New reviews, our Empire Strikes Back 4K gallery, Black Hole at 40 & Merry Christmas from The Bits!

Today will be the last post until Friday, when we’ll return with a bit of a release news update. But we do have a couple of interesting items for you today…

First, we’ve got a pair of new Blu-ray reviews for your, including Tim’s look at John Badam’s Dracula (1979) from Scream Factory. The film stars Frank Langella and Laurence Olivier and the disc is worth a look.

We’ve got a new review from Dennis too, this of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Cotton Club Encore on Blu-ray from Lionsgate. There’s not a lot included in the way of extras, but the presentation quality is very good. [Read on here...]

Also here at The Bits today, we’ve posted our long awaited image gallery, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back – A Visual Guide to Changes, Fixes, and Tweaks in the Disney+ 4K Version. Sorry it took so long, but we’ve been a little busy behind the scenes here at The Bits these last few days. But you’ll find 6 pages of comparison images to enjoy thanks to the efforts of Drew Stewart. And a gallery’s coming soon for Return of the Jedi too.

And on Monday we posted a brand new History, Legacy & Showmanship column from our own Michael Coate, which features a look back at Disney’s The Black Hole in honor of the film’s 40th anniversary. The piece features a new retrospective interview with author William Kallay and we hope you enjoy it!

Finally today, we do have one piece of significant pre-order news: We’ve confirmed that Disney and Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga 4K/Blu-ray box set (tentatively due on 3/31/2020) will be a Best Buy exclusive here in North America (in the US and Canada). However, Amazon.co.uk has the European exclusive on the exact same set and here’s the kicker—not only is it $10 cheaper, it’s listed as ALL REGION. So if you’re looking for a better deal on the box set, you can order it here.

All right, that’s all until Friday. We know that many of you are traveling and spending time with friends and family this holiday season.

So from all of us here at The Digital Bits… we wish you a very Merry Christmas!

(You can follow Bill on social media at these links: Twitter and Facebook)