Displaying items by tag: The XFiles

Well... it’s Friday. And thank goodness. I don’t know about you, but this week has been trying. On top of everything else, we’ve had 90 and 100 degree heat here in SoCal with like 80% humidity. Human beings weren’t designed for that kind of sticky.

I am working on my review of Pitch Black in 4K Ultra HD from Arrow Video. I hope to have it up soon, but at the very latest it will be up on Monday. There’s a lot of extras and I’m going back to look at the past Blu-ray and DVD versions to compare. I will say that the 4K remaster is beautiful and it really holds up. There’s tons of detail and the HDR grade is subtle but really adds to the film’s striking cinematography and overall look. The disc is also loaded—it appears that virtually everything from past releases as carried over, plus there’s new content too.

Meanwhile, we do have one new disc review here: Dennis has reviewed Sebastian Munoz’ The Price, new on Blu-ray from Artsploitation Films. You’ll find that here.

And I believe Tim is working his way through Arrow’s new Gamera: The Complete Collection Blu-ray set, which is a mighty beast. So he’ll have a look for you at that as well sometime soon. [Read on here...]

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All right, we’ve got a pair of new Blu-ray reviews for you to close out the week this afternoon...

First, Tim’s Halloween Hangover review for the day is a look at Pete Walker’s House of Long Shadows (1983), a horror/parody film available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber. The film stars Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Desi Arnaz, Jr., and John Carradine.

Also, Jim Hemphill has taken a look at the recent I Spit on Your Grave III: Vengeance is Mine, now available on Blu-ray from Anchor Bay. [Read on here…]

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Tim’s Halloween Hangover Blu-ray review today is a look at Roger Corman’s Tales of Terror (1962) from Kino Lorber.

In announcement news today, HBO has set True Detective: Season Two for Blu-ray and DVD release on 1/5.  [Read on here…]

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Comic-Con 2015 is a wrap and there’s plenty of good geek news to report for you today!

First though, our own Mario Boucher posted a new Inside Cinema column back on Thursday (in case you missed it) looking back at The Terminator films. Do check it out.

Now then... our Digital Bits Comic-Con panel went very well on Thursday afternoon! We had a packed room with lots of Bits readers asking great questions about Blu-ray. Our friend Charles de Lauzirika revealed that he’s officially working on the forthcoming Blu-ray of Ridley Scott’s The Martian. Cliff Stephenson is busy working on the Hannibal: Season Three Blu-ray for Lionsgate. And of course Robert Meyer Burnett has just completed the Prelude to Axanar Blu-ray for backers of that project on Kickstarter. Rob is also working with executive producer Alec Peters and myself on the full Star Trek: Axanar feature film – Rob is going to direct the film and I’m co-writing it with Alec. (As it happens, Charles de Lauzirika is helping to produce the film, and Cliff is going to produce the forthcoming Blu-ray special features, so quite literally everyone on our Bits panel is involved in the Axanar project.) You can view the project’s IndieGoGo page here (it launched during Comic-Con). More on that in a moment. As the panel wound on, we discussed the future of Blu-ray and indie studio releases on the format, we talked a little about Ultra HD Blu-ray (we’ll have more on that later this month), and we took questions from the audience. [Read on here…]

[Editor’s Note: Be sure to like TheDigitalBits.com page on Facebook for breaking news, site updates on the go, discussion with our staff and other readers, giveaways and more!]

We’ve got two more Blu-ray reviews for you today: Tim’s thoughts on Criterion’s new The Beatles: A Hard Day’s Night as well as Magnolia’s Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic. Both are worth your time.

Also here at the site today, our own Russell Hammond has updated the Release Dates & Artwork section with all the latest Blu-ray and DVD cover artwork and Amazon.com pre-order links. It really helps us tremendously to keep The Bits going when you guys support us by shopping through our links. A small portion of the purchase price of literally anything you buy from Amazon in the same shopping session after you click through any of our links comes back to us as an affiliate fee and, in this era when studio advertising and physical media sales are down, and server costs are higher than ever, your support makes all the difference between us keeping the site going or not. So thank you for shopping through our links… and please continue to do so! [Read on here…]

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All right, it’s a slow day with the MLK holiday here in the States, but we do have some good stuff for you today.

Actually, today big news isn’t specifically Blu-ray-related, but it may have a strong bearing on a future Blu-ray release. Deadline Hollywood revealed over the weekend something we’ve suspected for many months now, which is that Fox is currently in negotiations to bring The X-Files back to TV, with creator Chris Carter and stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson all apparently involved. It now seems likely that a Blu-ray release of the recently HD remastered series is waiting on these developments.  [Read on here…]

All right, first up today I wanted to let you all know that although The Bits is going to be at San Diego Comic-Con this month, a combination of personal/real-life business and other factors means we aren’t doing our regular Blu-ray and DVD panel event this year. Frankly, I think many of us just needed a break from the usual “demise of discs” commiseration, and wanted a chance instead to go down to the Con and just enjoy it in a more relaxed way.

That said, all the usual Bits suspects will be down in San Diego on Thursday and Friday. Before and after the Con, I’ll be reporting here at The Bits on all the BD-related news. You can expect details on TV Batman, lot of new Shout! and Scream Factory titles, the upcoming Twin Peaks BD set and much more. [Read on here…]

All right, we haven’t had a Rumor Mill update in a very long while, so now that we’re up and running on the newly-redesigned Bits, it feels like it’s time to get the Mill going again, yes? And with a nice Cold War-era, espionage-inspired logo to boot!

So here’s today’s dispatch: A number of our industry sources are now telling us that Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment is planning (and in fact may already be gearing up to) release their classic TV series The X-Files on Blu-ray. As fans will already be aware, the first four seasons of the show were produced in 4x3 format, like many TV programs of its era. The series then went to a 16x9 widescreen format for the remainder of its run, as anamorphic widescreen displays were starting to become common. The entire show was still broadcast in standard definition – not actual high-definition – and the visual effects and post-production were finished in SD. (Note that the first actual HD broadcast on Fox was for the 2004 NFL season, while X-Files ended its run in 2002.) Our sources say Fox has likely decided to “rebuild” the seasons in high-definition, in much the same way that CBS has done with Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Provided all the original camera negative has been properly stored and archived, it’ll presumably be an easier task as the show featured fewer and less elaborate visual effects.

This wouldn’t be the first time Fox has upgraded a show to Blu-ray: They did something roughly similar with Firefly on Blu-ray back in 2008, although to be fair all of the show’s visual effects were upconverted to HD rather than re-rendered in actual high-definition to save costs.

If all goes well, we’re told the first seasons of The X-Files could appear on BD sometime in late 2013. We’ll post additional updates as they come in. Stay tuned…

- Bill Hunt