ON DVD TODAY: July 1, 2008

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You will see that while there are a couple of interesting titles that hit the shelves this week, the big news is in the Latest Releases at the end of this article as Paramount has officially announced the DVD and Blu-ray boxsets of the rumored restored versions of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, The Godfather Part II and The Godfather Part III available on individual DVDs, in a five-disc DVD box set or a four-disc Blu-ray boxset. I wonder, will this be one of those releases that finally gets the masses moving to HD Blu-ray? Click on the links at the end of the article for special feature information for each release.

I put this at the top only because I think it is one of the major advantages Blu-ray has over DVD. Long movies are always presented on two individual DVDs, but just as Fox did with the director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven and Paramount is doing with the extremely long Godfather Part II, Disney releases Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York on Blu-ray and instead of having to get up in the middle of the movie and switch discs you just let it play as it all comes in on one Blu-ray disc. I actually love this movie and am astonished that it didn’t win a single Academy Award. Shame on you Academy! BUY IT AT AMAZON

I have only had time to watch the first disc of the Blu-ray release of this show and I will say the first episode was great as it showed the ad boys of the ’60s trying to figure out a new way to sell cigarettes now that the risks of cancer had been revealed. Unfortunately, the first episode was really the only one that focused all that much on the marketing angle of the show and it quickly dove into cliche romance drama filled with emotional highs and lows. I am not saying it was bad, but I am saying it is nowhere near as unique as the first episode was. This show is a Golden Globe winner and perhaps the rest of the episodes are better… I will have to give it a chance and see. BUY IT AT AMAZON

This one I did get a chance to review (read it here) and I liked it… a lot… the rest is in the review. BUY IT AT AMAZON

Humbug, this is a crap film that has one good thing going for it… the score. BUY IT AT AMAZON

Unfortunately, this was not a good movie. It had some good elements, but I’ll be damned if this is not Rachel Weisz’s worst performance ever. Portman sure is cute in it though even though she doesn’t put on much of a performance either. BUY IT AT AMAZON

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