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)

Beauty vs Beast: Cloud Actress

Jason from MNPP here with your weekly dose of "Beauty vs Beast" -- it's the 61st birthday of the French director (excuse me, they call them "auteurs" over there) Olivier Assayas, who's just come off one of his greatest successes, the role-playing actressy drama Clouds of Sils Maria. I reviewed Clouds way back at the 2014 New York Film Festival for TFE and I was bowled over by it then and I remain so today; when it continued getting Oscar talk all the way through this season I was happily surprised to see it even remembered. Of course come nomination morning it wasn't, because them's the breaks. I can easily suss out the names I'd boot in both Actress categories to make room for Binoche and Stewart's lively and lovely performances (Bye J-Law! See ya later, McAdams!) but if we were to face the two off against each other, well, then it gets tougher...

PREVIOUSLY The Revenant continues doing boffo box office and everybody seems to think it's Leo's Oscar to lose, but here at TFE y'all shoved him face-first in a snow-bank and ran away laughing -- it was a close contest but by a few points you decided that you prefered a murderer by Tom Hardy better. Said Nick T:

"I'm voting Fitzgerald because yes it's Big but Christ at least Hardy offers us a performance that's interesting because of the performance itself instead of how much he's Suffering, and once Glass is on his own Hardy was only thing that got me through the ordeal of The Revenant."

Nicole, Queen of the Amazons?

In her continual quest to spent every waking moment of her adult life on film sets (girl enjoy that lovely farm for a month!) our Nicole Kidman has lined up two potentially awful / potentially awesome new roles this week. (That's in addition to the films she's already shot that have yet to hit theaters.) The biggest ticket is Wonder Woman (2017) the sequel/prequel (?) to next spring's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The role in question is apparently Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons and mother to our wondrous woman.

Whatever would Cloris Leachman make of this? 

Do you care about Nicole Kidman appearing in Wonder Woman?

No. Take a break already.

Only if she's playing Wonder Woman

Yes, I'll see her in anything.

Poll Maker

Cloris  looks none too pleased. If you're of a certain age you'll remember that Cloris Leachman played the role on TV's Wonder Woman and she was the only member of the cast who truly embraced the (unintentional) comedy of Amazon Island. 

That's a ridiculously high profile film but the more intriguing project is the film adaptation of the best seller The Silent Wife about a woman who plots her philandering husband's murder. Our Ms Kidman has been attached to that one for a couple of years but now it has a director and that's where the intrigue comes in. It's none other than maestro of sexually charged thrillers Adrian Lyne (Indecent Proposal, Fatal Attraction, Lolita, 9 1/2 Weeks) . Lyne hasn't made a movie in 13 years but it's worth noting that he didn't go out with a whimper. He just quit. His last film was Unfaithful (2002) which was a hit and nabbed Diane Lane well deserved acting awards including an Oscar nomination. Lyne is now 74 years old but this year alone should have definitively put a stake in the undead assumption that directors age out of their gift -- see George Miller & Ridley Scott's huge artistic successes this year in their 70s and their entrenchment in the Best Director conversation. 

The movie star's recent femme thriller work has opened and closed without much excitement but Lyne is a big deal in that genre, even wrestling an Oscar nomination from it for Fatal Attraction, so godspeed to them both.

DVD/Bluray: Little Voices & Lion Roars

It's time to talk about this week's big DVD/BluRay releases and a few from last week since we neglected to mention them. The big one is of course Pixar's hit Inside Out which you were surely reminded of this Halloween weekend -- popular group costume! It's likely to end 2015, once Star Wars 7 & Hunger Games 4 arrive, as the fifth most ginormous hit. It's also looking like a good bet for a Best Picture nomination with the box office being so rough for more traditional Oscar types.

Tim and I both highlighted Inside Out in our halfway year in reviews (Tim's / Mine) because it's delightful, and moving, and a true return to form. Are you eager to revisit it?

It's all about the little voices in your head. But only five of them? I've got at least nine. Which begs the question... 

INSIDE OUT says we have five little voices in our heads: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust. How many you got?

Sounds about right.

I've got way more than that. But the other ones aren't appropriate for a family movie

I don't understand the breakdown. My voices reject labels!

I don't hear voices. Am sane!

Poll Maker

Other New Releases

• Best of Enemies - documentary (Amir's Review)
• Digging For Fire -from the prolific Joe Swanberg
• End of the Tour - Won very strong reviews but little public interest
• Max - did you know heroic military dogs can get PTSD?
• Pixels - Adam Sandler vs video games (Tim's Review)
• Seymour an Introduction - documentary (Glenn's Review)
• She's Funny That Way - a comedy via Peter Bogdanovich
• Southpaw - Jake Gyllenhaal vs his demons + abs/guns
• Vacation - the sequel meant to reignite the franchise

Curio Pick: The most compelling of the non Pixar new releases is surely the big cat epic Roar (1981), the infamous cult movie starring mom & daughter Tippi Hedren & Melanie Griffith, both of whom were injured (along with many other cast & crew) on set. What is it with Tippi Hedren and violent animals? See also: The Birds. 

People's Choice Voting Underway

This may be the first time we've ever mentioned the People's Choice Awards as I see they have no "tag" here and EVERYTHING has a tag here at The Film Experience. Obviously we don't mention them because they are embarrassing! But this morning, while waiting for the coffee to brew I chanced upon their "Fav Actress" ballot by way of Jessica Chastain's twitter and that woman has no shame (bless) about retweeting compliments / self-promotion.

And the ballot turned out to be not half bad actually as choices go as long as you ignore the one divergent option. This has to be the most Oscary list they've ever come up with right? But I still felt the need to fix it for them after the jump... 

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