This Week in DVD & Blu-ray: Predators, Please Give, Disneynature: Oceans

Posted on Tuesday, October 19th, 2010 by Adam Quigley

This Week in DVD & Blu-ray is a column that compiles all the latest info regarding new DVD and Blu-ray releases, sales, and exclusive deals from stores including Target, Best Buy and Fry’s.

PREDATORS
There’s a shot in the trailer for Predators that epitomizes my primary frustration with the film. Some of you will know the shot I’m talking about: it features over a dozen targeting lasers from Predators being locked onto a terrified Adrien Brody, in turn promising a mass heap of Predator carnage already implied by the film’s title. I won’t spoil how the scene plays out in the actual film, but I will say this: the trailer is bullshit, and so is producer Robert Rodriguez’s defense of it. Rodriguez doesn’t seem to realize that setting up an epic showdown and then failing to deliver on it is the exact opposite approach an action movie should be taking. And that, to a large extent, sums up the entire film: a whole lot of badass teasing and posturing, but not much in the way of satisfying payoff. The film is still serviceable B-movie fun, thanks in large part to an appealingly diverse band of characters (backed by Adrien Brody believably playing against type as a rugged commando), and some nicely atmospheric lightning and handing of action sequences by underrated genre director Nimród Antal (who makes the most of the film’s somewhat low budget), but it’s not nearly the movie it could’ve been.
Available on Blu-ray? Yes.
Notable Extras: DVD – An audio commentary by Robert Rodriguez and director Nimrod Antal, Motion Comics, and a De-cloaking the Invisible: Alien Terrain featurette. Blu-ray – Includes everything on the DVD, as well as 2 additional featurettes (“The Chosen”, “Fox Movie Channel Presents Making a Scene”), deleted and extended scenes, and a digital copy of the film.

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Box Office: How To Train Your Dragon Returns to #1, Kick-Ass Falls to #5

Posted on Sunday, April 25th, 2010 by Peter Sciretta

The weekend box office estimates are in, and we have some good news and some bad news:

• The bad news: Word of mouth did not help Lionsgate’s Kick-Ass, the comic book adaptation dropped an estimated 52% in its second weekend at theaters. In fact, it will place #5 on the Box office results listing this weekend with only $9.5 million in 3,065 theaters.
• The good news: The word of mouth buzz on How To Train Your Dragon continues to draw more and more people to the theater. In its fifth weekend of release, the film took over the #1 spot with an estimated $15 million, overtaking new releases like The Back-Up Plan ($12.25 million), The Losers ($.6 million) and Disney’s Oceans ($6 million).

In limited releases, one of my favorite films of the year thus far, Exit Through The Gift Shop, packed $13,545 per screen, for a total of $149,000 — not bad for a movie playing in only 11 theaters. To give you a comparison, Kick-Ass made $3,100 per screen this week — but yes, A LOT more screens.

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Oceans Teaser Trailer OR An Infomercial for Disneynature?

Posted on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 by Peter Sciretta

March of the Penguins sparked a new life in eco-documentaries by adding the dramatic element, and Disney is attempting to build a brand on the concept. Attached to Disney’s Earth is a teaser trailer for Disneynature’s next Earth Day release, Oceans.

The teaser doesn’t show much from the Jacques Perrin-directed ecological dramatic documentary, but it goes a long way to try to say “Walt Disney would’ve wanted you to see this movie.” It almost seems like an advertisement for the Disneynature brand itself, rather than the film. It kind of reminds me of the teaser trailer for WALL-E, where most of the build-up revolved around the past films of Pixar’s history. In some forms of entertainment, they call this “the rub.” Watch the new teaser trailer after the jump.

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