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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!
Friday Blu-Ray News: ‘Interview with the Vampire,’ ‘Angel’s Egg,’ ‘Nouvelle Vague’ (PM Weekly Issue #11)
Somewhere in a Warner Vault there are scenes from Interview with the Vampire that nobody outside the production has seen. On Tuesday they come out, on a disc, and nowhere else.
Read more: Friday Blu-Ray News: ‘Interview with the Vampire,’ ‘Angel’s Egg,’ ‘Nouvelle Vague’ (PM Weekly Issue #11)
The film reaches 4K for the first time this week, newly remastered with HDR, in standard packaging and a limited SteelBook. What makes it worth the top of this column is not the transfer. It is that somebody went back for the deleted scenes, put director commentary on them, and persuaded Neil Jordan to sit down thirty-two years after the fact and record two new pieces, one with his editor Mick Audsley on how the film was shot, and one with Dante Ferretti on the production design.
Think about what that actually requires. Someone has to locate material cut in 1994, work out what condition it is in, clear it, conform it to a modern master, and then convince a director with thirty years of work behind him since to give up an afternoon for a picture he finished before much of the audience was born. None of that is cheap and none of it is automatic.
And none of it happens for a streaming refresh. The film has been available on services for years. In all that time not one of them has carried a single frame of this material, because a service has no mechanism for caring. A catalogue title on a streamer is a row in a database with an expiry date on it. Nobody at a streaming company has ever been given a budget line for going into a vault, because there is no version of that spend that shows up in a retention metric.
The disc is the only remaining commercial reason for anyone to look. That is the argument compressed into one catalogue title, and it is a narrower argument than the one this column usually makes. Not that the picture is better, although it is. Not that you own it, although you do. That the existence of a physical release is currently the sole economic justification for a studio to go and find out what is still in the building.
Warner has not said how many scenes there are or what is in them. We will know Tuesday. What we already know is that without a disc to put them on, nobody would have gone looking.
Welcome to PM Weekly. Let’s get into the week.
THIS WEEK ON DISC
- Interview with the Vampire (1994), 4K UHD and Limited Edition SteelBook, Warner Bros.
- Angel’s Egg (1985), Collector’s Edition 4K UHD and Blu-ray, GKIDS
- Nouvelle Vague (2025), 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD, Criterion
- The Secret Agent (2025), director-approved 4K UHD and Blu-ray, Criterion
- Johnny Handsome (1989), Special Edition 4K UHD and Blu-ray, Kino Lorber
- Evil Dead Burn (2026), 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD, Warner Bros.
- Scary Movie (2026), 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD, Paramount
- Kriminal (1966), 4K UHD and Blu-ray, Cult Epics
- Missing in Action (1984), 4K UHD, MVD Rewind
- ChaO (2025), Blu-ray, Shout! Factory
MARKET SIGNAL
GKIDS is not putting its collector editions in shops any more. Four titles, Angel’s Egg, Look Back, Linda Linda Linda and Love & Pop, are sold only through its own website.
Read that against what retail has spent a decade doing and it stops looking like a boutique affectation. Best Buy is out of discs entirely. Target cut its sections to a token presence and pushed the rest online. Walmart has been shrinking its aisle since before the pandemic. The shelf that labels spent thirty years fighting to get onto has been quietly dismantled, and what survives of it is a bin of new releases near the checkout, which is no use at all to a seventy-three minute Japanese art film from 1985.
So a distributor that put The Boy and the Heron in American cinemas and watched it win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature has concluded that the only retailer it can depend on is itself. Alison Kozberg, who runs home entertainment there, put it in the language of preservation rather than margin: “by investing in thoughtfully curated, enduring releases, we are preserving these landmark works for future generations.” The business case underneath is straightforward. Full margin, no returns, no buyer deciding an art film does not merit facings, and a direct line to the people who actually want the thing.
The cost is the part worth naming, and it is not small. A store exclusive is a discovery problem. Nobody stumbles across a GKIDS release in the GKIDS store. You arrive already knowing, which means the audience for a film like Angel’s Egg is capped at the people who came looking for it, and the accidental buyer disappears, the one who picks something up because the cover is strange and they have twenty minutes. That buyer is how most of us found most of what we love. Boutique labels have been drifting toward direct sales for years and the drift has always been defensible one decision at a time. This is the furthest anyone has taken it, and it is being taken by the label with the best case for wanting a wide audience.
STORE OF THE WEEK
//www.instagram.com/embed.js
CineFile Video (West Los Angeles, CA)
CineFile sits at 11280 Santa Monica Boulevard, next door to the Nuart at 11272, the repertory house where Los Angeles has been watching midnight movies since before most of the people in the queue were born. That is not an accident of real estate. It is the business model.
The shop opened in 1999 to “collect and curate rare and excellent films in all genres,” and by 2013 it was going to close, which is what was happening to every video store in America that year. Sebastian Mathews, who ran the Touch Vinyl record shop up the road, bought it instead. He already had a store on a West LA stretch people had started calling Analog Alley, and he decided the block needed the video store more than he needed the money.
Thirteen years later it holds sixty thousand films to rent and to buy, runs on four employees, and opens noon to eight Sunday through Thursday and noon to midnight on Friday and Saturday, which is the schedule of a place that expects you after a film rather than before one. Joining costs five dollars and rentals are five fifty, or you take a monthly membership at twenty dollars for two discs at a time or thirty for four, with no late fees, a store discount and the screenings thrown in. Those run every Thursday at half past eight. This month brought Rushmore, The Faculty, Massacre at Central High and Dead Kids, which is a sensibility rather than a schedule.
It also runs distribution partnerships with Vinegar Syndrome, Shout! Factory and Criterion, which is worth pausing on in a week when a label decided its own website was a better shop than any shop. CineFile calls itself “an archival resource and a bastion for American culture,” which is a large phrase for a small room. But a place holding sixty thousand titles, selling the boutique labels over the counter and putting a 1976 teen revenge picture on a screen on a Thursday night is doing the one thing a website cannot, which is let you find what you were not looking for.
Kim’s Video, last week, was a collection that survived because a film crew went to Sicily and took it back. CineFile is the simpler story and possibly the harder one. It survived because one man who already owned a shop on that street decided a second one was not going to close.
(Next week: We Luv Video, Austin, and the hundred and thirty thousand tapes that came out of storage when a legend closed.)
THE STACK
What I pulled off the shelf this week.
The Mel Brooks Collection (2012)
Format: Blu-ray, 9 Discs
Bonus Features: audio commentaries by Mel Brooks on Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Spaceballs and Robin Hood: Men in Tights; “Back in the Saddle”; “Making Frankensense”; “Spaceballs: The Documentary”; “In Conversation: Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan”; a Robin Hood HBO special.
Mel Brooks turned a hundred years old on the twenty-eighth of June.
Fox put this set out in May 2012, nine films across nine discs in a box with a pamphlet: The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, History of the World Part I, To Be or Not to Be, Spaceballs and Robin Hood: Men in Tights.
I want to be straight about what is on it, because a box set is never uniform and this one certainly is not. Five of the nine carry almost nothing. The Twelve Chairs, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, History of the World Part I and To Be or Not to Be get a trailer and whatever was ported over from the DVD. Blazing Saddles sits on a BD-25 while the rest are on BD-50s, recycled from its standalone release. The 2009 original came with a hefty illustrated book about Brooks and the films. The 2012 reissue I own swapped it for a pamphlet, which is its own small lesson about what a set loses the second time around. If you buy this expecting nine special editions you will be annoyed, and you would be right to be.
The other four are the reason it stays on the shelf. Brooks recorded commentaries for Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Spaceballs and Robin Hood. There is a forty-two minute documentary on Young Frankenstein, a twenty-eight minute one on Blazing Saddles, and twenty minutes of him talking through Spaceballs with Thomas Meehan.
This week’s lede was about Warner going back for material cut in 1994 and getting Neil Jordan to explain it thirty-two years later, which worked because Jordan is still here and still working. The Brooks material is the same transaction at the far end of it. Those tracks were recorded when they could be recorded. Whatever nobody thought to ask him then does not get asked now, and there will not be a new Blazing Saddles commentary, ever, by anyone who was in the room.
That is not a morbid thought so much as a scheduling one. Every commentary is a person agreeing to sit in a booth for two hours while they still can, and the number of people able to speak first-hand about a film from 1974 only ever goes in one direction. Those two hours ended up on a disc because a disc was the only thing that ever had a reason to hold them. No streaming service has ever commissioned one. No streaming service ever will.
A hundred years old, and he sat down and explained his own films while there was somebody left to ask.
SIGN-OFF
That is Issue #11. Warner going into a thirty-two year old vault because a disc gave it a reason to, a label deciding the only shop it trusts is its own, CineFile still open on Santa Monica Boulevard because a record store owner would not let it close, and nine discs of a man who did the work of explaining himself while he could. 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
Corey Haim And Michael Ironside Horror ‘Watchers’ Hits Blu-ray In October Via Toy Robot Video
Toy Robot Video will release Watchers, a 1988 suspense horror starring Corey Haim and Michael Ironside on October 20. Based on the Dean R. Koontz novel of the same name, the film comes with new Special Features. Check out our post for details!
Read more: Corey Haim And Michael Ironside Horror ‘Watchers’ Hits Blu-ray In October Via Toy Robot VideoIn Watchers, Corey Haim plays Travis Cornell, a teen who befriends a highly intelligent golden retriever. This dog, however, was part of a biological research experienment who escaped after an explosion obliterated a science laboratory. A beast known as OXCOM (Outside Experimental Combat Mammal) also survived the blast, and agents Lem Johnson (Michael Ironside) and Cliff Soams (Blu Mankuma) are tasked with killing both survivors.
Travis, who adopted the dog, puts himself in harm’s way. If you’ve got Michael Ironside on your trail, trouble is right around the corner!
The ensemble includes Don S. Davis (Twin Peaks), Lala Sloatman (Dream A Little Dream), Barbara Williams (Inventing the Abbotts), and Jason Priestley (Beverly Hills, 90210). Williams also worked with Corey Haim in the 1992 feature Oh, What A Night and she co-write the Pauly Shore comedy Jury Duty. Don Hess directed the 91-minute feature and the script was penned by Bill Freed and Damian Lee.
The Watchers’ bonus features include new (and separate) interviews with Jon Hess, Michael Ironside, Lala Sloatman, and Barbara Williams. Watchers’ original theatrical trailer and a still gallery are also part of the extras.
As a Generation X member, one of my goals is to watch as many 1980s movies that I missed from my youth. I’m adding Watchers to my movie list, and would love to hear your thoughts and comments on the film! The movie is currently streaming on Prime Video if you want to give it a shot before its physical media release!
Watchers, starring Corey Haim and Michael Ironside, hits Blu-ray via Toy Robot Video on October 20.
***We receive a slight commission when you use our Amazon SiteStripe and affiliate links for your purchases. Thanks for your support!
***I give away Blu-ray or Digital code each week to members of our CinemAddicts Movie Club. Join our Facebook Group and become part of our community. Any questions please email me at editor@deepestdream.com.
***We review The Cycle of Love and Runner on the latest CinemAddicts episode:
I’ll be doing Unboxing Videos for our CinemAddicts Patreon community. Just Posted The First Unboxing On Our Feed
Cassie Workman Crafts “Pretty Eclectic” Comedic Documentary Series With ‘Cassie Workman Is Witchy AF’
Comedian/writer Cassie Workman collaborated with ETCH and Anarchists United Studios to create the new adult comedy series Cassie Workman Is Witchy AF. The show premieres exclusively on YouTube starting September 16 at 8 pm et. Workman (Giantess, Aberdeen) talked to Deepest Dream about the origins of her show.
Read more: Cassie Workman Crafts “Pretty Eclectic” Comedic Documentary Series With ‘Cassie Workman Is Witchy AF’
Cassie Workman is Witchy AF is an eight-part, comedic documentary series that delives into the philosophy and history of magic and occultism. With the use of Direct Message puppetry and practical SFX from Monster in My Closet, the show is set in a fictional occult bookstore owned by Cassie Workman. Guest stars on the show include Shirley Manson (Garbage), comedian Ben Russell, and an interesting figure named King Grimsquawk!
Full video interview with Cassie Workman is below and most of the conversation is also available in Q&A form:
Question: I’m here with Cassie Workman star of Cassie Workman Is Witchy AF. What got this whole thing started?
Cassie Workman: Oh, geez. I guess I was just looking for something to do. I started tossing around this idea, like years ago, and it sort of evolved a bit and then went on the back burner.
And then my agent in New York was like, “You know, do you have any ideas for a show? Let’s make a show.” And I said, “Well, I had this kicking around, and I think it’s really fun and stupid, and let’s make it.” And here we are. We found some really wonderful people in Etch Productions.
We got together in Asbury Park, New Jersey and we put together this crazy little show.
Question: Yeah. It, it was pretty interesting. The ones I saw was the Aleister Crowley one and the Anton LaVey (installment). How many episodes are on this whole season?
Cassie Workman: There’s eight episodes, and so we cover John Dee, the Elizabethan occultist, and we cover Santa Muerte. And the mechanics of magic, you know, how magic works.
It’s pretty eclectic.
Question: All right. It’s definitely a comedy show obviously, but it’s also a biopic of sorts, or a biography of these people. And is there any sort of like journalistic sort of responsibility you have?
Cassie Workman: I am not a journalist. I’m trying to represent the tentpole elements of people’s lives in a half-hour show. So obviously there’s gonna be people who love or know a lot about these historical figures who are gonna say, “Well, there also was this that happened.” I just didn’t have time to talk about it.
But I try to stay as true to the facts as possible. I hope it’s obvious when I’m making jokes because that’s the only time that I’ll stray from the actual real narrative. It’s like a, a good mix of funny and real and people will be able to tell when I go off on a tangent.
Question: What, what’s the writing process like on this? Just from the blank page to what comes on screen, how’s that get there?
Cassie Workman: Well, I was very lucky we had this researcher Morgan who was also a magician and. She was able to give us incredible information about the history of a lot of these characters, stuff that I didn’t know. And then it’s my knowledge on top of that to sort of, you know, color it a bit.
So the basis for each episode was just the research, and then cracking jokes off the research and little one-liners and asides and stuff. And then I was looking for ways to sort of frame the stories in interesting ways to just give it just an extra dimension. It’s a bit more watchable. The episodes were constructed like that.
Of course we have the reenactments which are all marionettes from Direct Message in California who make these beautiful marionettes. And so with that all swirling around in my mind, that’s how I started to build episodes. And it, it didn’t take a very long time to write the episodes.
They came pretty quickly.
Question: So with the marionettes and the puppets, do you have an idea of what they look like and you send it to them? Or do you say, “This is a script. Just go nuts.”
Cassie Workman: Well, yeah. I mean, because there’s so many historical figures, it’s just a matter of saying, “Well, it’s this person,” and find as many photos of them as possible and recreate them. They did an excellent job.
And then we have sort of a cast of players of the other marionettes who change costume here and there and become different people. That was pretty much the system. And then of course there’s King Grimsquawk who I was sitting at the Comedy Cellar.
I was gonna go on at the Comedy Cellar, and they have these little tables there that are like black chalkboard tables, and they give you chalk and you can just doodle while you’re waiting to go and do your set. And I, I drew a little picture of this crow with baby arms. And that was the first ever design for (King) Grimsquawk.
And that’s how we got him.
Question: This show is premiering on Etch. So we’re recording this tomorrow on the, on the 16th. Yeah do you have a season two planned, or is it too early, for that?
Cassie Workman: I have ideas. I’d be ready to go if you know, that were a prospect. Sure. We’ll see how this goes first, and then, you know, if it’s a big success, then sure.
Question: All right. Well, congratulations on the series. I’ve really enjoyed it. Thanks for joining me today.
Cassie Workman: Oh, not at all. Thanks so much!
Friday Blu-Ray News: ‘Peking Opera Blues,’ ‘Stranger Things,’ ‘Devil in a Blue Dress’ (PM Weekly Issue #10)
Ask what a restoration is and everyone answers with the image. A 4K scan of the original camera negative, Dolby Vision, a colour grade signed off by the cinematographer.
For forty years, the thing actually broken about Hong Kong cinema in the West was none of that. It was the subtitles. Export prints went out with translations done fast and cheap, sometimes off a second-hand script, sometimes seemingly by someone guessing. Jokes vanished. Names changed reel to reel. An entire national cinema reached English-speaking audiences through a fog, and a couple of generations of us learned to love these films while only partly understanding them.
Read more: Friday Blu-Ray News: ‘Peking Opera Blues,’ ‘Stranger Things,’ ‘Devil in a Blue Dress’ (PM Weekly Issue #10)Shout! Factory has been quietly fixing that for a year and a half. Every title in its Hong Kong Cinema Classics line carries the same line on the spec sheet: “optional English subtitles translated for this release.” Not inherited, not licensed from whatever came before. Commissioned. When Blu-ray.com reviewed the City on Fire 4K last August it stopped to note the new translation and pronounced it clean. Peking Opera Blues and City on Fire arrive Tuesday in SteelBooks carrying those same discs, with John Woo’s Bullet in the Head following on the twenty-eighth. The metal case is all the SteelBook adds, which is a fair complaint and not the one I want to make this week.
That deserves to count as restoration work, and it rarely does. Nobody puts new subtitles on the front of the box in the way they put Dolby Vision there, because it does not demo well and you cannot screenshot it for a forum thread. But for a film like Peking Opera Blues, where Tsui Hark is moving between farce, opera and revolutionary politics inside single scenes, an accurate translation changes what the film is far more than another few hundred lines of resolution ever could.
It is worth being clear about what this costs a label. A new 4K scan is a capital expense with a visible result. A new subtitle track is a person, or several, sitting with the film for weeks, and the reward for doing it well is that nobody notices. The audience it matters most to is the audience least able to check the work, which is exactly the condition under which corners have always been cut in this business. Shout! Factory has been doing it anyway, across an entire line, on films that already had discs on the market.
The picture was never the part that was lost.
Welcome to PM Weekly. Let’s get into the week.
THIS WEEK ON DISC
- 12 Angry Men (1957), 4K UHD and Blu-ray, Criterion
- Peking Opera Blues (1986), Limited Edition 4K SteelBook, Shout! Factory
- City on Fire (1986), Limited Edition 4K SteelBook, Shout! Factory
- Star Trek: First Contact (1996), 30th Anniversary 4K SteelBook, Paramount
- The Pink Panther Masterpiece Collection, five films on 4K plus a supplements disc, Kino Lorber
- Arrival (2016), 10th Anniversary Limited Edition 4K SteelBook, Paramount
- Annihilation (2018), Limited Edition 4K SteelBook, Paramount
- Supergirl (2026), 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD, Warner Bros.
- Batman: Knightfall Part 1 (2026), 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment
- Minions & Monsters (2026), 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD, Universal
MARKET SIGNAL
When Netflix and Arrow Video announced a twenty-five disc box of Stranger Things in March, Netflix framed it as an experiment. The creators talked about wanting the show “owned in its entirety, as a way to preserve the show for decades to come,” and the company made clear that further Netflix titles on disc depended on how this one sold. The verdict came Monday. In Britain it passed £1 million in its first month and now sits at number one for retail value on the year-to-date physical chart, outselling every film released there this year. Five seasons, forty-two episodes, £145 for the standard edition.
There is no American dollar figure, because Circana reports units as an index while the British trade bodies report what the country actually spent. What Circana does show is the set entering the US Blu-ray chart at number three in its release week, behind two new studio titles, and number two on the 4K chart. The number that matters is the format split. Seventy-four percent of American units sold were the 4K edition, 61 percent in week two. With a cheaper Blu-ray on the same shelf, buyers took the expensive one three to one, on a set that opens at $143. That is not a mass-market result and nobody should dress it up as one. It is evidence that whoever is left is buying at the top of the price ladder on purpose.
It is also not a fluke, which is what makes it a signal. On November 3, Criterion adds Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters to the Collection as spine 1333, the fourteenth Netflix original it has taken. The same day, Amazon MGM puts both seasons of The Rings of Power on 4K, Blu-ray and DVD through Alliance Entertainment. Euphoria’s complete series follows on December 15. Notice who is manufacturing all of it. Netflix did not build a home entertainment division, it went to Arrow. Its Oscar winner is going out under a Criterion spine number. The streamers hold the catalogue and the capital, and everyone who knows how to put a film in a box properly still works at a boutique.
The streaming argument was never that discs were inferior. It was that owning things had become an obsolete habit people would drop once they understood they did not need it, and every one of these companies was built on that claim. Netflix tested it on its own biggest property and got back an answer it did not want. The limit is real, and worth saying: these are all enormous titles, this is monetization of the summit rather than preservation, and the mid-budget original with a modest audience still has no disc and no route to one. But the demand was always there, and they were wrong about it.
STORE OF THE WEEK
Kim’s Video (Alamo Drafthouse, Lower Manhattan, NY)
Yongman Kim came to New York from South Korea in 1979, aged twenty-one, and built a chain of video stores that became the reference point for anyone serious about film in this city. Then in 2008 he gave the whole thing away. Roughly 55,000 films went to Salemi, a town in Sicily, on the understanding that former members could visit the collection and that it would eventually be digitized.
Then nothing. For years, nobody outside Salemi could say with confidence where the films were or what condition they were in.
Ashley Sabin and David Redmon went to find out, and the documentary they came back with premiered at Sundance in 2023. What they found in Salemi they describe as sophisticated, creative corruption. What they did about it is the part that makes the film: Kim’s Video ends with a heist.
The collection is now in the basement of the Alamo Drafthouse on Liberty Street. About 15,000 titles restored so far, free five-day rentals, twenty dollars if you also need to borrow a VHS or DVD player, several original Kim’s employees doing the restoration work, and a monthly Kim’s Video Presents screening series upstairs.
Vidiots, last week, was an institution saved intact because somebody made it a nonprofit in 2012. Kim’s is the opposite lesson. The institution died. The collection did not, because a film crew went and physically retrieved it. Not every library gets a documentary made about it. Most of the ones that end up in a warehouse simply stay there.
(Next week: CineFile Video, Los Angeles, and the record shop owner who bought a video store in 2013 to stop it closing.)
THE STACK
What I pulled off the shelf this week.
Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)
Format: DVD, 1 Disc
Bonus Features: audio commentary by director Carl Franklin; Don Cheadle screen test
Carl Franklin’s adaptation of Walter Mosley’s novel came out in September 1995, made about sixteen million dollars, and did not produce the Easy Rawlins series everyone expected. Denzel Washington plays a laid-off aircraft worker in 1948 Los Angeles who takes a job finding a missing white woman because his mortgage is due, and discovers that being good at asking questions is a dangerous skill for a Black man in that city. Don Cheadle arrives late as Mouse and takes the film away from everybody.
This is a permanent part of my collection and it is a DVD, which is the point of putting it here.
The commentary on that disc was recorded in 1999. Franklin sat down and talked through the film, and every premium edition since has carried that track forward. Twilight Time used it. Indicator used it. Criterion’s 4K, the current definitive version, uses it, because there was never going to be a better one. Franklin is thirty years further from the shoot now than he was then, and the version of him that is closest to the film is the one that was captured for a standard definition disc nobody thought of as an archival object at the time.
That is the same argument as this week’s lede, arriving from the other direction. The picture keeps getting improved. Criterion scanned the negative, and the film looks better than it ever has. But the parts of a release that are not the picture, the commentary, the translation, the screen test of a young actor who did not have the part yet, those get made once and then get carried, edition after edition, because nobody can go back and make them again. The transfer is the thing labels advertise. The supplement is the thing that turns out to be irreplaceable.
Criterion’s edition is the one to buy if you are buying now. But the disc I own is where the record starts, and it is worth knowing that a 1999 DVD is still doing load-bearing work inside a 4K box that costs four times what it did.
SIGN-OFF
That is Issue #10. Two Hong Kong classics arriving with translations that finally do the dialogue justice, Netflix running an experiment on whether anyone still wants to own things and getting back an answer it plainly did not expect, Kim’s Video home from Sicily in an Alamo basement, and a reminder from my own shelf that the supplements outlive the transfer every time. 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
‘The End of Oak Street’ Hits 4K UHD, Blu-ray, And DVD In November | Physical Media News
The summer dinosaur adventure/thriller The End of Oak Street hits 4K UHD, Bu-ray and DVD on November 3. Starring Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, the movie also hits Digital in North America starting September 15. Special features details are in the post.
Read more: ‘The End of Oak Street’ Hits 4K UHD, Blu-ray, And DVD In November | Physical Media News
The End of Oak Street, released in theaters on August 13, generated over $115 million worldwide at the box-office. David Robert Mitchell, whose previous credits include It Follows and Under the Silver Lake, directed and wrote the feature.
The Digital, Blu-ray and 4KUHD’s special features include:
- “Banding Together: The Making of The End of Oak Street” – A look into how filmmaker David Robert Mitchell made the movie from concept to its execution.
- “Every Creature Tells A Story: The Dinosaurs of Oak Street” – A spotlight on ILM’s dinosaur designs for the movie.
- “The Spinosaurus Attack: Driving Fear on Oak Street” – An examination of the spinosaurus attack sequence in The End of Oak Street.
The movie centers on a family (Anne Hatahaway, Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella, Christian Convery) that try to survive a cosmic event that transports their neighborhood to parts unknown. Rated PG-13, the film runs 99 minutes.
Will you be purchasing The End of Oak Street on Digital or on Physical Media? Share your thoughts on the film in the comments!
***We receive a slight commission when you use our Amazon SiteStripe and affiliate links for your purchases. Thanks for your support!
***I give away Blu-ray or Digital code each week to members of our CinemAddicts Movie Club. Join our Facebook Group and become part of our community. Any questions please email me at editor@deepestdream.com.
***We review Hope, Dark Hollow and Teenage Wasteland on CinemAddicts:
Friday Blu-Ray News:’Toy Robot Video,’ ‘Guyver: Dark Hero,’ ‘Ninja Wars'(PM Weekly Issue #9)
Arrow Films has started a label aimed squarely at people who are not us.
Toy Robot Video launches this month as an Arrow Films subsidiary, announced back in June and shipping its first discs now. The pitch is unusually direct: more mainstream than Arrow Video, cheaper than Arrow Video, built to feel like browsing a video store rather than shopping a boutique catalogue. The opening slate is Guyver: Dark Hero and Roaring Fire next Tuesday, then a two-disc 4K of Masters of the Universe and something called Marshmallow on the fifteenth, with Ninja Wars at the end of the month. Remastered transfers, OBI strips, slip cards, art cards, at prices designed not to hurt.
Read more: Friday Blu-Ray News:’Toy Robot Video,’ ‘Guyver: Dark Hero,’ ‘Ninja Wars'(PM Weekly Issue #9)The label’s own copy says it will “celebrate film and entertainment in all its forms to both new and nostalgic audiences alike,” while keeping Arrow’s “commitment to premium curation and presentation.” Mike Hewitt, speaking for it, described it as “intended to be a fun and inclusive label,” meant to “spread the joy of physical media ownership” to younger buyers and to people who were never cult film enthusiasts in the first place.
Read that as a market signal, because it is one. Boutique labels have spent fifteen years perfecting a model built on scarcity and expertise: limited runs, deep supplements, prices that assume the buyer already knows why the film matters. It works. Last issue covered the data showing exactly how narrow it is. Toy Robot is Arrow putting real money behind the opposite proposition, that the audience for owning movies is considerably larger than the audience for collecting them, and that you reach it with Masters of the Universe at a fair price rather than a numbered edition of something difficult.
There is a version of this that is cynical, and it is worth naming. A cheaper line with thinner supplements is also a higher-margin line, and “accessible” is what every company says when it means “we found a way to spend less.” Note that Arrow gets there first, promising premium curation in the same breath as accessibility, which is exactly what you would say if you knew that objection was coming. But Arrow of all labels does not need a budget imprint to survive, and the titles they have chosen are not the obvious cash grabs. Guyver: Dark Hero and Ninja Wars are not sitting on anybody’s most-wanted list.
If they are right, it is the most consequential thing to happen to this format in a while. Every argument this journal makes about ownership runs into the same wall eventually: the people who already agree are a small and finite group. Somebody finally trying to make the wall bigger is worth paying attention to.
Welcome to PM Weekly. Let’s get into the week.
CORRECTIONS
Issue #7 listed The Hot Spot as an August 18 release and led with it arriving that week. It streets today, September 1. Issue #4 listed A Bay of Blood as a July 28 release; Severin put it out on November 28, 2025.
Same cause both times. The release calendar carries titles forward across consecutive monthly listings, so an old disc keeps resurfacing as news, and neither date was checked against the label. From now on they will be.
THIS WEEK ON DISC
- 28 Days Later (2002), Limited Edition SteelBook, Sony
- The Hot Spot (1990), Limited Edition of 5,000, Radiance
- Tekkonkinkreet (2006), 2-disc 4K UHD and Blu-ray set, GKIDS
MARKET SIGNAL
The merger this journal has tracked since Issue #1 has quietly stopped being an argument about market share and become an argument about who can afford to keep arguing.
In mid-August, Paramount asked the court to require the state attorneys general suing to block its Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition to post a bond of $1.88 billion. The reasoning is that delay is expensive. Paramount owes WBD shareholders roughly $7 million a day in ticking fees for every day the deal stays open, and it wants the states carrying that cost if their suit ultimately fails. This month the attorneys general and the Writers Guild filed in opposition, telling the court that Paramount is trying to pull a fast one.
Strip out the legal machinery and the move is simple enough. If a company can attach a nine-figure price tag to the act of challenging it, then whether a merger is lawful starts to get settled by which side can afford the bond rather than by the trial. Whatever you think of this particular deal, that is a mechanism worth watching, because it works exactly the same way regardless of who happens to be right.
For this journal the stake is narrower and more concrete. Warner’s catalogue is the vault that Arrow, Criterion, Vinegar Syndrome’s Iconoscope and most of the labels in this column license against. Every month the ownership question stays open is another month of uncertainty about who controls the films they want to restore, and boutique labels plan their slates a year out. A bond fight is not usually a physical media story. This one sets how long that uncertainty runs.
STORE OF THE WEEK
Vidiots (Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, CA)
Patty Polinger and Cathy Tauber opened Vidiots in Santa Monica in 1985, and for thirty-two years it was the video store other video stores measured themselves against. Then Santa Monica rents did what Santa Monica rents do. The shop closed in 2017 and fifty thousand titles went into storage.
Most collections that go into storage do not come back out. This one did. Vidiots had become a 501(c)3 nonprofit in 2012, which turned out to be the decision that saved it, and on June 1, 2023 it reopened inside the Eagle Theatre in Eagle Rock, a 1929 movie house that had been sitting mostly dark. More than $2.4 million in donations paid for the relaunch and the theater rehabilitation.
What reopened is not really a video store. It is close to eleven thousand square feet containing a 271-seat theater running 35mm and DCP, a smaller MUBI microcinema, a bar serving beer and wine, and a rental library that has grown from the fifty thousand rescued titles to roughly seventy thousand across DVD, Blu-ray and rare VHS. It is open seven days a week. It turned forty last year.
The lesson Vidiots keeps teaching is the one Beyond Video and Movie Madness teach too, and it is not a romantic one. Every video store that survived the last decade in America survived by becoming something other than a business that rents tapes. Nonprofit status, a theater, a bar, a membership, a donor base. The affection alone was never going to be enough. The affection plus a 501(c)3 was.
(Next week: Kim’s Video, New York, NY, and the documentary about how 55,000 films came back from Sicily.)
THE STACK
What I pulled off the shelf this week.
Extra Ordinary (2019)
Format: Blu-ray, 1 Disc
Bonus Features: “Extra Ordinary: The Making of a Supernatural Comedy” featurette; theatrical trailer
Rose is a driving instructor in small-town Ireland who can talk to the dead and would very much rather not. Martin is a widower whose late wife still nags him, out loud, from beyond. Christian Winter is a washed-up one-hit rock star, played by Will Forte at full commitment, attempting a Satanic pact to reignite a career that peaked decades ago. Maeve Higgins and Barry Ward play the two leads like people who are tired rather than haunted, which is the whole trick of the film.
Mike Ahern and Enda Loughman’s supernatural comedy came out of SXSW in 2019, got a small theatrical run, and landed on Blu-ray from Cranked Up Films in June 2020, which is to say it arrived in the worst possible month in the history of small films finding audiences. Almost nobody saw it. The people who did tend to become slightly evangelical about it.
The disc is modest. One making-of featurette, a trailer, a clean 2.39:1 transfer with a DTS-HD 5.1 track. No booklet, no essay, no numbered slipcase, nothing to collect. And I want to be straight that this is the point of including it in a week led by Arrow launching a label for people who do not buy numbered slipcases.
Not every film needs the deluxe treatment. Some of them need to exist, findably, at a price a person will pay on a whim, because the alternative is that a small Irish comedy with no franchise and no awards campaign simply evaporates when whichever service currently has it decides it is not earning its shelf space. Extra Ordinary is never going to get a 4K restoration. It does not need one. It needs to be on a disc, so that in fifteen years somebody can still hand it to a friend and say, trust me on this one.
SIGN-OFF
That is Issue #9. A boutique label betting that the audience for owning films is bigger than the audience for collecting them, a merger fight that has turned into an argument about who can afford to keep arguing, and a Los Angeles institution that came back from storage because somebody had the foresight in 2012 to make it a nonprofit. Three titles on shelves Tuesday, the thinnest week this column has covered, and two corrections worth making in public. 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
Rafael Manuel Talks “Emotional Clarity” of Filipiñana and Crafting A “Cinema of Resistance”
Director Rafael Manuel’s Filipiñana has received its share of critical acclaim, and this weekend it expands its theatrical reach. An evocative and visually immersive exploration of a Filipina’s (Jorybell Agoto) experiences at a country club, this Philippines set narrative locked me in from the jump. Manuel talked to Deepest Dream about his feature and he explains why “emotional clarity” is an integral part of his filmmaking aesthetic.
Read more: Rafael Manuel Talks “Emotional Clarity” of Filipiñana and Crafting A “Cinema of Resistance”
Filipiñana centers on Isabel (Jorybell Agoto), a 17-year-old who works at a country club outside Manila. Whether its lining up golf balls or scooping them out of the water, Isabel and her fellow co-workers have an understandably hard time working out in the baking sun. They also have to deal with the tourists and club members who may take advantage of their social status, leaving these women as second class citizens on the grounds that they keep immaculate.
Isabel’s main journey is to return a golf club to Dr. Palanca (Teroy Guzman), the head of the premises. A secondary storyline centers on a club member’s (Carlitos Siguion-Reyna) attempts to get his niece (Carmen Castellanos) to stay in the Philippines and help with the family business.
Don’t expect a plot heavy narrative with Filipiñana since it refreshingly traverses another direction. “I really believe that emotional clarity should take precedence over narrative clarity because it’s less propagandistic,” said Rafael Manuel. “With emotional clarity, you’re giving autonmy to an audience to feel how it is they want to feel because then an image can invoke a totally different response from another person. For me, this is very much a cinema of resistance.”
The film is also a cinema of discovery thanks to the nuanced performance of Jorrybell Agoto.
“She’s so amazing,” said Manuel. “One of my favorites is Giulietta Masina, the wife of Federico Fellini. I think there’s a lot of similarities between Giulietta and Jorybell in the playfulness and even in the facial structure and the expression. What drew me towards Jorybell is (she’s) like a silent presence that grows – and (her) playfulness, obviously. I see so much depth and meaning, like an underground reservoir of meaning in her eyes. This is super important with the kind of cinema (that) I want to do, where the acting is very minimalistic because you leave space for freedom for the audience.”
Rounding out the ensemble are Nour Hooshmand, Isabel Sicat, Micah Musa, Elle Velasco, and Angeli Bayani.
Filipiñana hits Los Angeles and additional cities on September 4th. Tonight he will be doing a post-screening Q&A at the Laemmle Noho 7. He will also be part of a Q&A on September 4 and September 8 at the Laemmle Glendale.
Full interview:
***We receive a slight commission when you use our Amazon SiteStripe and affiliate links for your purchases. Thanks for your support!
***I give away Blu-ray or Digital code each week to members of our CinemAddicts Movie Club. Join our Facebook Group and become part of our community. Any questions please email me at editor@deepestdream.com.
***We review Filipiñana, Coyote vs. Acme, and Buddy on the latest CinemAddicts:
Josiah Pippel On Winning ‘American Ninja Warrior’ Championship: “I Want To Go For More”
Josiah Pippel is the Season 18 champion of American Ninja Warrior, and that honor garnered him a trophy and $250,000. Pippel talked to Deepest Dream about the long road to becoming a champion (his Ninja journey began at 7!) and why his ninja career is far from over. My full interview with Pippel is featured in the post.
Read more: Josiah Pippel On Winning ‘American Ninja Warrior’ Championship: “I Want To Go For More”Although American Ninja Warrior fans have followed Josiah Pippel’s journey for years, there is an aspect that can’t be fully explored within the television real. “I think the biggest thing that people don’t see is the late nights in the gym,” said Josiah Pippel, who is the co-founder of the ninja league Team Ninja Association. “The hours we’ve dedicated and all the failure that has gone into this ween. I’ve been doing this for 13 years, and now I’m finally the champion of American Ninja Warrior. But that was 13 years of failures (and) 13 years of lessons learned to get met to this point.”
Even though he has climbed to the top of the mountain, Pippel refuses the complacent approach. “Obviously I’m not taking it for granted,” said Pippel, who defeated reigning champion Kai Beckstrand. “This is a really big moment for me and opportunity, but I want to go for more. I think I’m not done with the sport just yet and with American Ninja Warrior. I have more to give, and now I’ve proven that I can be at the top and I want to stay there as long as I can. So with Season 19 coming around the corner and Season 20 (as well), my goal is to defend my championship and be the two-time and maybe even three-time champion.”
During the interview, Pippel also discussed being positively influenced by his parents and the community that has supported his journey. He also delves into the time he puts into Team Ninja Association and explains why his passion for cars runs deep:
***We receive a slight commission when you use our Amazon SiteStripe and affiliate links for your purchases. Thanks for your support!
***I give away Blu-ray or Digital code each week to members of our CinemAddicts Movie Club. Join our Facebook Group and become part of our community. Any questions please email me at editor@deepestdream.com.
Ryan Reynolds On Why ‘Mayday’ Is A “Really Well Timed” Buddy Picture
Described as a “genre-bending, action-packed buddy comedy,” Mayday features the starpower of Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh and it should be a hit when it premieres globally September 4th on Apple TV. Co-directed, written and produced by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, the feature, according to Reynolds, is “really well timed.” Check out our Mayday post for more details!
Read more: Ryan Reynolds On Why ‘Mayday’ Is A “Really Well Timed” Buddy Picture
A Worthwhile Collaboration For Kenneth Branagh and Ryan Reynolds
Kenneth Branagh described Ryan Reynolds as a person of “joy and brilliance,” and Reynolds follows a similar track. “Ken has not only brought me the same kind of joy, day in and day out, but he’s kind of a teacher,” said Reynolds, who plays U.S. Navy pilot Lieutenant Troy ‘Assassin’ Kelly in Mayday. “You sort of work with somebody like that and just learn from every single moment, and it grounds you in this idea that ‘Wow, I’m really lucky to do this job. Get a front row seat to this incredible performer (and) this incredible storyteller.”
‘Mayday’ Is A “Well-Timed” Throwback To 1980s Buddy Comedies
At the New York premiere of Mayday, Reynolds likened the tale to memorable features of yesteryear. “I think this movie’s well-timed,” said Reynolds, who worked with co-director John Francis Daley in the 2005 feature Waiting…. “This is the sort of old fashioned, ’80s kind of feel (type movie). That decade produced some of the greatest buddy action comedies of all time. You’ve got Midnight Run (and) Another 48 Hrs.. You (have) Beverly Hills Cop (and) Lethal Weapon. They all came out of this era and it’s so much fun. And John Goldstein and John Francis Daley really captured that joy you have watching those kinds of movies while still not making it feel dated. Even though it’s a period piece.”
Catch Mayday, co-starring Marcin Dorociński and Maria Bakalova, on Apple TV September 4th! Share your thoughts on the movie in the comments!
We review Buddy and Coyote vs. Acme on CinemAddicts:
***We receive a slight commission when you use our Amazon SiteStripe and affiliate links for your purchases. Thanks for your support!
***Ryan Reynolds’ quotes come from generic interviews supplied by Apple TV to media members.
***I give away Blu-ray or Digital code each week to members of our CinemAddicts Movie Club. Join our Facebook Group and become part of our community. Any questions please email me at editor@deepestdream.com.
Mark Wahlberg Talks “Great Chemistry” With ‘By Any Means’ Star Yahya Abdul Mateen II
Directed by Elegance Bratton (The Inspection), By Any Means centers on an FBI agent (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) who is investigating the killings of targeted civil rights leaders. Helping him on his quest is mafia hitman Greg Scarpa (Mark Wahlberg), a man who knows a thing or two about violence and vengeance. The feature, written by Sascha Penn (Power Book III: Raising Kanan), hits theaters Friday. Check out our post for a few Wahlberg insights on By Any Means!
Read more: Mark Wahlberg Talks “Great Chemistry” With ‘By Any Means’ Star Yahya Abdul Mateen IIA Unique Role For Mark Wahlberg
By Any Means, inspired by a true story, was a feature which boasted a rare role for Mark Wahlberg. “It’s one of those characters where you don’t get to play that often,” said the actor, who was last seen in the comedy Balls Up. “You just got to dig a little deeper and go a little darker.” Wahlberg described Greg Scarpa, aka the Grim Reaper, as a “fascinating guy” and he added that he was approached on “more than one occasion” to play Scarpa. “I read the script (to By Any Means) and fell in love with it, and I thought it was fascinating how this guy who lived and existed in this world of the mafia in New York and the Colombo Wars all of a sudden he’s down in the South during the Civil Rights movement.”
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II Is A Bonafide Star
Another postive aspect of filming By Any Means was getting the chance to collaborate with Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. “I had never worked with Yahya and never met Yahya,” said Wahlberg. “But to see the level of talent and also a level of charisma and commitment that he has – it’s pretty incredible. I think we have great chemistry together. He’s fantastic in the part and it’s one of the few times where I’m seeing a star about to really explode. I can’t wait to see what he does in the future.”
Rounding out the By Any Means ensemble are Nicole Beharie, Josh Lucas, LisaGay Hamilton, LaChanze, Ethan Embry, David Strathairn and Giancarlo Esposito.
Catch By Any Means starting Friday, September 4. Share your thoughts on the movie in the comments!
***We receive a slight commission when you use our Amazon SiteStripe and affiliate links for your purchases. Thanks for your support!
***I give away Blu-ray or Digital code each week to members of our CinemAddicts Movie Club. Join our Facebook Group and become part of our community. Any questions please email me at editor@deepestdream.com.
We review Buddy and Coyote vs. Acme on the latest episode of CinemAddicts: