People tell me physical media is a dying format and that everyone gets their movies digitally now. Well, I’m old and set in my ways. One of those ways is buying my favorite movies on blu-ray. Last time there was a new Star Trek movie available on disc, Paramount spread the movie’s bonus features over several different retail outlets, and I was not happy about it. This time, while there are still retail exclusives for Star Trek Beyond, you don’t have to buy five different versions of the same movie to get all of the featurettes in one place.
Nolan had me for a moment, I was deep in space with his crew as they went through a worm hole; into the next galaxy for our new earth. After the film’s release, following tradition in the wake of a Nolan film; debates began. Physicists were referenced and America’s favorite smarty-arty Neil De Grasse Tyson weighed in. I had no problem with any of the alleged technical flaws of the film, I was more concerned with the brother. Matthew whats-his-name and the other Caucasoids left him in space for 23 years?
I don’t know when zombies became cool, but they sure took off some time in the last five years. They’re everywhere: on TV, in video games, in comics, in cell phone commercials, in corporate for-profitadventure/mud-runningevents. It kind of makes me wish zombies were a publicly traded stock option. I could have invested my savings years ago and made millions before the zombie bubble bursts.
One of the landmark works in the contemporary zombie zeitgeist (oh yeah, I totally just put all those words together into a sentence) is Max Brooks’ World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, which I haven’t read, because I suck. Also, because it doesn’t have pictures, and I like my “fun read” books to have pictures in them.
But according to Wikipedia, the World War Z novel is a multi-perspective story that documents the global battle against a zombie apocalypse. It’s supposed to be really good. I do plan on reading it someday.
Target has, arguably, the worst box art. But I’m a sucker for bonus features.
As you know, one of the reasons we at The Nerds of Color decided to celebrate Star Trek this week — aside from it being the franchise’s 47th anniversary — was the fact that the latest iteration of Trek, J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek Into Darkness, was being released on DVD and blu-ray today.
Like a good fanboy, I went straight to Target first thing this morning to secure my copy as soon as possible. After carefully examining about a dozen different cases, I finally chose one whose slipcover was minimally damaged by Target’s idiotic security cases (I’m very picky about the condition of the packaging).
It wasn’t just happenstance that I went to Target to get my copy of Into Darkness. You see, when Paramount Home Video announced the blu-ray release back in May, they also announced a series of retailer-exclusives and multiple versions of the disc. As of today, there are nine different ways to own Star Trek Into Darkness on blu-ray (and this doesn’t include options such as iTunes or DVD). Now, giving different retailers incentives is not a new phenomenon. In the past, the kinds of exclusives offered by different outlets ranged from unique packaging (like variant slipcovers or steelbooks) to including little tchotchkes (such as collectible figurines or other paraphernalia).
