June 21st, 2010
We have reached the slowest time of the year on the home market. The biggest first-run release coming out this week is Green Zone, which was a box office disappointment. The second biggest first-run release is She's Out of My League, which was also a box office disappointment, as was Remember Me. Worst still, there are very few limited releases, TV on DVD releases, or classics to make up the difference. However, many releases are worth picking up for certain target demographics, although very few that will likely sell a lot of units. For instance, Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Complete Book 1: Collector's Edition is a must have if you don't own the series on DVD yet, but there's not enough new material to make the upgrade. Cinematic Titanic: Danger on Tiki Island continues the tradition started with MST3K, but either you love you show or you're simply not interested in the DVD. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs makes its 3D Blu-ray debut, but the number of people who have made the leap to 3D is so small that it can't really be pick of the week material. To find the Pick of the Week, I'm instead going with two films that couldn't be more dissimilar if it were a contest. Death Race 2000 and The Last Station. Both are worth owning, but in both cases the Blu-ray release is not the obvious better deal.
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June 20th, 2010
The Good Guy is the debut film for writer/director Julio DePietro. It stars more than a few recognizable faces, but it struggled to win over critics, while it never found an audience during its short theatrical release. Now that it is coming out on DVD, will it finally be discovered, or will this be an uneventful end to its run?
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February 24th, 2010
Showing once again that there's no such thing as bad publicity, Ghost Writer topped the per theater chart with an average of $45,752 in four theaters during its opening weekend. It will be interesting to see if it can maintain this momentum going forward. Shutter Island was the only other film in the $10,000 club, earning an average of $13,729 in nearly 3,000 theaters on its way to the number one spot on the overall chart.
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February 19th, 2010
Oscar night is approaching, a fact which has influence on both the most significant limited release of the week, and the relative weakness of limited releases in general.
It would be hard to argue that 2010 Oscar Shorts is not the biggest release of the week, but the most interesting release might be Defendor.
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