New to Blu: January 19-26

There’s not much new on Blu-ray for grown-ups this week.

The unusually dismal line-up of theatrical releases ranges from the comedies, Grown Ups and Vampires Suck, to the family films, Cats & Dogs 2: The Revenge of Kitty Galore and The Last Airbender, to the graveyard shift tearjerker, Charlie St Cloud.

Offering some relief from the school holiday doldrums are the back-catalogue newcomers, Barfly and State of Grace, and the direct-to-Blu-ray Leaves of Grass.

Critics agreed Vampires Suck did just that but differed over the quality of the HD: Blu-rayDefintion.com rated it 4/5 (“surprisingly strong and detailed effort for this sort of film”) but High-Def Digest thought it deserved only 2.5/5 (“this lame spoof debuts with a poor transfer, degraded by several moments of visible artifacts”).

But critics did concur that Grown Ups’ transfer was barely adequate. One of the more positive assessments was The Cinema Laser’s: “Image sharpness, depth, texturing and detail are very good, but the picture sometimes looks a little too much like an expensive sitcom.”

Easily the pick of the week’s HD transfers appears to be The Last Airbender: “The level of detail is superb throughout, and scenes which were attacked for being incomprehensibly murky in theatres boast impressively clarity on Blu-ray” (DVD Verdict); “This isn’t a transfer that’s going to blow longtime Blu-ray fans out of the water, but it will earn the respect of videophiles who demand upper-tier presentations of new release films” (Blu-ray.com); “An excellent 1080p transfer that preserves the film with far more finesse than, frankly, it deserves” (DVD File).