It’s that time again! Fire up your DVD and Blu Ray players, and let’s get to work on what’s new this week:

• Justice League: The New Frontier

Based on Darwyn Cooke’s insanely beautiful comic book mini-series. (It looks even better in the ABSOLUTE edition, trust me.) Can it possibly hold a candle to its source material? I guess we’re about to find out.

It’s available in the standard release form, as well as a two disc special edition set and a Blu Ray special edition.

The Best Buy special edition comes with a Green Lantern figurine, too.

• Newhart: The Complete First Season

This is the Bob Newhart I grew up watching, and have such fond memories of. Remember when Monday nights were CBS nights? (OK, besides this and then Murphy Brown, just what was on the schedule for CBS on Mondays that causes me to remember it fondly? I can’t remember anymore.

• The Smurfs, Season One, Volume 1

I hope you caught the link on this blog earlier in the week about the CGI movie that’s forthcoming. I’m still holding out hope for a comic book revival/translation.

• Hotel Babylon: Season One

A BBC production. Anthony Stewart Head (of VR.5 fame) did a guest stint in an episode of this.

• Extras: The Extra Special Series Finale

I still haven’t caught the two seasons of this show, but it appears to have followed THE OFFICE’s structure — two seasons, a Christmas special, and done. This disc stands alone. It was previously available as part of the complete series set.

• Beowulf

Yes, that’s right. There are actual movies out this week, too! This one is written by comic scribe Neil Gaiman and features rotoscoped animation of a naked Angelina Jolie, as well as another excuse for everyone to write about the Uncanny Valley.

As a special bonus, there’s an HD-DVD version of the disc out this week, as well. Instant relic!

• 30 Days of Night

I’m not trying to stuff this week’s release list with comic book references, but I can’t help it. This one is based on the comic book. AND it’s live action.

• The Last Emperor

Why is this just coming out now? It’s not — this is the Criterion Collection edition of the movie. Impressive.

It’s a big big week. What else are you looking at? What’s on your Must Buy list?

• I really need to do another Twitter post, don’t I? I haven’t posted much over there lately. Need to get back into the groove.

• Screen shot comparisons between the Apple TV, Blu Ray, Cable HD, DVD, and SD Cable video. Apple TV holds up pretty well. You can’t beat Blu Ray discs, though. Not yet, anyway.

• The new STAR TREK film has been delayed to Summer 2009 now.

• The new INDIANA JONES movie trailer is available for viewing.

• Super Mario Bros. a capella.  With Zelda and Mortal Kombat, et. al. included. Hilarious!

• Much more about Auto Tune Abuse.

• Geek alert for the day: BeOS is coming BeACK?!?

For a change of pace, let’s do this on Monday instead of Tuesday this week.

It’s a pretty darn good week, with some exciting releases.

• Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Season 5

I know some of you will be looking forward to this one.

• Curb Your Enthusiasm, Season 6

I’ve only seen Season One, but it’s a darn hilarious show.

• The Invasion

Remember this one? Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig? Yeah, most people don’t. (Also available in both HD-DVD and Blu Ray.)

• Daddy Day Camp

They only wish they could forget about this movie, though it does make for a funny punchline.

• Lake Placid 2

Unnecessary Sequel of the Week! If Betty White isn’t in it, does anyone care?

• Damages, Season One

FX must really like it, despite the low ratings it got last summer. They’ve renewed it already for a couple more seasons. This is the legal show starring Glenn Close and Ted Danson. Really wanted to see it, but didn’t have the time. (It’s also available in Blu Ray.)

I am looking forward to making the time for the final season of THE SHIELD in a couple of months, though. THAT is the best show on television that never gets the rewards it deserves.

• The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

This is the documentary tracking the controvery over who holds the World Record for best Donkey Kong score of all time. If you haven’t read about this one yet, go Google for it. I think WIRED had a pretty good article on it, and I think I linked to it on this blog before. Call me a geek, but this might just be the Release of the Week.

USATODAY.com

The film, which remains without a formal title, will dump the long-running “mythology” plotline — that aliens live among us and are part of a colonizing effort — that made it one of the most popular television shows in the late 1990s but ultimately drove away some viewers who found it too complex and ambiguous.”We spent a lot of time on (the mythology) and wrapped up a lot of threads” when the show went off the air in 2002, says Chris Carter, creator of the series and director of the new movie. “We want a stand-alone movie, not a mythology conspiracy one.”

That’s a very very good idea.

* Trajan is the movie font. Wait, wasn’t GLADIATOR in Trajan? He named three other Russell Crowe movies, but missed the most obvious one to me. . .

* LucasFilm Christmas cards through the years.

* Here’s a hobby I want nothing to do with. It involves jumping off cliffs and sailing down with a webbed suit. Beautiful video, though.

* Honestly, I’m not kidding. If you thought TEAM FORTRESS 2’s release was a miracle this year, take a gander at this: The DUKE NUKEM FOREVER trailer. No, that’s not a typo.

* Imagine familiar corporate logos done up in Web 2.0 style. Now, imagine 60 such logos. Some are improvements. Others just added rounded corners, a reflection, and a new font.

* Sometimes, I think that everything that could be said or done with STAR TREK has been done by now. Then a Flickr group comes along with the improbable name of “The Galactically Hot Women of Star Trek.” How does one not link to that?!? The only thing missing is a little icon in the corner for each of the women that Kirk bedded.

• BLADE RUNNER

This is all you need to know: 5 disc edition, 4 disc edition, and the Blu Ray edition. There’s a single disc edition of it out there, too, but is anyone seriously considering buying it?

I’m half-tempted to end it there, but there are lots of interesting releases this week:

• SIMPSONS: THE MOVIE

Pick it up at your local DVD dealer. Or 7-11.

• STARDUST

It flopped at the box office, but I hear it has its charms.

• THE ADVENTURES OF YOUNG INDIANA JONES: Volume 2

Has anyone actually watched the first volume of this yet? What did you think?

• BALLS OF FURY

Remember seeing a lot of promos and trailers for it, but don’t ever remember when it was in theaters.

• BRING IT ON: IN IT TO WIN IT

You go, girl!

Next week is Christmas week. Don’t be expecting ANYTHING. I think they released two movies last year for that week.

I do not have a good feeling about this one. . .

E! News - Cameron’s Avatar Delayed

Film geeks anxiously awaiting James Cameron’s first big-screen spectacular in nearly 15 years are going to have to wait just a little bit longer.On Wednesday, 20th Century Fox announced it will postpone the Oscar-winning helmer’s highly anticipated 3-D sci-fi action film Avatar, from May 22, 2009 until Dec. 18, 2009.

• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

This might be the release that decides the Blu Ray/HD-DVD war. Warner Bros is the last major studio to still release movies in both formats, having not yet been bought out by Microsoft. There are rumors now that Warner Bros might be deciding between the two camps in time for CES next month.

HARRY POTTER is their biggest release between now and then. So they’d be watching the sales figures on this release VERY closely. If there’s a big disparity between Blu Ray and HD-DVD format numbers on this movie Warner Bros could use that to choose a side.

Those covers above, by the way, are the regular DVD edition, the HD-DVD/Standard DVD edition, and the Blu-Ray edition.

• The Bourne Ultimatum

Sure, it goes over the edge in the Believability Column at the end, but it’s still a pretty cool movie trilogy.

• Lost Season Three

Remember LOST? It got really good down the stretch there last season. Then, it changed the game completely and left us hanging off a cliff. It’s going to do the same exact thing in the shortened fourth season coming up. I love it.

• High School Musical 2 - Extended Edition

Why? It’s Christmas time! How many letters to Santa will include this bad boy in it? How many parents wouldn’t be able to tell the difference on the store shelves between the extended edition and the regular edition? ::sigh::

Next week, we’ll have more DVDs, but not too many. And on Christmas week, we’ll likely have none, but let’s not get TOO FAR ahead of ourselves.

Christmas shopping season officially begins on Friday. The malls started it about three weeks back, but the sane people remaining in society are waiting for Black Friday. I might click over to Amazon once or twice to see if they have any insane dSLR camera sales, but otherwise I’m skipping the whole thing. My Christmas shopping is actually almost complete. And I didn’t have to park a mile away from any store to get anything. Whoo-hoo!

In any case, it’s Tuesday! New DVDs:

• Live Free or Die Hard (Unrated)

Oddly enough, the Blu Ray disc doesn’t say “Unrated” on it. Are both versions on the same disc? Is it just the standard movie edition on the Blu Ray? I dunno. I still question putting Blu Ray and HD-DVD covers in this feature every week.

I heard good reviews for the movie in a Big Dumb Action Flic With Lots of CGI kind of way.  That works for me, though.

• Hairspray

Those of us who watched SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE? over the summer are all too familiar with this movie. Chicks and tweenies dug it, too.  Wait, that’s the same demo, isn’t it?
That’s the two-disc special edition on the left and the standard widescreen on the right. There’s also a full frame edition, but we don’t talk about those here.

• The Batman: Complete Fourth Season

Not a week goes by without pandering to my comic book friends! =)

X-Files Marks Spot for Release - Yahoo! News

Twentieth Century Fox has at long last unveiled a release date for its forever-in-the-works X-Files sequel, announcing that Mulder and Scully will be reuniting on the big screen June 25, 2008. […]

Fox, however, did note that the film, written and directed by X-Files creator Chris Carter, would act as a stand-alone story.

Yay!

• An appreciation of Shatner’s “Khaaaan” moment.
• Apple is on a roll - here’s why.
• 53 Photoshop tips. Some obvious, some useless, some necessary to get through your day.
• The final round of GH3 is “The Devil Went Down To Georgia.” In this version, the guitar takes the place of the fiddle. My fingers ache, but you can listen to the song here.
• Seriously, that’s playable? Insane.
• Google offices transformed into Super Mario Bros. Level 1-1.
• Lotsa TiVo3 updates!
• You want a MacBook slim? How about a Cintiq 12 inch? Beautiful, even if it has to run Windows. . .
• Remember when I said there are too many variations of PlayStation 3s and XBox 360s? Here’s the PS3 Venn Diagram to prove it.
• TRANSFORMERS moved 100,000 HD-DVD discs. I guess the next generation of DVD is finally here! Or, EVERY XBox 360 owner of the add-on picked up the movie. Very likely.
• A father tells his son the worst swearword in the world. Obviously, there’s some NSFW language in here. But it’s cute and funny all at the same time.
• Mythbusters takes on the cockroach radiation theory.
• You missed the iPod’s sixth birthday yesterday. Better go pick up one of those “belated” birthday cards.

This list may or may not be complete. We’ll lead off with the Big Release:

• The Transformers (2007)

It’s the ultimate boy’s movie. Kick ass cool, if terribly shallow and obvious and often visually confusing in the final scene. Still, tons of fun.

It’s also available, quite famously, in HD-DVD format. That’s the cover scan on the far right. The middle box is the single disc edition. The left box cover is for the two disc special edition. The HD-DVD is also two discs.

• Grind House Presents: Planet Terror (2007)
  

Wait, so they’re releasing the Quentin Tarantino/Rovbert Rodriguez double bill as separate movies now? Weird. There’s an unrated edition of the movie, too. As always, I suggest going for that one.

• The Jazz Singer: 80th Anniversary Collector’s Edition (3-disc set) (1927)

This is not the Neil Diamond movie, though he does seem old enough to have starred in it.

• MacGyver: The Complete Series (39-disc set)

How can you say no to MacGyver? This was my favorite show growing up. While it looks and sounds cheesy 80s today, it’s still a wonderfully creative show that only went off the rails a few times, like when Mac decided to fight for social injustices on a weekly basis. ::sigh:: Or how about that season that the writers decided to find him a girlfriend and then gave up after a half season of painful wannabes?

• The Princess Bride: 20th Anniversary Edition (2-disc set) (1987)

I’m torn. The world doesn’t need a THIRD edition of this movie. On the other hand, it’s on my Top Ten Movies Of All Time list, so maybe there needs to be an exception made?

Nah, I’ll just pull out that previous special edition and watch that one, instead.

UPDATE: Scratch that.  This release has been pushed back to November 13th.  I was working off an old release list on this one.  Sorry about that.

From our late friends at DVDJournal comes this hopefully-complete list from which I’ll draw my highlight reel.

We start with some TV shows everyone loves but I don’t watch:

• Criminal Minds: Season Two (6-disc set)
• Entourage: Season 3, Part 2
• How I Met Your Mother: Season Two (3-disc set)
• Jericho: Season One (6-disc set)
• The Sarah Silverman Program: Season One
• Shark: Season One (6-disc set)

Don’t ask me to watch any of them. I won’t. Right now, I’ve got two DVRs backed up with shows from the last week I haven’t yet made time to watch. If I can’t find the time to watch CHUCK or BIONIC WOMAN or, hell, BOSTON LEGAL, I don’t think you’re going to talk me into ENTOURAGE.  October baseball will just make it worse.

• Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer: Special Edition (2007)
• Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)

This is the highlight of the week for me. Haven’t seen either of these two movies, though I know Best Buy is selling a special cheaper two pack with them in it.

• The Flintstones: A Flintstone’s Christmas Carol

Tis the season! They were playing Christmas carols at one store I was recently at. Or, it might have just been a music Christmas tree from the selection they were selling. ::sigh::

• The Jungle Book: Platinum Edition (2-disc set) (1967)

Finally! A cinematic classic!

• Misery: Collector’s Edition (1990)

I hear it wasn’t bad, but did anyone want a collector’s edition? That leads me to another question that I’ll save for later in the week when I start running low on material. ;-)

• The War: A Ken Burns Film (5-disc set)

I don’t know if this edition includes the Latinos or not. That’s a fight for someone else to worry about.

Next week is a huge release list, including 28 WEEKS LATER, EVAN ALMIGHTY, FAMILY TIES Season Two, another edition of POLTERGEIST, and more WHOSE LINE IS IT ANYWAY?

Wall-E trailers and video clips on Yahoo! Movies

Impressive, but short.  Love the new Walt Disney logo in the front of it, and am impressed by the focusing techniques of the CGI.  This is the most photorealistic trailer from Pixar yet, I think.  Looks cute, though.  Supposedly, Wall-E has no dialogue in this movie.  We’ll see next year.

• Create your own TV/DVD commentaries. It’s the lastest Web 2.0 site!
• Flash game of the day: Gimme Friction, Baby. Just point and click. keep all the balls above the line. Knock out other balls by hitting them repeatedly. It’s a mind bender!
• A new way to resize images (”seam carving”) allows for natural stretching and contracting, not just shrinking and expanding. It’s a fascinating technique, but purists will loathe it.
• Behind the scenes on THE ROCK. I love that movie. (Link goes to eight minute embedded movie.)
• MIT students create their own Segway.