Coming Soon

The work of Oscar-winning Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki is finally coming to Blu-ray. Despite a global fan following, animated classics such as Spirited Away and My Neighbour Totoro remain unavailable on the hi-def format, even in his native Japan. 'Mizayaki has been a little suspicious of the BD format in the past,' admitted Panasonic's Tesuro Homma at the company's Munich 3D TV roll-out.  read more »

Director Dario Argento has been heralded by some as the great hope of international horror cinema. Clearly, the director of Suspira (out this week on Blu-ray) has delivered classics of Italian horror – but equally has served up some pretty awful movies, notably Mother of Tears, the abysmal followup to Suspiria and Inferno that envisaged the end of the world in terms of a  read more »

Excited by the Blu-ray release of Suspiria? Want to learn more about Italian genre movies? The sick puppies at HCC have come up with a fistful of must-see horror thrillers from the masters of spaghetti splatter that are guaranteed to take your video collection beyond the edge...  read more »

It’s arguably one of the greatest horror movies ever made. And now Dario Argento's horror classic Suspira comes to Blu-ray.  The Italian splatter classic has undergone a brand new high definition transfer courtesy of Nouveaux Pictures and Cine-Excess.
The BD comes with a host of freshly commissioned extras including a new documentary featuring director Dario Argento and composer Claudio Simonetti alongside a feature length audio commentary by Argento experts Alan Jones and Kim Newman.

Released this week, it tells the story of  read more »

Is the price discrepancy between Blu-ray and DVD finally coming to an end? In an industry first, Icon Home Entertainment says it will peg its Blu-ray prices alongside DVD during 2010.

Price parity will begin with Blu-ray and DVD releases out from April 1, and includes The Road, Nowhere Boy, Precious and A Single Man.  read more »

Despite multiple 3D hardware launches at CES, only two Hollywood studios have announced 3D Blu-ray movie plans. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will make a tentative foray this summer with a 3D release for its animated kids hit Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, while Disney will issue its CG-animated Jim Carrey yarn A Christmas Carol in time for the 2010 mince pie season.  read more »

Following an aborted launch several months ago, Warner Home Video has now confirmed that The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy will be coming to Blu-ray in the US on April 6, 2010.

As previously announced, this boxset will only include the theatrical cuts of the three fantasy epics, with the Extended Editions being held back to a latter date to  read more »

An unseen version of the second pilot episode of the original Star Trek TV series looks likely to be one of the key reasons to beam up the pending six-disc Season 3 release of the series on Blu-ray.

Trekkies (Trekkers?) will finally be able to enjoy the original cut of Where No Man Has Gone Before, the first episode to feature James T Kirk, with footage previously edited from the broadcast version, alongside a different opening monologue and theme. It will be presented on BD in  read more »

One of the year's hottest titles is undoubtedly Sony Pictures Home Entertainment's forthcoming blockbuster Terminator Salvation. Touching down on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK on November 23, the film finally gives fans of the Terminator franchise a chance to witness the future war between the mankind and Skynet's robotic legions.

HCC was lucky enough to recently receive an advance copy of the UK Blu-ray release for  read more »

‘A friend of mine likes to say: We Won! All of us geeks and nerds, we now control the (movie) industry. It’s marvelous. All our childhood fantasies have come true!’

Len Wein, one of the most influential comic writers of the 1970s and 80s, and creator of badass X-Man  Wolverine, is reflecting on how the comic book world has evolved into the most significant creative and financial driver for modern Hollywood. Clearly the idea  read more »

‘The great thing about the Blu-ray format,’ says X-Men Origins: Wolverine director Gavin Hood, ‘is that it finally makes it possible to have a real cinema experience in the home – and that’s important. There’s nothing worse than sitting in the cinema with some guy chewing his popcorn in your left ear… I’d rather be at home. It’s also helping us, as filmmakers, preserve the quality of what we’ve made for a longer lifespan.’

I’m in LA, having a one-on-one with Gavin Hood. Like any press junket, there’s a revolving door of journalists all eager for onset tittle-tattle. I’ve got more important things on my  read more »

‘I’m very proud that with X-Men we launched the comic book genre. We opened it up for Spider-Man and Iron Man.’ Lauren Schuler Donner is the Hollywood producer responsible for bringing Marvel’s X-Men characters to the big screen and she’s briefing an international press corp about her involvement in the franchise, not to mention the upcoming Blu-ray release of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, out in the UK next week. It’s day three of HCC’s Wolverine Week, and as I’m about to find out, Donner is keen to talk about both the development of the Wolverine story as well  read more »

There's good news for fans of the hit TV series Dexter. Showtime, the edgy US cable-network behind the popular serial killer drama, has announced that it will be launching a 12-part series of animated webisodes based on the show to tie in with the fourth series, which recently  read more »

‘When I look back at it now, there were a lot of people who thought I was crazy,' says Lauren Shuler Donner. 'I remember a reporter from Entertainment Weekly who asked me: why are you doing an X-Men movie? There had been a couple of other comic book movies –Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Superman, Blade… some really awful, some fantastic – but no one had done it since then. But I had a basic philosophy that everything comes from character. So I didn’t set out to make a comic book movie; we grounded the characters, made them  read more »

‘Making a movie as big as this, with so many people involved, is like surfing a big wave. Sometimes you’re flying and it’s going great and sometimes the damn thing is about to crash on your head. You just have to try and make it inelegantly through and get back onto the good wave.’

Director Gavin Hood is nothing if not candid. It was never going to be easy making the world’s most popular mutant a critical and commercial hit, but with X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Hood appears to have beaten the ankle breakers and scored some major pipelines. The sharp-clawed fantasy has  read more »