This year, I’m feeling more adventurous, so I’ve set some photographic New Year’s Resolutions. Click on the link to visit the all-new AugieShoots.com for that post.

My first resolution for the new year: Keep AugieShoots.com running regularly. It might not be daily, but at least three times a week should be doable.

The second resolution: Get VariousAndSundry updated regularly again, even if it’s only once a week.

Three: Watch more Blu-ray movies. I’ve been very slow to buy them, mostly because I haven’t watched enough of the ones I DID buy. So let’s start correcting for that in 2011.

Why, just yesterday, the following things see release:

* Greg Rucka’s new “Queen and Country” novel, “The Last Run.”

* Rock Band 3, featuring a keyboard component and the promise of Billy Joel songs to come.

* Back to the Future Trilogy on Blu-ray for only $48(!).

* If that’s not enough for you, on November 15th, we’ll see the release of the first volume of Mark Twain’s Autobiography, unpublished for 100 years after his death.

We are truly cursed to live in interesting times, yet with never enough time to absorb and enjoy it all.

This is wrong. The Blu-ray disc is not the subordinate bonus disc. That’s a ridiculous statement on Disney’s part. There are two SKUs for the “Snow White” home video release.

The first is a cheaper lesser DVD-only release. It has the movie, some bare bonus bits, and that’s it.

The Blu-ray SKU contains two Blu-Ray discs (the feature, and a disc of bonus materials) plus the original DVD disc as a bonus, mostly to be used in the car player for the kids in the back seat. That DVD disc isn’t what anyone is purchasing that box for. It’s a secondary feature to be added to the Blu-ray release.

Even worse, Disney advertises this as a “Disney DVD” release with the Blu-ray insignia hidden in the bottom right corner of the box. Disney is living in the past, and needs to deal with the fact that it’s publishing two formats, and should have a name that encompasses both. (Take, for example, the way Apple has “iOS” to cover all its mobile touch-screen devices, instead of an “iPhone OS.”)

Yes, there are still more DVD players out there than Blu-ray players. Most likely, that will always be true. That’s not the issue here. The issue is — well, purely semantic. But it’s a horrible way to market a Blu-ray disc. Those who want the Blu-ray are used to a certain packaging that Disney isn’t using. It’s not the slightly smaller box. It’s not the box with the blue bars at the top and bottom. It’s just — wrong.

Turns out my first Amazon purchase was September 7, 1998.  I bought two things:

• The Fifth Element on DVD

I had gotten my DVD player a couple months earlier, so this would have been one of my earliest movie purchases.  Back then, DVDs weren’t a dime a dozen.  This one cost $20.99. Today, it’s available for $12.49. For goodness sake, the Blu Ray for this movie is less than $15.

• DVD Demystified: The Guidebook for DVD-Video and DVD-ROM

What can I say, I’m part tech geek. This $42.95 book promised to discuss the format and the processing in detail. I was very curious about it at the time.  I remember carrying this book out of the office one day, when one of the Veeps at the company I worked for (he’s very smart) looked at the book and said, “I didn’t think they were all that mystifying.”

Total price: $68.84

That’s right: There was no free shipping on orders more than $25 back then, let alone Amazon Prime.

Last week, I talked about my initial Blu Ray thoughts from watching last year’s “Star Trek” movie. Now, let’s get to the movie, itself, in convenient blogger-friendly bullet point format:

* I still get chills when they do the slow pan across the Enterprise for the first time in any given movie.

* J.J. Abrams knows what the fans wants and throws in as many references as he can, from Kirk bedding green skinned alien women to the guy in the red shirt jumping to his death. Really, we all saw it coming and we all laughed when it happened. Oh, and Sulu is a swordsman! Excellent!

* Chekov is a bit too much, though I did laugh at his inability to pronounce code words right. “Wictor Wictor.”

* The guy playing McCoy sure gets DeForest Kelley’s cadence dead-on. I think it may be my favorite introduction to a character of all time, when Bones walks into the shuttle and sits next to Kirk.

* Abrams didn’t change things as much as I thought he might. He amplified them. He created Spock to be just as much the rebel as Kirk. And those similarities help to amplify the fights between the two which, in the original series, felt almost jocular more often than not.

* Uhura bedding Spock? Interesting. As I recall, the trailers were cut to make it look like she and Kirk were having a romp.

* Pike eating a slug is Chekov getting the slug in his ear from “Wrath of Khan” right?

* I’m a geek, I know.

* Spock’s alternate reality speech is the nice way to consider this a franchise reboot, isn’t it?

* My only problem with the movie? Kirk is handled as a cartoonish buffoon in two places: his blown-up hands, and running away from CGI Creature. Besides, My Captain Kirk (UGH) would have found a gigantic icicle and pierced the heart of that beast to save himself, not cower in fear and wait for a deus ex machina.

* The movie really was like a Greatest Hits Star Trek film. They’ll need to expand beyond that for the next movie, though I have no doubt they will do so admirably.

* Scotty has a cute alien creature buddy. Why? Is there a reason beyond the merchandising? Or was it because another human would have cost more money to pay an actor with lines for? I smell deleted scene. I need to get to that second disc filled with extras . . .

* “I got your gun.” BWAH HA HA

* Damn, he even sits in the captain’s chair like William Shatner.

* Bruce Greenwood will forever be The Nowhere Man to me, but he does well as Pike, too.

* In the end, the movie wears “Star Trek” like a badge on its sleeve, not something to be avoided or ashamed of. It revels in the fact, throws in as many in-jokes and well-remembered punch lines as possible, and then lets everyone know that the old Trek you knew and loved is still valid, but this is the new and modern revamped parallel version (minus a Romulan and Vulcan home world) that you may now enjoy.

Highly recommended.

These Blu Ray write-ups always seem to feature one prominently dead guy, don’t they? I’m cursed.

• Surrogates

Bruce Willis movie, based on the Top Shelf comic book.  Did you ever think you would read such a sentence?

• Atonement

• Pride & Prejudice

Chick flics?  Check and check.

• Fame

The Blu Ray is an “extended dance edition.”  Oooh…

• Saw VI

Do they ship one of these sequels every week now?

• Whip It

Drew Barrymore directs, “Juno” stars.

• Paris, Texas (Criterion Collection)

It’s Criterion, so I’m supposed to love it, right?  I have the Criterion DVD release of “House of Games.” Really need to get to that someday.  Haven’t watched it in years, and then it was in the standard release.

I finally got to fire up the Blu Ray player on Monday and Tuesday nights to watch a movie, after a long weekend of near-misses. So I watched “Star Trek,” and loved every minute of it. Every line of dialogue. Every bit of questionable physics.

So, time for some bullet points, and I’ll start with the Blu Ray side of things:

* Oooh, so pretty. Even the Paramount logo is sharp and shiny.

* The Blu Ray player really is just a computer that happens to play video. It feels so much like that now. Yes, it loads a little more deliberately than a DVD player, but given how many DVD menu authors like to go overboard with “designed” things that take time to play after you choose any menu item, it’s not that big a stretch.

On the Samsung unit I have, the default menu gives you four additional options to start, including Pandora, YouTube, and Netflix, or Blu Ray. I really need to get internet connectivity working with this player next. I want to watch that whole 90 minute takedown of “The Phantom Menace” on my big screen TV. ;-) (I’ve since watched all the parts of that series, by the way, and it’s hilarious. Well worth the time.)

* Blu Rays still do the annoying “Show Four Trailers Before Accessing the Menu” crap. It looks like the “Title Menu” button will skip past them. Doing chapter skip is too slow for me.

* I like the way the text on the screen seems in proportion to the screen size. Things aren’t REALLY HUGE because they don’t need to be. They’re likely the same size, pixel-wise, as DVDs, but can look smaller and more proportionate just because there’s more pixels up on the screen.

* Surround sound rules.

* I know the home theater experts say to use the cinema video mode and then calibrate from there, but I still find that to be too dull. I use “standard.” “Vivid” is only for those who are half-blind, I guess. Or for Best Buy’s use up on the wall.

* Heh heh. While the disc menu is loading, you get a little Enterprise spinning around.

* Wait, there’s no movie trailer on this disc? I hope it’s on the second disc. I like having movie trailers. (It is on the second disc, with all the extras.)

Lesson learned: If you want to off yourself (a regular motif of these Blu Ray posts, it seems), use something quicker and easier than a kitchen knife. Yikes.

• The Bourne Identity (Universal)
  The Bourne Supremacy (Universal)
  The Bourne Ultimatum (Universal)

These are the new flipper discs, where one side is Blu Ray and the other is DVD. I suppose that’s a good gateway drug kind of thing, but it seems ultimately silly to me. Maybe the idea of a single SKU is glorious to the movie companies. I don’t know.

The big problem, of course, is that you’ll need to look at the tiny type on the ring around the hole in the middle of the disc to tell whether you’re about to put in a Blu Ray or a DVD disc.

So just buy the trilogy on Blu Ray and be done with it.

• Che (Criterion)

For you communist revolutionary dictator worshipping types…

• Gamer

Gerard Butler in what looks like a bit of a “Ender’s Game” type of movie.

• The Invention of Lyi

The story of the first politician, right? Stars Ricky Gervaise.

• Whiteout

Yes, this is the comic book-based movie that bombed so big in September that I don’t think it saw October in a movie theater. The original comics are really really good, though.

• Magnolia

I like this movie. I’ve never watched the DVD more than once, but I like it. Big sprawling cast, crazy ending, and a magnificent Oscar-nominated supporting actor turn for Tom Cruise that’s completely NSFW at the beginning there.

• Weeds: Season Five

There’s always a TV-on-DVD release, right? I guess this is TV-on-BD now?

It’s a Criterion movie, so there’s an audience for it.

• Cliffhanger

Sylvester Stallone hangs off a mountainside. Everyone roots for the mountain.

• Fame (2009)

Despite co-starring someone from “So You Think You Can Dance,” it didn’t do too well. I believe Ebert was tracking some stories about unfortunate cuts being made to bring the film in under a certain time limit that completely destroyed the plot and characters, though. No reported “Director’s Cut” here, though.

• The Hurt Locker

An Oscar favorite for Best Picture, Best Director, and probably more. It’s currently also the #1 best selling DVD/Blu Ray on Amazon.

• Last Action Hero

Really? They bothered to put this on Blu Ray? The new gold rush must be on. The movie tanked so bad when it was released that Topps famously canceled the comic book adaptation of it, after all the work was already done!

• Moon

2009 smaller budget science fiction movie. Got some good reviews that I saw.

• The Simpsons: The Complete 20th Season

Remember when they announced this series coming to DVD at a rate of two a year and people complained that it would take forever to catch up to the series? Is this being released out of order? It hasn’t really been 10 years of Simpsons releases, has it?

On the bright side, there’s nothing I’m tempted to buy this week. I can go back to not watching the five Blu Ray discs I do already own.