Blu-Ray Alert: February 26-March 4

This week’s bonanza slate of Blu-ray releases could be a record in terms of the number of titles – and could set a record for sales with three HD editions of Michael Jackson’s This Is It going on sale from March 3.

Indeed, so confident is Sony Pictures Home Entertainment of This Is It’s prospects that it’s not allocated review copies to media to help promote it.

In the US, where it was released in late January, the posthumous concert film was #1 in its first week and sold 1.2 million copies, which was a record for first-week sales of a music film (21% of sales were on Blu-ray).

Sony also has two other big drawcards – Lost: Season 5 and The Taking of Pelham 123 – which came out today.

Lined up for Wednesday are a raft of back catalogue releases, priced from $30-$40, and a handful of new titles, including The Warlords, Case 39 and Not Forgotten.

For the first time, you can buy each of The Bourne Trilogy instalments separately, along with HD spruce-ups of John Q, The Waterboy, 10 Things I Hate About You (10^th Anniversary Edition), Nanny McPhee, Smokin’ Aces, Rob Roy, Fracture, Borat, Home Alone, Mrs Doubtfire, The Last King of Scotland, Romancing the Stone and Tristan + Isolde.

New to both Blu-ray and DVD are the natural history titles Home, Antarctica Dreaming, Coral Sea Dreaming Awaken and Serenity Southern Seas.

But inexplicably, the latest Ken (The Civil War, Jazz, The War) Burns sensation, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, has missed out on a Blu-ray release – only the five-disc DVD set will be made available here from Wednesday.

If you want to take a punt on importing the Blu-ray version, first check out this review and this one.