New to Blu: May 5 – 11
May 5, 2021 
6 Comments
Liam Neeson’s latest action drama, The Marksman, hits the Blu-ray bull’s eye with “a crystal clear transfer”, one online review reports.
“Blue skies, and a naturalistic look and feel look great in this 2.39:1 AVC HD encode,” said another of the rancher-goes-rogue thriller.
“Details are strong, the print is clean.”
The only extra is a making-of short.
It lands here a week earlier than in the US while Wld Mountain Thyme is being released on the same day.
Also new are the delayed re-issues of Children of a Lesser God, Amistad and Hustle & Flow.
Warning: preg_replace(): Unknown modifier '/' in /home/customer/www/screenscribe.net/public_html/wp-content/themes/headlines/includes/theme-comments.php on line 66
May 5, 2021 at 9:06 pm
I wish we had more TV shows released on Blu-ray in New Zealand. I notice that I Dream of Jeannie and Baywatch are being released soon in the USA, also the original Charmed in Germany 🙂
Don’t get me started, Trevor. Whether it’s vintage series like The Avengers, Columbo or Little House on the Prairie, or the latest HBO dramas, NZ’s long been a backwater for TV-on-Blu-ray. While the majors have dropped the ball, there have been notable exceptions from indie labels, such as the stunning box sets of the original Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Monty Python’s Flying Circus and The World at War.
I read that The Warehouse are scaling back on DVD and Blu-ray. Falling demand for the product … https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/125014094/the-warehouse-phases-out-bluray-and-dvds-from-stores-as-customer-demand-plummets
That’s true, Mike, but the attitude of some distributors has contributed to that. Roadshow Entertainment has done an appalling job of servicing this market since closing its Auckland office. With not enough leadership from these companies to support the few retailers that still operate, this market was ripe for consumers to embrace streaming. Our censorship system doesn’t help, with the costs of classification not making it viable to release some titles here. Case in point: Madman NZ couldn’t release Yellowstone on Blu-ray here until Universal, with its deeper pockets, bore the brunt of the censorship costs for the DVD release. Universal and Sony have done their best to promote Blu-ray but increasingly have cut back their slates. Universal never released the 4K-UHD of Seven Worlds, One Planet here. And while Sony offered a vintage title like The Ladykillers on Blu-ray, it passed on the 4K-UHD. I love the convenience and quality of streaming but you can’t beat the specs and catalogue breadth of Blu-ray.
With talk of Amazon coming to New Zealand I wonder if they will have Blu-rays especially imported 🙂
Let’s hope that is the case, Trevor, rather than Amazon limiting NZ consumers to its NZ site.