Under Siege? Oh hell yes!!

and that's great that Davis recorded a commentary track. I listened to his track on the old Chuck Norris movie Code of Silence and he's a solid listen.

Under Siege in 4k I'll definitely buy that. No new interview from Steven Segal?

Arrow released a teaser on social media this morning that seems to be for Save the Green Planet. Both companies that released it on DVD in the US and UK are both defunct, so it should probably a release for both territories.

Had a feeling that one would resurface with BUGONIA doing the rounds. SAVE is one of the outright gems from the early 00’s growth of the, ahem, K-wave, and it’s ripe for reappraisal. The director made some decent movies afterward, too, especially the phenomenal historical epic 1987: WHEN THE DAY COMES (2017), a movie and a subject matter that’s as relevant, globally, today as it was eight years ago, and nearly forty years ago, and which would be well suited to a release from a less genre-oriented boutique, but alas.

Arrow and Atomic are both shipping out ShawScope vol. 4 early.

Segal is too busy training the Russian army.

Next round of announcements go up tomorrow! This teaser is 100% from Excalibur, so we have that to look forward to.

That one has crossed my mind countless times in recent months as an ideal upgrade candidate, especially once they started doing all those Warner titles. I wouldn’t be surprised if they followed tradition and stuck it on 4K only , but it would be nice if they stuck a Blu in the pack, or made separate editions. A lot of the cast is gone, but some ‘pretty big later’ names are still around for interviews (Mirren, Lunghi, Neeson, Stewart, Byrne, Hinds), as are some of the key crew members. This film has long deserved more than just the sole commentary Warner has recycled for years.

It looks like Westworld and American Yakuza will be announced tomorrow as well.

Westworld - Hell Yeah!

And separate format versions for WESTWORLD and EXCALIBUR, too. Color me surprised! Decent extras on those, too, finally.

Westworld

As Arrow’s description notes, AMERICAN YAKUZA was the first in Toei’s run of American versions of their ‘V-cinema’ line. What’s frustrating here is the fact that Arrow has done a couple of multi-film boxed sets of some of the Japanese films from this line, but this one gets a standalone release when at least three of the others would’ve made for an excellent box set as they’re all quite good as DTV movies go. I get that Viggo Mortensen’s early role in this is a selling feature, but the others are hardly slouches: Russell Crowe in NO WAY BACK, Virginia Madsen in BLUE TIGER, and (possibly) Michael Rooker in BACK TO BACK. The connective tissue on all of these is largely Japanese actor Ryo Ishibashi. I think BACK TO BACK may not have involved Toei, but the other three did, and would make a great combo pack like their other V-cinema boxes.

Might be down for Excalibur and Westworld.

Spaceballs... The UHD

I immediately pre-ordered Hard Boiled UHD from OrbitDVD. I'm intrigued by the Samurai Revolution Trilogy. I've never seen any of those, but I'm a sucker for samurai movies.

A quick scan of the bonus features indicates Arrow’s HARD BOILED set includes all of Shout’s extras, but adds the other ‘archive’ commentary (from the Kino DVD, I believe?) with just Woo and Chang. The extras also list an archival featurette with Woo, Chang, David Wu, and Phillip Kwok (Mad Dog); I’m not sure where that’s from but those four did appear in interviews on the old Dragon Dynasty DVD, so maybe they’ve combined them? Arrow also adds archival interviews with Chow and Leung. Again, not sure of the provenance, but it might be neat if those were some kind of original on-set promotional material from Hong Kong.

Definitely in for this and CITY ON FIRE in the eventual sales. I think Tony Stella is a solid choice for the alternative poster art on these kinds of pictures. Hopefully they’ve given him THE KILLER and the ABT trilogy to illustrate as well so there’s some visual cohesion across the gun action pictures.

Also added to the Arrow Hard Boiled is a Dolby Atmos track. It's not something I need, or even necessarily want in a lot of cases, but I'm intrigued because Arrow doesn't usually add these things willy nilly. There's no way this is akin to one of those garbage 7.1 remixes that were on the HK Blu-rays. If Arrow is including it, then I have to assume it must be something someone put some thought and care into.

^ Interesting. Didn’t catch that. It would be interesting to read reviews for that soundtrack. I guess it would have to be a custom thing, but I’m curious whether it’s just some better sounding version of the extant mono tracks, or some new full-on surround sound thing? And if so, I’m likewise curious how they would create something like that without spending much money for a boutique Blu-ray release. AI maybe? I mean, there can’t be much to work with in terms of original recordings, surely?

Those HK mixes were largely awful unless they were a n a film that originally had a proper surround sound audio mix in the first place (which was virtually non-existent on the ‘HK heyday’ era films, and even then they still sounded overdone and inauthentic to these admittedly untrained ears.

Incidentally, I revised my previous post to of that the bonus audio commentary in the Arrow edition taken from the Kino DVD is the one featuring Woo and Chang only. The one with them intercut with the other two guys (from Criterion) is in Shout’s set, and honestly, the Kino two-man commentary is way better.

That image is wrong, but part of me is disappointed that Red Sonja is a only a 4K release since it never got a blu-ray release in the US, but the other part of me is like "why do you care you wouldn't but it anyway?".

Gonna get Hard Boiled because it will have Atmos, so that's a game changer.

Arrow just teased Mortal Kombat coming to 4k on their Facebook page. The existing blurays are enough me.

Here's hoping they get Atmos soundtracks.