Now then, we have some new Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD title updates to start the new week...

First up, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has officially announced the Blu-ray, DVD and 4K Ultra HD release of Ruben Fleischer’s Uncharted, starring Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg, on 5/10, with the Digital release expected on 4/26. Extras on the Blu-ray and 4K will include audio commentary with Fleischer, deleted and extended scenes, and 6 behind-the-scenes featurettes (Becoming Nathan Drak, Big Action Breakdown: C-17 Globemaster, Charting the Course: On Set with Ruben Fleischer, Never a Dull Moment: Stunts & Action, The Buddy System, and Villains, Backstabbers & Accomplices). The 4K will include HDR10 high dynamic range and Dolby Atmos audio, and there will be both wide release and Steelbook versions. You can see the cover artwork above left and also below.

Arrow Video has revealed their June slate of Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD titles, which is set to include Lucio Fulci’s Demonia (Blu-ray – UK) on 6/6, Rainer Werner Fassbinder: Volume III (Blu-ray – UK – includes The American Soldier, The Niklashausen Journey, Gods of the Plague, Rio Das Mortes, Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven, Fear of Fear, and Satan’s Brew) on 6/13, Gérard Kikoïne’s Edge of Insanity (Blu-ray – UK, US, Canada) and Robert Day’s The Initiation of Sarah (Blu-ray – UK, US, Canada) on 6/21, and Tony Scott’s True Romance (Blu-ray and 4K Limited Editions, as well as Steelbook and Limited Edition 4K Steelbook – US, Canada) on 6/28.

And while we’re on the topic of 4K, we have some street date updates for you from various retail sources: 20th Century Studios will release Death on the Nile (2022) on 4/5, Lionsgate has set Hell or High Water (2016) for Best Buy exclusive Steelbook release on 4/19, Paramount will release The Lost City (2022) on 8/2, Universal will release The Northman on 6/7, followed by Michael Bay’s Ambulance on 6/14, and the animated The Bad Guys on 6/21, and Warner Bros. is now expected to release Matt Reeves’s The Batman (2022) on 5/24, with Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore expected to follow in late June (6/28 is the likely date). Note that James Wan’s Malignant (2021) is also currently up on Amazon.co.uk from Warner with a street date of 5/23 (so it’s likely to be 5/24 here in the States). Keep in mind that many of these dates are still subject to change, as the titles in question are not all officially announced.

On regular Blu-ray, The Film Detective will release Jerry Gross’ Girl on a Chain Gang (1966) on Blu-ray and DVD on 4/19.

Lionsgate has set The Humans for release on Blu-ray and DVD on 4/29.

IFC Films is releasing Robert B. Weide’s terrific documentary Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time ​on Blu-ray and DVD on 5/17. This is currently streaming on Hulu, and it’s absolutely wonderful. I highly recommend it.

Undercrank Productions is releasing Sidney Franklin’s restored Beverly of Grustark (1926), staring Marion Davies, on Blu-ray and DVD on 4/12, newly restored from a 4K scan of the 35 mm nitrate by the Library of Congress.

Also, Omnibus Entertainment and Film Movement will release Lovecut on DVD and Digital on 5/3.

And IndiePix Films will release Bill Haney’s A Life Among Whales documentary on DVD only on 4/19.

In other news today, we have a sad note to report: Taylor Hawkins, the longtime drummer for the Foo Fighters has died at the age of 50. The band was on tour in South America, and Hawkins was apparently found dead in his hotel room just hours before they were set to take the stage at a festival in Columbia. His final performance was at Lollapalooza Argentina on the 20th (you can watch it below on YouTube). I just saw the Foos play in Las Vegas in December, and my wife and I saw Taylor at a Lionel Richie concert a couple weeks before that. He was a fellow Minnesota Vikings fan, he grew up not far from where I live in Orange County, California. By all accounts he was a genuinely good dude, in addition to a wildly talented musician. And I find myself just enormously saddened by it. You can read more via The New York Times, here via Variety, and here on CNN. My love goes out to his family and friends, the Foo Fighters family, and all of their many fans today.

Finally, the 94th Academy Awards were held last night, and what an inglorious mess it was. I’ll confess, I stopped watching the ceremony several years ago, when it became clear that it was more about vain celebrity self-promotion and industry politics than actually honoring the skilled artists and craftspeople who create the films we love. This was never made more obvious that it was last month, when several key awards—including Best Score—were dropped from the live broadcast (and yet the damn broadcast still apparently ran a half-hour long). So I refused to watch. Over dinner last night, my wife and I did tune in very briefly just in time to see Will Smith slap Chris Rock on live TV (which, had anyone else done that, they’d have been escorted from the fucking theater) and that pretty much ended my interest in Hollywood awards shows for all time. As far as I’m concerned, the Academy and ABC should just hold the event on Saturday next year, pre-tape the entire thing, then produce and edit a polished, elegant version for broadcast on Sunday night without all of the bullshit. Because what we got last night was really a perfect summation of the current sorry state of the Hollywood film industry circa 2022: an embarrassing mess.

Side note: Columnist Ross Douthat wrote a terrific—if depressing—opinion column on the state of the movie business for The New York Times on Friday (you’ll find it here), and I’m afraid it’s right on the money. What we’re seeing today with theater-going and physical media slowly falling out of favor, not to mention the rise of streaming services, is a decline of the film industry as we knew it in the 1980s and 90s, in much the same way we saw the music industry decline in the 00s from its glory days in the 1970s and 80s. Movies are certainly not going away, just as music hasn’t gone away, but they aren’t special anymore—they aren’t an essential form of cultural entertainment in most people’s lives like they were in the past. I can’t tell you how many young people I talk to who consider themselves movie fans yet have little interest in watching anything made before they were born. And if it’s filmed in black and white, forget it—it’s not worth seeing. I hope all of this is just a cycle, and what goes around always comes around. Just look at the resurgence of vinyl LPs. Even so, for those of us who grew up in a time when music and movies were the beating heart of our cultural lives, well... all of this a bit disheartening. But I, for one, am too damn stubborn to lose faith.

We’ll leave you with a look at the cover artwork for a few of the titles mentioned above. Click on each to visit their pre-order pages on Amazon.com...

Stay tuned...

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