Widescreen: Physical media gems for fans of John Hughes, Stephen King, Ridley Scott
The streaming era still has delightful surprises for fans of physical media from time to time, thanks mostly to specialty labels like Criterion, Shout Factory, Arrow Video and Kino Lorber. These outlets license films from the studios for premium Blu-ray/4K disc packages, often jammed with extras.
The latest such surprise comes from Arrow: a 4K release of John Hughes' “Weird Science,” the Northbrook auteur's sci-fi comedy in which Anthony Michael Hall and Ilan Mitchell-Smith use a computer to create the perfect woman, aka Kelly LeBrock. A couple of nobodies named Robert Downey Jr. and Bill Paxton round out the cast. (And who could forget the theme song by Danny Elfman and Oingo Boingo?)
A standard Blu-ray version is available now, and the 4K UHD release with a bevy of new bonus features arrives Aug. 22. Those features include new interviews with people who worked in all corners of the production, a collection of writings on the film and a foldout poster.
Deal with the devil
One of this writer's personal holy grails arrives July 25 from Kino Lorber: a new 4K scan of the 1993 Stephen King adaptation “Needful Things,” a particularly nasty horror-comedy in which the devil conducts business in King's favorite fictional town of Castle Rock.
Coming in 4K and standard Blu-ray variations, “Needful Things” also includes a much extended, three-hour TV version of the film that was originally assembled as a quasi-miniseries to air on TBS and TNT.
Why revisit this mostly forgotten film after 30 years? The incredible cast, starting with screen legend Max von Sydow as Leland Gaunt, a devilish shopkeeper whose wares just happen to include the exact thing that every resident of Castle Rock has ever desired. Those residents include sheriff Ed Harris, whose unhinged delivery of the line “Everybody is insane, everywhere!” is the highlight of the film; corrupt official J.T. Walsh, the king of '90s character actors; and eccentric dog-lover Amanda Plummer, so chilling on this past season of “Star Trek: Picard.”
And finally
Ridley Scott's “Thelma & Louise” entered the Criterion Collection this week. The Geena Davis/Susan Sarandon classic has (you guessed it) a new 4K remaster, audio commentaries, interviews and documentaries, and even a Glenn Frey music video. It's available now on 4K and standard Blu-ray.
Sean Stangland is an assistant news editor who still watches DVDs on his Xbox 360 from time to time.