Displaying items by tag: Legendary

We have a few more new announcements to share with you today, and a little bit of an update...

First, A24 has just announced new A24 Shop-exclusive Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD editions of Halina Reijn’s Babygirl (2024) that are expected to ship in March (street date TBA). The 4K includes HDR10 high dynamic range, while both feature Dolby Atmos audio. Extras on each version will include audio commentary with writer/director Halina Reijn, 2 featurettes (Directing Desire with Halina Reijn and Power Looks: Dressing the Cast of Babygirl), deleted scenes, and a gallery of BTS photography by Niko Tavernise. You can pre-order both versions here.

Meanwhile, our friends at the BFI have just announced new 4K editions of Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood (1957) and Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine (1995). The former is set to street on May 19, while the latter arrives on April 14. Both will feature Dolby Vision HDR. You can find those here.

A quick update on those Clint Eastwood 4K titles we mentioned Tuesday, including Pale Rider (1985), Dirty Harry (1971), and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976): They’re now available for pre-order on the Gruv website, but with no street date listed. We expect official details from Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment in the coming weeks. [Read on here...]

All right, we’ll have a bit of additional announcement news for the week tomorrow here at The Bits, and I’ll be spending the afternoon working on a review of Akira Kurosawa’s Ran in 4K UHD, which will be posted then as well.

But today, I want to talk about Denis Villeneuve’s DUNE.

I had the opportunity last night to attend one of Warner and Legendary’s IMAX sneak peek events for the film as a member of the press.

A little background first... I would definitely go so far as to call myself an expert on the subject of science fiction cinema. I’ve been reading literary science fiction my entire life (including DUNE many times), I’m known in some circles to be well-versed on the topic human spaceflight, and I’m a life-long student of science in general. I read physics and astronomy research papers like some people read comic books.

So as I noted in my recent review of Voyagers in 4K, I have certain critical expectations of science fiction films and TV series. Is the story and its science setup plausible, or does it require too many contrivances or conveniences? Is the story logically consistent? Is the world-building credible and convincing? And most importantly, is the story entertaining, engaging, or thought-provoking? The vast majority of genre programming fails on one or more of those criteria. In other words, on both the big and small screen, truly great science fiction is rare. [Read on here...]