrees these focus on the typical genre trifecta of action-horror-sci fi, with some light toe dipping into erotica, which is something to be aware of if you do your Blu-ray shopping at work, like I tend to do lol. Some boutiques are on a strict "check from home" regimen lol.

I check blu-ray.com with some degree of frequency. I'm not sure how reputable they are as a review website, but they appear to fairly objective with their assessments of A/V presentation, citing metrics that sound legit to my otherwise clueless ass. I will say that, subjectively, I tend to agree with their assessments, so I think they're onto something.

Their "deals" section is pretty hit or miss, but they'll occasionally do news post if a particularly good sale is going on somewhere. Similarly, I keep tabs on Criterion to catch any discounts they throw down.

With that being said, the majority of my acquisitions have been from local book resellers, the occasional yard sale, and impromptu bargain bin dives while passing through a retailer. For example, my 4K steel book of Magnificent Seven was marked down to like $12 in a big tub of random DVDs and Blu-rays. I had to look up this particular release in the store (on blu-ray.com) just to be sure I wasn't getting scammed with an inferior cash grab transfer. I also picked up a similarly priced 4k steel book of The Lair of the White Wyrm, which was a total impulse buy on the basis of it being $12 and looking nutty as hell.

So, it's a lot of luck, and I only own a dozen or so 4k discs, despite having started obtaining them several years ago, well before owning the requisite playback equipment.

Congrats! I'm in a similar position, recently acquiring a 4k player myself. I've been assembling discs as I've come across deals. Movies which I think really benefit from the 4k treatment include:

• Lawrence of Arabia. Ideally, the first time anyone sees this movie would be on an IMAX screen. My first viewing was with 720p DVD rip watched on a cracked tablet screen, and it was STILL visually impressive. Watch it on a scale commensurate with the story itself, and it's quite possible some sequences will take your breath away.

• The Magnificent Seven. Similar vein as Lawrence (sweeping widescreen shots of desert locales), but a little grimier. The whole image has this really lovely texture and vivaciousness to it. I particularly enjoy the latest releases new color grade, which lends further vitality to the picture, emphasizing the panoply of color in many scenes through increased saturation and dynamic range. It does not tread into cartoony, Technicolor excess though, instead feeling "just right" to my eyes. Like how I remembered the film looking, rather than how it actually appeared on my old DVD release of the movie. --> Addendum to the above, the Criterion release of Seven Samurai is also worth picking up. It a perfect example of how good an "old" black and white movie can look.

• Blade Runner. It's a movie driven by vibe and aesthetic as much as plot, if not more, and the clarity of an HDR 4k picture enhances those features. Those aerial shots of LA, where you can see every little detail of the miniatures, down to each individual window of the Tyrell megastructure, are, again, breathtaking.

• Alita: Battle Angel. A 21st century update of the cyberpunk aesthetic, but looked at through the maximalist lens of anime/manga, as opposed to the brooding noir tone of the Blade Runner. I don't know when the next time we're going to get Jim Cameron levels of production value in a cyberpunk setting any time in the near future, so I appreciate being able to pick out all the little details in the background of the frame, as well as the heightened impact of the crystal clear action sequences (thinking of the rollerball death match race sequence in particular).

I didn't know David Lynch died :(

Now, clearly this was never going to be a release which had oodles of effort put into its bonus features, but is it pretty standard that new releases on home video no longer have commentary tracks? That was the best part of the DVD boom.

I can understand all the creatives involved wanting to get as far away from this radioactive bomb as possible, though.

Laws do cover non-american entities, but non-american entities are not afforded the same protections as citizens / corporations, it would appear.

Idk if the Constitution enters into it when the company in question is not American.

Very exciting stuff. I was looking for physical copies of some of Woo's early films last year and, as you say, the landscape is a mess. I wound up just sticking with my old torrent copies, since those were a known quantity. Here's hoping Shout is able to put together some decent releases.

Cause it doesn't matter if they are still profitable. If you aren't MORE profitable than your last outing, then you aren't growing, and if your business isn't growing, it's dying.

However, I wonder if the premise is flawed here. In 1999, you could probably get a somewhat accurate idea of a game's profitablity by comparing dev cost vs units sold. However, with live service being the AAA fascination du jour, and Call of Duty in particular having a whole game mode siloed off into the free to play space, I question if "units sold" is indicative of financial success anymore.

Yes and no. There is an absolute avalanche of Star Wars media with knotty, interwoven stories charting all sorts of characters and their escapades before, during, and after the films' time periods. However, 99% of this was jettisoned when Disney bought it. I believe they brought forward the original films, the prequels, The Clone Wars, and maybe a handful of other things, but all other media was siloed into the "Legends" continuity. Frankly, it's a move I understand. While there are standouts among the Legends stories, there's also a ton of dreck, made quickly and cheaply to cash in on the Star Wars boom of the 90s.

Whats funny, though, is that Disney's Marvel style approach to Star Wars (interconnected TV series, movies, games, etc.) has just started the rat's nest of continuity snarls and incomprehensible lore all over again, with the same highly uneven results as far as quality goes.

I don't know a lot about computers, but I do know a fair amount about bussy. $2000 for 512 is a steal!

Thank you for sharing. Feels like a lot of these "weekly deal roll-up" posts are the product of webscrapers, SEO, and AI slop.

This is far superior to that, and the selection is very diverse.