With the one two punch of Television Critics Association press tour and Comic-Con in July, I’m a little late with my monthly awards for the Blu-rays that deserve space on your crowded shelves. Thank you for bearing with me. There were some noteworthy releases last month, including some new deleted scenes that impact the films from which they were excised greatly. Here are the ones that earned Shelf Space Awards.
Slideshow: The Shelf Space Awards for July 2014
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
The Shelf Space Awards: May 2014
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Best New Blu-ray
Sabotage is exactly the kind of movie Arnold Schwarzenegger should be playing at this point in his career. He’s not the total action hero anymore, but still dealing with a world of violence. The Blu-ray looks great, in fact way better than I expected. For the gritty handheld style David Ayer likes to employ, the bright scenes are still vivid and the dark scenes still crisp and clear. The alternate endings are worth watching too. They’re so dark for Schwarzenegger’s image, it would’ve been really ballsy.
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Worst New Blu-ray
I watched the digital release of this halfquel and unfortunately it does not live up to the standards of Jackass 2.5 or 3.5. The material they took out of Bad Grandpa just wasn’t worth releasing as a standalone film. At least it was only a home video release, but whether Blu-ray or streaming, the best Bad Grandpa.5 deserved was to be a bonus feature.
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Best Catalogue Blu-ray
Scream Factory’s release of the killer alligator film looks like it could be a studio release, as it originally was from 20th Century Fox. Sharp and clear, Lake Placid takes you right back to the summer of 1999. It’s a little sepia tinted, which I’m not sure was the original look or an artifact of this transfer, but if Fox wasn’t going to do a Blu-ray, Scream Factory preserved the film in reference quality for posterity.
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Worst Catalogue Blu-ray
But admittedly so. The Final Terror opens with a warning that the original film elements, negative and inter-positive, were lost so this transfer comes from the best reels of six different release prints. As such, it’s actually rather impressive. The transfer is consistent and solid, looks like a 1980s film print, but it’s clear and clean.
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Best TV on Blu-ray
I was not able to get my hands on a “Twin Peaks” Blu-ray myself, but by all accounts this complete collection of the series and Fire Walk With Me delivers. Blu-ray.com reports an overall great transfer, with a few inconsistencies between episodes and the feature film, and Vulture says the deleted scenes make Fire Walk WIth Me more in line with the series.
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Best Foreign Blu-ray
Ong Bak, Ong Bak 2 and Ong Bak 3 were collected in a single Blu-ray set this month, and I remember the original Blu-ray transfers of the single releases. The original was a little brown and muddy, perhaps reflecting an early effort of an emerging film industry or just not a very colorful transfer. The sequels were much more vibrant with the epic jungles of Thailand in period piece detail. Still, none of the Ong-Bak films would compare to The Raid 2 which I reviewed in full last month.
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Best Cover Art
The new home video cover art to Dom Hemingway makes me laugh, Jude Law in a police mug shot pointing and smirking at us. The Blu-ray lives up to the cover too. With its lighting and color, Dom Hemingway almost looks like a Wes Anderson movie.
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Worst Cover Art
I was not even aware of this third impostor to The Rock’s Hercules and Renny Harlin’s The Legend of Hercules. While clearly the cheapest knockoff of the bunch (and compared to Legend that’s saying a lot), the cover art doesn’t even try to look badass with WWE’s John Morrison giving a goofy, squinty grin.
