New to DVD & BluRay. Plus: Readers Choice Instant Watch

What's new or newish for home viewing? Let's see... It's been two release weeks for Oscar contenders. Several of them now available for rentals and sales hot off their Oscar wins. 

• Creed. See why we all fussed about it and why so many were rooting for Sly (who lost in one of many surprises Sunday night) despite an unspectacular career. That's the German cover to the left. I include it because it's intereting to note that overseas they have to mention Rocky in the title somehow "Rocky's Legacy," not trusting that just Creed would do it.
• The Danish Girl. See why Vikander won the Oscar. (Hint: Huge leading role and she's playing a Long Suffering Wife, in short Oscar's two favorite things in the Supporting Actress category)
• Fargo Year Two - I hear it's good. Why am I still resisting?
• The Good Dinosaur - Tim was relatively kind in his review. I was not impressed -- could not relate to the weird juxtaposition of photoreal backgrounds and bright green rubber dinosaurs -- but I did love "Spot"... such a cutie
• Legend Tom Hardy x 2
• Miss You Already Toni Collette + Drew Barrymore. It was easy to miss them in theaters. Gone already? Love both of them though so let's catch up.
• My All American Finn Wittrock headlines. But it's straight to DVD
• Room See Brie Larson's Oscar winning work and Jacob Tremblay's and the Production Designer's shoulda been nominated work - hey, at least we honored them! 
• Secret in their Eyes The remake of the Oscar winning Argentinian film. I'm getting so far behind on the Kidman pictures. Must catch up, regardless of the quality but she makes a lot of movies so it's easy to fall behind.
• Spotlight See why this won Best Picture despite the odds. Hint: it's a) really good and b) hard to dislike and thus scored well on the Academy's Preferential Ballot against a field of decidedly more divisive competitors.
• Youth So curious how y'all will like it who haven't yet seen it. It's quite divisive but it is not uninteresting. Jane Fonda bears her teeth. Harvey Keitel mopes. Rachel Weisz gets a mud bath. Paul Dano wears... no, that's a spoiler. And there's a really big opera number that should've made a great Oscar moment ("Nah... we can't have a famous Asian woman singing on stage in a year where we're dinged for being too white!" - Some Academy producers somewhere.)

READERS CHOICE
I hinted that we might try a series wherein you choose the latest instant watch title for Nathaniel to write up. A Reader's Choice Date... perhaps biweekly? So here are your first options. All new to Netflix or Amazon Prime beginning on March 1st (or thereabouts). Make your case in the comments or simply vote. I'll revisit the title you pick and wrote about it on March 10th. American Psycho (2000) is also new to Amazon Prime -- just in time for the new Broadway musical starring Benjamin Walker -- but we've talked about that modern classic a lot in the past so we'll skip it this time. (A is for Amazon; N for Netflix)

Newish to Watch at Home: Crimson Peak, Trumbo, Grandma, Etc.

Newish on DVD/BluRay

• The 33 Antonio Banderas / Chilean miner rescue story
• 99 Homes the other acclaimed housing crisis movie
• Black Mass the gangster movie with Johnny Depp, buried under alien makeup, plays a gangster. Watch out for great performances on the periphery from Peter Sarsgaard and Julianne Nicholson
• Crimson Peak from Guillermo Del Toro. Critics were divided or had many reservations but those who loved it really loved it. Here's a rabidly pro piece nicely titled "Ghosts are Movies".

LUNCHTIME POLL:
Would you rather...

- Be seduced by Tom Hiddleston?
- Gain access to all of Mia Wasikowska's money?
- Marry into Jessica Chastain's family?

• Girls S4 -I've definitely lost track of this show. Weirdly I quit with an episode I couldn't have loved more (S3E7 "Beach House")
• Grandma - Lily Tomlin gets her own well deserved star vehicle and drives it superbly
• Love the Coopers - Diane Keaton earns a paycheck
• Spectre  -the first Bond I haven't seen in theaters in some time. It just kind of happened, the skipping of it
• Steve Jobs -the intense three act drama starring Michael Fassbender & Kate Winslet
• Togetherness S1 the highly undervalued HBO dramedy. Melanie Lynskey and the rest of the cast are just super
• Trumbo in case you'd like to discover why it did so well in the precursors

NEW TO STREAMING
Netflix added Dope, The Face of Love (a romantic drama misfire from The Bening), Open Season, and the 2007 Best Picture nominee Atonement (tomorrow) and by the end of the month they'll add Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny which looks terrible *sniffle* despite being something we've looked forward to for so long. Amazon Prime added Solomon Kane a fantasy action film starring James Purefoy, Max von Sydow and Rachel Hurd-Wood that Radius TWC buried in 2009 (never opened in the States but played elsewhere). By the end of the month they'll add Digging For Fire from Joe Swanberg.

Which of these will you be catching up with?

Spielberg's Best Pictures and New DVDs

Time to check in to see which movies we all can check back in with or catch up with now that they've hit the home market. The big title, Oscar wise is Steven Spielberg's 10th Best Picture nominee as a director, the cold war drama Bridge of Spies with Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance both doing fine work as a lawyer and the spy he must bargain with for a prisoner of war trade. Only one of Spielberg's directorial efforts has ever won Best Picture (Schindler's List, 1993) but which is your favorite? I'd rank them like so...

1. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
2. Schindler's List (1993)
3. Jaws (1975)
4. E.T. The Extra Terrestrial (1982)
5. Lincoln (2012)
6. The Color Purple (1985)
7. Bridge of Spies (2015)
8. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
9. Munich (2005)
10. War Horse (2011)

With the disclaimer that everyone knows I'm not a Spielberg aficionado really (the top three are the only ones I'm completely wild about from this list with Close Encounters of the Third Kind also a favorite but Best Picture was not among its 8 (!) nominations. [Trivia Aside: It's tied for second place with The Dark Knight and some other films for 'most nominations without Best Picture,' though the expanded Best Picture field will probably insure that no more films join said list. The all time record holder is They Shoot Horses Don't They (1969) which is completely amazing film but somehow missed a Best Picture nomination despite 9 other bids for the gold.]

ICYMI Murtada just got done ranking the Spielberg Nominated Performances so we're in that sorta mood you could say

Also New on DVD or BluRay

• Burnt Bradley Cooper is a chef. And lots of actresses orbit him
• Chi-Raq Spike Lee's randy funny raging update of Lysistrata (See: Best of 2015)
• Downton Abbey (Final Season) which I'm loving as it airs
• Freeheld in which Julianne Moore & Ellen Page fall in love and fight for their rights
• Goosebumps in which monsters come to life and Jack Black and kids fight them
• Our Brand is Crisis a rare flop for Sandra Bullock as a campaign manager
• Suffragette Mulligan, Streep and Bonhman-Carter fight for their voting rights
• Truth Cate Blanchett and her fabulous curls fight a losing battle to bring down President Bush with his sneaky draft-dodging

New to Netflix Instant Watch

• Better Call Saul (S1) in which Breaking Bad lives on to hold on to its Emmy slots. Now Streaming on Netflix.
• Lila & Eve Viola Davis goes vigilante. February 6th.
• Love (Gaspar Noe) in which Gaspar Noe splooges into the camera (in 3D!). This explicit sex drama should have really been something but Christ it's a bore. February 4th. 
• Mad Men (S7.2) in which we try to be all zen while saying goodbye to the greatest TV show of all time. February 5th.

READER'S CHOICE
We might start doing a poll where you choose which old movie, just released to Instant Watch, you want to force Nathaniel to watch and write up and discuss with y'all. What'cha think? Some of this month's new/old options are Charlie's Angels (2000), Cruel Intentions (1999), Full Metal Jacket (1987), Jennifer 8 (1992... I used to be really into this one because: Uma), Losing Isaiah (1995), Stardust (2007), Teen Witch (1989), and I Love You Phillip Morris (2009)

Newish: A Walk with the Teenage Martian Outta Compton

It's time for the irregular 'newish for home viewing' list. If you've been trying to catch up on 2015 hits & misses (no judgments -- we're all for movie consumption of multiple kinds and whenever people can get to them) it's worth noting that a lot of things hit DVD, Blu-Ray, and Streaming over the past three weeks. Here are some highlights. (Links go to related articles here).

Click to read more ...

Podcast: Anomalisa & Great Films to Stream Right Now

Previously on Pt 1: The Hateful Eight and Comedy Performances of 2015

Pt 2 is here now. Joe, Katey and Nick --soldiering on awesomely without Nathaniel at this week's recording session -- are talking Anomalisa, and streaming recommendations to complete your film year. I hope you enjoy their conversation as much as I did! 

36 minutes 
00:01 Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson's Anomalisa has attracted obsessed fans. Do Katey, Joe and Nick number among them? Find out. 
14:40 Reader Question: Great performances in not so great films? When actors do all the work themselves. 
20:10 Catching up with 2015 films we missed. Streaming recommendations!
34:30 Goodbyes & Plugs & Happy New Year

Films discussed include but are not limited to: Phoenix, The Man From UNCLE, Blackhat, and Goodnight Mommy  

Further Reading: 
Joe's Decider column on future cult classics
Nick's new giant Actress project 

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. 

Anomalisa, Phoenix, and More...