New to Blu: August 30-September 5

The season two Blu-ray of Narcos lands here a week ahead of the US — and with the same extras and specs.

They include:

• Audio commentary with director Andrés Baiz, producer Eric Newman, and actor Wagner Moura
• Unredacted: Declassifying Narcos: Season Two
• Deleted scenes

Sometimes the price we pay for getting the jump on the US is getting a bare-bones Blu-ray release.

Case in point was season four of Black Sails, which arrived with only 5.1 audio and none of the US release’s (admittedly scant) extras.

A spokesman for Defiant, which also is distributing Narcos, told ScreenScribe:

It’s right that since we release ahead of the US we sometimes don’t have access to things like bonus content and captions that they would normally include on theirs.

 

Our masters for season one [of Black Sails] came from the US and do include Dolby 7.1 TRUE HD, but seasons two and three came out of the UK and they had decided to only offer 5.1 audio.

 

We authored season four ourselves, but our masters were delivered as 5.1. We haven’t authored anything locally in 7.1 yet, so we’ll have to investigate the cost/process to see if we can include it for any titles going forward.

 

It’s unfortunate and we always like to match international offerings, but sometimes it’s just not possible or cost prohibitive to do so.

It’s also unfortunate that NZ continues to miss out on top Blu-ray releases.

The latest sinful omission is American Gods, the 4K Amazon Prime series that’s out this week on DVD-only whereas Roadshow Entertainment is distributing it on Blu-ray in Australia.

As for the week’s other newcomers:

• McLaren (with behind-the-scenes and deleted footage)
• Free Fire (“a strong but far from perfect presentation”)
• The Osiris Child: Science Fiction – Volume One (“a fairly strong presentation”)
• Vengeance: A Love Story 
• Death Note: Light Up the World
• Batman and Harley Quinn.