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‘Sonic The Hedgehog’ Blu-ray Giveaway!
I’m very excited to announce that I have Five (5) Blu-rays of Sonic The Hedgehog up for grabs. The discs, all of which are sealed, also come with the Digital Code and the DVD! Entry details are below!
Matthew Engelbert Talks ‘What Tomorrow Brings,’ Working With His Family, And Indie Filmmaking
Matthew Engelbert wrote, directed, and produced the indie family drama What Tomorrow Brings. The movie was a family affair, as his daughters Joely Engelbert and Phoebe Engelbert star as the leads. His older children (Eli, Ariel, and Zoey) along with his wife Caroline also handled various responsibilities on the feature. Engelbert talked to Deepest Dream about shooting his movie on an iPhone 15 Pro Max and the overall challenges of making What Tomorrow Brings. Review of What Tomorrow Brings and full interview with Engelbert is below!
Read more: Matthew Engelbert Talks ‘What Tomorrow Brings,’ Working With His Family, And Indie Filmmaking
What Tomorrow Brings centers on Clara (Joely Engelbert), a teenager who tries to take care of her younger sister Ruby (Phoebe Engelbert) amidst extremely tough circumstances. Their father has passed and their mother, overwhelmed by her parental duties, tells Clara that she will be leaving them to seek treatment.
Shooting on an iPhone Pro 15 Max, even though he used several, was an intriguing choice for Matthew Engelbert. It was a creative decision that ultimately worked for the filmmaker. “I knew I could shoot with (an iPhone) as opposed to bringing in two larger, much more professional cameras,” said Engelbert. “And then I would be bringing in camera operators. With the nature of this film, where I needed to have such latitude with the filming schedule, it just worked. For this type of movie, I think the camera captured (the tale) really well. My objective with this film was to frame the shots I wanted. I believed it was a good story.”
To provide a bit more realism to the dialogue, Engelbert enlisted Joely and Phoebe as his co-writers. The movie was, to coin an oft-ushed phrase, a family affair.
“I wouldn’t have made the movie,” said Engelbert. “If I wasn’t making it with them.”
Another aspect that worked was the healthy use of voiceover which gives us a bird’s eye view of Clara’s inner thoughts and turmoil. “For me, the idea of journaling and the voiceover, that’s how I decided I was going to transition between scenes,” said Engelbert. “I thought, ‘How do people cope with trauma?’ I’d read somewhere that (some) journal. So a lot of this story is told through (Clara’s) lens.”
My review of What Tomorrow Brings:
I appreciated Matthew Engelbert’s intimate approach with What Tomorrow Brings, and the feature contains standout work from Joely Engelbert (she won Best Actress at the Santa Fe Film Festival) and Phoebe Engelbert. I’ll be posting their interviews next week, and thanks to the Engelberts for taking the time for the chat.
What Tomorrow Brings is available on TVOD/AVOD starting September 4th.
Full interview with Matthew Engelbert:
Casey Carter Explores “Human Dimension” With ‘To Use A Mountain’ Documentary
Casey Carter makes his feature directing debut with the award-winning documentary To Use A Mountain. The film is currently playing in New York (Firehouse: DCTV’s Cinema for Documentary Film). Check out our full interview with the filmmaker, as well as Eric Holmes’ glowing review of the documentary, below!
Read more: Casey Carter Explores “Human Dimension” With ‘To Use A Mountain’ Documentary
The Origins of ‘To Use A Mountain’
In 1982, six rural communities in the United States were notified that the government’s nuclear waste might be buried beneath them as a way of isolating the waste for 10,000 years. The Department of Energy created the assessments, thus affecting the lives of said communities. Ultimately Yucca Mountain in Nevada was chosen as the nuclear waste site. But after decades of controversy, construction in the area was stopped. The affected lives and communities difference are spotlighted in To Use A Mountain.
“Part of what I wanted to do in the film was to discover that human dimension and create a film that is in a way a rebuttal to the form of this archive of describing a place in a purely analytical and utilitarian way,” said Casey Carter. “And present these places in a more humanistic way. To see the communities (and) the landscape, to feel what it feels like in these places. But also to feel what it feels like to face the possibility that the federal government will say, ‘You’re the one. This is where we wanna put this place.’ To face this potential destiny that people in these communities felt as an existential threat to their history, to their communities, and to their identities in some sense.”
‘To Use A Mountain’ Is A Mixture of Archival And Personal Accounts
Carter crafts a “visual voice” for the maps and texts that comes from the Department of Energy. This stylistic choice creates a “psychological space” that captures the feeling of “what does it feel to be mapped?”
“And then there’s just the topic of the film,” added Carter. It’s heavy and we’re talking about people whose families were impacted by nucelear weapons testing in Southern Nevada. There’s no easy away around what that looks like and feels like. It’s tragic.”
Check out Eric Holmes’ full interview with Casey Carter. Holmes reviews To Use A Mountain on this week’s CinemAddicts:
Catch To Use A Mountain through August Firehouse: DCTV’s Cinema for Documentary Film through August 27. Share your thoughts on the documentary in the comments!
“Smartest Guy In Hollywood” Peter M. Hoffman Reflects On ‘Karmic Winds’ Memoir And Making “Something Beautiful’
Yale-trained lawyer Peter M. Hoffman employed his analytical and legal skills to craft a successful career in Hollywood as president of Carolco Pictures. That era was just one chapter in his life, as he paints a full picture in his candid memoir Karmic Winds. Hoffman, who claimed he was wrongly convicted of fraud, wrote his memoir while in Terminal Island prison. “I wanted to make something beautiful out of this process,” said Hoffman. “And writing it and the connection wi th the people there and my family deepened (and) I came out of it a better person.” Check out our full interview with Peter M. Hoffman below!
Read more: “Smartest Guy In Hollywood” Peter M. Hoffman Reflects On ‘Karmic Winds’ Memoir And Making “Something Beautiful’
‘Karmic Winds’ Writing Origins
“I think it would be fair to say that I had to give up a lot of resentments for things that I thought were wrong,” said Peter M. Hoffman, who details the legal process of his seeking state tax credits for a New Orleans film project. “And like a lot of people, something bad happens and it isn’t your fault and you’re suffering the consequences of it. You can get aggravated and feel self-justified. The thing that was important to me was to give that up. It happened. It’s a fact. What do I make of it?”
Films Covered In ‘Karmic Winds’
Part of that healing and self-discovery process was Hoffman’s writing of Karmic Winds. Along with detailing his personal journey, the book is also an engaging read for cinephiles. Projects such as Basic Instinct, Stander, Mountains of the Moon, and Jacob’s Ladder are covered in his memoir.
“(Jacob’s Ladder) is a remarkable film that over time has found an audience,” said Hoffman. “We did no business with that picture when it started, but over time, there’s how many people come up to me and say ‘Oh, Jacob’s Ladder is one of my favorite movies.’ (Writer) Bruce Joel Rubin was really trying to suggest in that unique case where a person dies before their time, and they have to imagine forward all the events, and to make the decision about whether they want to go back or they can go into the light.”
Peter M. Hoffman On Appreciating ‘Amor Fati’
When asked about the key to all of his successes, Hoffman added that a lot of it was beyond his control, citing the Latin phraise “amor fati.” “I love the fat that was given to me,” added Hoffman. “I love the things that I really put my heart and soul into like Stander and The Believer. (And) I love the pictures that I was involved in where I was more or less just a financier (like) Jacob’s Ladder (and) Mountains of the Moon. I just have to embrace it and say it’s great and show it to my daughters and grandsons and say, ‘This is it – this is what happened.'”
Karmic Winds: Reflections from the “Smartest Guy In Hollywood” is now available through various retailers (including Amazon).
Friday Blu-Ray News: ‘The Hot Spot,’ ‘Troy,’ ‘Deep Blue Sea’ (PM Weekly Issue #7)
In 1990, Dennis Hopper walked a group of musicians into a studio and told them to play the blues.
He was scoring The Hot Spot, his sweaty little neo-noir with Don Johnson, and instead of a composer he hired legends: Miles Davis, John Lee Hooker, Taj Mahal, the slide guitarist Roy Rogers. He put them in a room together and had them play to the film. What came out, produced by Jack Nitzsche, is one of the finest things ever attached to a movie almost nobody saw. It was among the last music Miles Davis ever recorded. He was gone within the year.
Read more: Friday Blu-Ray News: ‘The Hot Spot,’ ‘Troy,’ ‘Deep Blue Sea’ (PM Weekly Issue #7)The film disappeared. The soundtrack became a cult object, passed between people who never even watched the picture it came from. This week, thirty-six years later, Radiance restores The Hot Spot in 4K and caps it at 5,000 copies.
There is a whole category of film like this. Movies that survive because of one strange, brilliant thing buried inside them that deserves to be kept. No studio protects those. Someone who loves them has to.
Welcome to PM Weekly. Let’s get into the week.
This Week on Disc
- Troy (2004), 3-disc Limited Edition, Arrow Video
- The Hot Spot (1990), Limited Edition of 5,000, Radiance
- Nightcrawler (2014), Collector’s Edition, Shout!
- The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2008), two cuts, Arrow Video
- Popeye (1980), Dolby Vision, Paramount
- The Swan Princess (1994), Dolby Vision and 7.1 audio, Sony
- Buffet Froid (1979), Limited Edition of 4,000, Indicator
- Abandon Ship (1957), Sony
- Flight (2012), Kino Lorber
- MacArthur (1977), Kino Lorber
- Repo Men (2010), Kino Lorber
- The Island (1980), Kino Lorber
- Badland Rising (2026), Well Go USA
Market Signal
Arrow Video’s 3-disc 4K Troy went fast. Within days of its August 18 release the Limited Edition was sold out at Arrow’s own store, Barnes & Noble, Walmart and Amazon UK, with Amazon US left as the last major retailer still holding stock, per HD Report’s August 19 follow-up. A twenty-two-year-old Warner blockbuster, a Brad Pitt epic that has sat in bargain bins for years, and collectors cleared the boutique edition off most shelves inside a week.
That is the number to watch, because it is not an accident. Radiance capped The Hot Spot at 5,000 copies. Indicator capped Buffet Froid at 4,000. These labels set their runs deliberately small because they know almost exactly how many buyers are real, and the buyers keep clearing the shelf anyway. Troy is just the loudest version of a signal this market sends every week: demand for the definitive physical edition now routinely outruns the supply labels are willing to press.
There is a tension worth naming. A movie pressed in a single limited run is a movie most people cannot get once it is gone, and a sell-through like this is a sale the label only makes once. But scarcity is also the engine. It is what makes these editions viable to produce in the first place, and what turns a catalog title nobody thought about into an object people set an alarm to buy. This week, the alarm went off for Troy.
Store of the Week
The Video Store MPLS (Minneapolis, MN)
Every store we have featured so far was a rescue, a shop saved from closing or a collection kept out of the dumpster. The Video Store MPLS is the opposite: a video store being born, right now, in 2026, out of nothing.
Founder Eric Knobel’s pitch is almost stubbornly simple, to “preserve and archive every single movie we can get our hands on, from the classic greats to the objectively terrible.” It started as a reaction to the exact frustrations this journal keeps naming: titles vanishing from streaming, prices climbing, ads landing where they should not. “I paused something the other day because I wanted to look at the frame,” Knobel said, “and an ad came up instead.” So he started buying, and taking donations. The collection is already past 3,000 titles, with hundreds arriving in a matter of weeks, on the way to a target of roughly 10,000 before the doors even open.
There are no doors yet. No storefront secured, which is the honest, unglamorous stage most of these stories skip past. What there is instead is a monthlong crowdfunding push launching this August, with a kickoff screening at the Trylon and a closing night at Strike Theater, a shop trying to exist by asking a city whether it still wants one. On the evidence of every other store in this column, the answer is usually yes.
(Next week: Video Free Brooklyn, Brooklyn, NY.)
The Stack
Deep Blue Sea (1999)
Format: Blu-ray (2010 Warner release), 1 Disc
Bonus Features: audio commentary with director Renny Harlin and Samuel L. Jackson; two behind-the-scenes featurettes, “When Sharks Attack” and “Sharks of the Deep Blue Sea”; five deleted scenes with optional director commentary; theatrical trailer.
Renny Harlin’s shark movie should not work as well as it does. The premise is nonsense. Scientists on an isolated sea lab enlarge mako shark brains to cure Alzheimer’s, and the sharks get smart enough to fight back. The movie is completely unembarrassed about it, and that is the point. It commits. It gives you Thomas Jane and Saffron Burrows and Stellan Skarsgard and LL Cool J with a parrot, and then, in the single most famous thing it ever did, lets Samuel L. Jackson deliver a rousing hold-it-together speech and eats him mid-sentence. Audiences have never stopped talking about that cut.
Here is why it earns a spot on the shelf. Streaming gives you the movie. The disc gives you Renny Harlin and Samuel L. Jackson sitting down to talk through how they built it, the deleted scenes that never made the cut, the featurettes on how the sharks were pulled off. That is the part the licensing carousel never carries. A big, loud, perfectly built studio popcorn movie is worth owning for the movie alone, the kind you actually rewatch, but the commentary and the cut footage are the things you cannot get any other way once the stream moves on. The disc does not care what quarter it is. It just plays, extras and all.
Sign-off
That is Issue #7. A Dennis Hopper movie almost nobody saw, kept alive by a soundtrack too good to lose. Thirteen new titles on shelves Tuesday, one of them selling out at most stores within days. And a brand-new video store in Minneapolis trying to exist out of donated tapes and stubbornness. Whatever else is disappearing, somebody keeps deciding these movies are worth keeping. If you know one person who still alphabetizes their shelf, forward this to them. That is the whole engine we have, and it is a good one.
See you Friday.
PM Weekly
Sean Reid
Film & TV Production
seanreid@worldonetv.com
Garret Dillahunt “Honored” And “Thrilled” To Be Part of ‘Lanterns’ Universe
As a kid, Garret Dillahunt was a comic book collector and now years later he plays a pivotal role in the new HBO Max series Lanterns. During his interview with Deepest Dream, Dillahunt reflected on his prolific career (Deadwood, Raising Hope), and he talked about why he was “honored” to be part of the Lanterns ensemble. Check out our full interview below!
Read more: Garret Dillahunt “Honored” And “Thrilled” To Be Part of ‘Lanterns’ Universe
Comic Books Were Part of Garret Dillahunt’s Youth
“With people I’m talking to (in promoting) this show, I haven’t talked about my comics so much in a long time,” said Garret Dillahunt. “And it’s really rekindled this sort of gratitude I have for that exposure early in life. I’m so happy that’s how I spent my youth. I have 15 boxes of them, the long boxes. I love (it) – even though it kills my back, the changing of the bag and the board after a certain number of years.”
“They’re so beautiful,” said Dillahunt, whose previous work includes Fear The Walking and Deadwood. “I used to wanna hang them all on my wall, just like wallpaper the whole room with them. It was just… ‘Cause it represented so much joy.”
As for his Lanterns role as powerful Nebraskan William Macon Sr., Dillahunt can’t give too much details. That said, he may not be on the side of good. ”I don’t feel like he thinks he’s a bad guy,” said Dillahunt, who sees a commonality with the Lanterns. “They both just have the same goal, (but) ust have different ways that they think is the right way to go about achieving that goal. I think the best villains don’t think of themselves as villains.”
Dillahunt “Thrilled” About Lanterns Production And Storytelling
Dillahunt said that there were no a**holes on the production and that everybody had a good time making this highly anticipated series. “I’m really honored to be a part of (Lanterns) and I’m proud of this one,” added Dillahunt. “I’ve seen the first four (episodes). But I haven’t seen the whole thing. I thought it was good when we made it, and then I was so thrilled about how excellent it was when I saw the first four.”
Lanterns, which co-stars Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre, hits HBO Max and HBO on Sunday August 16 (9 pm et). Share your thoughts on the series in the comments!
***Full interview with Garret Dillahunt:
Finish Your Screenplay: Director Kevin D. Sepe On Writing ‘Elijah Peel’
Now playing in theaters, Elijah Peel is a resonate rock n’ roll tale about a music star (Robert Malcolm Cumming) whose turbulent life takes a profound turn thanks to a newfound friendship with a young girl (Evelyn Grace Kite). First time filmmaker Kevin D. Sepe talked to Deepest Dream about the big challenge of writing the screenplay through the objective lens of being both a director and producer. Did wearing several hats alter Sepe’s approach to his storytelling? Check out our full interview below!
Read more: Finish Your Screenplay: Director Kevin D. Sepe On Writing ‘Elijah Peel’
‘Elijah Peel’ Screenplay Process
“To wear (several) hats is really hard because I’m in a position of being the producer, writer, and also being the director,” said Sepe, who co-directed Elijah Peel with Nathan Ross Murphy. “Those are three completely different hats, and that was the most challenging part of this because as the producer your job is to get it all to happen. You look at the screenplay and go, “This is gonna be tough.” Within the parameters of time elements or money elements or whatever that is, you have to be able to assess that as a producer objectively saying: ‘I can’t do this. This can’t be done. This is gonna cause a problem. This is gonna take too long. Let’s condense it. Let’s do that.'”
“So I’m telling my other part of my brain to do this, it’s not like I can go to a department,” said Sepe. “And go, ‘Hey, bring this back with this.’ I then convert that to (the script). It’s a very interesting place to be where you have to actually do it.”
Analyzing his story from an objective vantage point ultimately was an advantage for the filmmaker. “When you write it, you’re writing,” said Sepe, who also produced the movie’s original soundtrack. “I just let it flow. It’s not an easy thing to do – to remove very personal things for the betterment of the film and to make it flow quicker. And to make it get to a place where you think it will be received properly and in its most powerful condition.”
Catch ‘Elijah Peel’ In Theaters
The movie, executive produced by Willie Robertson and Korie Robertson, co-stars Kevin Sorbo’s as Elijah’s manager. Shot on location in and around Memphis, Tennessee, Elijah Peele is now playing in theaters.
***Check out my review of Elijah Peel on CinemAddicts:
Will you be watching Elijah Peel this weekend? Share your thoughts on the movie in the comments!
Finish Your Screenplay: Reed Arnold On Writing Wedding Comedy ‘Do Us Part’
Reed Arnold writes, directs, and stars in the new wedding comedy Do Us Part. The Oklahoma City filmmaker, who has had his works produced on stage in San Antonio, New York City, and Los Angeles, stepped up to the plate and made his own indie film. It’s an ambitious task, and the great news is this film absolutely hits the mark. Arnold talked to Deepest Dream about the challenges of making the movie, which is now playing in Los Angeles and available on Digital. As for writing the screenplay, it was not an overnight process. Check out the full interview below!
Read more: Finish Your Screenplay: Reed Arnold On Writing Wedding Comedy ‘Do Us Part’
Do Us Part centers on Ryan (Travis Laughlin), a nice guys who’s about to marry the love of his life. With his best man Mark (Reed Arnold) by his side, what could possibly go wrong? When Ryan’s close friend Rose (Kelly Russo) pops up to the wedding without an invite, things get complicated.
‘Do Us Part’ Screenwriting Journey
The story’s first draft started as a twenty five page short back in 2014, and that original premise was already set in place. “I don’t remember how long it took (to write),” said Arnold. “But it was pretty quick, and a lot of that still remains in the final version.”
That story was rehearsed as a play several months later and then upon realizing the story could be expanded, it was turned into a full length tale. “Four years later I adapted it to a screenplay where I added the other characters and did some rearranging to open it up for film,” said Arnold. “So it’s kind of a long journey from the short script it was gonna be into the final product. But that core original idea of the best man keeping this thing afloat for his own reasons, and then I had a second plot twist idea pretty soon after that which really solidified the premise for me and made me think that I had something pretty fun. It was in bursts for six years basically that we put this thing together.”
Classic Sitcom Styles To ‘Do Us Part’
One of the script’s strongest aspects is its machine gun dialogue and banter among the characters. That aesthetic was inspired by Arnold’s love for such sitcoms as Friends and How I Met Your Mother. “I was going for that rat-a-tat sitcom style dialogue,” said Arnold. “That was the part I wanted to play. So that’s what came out, and I’ve tried to maintain that throughout the entire process. That was my North Star – you get some insults in there, but you always know that there’s still, love behind them.”
Check out my Do Us Part review on CinemAddicts:
Do Us Part is now playing in Los Angeles and is available on Digital.
***Full interview with Reed Arnold:
Friday Blu-Ray News: ‘Hokum,’ ‘Project Hail Mary,’ ‘The Descent Part II’ (PM Weekly #6)
Steve James spent the 1980s playing muscle in other people’s movies, Cannon Films action pictures, The Delta Force, American Ninja, a scene-stealing supporting role as Kung Fu Joe in I’m Gonna Git You Sucka, streeting on disc again this very week. He died of cancer in 1993, forty years old, having never gotten the lead role his talent deserved. He got one. It just took thirty-six years for anyone to find it.
Read more: Friday Blu-Ray News: ‘Hokum,’ ‘Project Hail Mary,’ ‘The Descent Part II’ (PM Weekly #6)Riverbend Starring Steve James Hits Physical Media
Riverbend, a 1989 independent action-drama, cast James as an army officer leading a Black uprising against a corrupt sheriff in the Jim Crow South. It got a limited VHS release through Paramount’s Prism label and then all but vanished. Michael Dennis, a Philadelphia archivist, first saw the tape on a video store shelf in the ’90s and didn’t watch it. Decades later, a mentor asked him to digitize it for YouTube. He finally watched his own transfer and realized what he’d been sitting on.
What followed took three years: tracking down the original 35mm negative, a 6K restoration supervised by the film’s original director, a theatrical run at the Aero and BAMcinématèk, and finally a Blu-ray release on Juneteenth this year, the first release from Dennis’s new label, Reelblack Renaissance. Its entire mission is rescuing Black independent films that never got proper releases, the ones that end up bare-bones or don’t get released at all, no commentary, no restoration, no context, just a scan and a barcode. “There’s no Black-owned boutique label doing this work,” Dennis said. “So we’re filling that gap.”
Riverbend didn’t need a studio to decide it mattered. It needed one person who refused to let a VHS tape stay the only copy that existed.
Welcome to PM Weekly. Let’s get into the week.
THIS WEEK ON DISC
- Project Hail Mary (2026), Alliance Entertainment
- Troy (2004), 3-disc Limited Edition, Arrow Video
- Mars Attacks! (1996), 30th Anniversary SteelBook, Warner Bros.
- JFK (1991), Theatrical Cut, Shout! Factory
- Harlan County USA (1976), Criterion
- New York, New York (1977), MVD
- Ju-On: The Grudge (2002), Limited Edition, Arrow Video
- The Descent: Part II (2009), SteelBook, Lionsgate Limited
- Body Snatchers (1993), Vinegar Syndrome
- I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (1988), Vinegar Syndrome
- Enemy at the Gates (2001), 25th Anniversary SteelBook, Paramount
- 54 (1998), Director’s Cut, Cinématographe
- Abraham’s Boys: A Dracula Story (2025), Shudder
- Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (2023), Lionsgate
- Circle of Iron (1978), exclusive SteelBook, Blue Underground
- Hokum (2026), Decal
- Spike of Bensonhurst (1988), Limited Edition, Fun City
- Abandon Ship (1957), Sony
- Buffet Froid (1979), Limited Edition of 4,000 copies, Indicator
MARKET SIGNAL
The Sopranos is getting its first-ever complete 4K box set on December 8th, all six seasons, eighty-six episodes, fully remastered, the release this show has deserved for years. It includes “Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos,” Alex Gibney’s acclaimed documentary on the show’s creator. One honest note: that documentary isn’t new, it aired on HBO back in 2024 and has been streaming on Max ever since. What is genuinely new is a single bonus featurette with David Chase, made specifically for this release and available nowhere else.
It’s worth sitting these two stories next to each other. A tiny Philadelphia label just spent three years and its own founder’s money reviving a film that had one VHS release and nothing since. A media conglomerate is bundling an existing streaming documentary into a box set and calling most of it new. Scale isn’t the same as care. Sometimes the smaller release is the one actually doing the work.
STORE OF THE WEEK
Beyond Video (Baltimore, MD)
A group of former customers and staff tried to save Video Americain, an actual John Waters filming location, the video store seen in Serial Mom, and couldn’t raise enough. Instead of giving up, they built an entirely new collection from scratch: donations from their own shelves, a public call for more, member support through Fractured Atlas in exchange for borrowing privileges. Opened in 2018 with under 9,000 titles, Beyond Video now holds more than 21,000. It’s not a survivor story. It’s a resurrection, built by the people who showed up after the original store couldn’t be saved.
(Next week: The Video Store MPLS, Minneapolis.)
THE STACK
What I pulled off the shelf this week.
The Ben Stiller Show: The Complete Series (2003 DVD, series originally aired 1992)
Format: DVD, 2 Discs
Bonus Features: Seven audio commentary tracks with Ben Stiller, the cast, and writers; “A Brief History of The Ben Stiller Show” featurette with an alternate pilot version; ten outtakes and five unaired sketches; an E! behind-the-scenes special; the “Melrose Heights” special commentary Easter egg.
Fox canceled this after twelve episodes, which is exactly the kind of decision that makes a case for physical media all by itself. The show won an Emmy for comedic writing, launched Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, Bob Odenkirk, and Andy Dick into everything that came after it, and network television still didn’t want it. This DVD, released a full decade later once Stiller had actual box office pull, includes a thirteenth episode that never even aired. That’s the whole argument: a show good enough to eventually earn a proper release, sitting on a shelf as complete proof it existed, instead of scattered across whatever corner of a streaming library still bothers to license it.
SIGN-OFF
That’s this week. A one-person label spent three years chasing down a negative nobody else wanted, and a media conglomerate spent one afternoon repackaging a documentary that already existed. Nineteen new titles landed on shelves regardless of which kind of effort went into them. If you know one person who still alphabetizes their shelf, forward this to them. That is the whole engine we have, and it is a good one.
See you Friday.
PM Weekly – Sean Reid
Movie & TV Production
seanreid@worldonetv.com
Yihong Exa Huang’s ‘Fortune House’ Debuts At LA Shorts International Film Festival
Los Angeles based filmmaker Yihong Exa Huang’s Fortune House, a magical realist immigration narrative, makes its world premiere tonight at the LA Shorts International Film Festival. Huang, whose previous shorts include I Hate Love and Just Another Day, talked to CinemAddicts co-host Eric Holmes about the inspiration behind Fortune House.
Read more: Yihong Exa Huang’s ‘Fortune House’ Debuts At LA Shorts International Film Festival
Directed by Yihong Exa Huang, Fortune House centers on an undocumented Chinese delivery driver who discovers a restaurant that is run by demons. He gambles for his place in America through a risky game of mahjong.
“With a short film, you’re trying to show a glimpse of the world or a human condition,” said Huang, who is an AFI Conservatory graduate. “You can’t really tell more than that because the time is limited. But with a feature, you present the whole world. So for this kind of concept, we wanted to see if it works or not and we have a main character who is going to conquer through every difficulties to reach the end. We also want to see if it’s working or not by showing a glimpse of this world building. Then we can make a decision if we’re going to do more in the future.”
Next up for Fortune House is a hopeful successful festival run that starts tonight. “The reason we were so excited about LA Shorts International Film Festival is because we literally just started a festival run a month ago,” said Huang. “And this is the first news that we got. So we’re really excited for that. After that we will go for more festivals and hopefully get more screenings. And then after a year of a festival run, we will try to do more community based screenings. Then we’re trying to go on streaming and work with some media to publish it somewhere on a media platform.”
Huang is also writing an action comedy feature about a young immigrant who lives in the United States. When his father visits from China to celebrate his son’s graduation, he must hide that he’s dropped out of school and is a drug dealer. The script is currently under rewrites and is still in the financing process. “We will see how it goes after this,” added Huang.
Full interview with Yihong Exa Huang is on CinemAddicts and YouTube:
Catch Fortune House tonight at the LA Shorts International Film Festival at the Regal NoHo West in Los Angeles.
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Friday Blu-Ray News: ‘The People Vs. Larry Flynt,’ ‘Little Fockers,’ ‘Safe’ (PM Weekly #5)
Video Store Day turns sixteen this year. Daniel Hanna started it in 2010 as a grassroots way to get independent video stores rallying around one day the way record shops do every April. Sixteen years later, on October 17th, it’s got a real distributor behind it for the first time. MVD Entertainment Group, thirty-five years in the business, still family-owned, just signed on as an official partner, promising exclusive Blu-ray, 4K, DVD, and even VHS variants sold nowhere but through participating independent stores.
Read more: Friday Blu-Ray News: ‘The People Vs. Larry Flynt,’ ‘Little Fockers,’ ‘Safe’ (PM Weekly #5)Hanna called it fifteen years of running Video Store Day as “a grassroots event,” now finally with a distributor’s backing. Fifteen years of doing this without one, just stores and volunteers and word of mouth, and it still built something worth a company the size of MVD showing up to help carry.
Record Store Day had it easier. Vinyl never really stopped being manufactured; it just went quiet for a while. Video stores watched their entire format get discontinued out from under them, and kept going anyway. Sixteen years of survival, on the format that wasn’t supposed to make it, just landed its first real distribution partner.
Products get announced in August. First MVD-backed exclusives ever. Mark the date.
Welcome to PM Weekly. Let’s get into the week.
THIS WEEK ON DISC
- Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), 20th Anniversary SteelBook
- American Pie 2 (2001)
- Creepshow 2 (1987), Special Edition, Arrow Video
- Little Fockers (2010)
- Night of the Comet (1984), SteelBook, Shout!
- School on Fire (1988), Shout!
- Safe (1995), Todd Haynes, Criterion
- The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), Arrow Video
INDUSTRY WATCH
Two studios just lost separate control of their own discs. Conectiv Supply Chain Solutions acquired Studio Distribution Services this week, the joint venture Universal and Warner Bros. Discovery set up back in 2021 to handle their own DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K sales and distribution. Conectiv also picked up exclusive, long-term licensing agreements to run both studios’ physical home entertainment businesses going forward, folding disc and vinyl manufacturing, fulfillment, and distribution under one company for the first time. Conectiv’s CEO called it “the industry’s most comprehensive packaged-media platform.” That’s not marketing spin, it’s an accurate description of what just happened: two of the biggest libraries in the business now depend on a single third party to keep their discs made and shelved. Warner Bros.’ own head of transactional sales insists nothing changes for consumers or retailers. Maybe. But it’s worth noticing how much of this industry’s physical backbone just moved under one roof in a single afternoon.
MARKET SIGNAL
Not every game publisher is reading Sony’s exit from physical the same way. Sega’s president told Famitsu this week that the company has no plans to stop making physical games, pointing to what he called the “culture of physical media,” even while agreeing that digital makes sense for most full console and PC titles. Meanwhile, Ubisoft’s CEO said on an earnings call that he doesn’t think Sony’s move will “disturb the industry too much.” One company is quietly signaling it’ll keep making discs regardless of what Sony does. Another is shrugging like the whole question barely matters. That gap is the real story: physical gaming’s future isn’t actually settled industry-wide, it just looks that way when Sony’s the only one making headlines.
STORE OF THE WEEK
Free Blockbuster network
Not a store this time, a movement. Free Blockbuster started as a grassroots “take a disc, leave a disc” project: volunteers repurpose old newspaper boxes and cabinets, paint them in Blockbuster’s old blue-and-yellow, and stock them with DVDs anyone can take, no membership, no late fees, no app. Boxes have spread to dozens of cities, entirely community-run, entirely free. It’s the opposite model of everything else this feature has covered so far, no shelves, no staff, no single address, just physical media kept in circulation because enough people decided it should be.
(Next week: Beyond Video, Baltimore.)
THE STACK
What I pulled off the shelf this week.
Tennis, Anyone? (2006)
Format: DVD, 1 Disc
Bonus Features: Deleted Scenes, Cast Interviews, Director’s Notes & Commentary, Hidden “Easter Eggs”
This one’s proof that DVDs preserved a whole tier of movie that streaming never bothered archiving. Donal Logue directs and stars as a washed-up actor chasing relevance through celebrity tennis, with a cast that reads like a “spot the future star” game: Paul Rudd in a small role years before he was Paul Rudd, plus Stephen Dorff, Danny Trejo, and Jason Isaacs filling out the supporting bench. The commentary track and cast interviews are the kind of extras a movie this small would never get again if it were made today, nobody’s licensing this for a streaming platform, let alone paying for new bonus content. The DVD isn’t just how you watch it. It’s the only reason any of that material exists at all.
SIGN-OFF
That’s this week. Video Store Day just landed its first real distributor after sixteen years of doing it alone. Two studios just handed their entire physical backbone to a single company in one afternoon. And somewhere out there, a repainted newspaper box wearing a dead company’s colors is quietly keeping discs in circulation anyway. Physical media doesn’t move in one direction. If you know one person who still alphabetizes their shelf, forward this to them. That is the whole engine we have, and it is a good one.
See you Friday.
PM Weekly
Film & TV Production
Sean@WorldOneTV.com