New to Blu: October 7 – 13

Holy Blu-ray Brilliance! Gotham soars on to disc this week with a top-notch transfer and two-and-a-half-hours of HD extras.

“The Blu-ray release of Gotham: The Complete First Season looks fantastic; bleakly but beautifully saturated, precisely detailed, and proficiently encoded via a near-perfect 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 video presentation.”

“The show is pretty dark more often than not but colours are still really nicely produced here, resulting in some moments of fantastic visual contrast that the discs present pretty much perfectly.”

“Equally as impressive as the way the show looks is the surprisingly robust DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack. There seems to be a depth to this mix that I really wasn’t prepared for and it really works with the show. Vocals are rich and pure.”

Also new are seasons one of Humans (“packed with interesting interviews“) and The Leftovers (“the show is really dark in tone and colour palette, but there are plenty of colours that pop here”), and American Horror Story: Freak Show (“a solid, if also [probably intentionally at times] fairly soft looking season, with some really frightening moments of fine detail“).

Fresh from their theatrical runs are:

Spy

• “Technical merits are first rate, the supplementary package is outstanding”
• “This is a gorgeous picture from beginning to end with outstanding sharpness and winning detail (so detailed that some awkward CGI wire removal seems obvious during the helicopter finale), colour that’s notably rich and accurate, and contrast which has been dialed to perfection”

Woman in Gold

• “A good sense of detail and depth in most of the shots, and black levels throughout are pretty strong”
• “From start to finish, sharpness looked good. Only the slightest hint of softness affected wide shots”

Gemma Bovery

• “Often quite scenic when it ventures out of doors to exploit the lush scenery of Normandy, but on the whole the palette here is somewhat tamped down“
• “Skin tones are also natural, blacks and shadow detail fine, brightness and contrast consistent”

Aloha

• “The great imagery and framing are done justice by the high-def presentation”
• “The 1.85:1-framed, 1080p AVC encode hits expeted notes with the lush landscape, encapsulating the scope of the island atmosphere with impeccable rendering of depth and the inherent gradation of beauty within foliage, expansive water, and hazy mountains”

Going direct to disc are: The Rewrite (“for the most part this is a fine presentation“), Danny Collins (“transfer is exceptionally good, but not necessarily something to show off your display’s capabilities”), Mercenary: The Absolution, Rudderless and Jackie & Ryan.

Fans of classic horror can thrill to The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, Black Sunday, Masque of the Red Death and The Last Man On Earth while anime newcomers include Michiko & Hatchin: Complete Series, Last Exile: Fam, The Silver Wing (Complete Series) and Soul Eater Not! Collection.