Weekly RoundUp 3-8-2016

Mike Frezon · Mar 5, 2016

ANOTHER BIG CHANGE THIS WEEK!

Please note that we have reversed the order of the grids starting this week. If any 4k/UHD titles are released, they'll be listed first. Then, Blu-rays 2nd and DVDs 3rd. In the absence of 4k/UHDs, Blus wil be listed first.

Don't get confused!

And we have not forgotten about solving the issue of returning the color coding to the grids. It's coming.

Thanks in advance, everybody, for the "likes" of the OP!

Matt Hough · Mar 5, 2016

Thanks, Mike, for the RoundUp!

I'll be reviewing The Vikings tomorrow. I hope Fox elects to send Victor Frankenstein and The Peanuts Movie for review. Those are the other two items on my review schedule for the week.

TravisR · Mar 5, 2016

I'll pick up Community: Season Six at some point.

It didn't get great reviews but I thought In The Heart Of The Sea was pretty good.

Thanks for the prices, Mike!

Sam Posten · Mar 5, 2016

Thanks for reversing order!!!!

Peter McM · Mar 5, 2016

Any reviews pending for Xanadu or Best Little Whorehouse?

Adam Lenhardt · Mar 5, 2016

Thanks as always, Mike. I really like that when I clicked on the RoundUp link under recent threads, it took me directly to the article first and then I could click through to the thread to comment. Going the reverse was really throwing me off.

Torn about what to do for the new Star Wars. On one hand, preordering through Target would ensure I get the retailer exclusive version without having to head over before work and get there right when the store opens, to ensure I get a copy with their notoriously poor stocking decisions. And the $5 gift card is a nice bonus. On other the other hand, something tells me the price is going to go down between now and the release date. The question is whether it'll go below $19.99 or not.

Jake Lipson · Mar 5, 2016

Thanks for your work, Mike. I'll be getting Coming Home and Peanuts this week (Peanuts will be on regular BD for me, since I'm not jumping to UHD right now.) Coming Home is the only movie I've ever watched twice back-to-back in the movie theater; it really is that good, just a beautiful film all around, and I highly recommend it to anyone who thinks they might be interested in it.

Dennis Nicholls · Mar 5, 2016

Now 23 bucks is a decent price for a vintage Mae West.

bujaki · Mar 5, 2016

COMING HOME (2015) is the best movie about the power of unconditional love since Haneke's AMOUR.

Bill Coolidge · Mar 6, 2016

Adam Lenhardt said:
Torn about what to do for the new Star Wars. On one hand, preordering through Target would ensure I get the retailer exclusive version without having to head over before work and get there right when the store opens, to ensure I get a copy with their notoriously poor stocking decisions. And the $5 gift card is a nice bonus. On other the other hand, something tells me the price is going to go down between now and the release date. The question is whether it'll go below $19.99 or not.

When I pre-ordered "Game of Thrones" Target promised to cover any price drop the way Amazon does.

David Norman · Mar 6, 2016

Bill Coolidge said:
When I pre-ordered "Game of Thrones" Target promised to cover any price drop the way Amazon does.

Pretty common on all pre-orders -- it doesn't always work quite as smoothly as Amazon's guarantee, but it seems to be improving. The handful of preorders I've done with them
about automatically adjusted the price at shipment to the the lowest price or automatically refunded the difference if the price price dropped after it shipped/charge posted.
About half the time I had to call by Thurs/Friday to apply the refund though it wasn't a problem either time.

The only issue some people run into is the CSR thinking you're calling for a Price Correction rather than Pre-Order Guarantee since the former in limited to 2 weeks and latter should
be an unlimited time so I'm very careful to qualify the Target guarantee I'm applying. Other people have successfully/correctly argued that purchase date (shipment or release day) is the
key time and not the order date since you can't actually buy something a month before it's available.

Joseph Bolus · Mar 6, 2016

Thanks for the RoundUp!

This week I'm getting Peanuts -- but just in Blu-ray. I'm excited about 4K UHD, but I currently don't own an OLED HDR display, and probably won't for at least another 10 months. So I'm sticking with the "legacy" format until I get closer to obtaining the proper display to show off UHD. (If past history is any indication I'll probably be regretting this decision in about a year.)

Those specials at Best Buy on "Kung Fu Panda" look mighty appealing as I don't own either movie on Blu-ray. And they'll probably look "good enough" upscaled to 4K ...

Aaron Silverman · Mar 7, 2016

Glad you guys mentioned Coming Home. I didn't notice the "2015" in the listing and passed on by, thinking it was the old Vietnam movie. Didn't know there was a new China movie by the same name! Definitely want to see that one. The Cultural Revolution was my wife's childhood.

Jake Lipson · Mar 7, 2016

Aaron -- if you think you are interested at all in Coming Home, it is worth a blind purchase, even at Amazon's high price. I really think it is that outstanding.

However, I was coming back to the thread to report a possible problem with that release, or at least Amazon's shipping of it. Usually, late Sunday or at the latest by the time I wake up on Monday morning, I have an Amazon email in my inbox confirming shipment of whatever preorders I had in place for that week.

Today, though, it is 5:13pm here as I type this, and not only do I not have shipping confirmation yet, but it hasn't even entered the process. My account still lists the order as open and able to be cancelled if I wanted to (which I don't, but typically removal of the ability to cancel the order is indication that it is entering the shipping process.) I have not been billed for it yet either. So, it is beginning to look unlikely that it will arrive tomorrow as the site still claims. (I don't, per se, absolutely require it tomorrow, but I am accustomed to Amazon's great fast service and this is a bizarre departure from that.)

I looked out of curiosity at Amazon's policies and it says that if they miss their delivery promise, the shipping costs on the order will be refunded. However, I am a Prime member and I only had to select Free Two-Day Shipping for guaranteed release date delivery, so in this case there is no shipping cost (unless they want to count the Prime membership fee of $99 as the shipping cost, but I doubt they'll go for that.) This means, essentially, that their delivery guarantees are moot for Prime members, who probably are the ones that most care about those guarantees.

This makes me wonder if there might be a delay from the studio in releasing the title, or getting it to Amazon. I will report back when I have any news from them. Has anyone else heard anything?

TravisR · Mar 7, 2016

Jake Lipson said:
This makes me wonder if there might be a delay from the studio in releasing the title, or getting it to Amazon. I will report back when I have any news from them. Has anyone else heard anything?

I can't speak to this title but I have had smaller movies be a day or two late from Amazon. I just assume that they didn't order enough copies initially and they had to reorder some more.

Jake Lipson · Mar 7, 2016

Good to know - thanks, Travis! Unfortunately, Coming Home would definitely qualify as "smaller"; its total U.S. gross was $377,607 over 14.3 weeks in a maximum of only 55 theaters, and it really deserves more of an audience than that.

Out of curiosity, Travis, when this has happened for you, did Amazon do anything to make up for the delay? I am a loyal customer and I wouldn't stop ordering just because of this or anything, but it would be nice if they made some kind of gesture.

Edit: It's Tuesday morning today and my order is now marked as "shipping today" and cannot be cancelled, but I don't actually have the confirmation email yet and the order is still listed as "open" rather than fulfilled. I assume this means I'll actually get it maybe tomorrow or Thursday, even though the orders page still says it will arrive by tonight.

Edit: I got the shipping confirmation email at 2:09pm, right after the mail arrived, and it wasn't in there, so I'm expecting it will probably come tomorrow. (It is at least coming from a distribution center within the state.)

Jake Lipson · Mar 8, 2016

For those interested in Peanuts at Target, be careful. At 8:15am, only 15 minutes after opening, my local Target was completely sold out of their exclusive version. Apparently they only stocked 10 of them to begin with and then allowed a lady who got there 5 minutes earlier to buy 3 copies (I thought there was usually language in the Target ad about a quantity limit per guest on new releases, but I guess not.)

I got one but had to go to a second store to get it and they only had 1 copy of the exclusive which was also packaged in the gift set with the Snoopy plush, which is what I wanted -- and really, since the set with plush is selling for the same amount of money as the Blu-ray on its own, why would anybody choose NOT to take the adorable little Flying Ace Snoopy home?

Anyway, I got it -- and the third disc is actually inside the Blu-ray case itself, making it a 3-disc case (which is how all retailer exclusives *should* be packaged in my opinion, but very few actually are, as most studios seem content to just cheaply slap a paper sleeve on the shrinkwrap. The bonus disc is a DVD, rather than a Blu-ray.

You can tell the difference between the regular copies and the exclusive because of a sticker on the front that says "EXCLUSIVELY AT TARGET.." I'm pretty sure there are exclusives both with and without the toy (although I wanted the toy so I didn't really pay a lot of attention.) I don't think that either the exclusive disc, or the toy either for that matter, are available with the 3D or UHD versions. I wouldn't swear by this though.

Adam Lenhardt · Mar 8, 2016

Thanks, Bill and David. I rolled the dice.

Jake Lipson · Mar 8, 2016

Well, well, well, I'm used to Amazon's speed and I still have to admit that my experience with them today was extremely impressive. Hats off to them for incredibly fast shipping, as Coming Home is here today after all despite the absurdly late shipping notice this afternoon. According to the tracking, it arrived at my front door at 6:06pm, so it did in fact get here before 8pm as promised.

4k/UHD	Amazon	BestBuy	Target
Peanuts Movie [4k/UHD]	$29.99	$29.99

BLU-RAY	Amazon	BestBuy	Target
Along Came Polly	$9.99
Batteries Not Included	$14.98
Benefactor, The	$14.99
Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, The	$9.99
Coming Home (2015)	$24.99
Howard the Duck	$14.98
In the Heart of the Sea	$22.99	$22.99
In the Heart of the Sea [Blu-ray 3-D]	$27.99	$27.99
Jane B. Par Agnes V. / Kung-Fu Master!	$35.95
Macbeth (2015)	$14.99
Manhattan: Season 2	$34.97
NFL: Super Bowl 50 Champions-Denver Broncos	$24.99
Open Season: Scared Silly	$19.99		$17.99
Paris Belongs to Us (Criterion)	$27.99
Peanuts Movie, The	$19.99	$19.99	$19.99
Peanuts Movie, The [3-D Blu]	$24.99	$24.99
Species II	$22.99
Species III / Species: The Awakening	$22.99
Tribe, The	$19.99
Victor Frankenstein	$22.99	$19.99
Victoria	$22.99
Vikings, The (1958)	$15.99
When Eight Bells Toll	$16.49
Xanadu	$9.99

DVD	Amazon	BestBuy	Target
10,000 KM	$14.99
40 Love	$24.95
666: A Demon Within	$11.99
Absent, The	$7.99
Benefactor, The	$16.99
Beyond Beyond	$13.99
Blue Hour, The	$24.99
Break Point	$12.99
Bunni	$13.99
Chet Zar: I Like to Paint Monsters	$24.95
Children Of the Stars	$9.99
Community: The Final Season	$27.99
Curse Of The Puppetmaster	$9.95
Devil Knows His Own, The	$14.95
Dr. Kildare – The Complete 5th Season	$59.99
Escape From The Insane Asylum	$14.95
Field Freak	$9.99
Flesh for the Inferno	$13.99
Grease Live!	$12.99		$12.99
Hogan’s Heroes (The Complete Series)	$58.99
In the Heart of the Sea	$14.99	$18.99
Macbeth (2015)	$14.99
Mae West: Essential Collection	$22.99
Manhattan: Season 2	$24.99
Mask You Live In, The	$13.99
Monkey Puzzle	$7.99
Nelson Algren: The End is Everything, the Road is All	$24.95
NFL: Super Bowl 50 Champions-Denver Broncos	$19.99
Open Season: Scared Silly	$14.99		$10.00
Out of the Inferno	$13.99
Paris Belongs to Us (Criterion)	$22.99
Peanuts Movie, The	$18.99	$14.99	$16.99
Peppa Pig: The Golden Boots	$9.99
Punk’s Dead: SLC Punk 2	$9.99
Rookie Blue: Final Season	$23.49
States, The	$8.99
Taking, The	$9.99
Tribe, The	$24.99
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Season One	$16.99
Victor Frankenstein	$15.99
Victoria	$19.99
Vikings, The (1958)	$12.49
Wasteland, The	$14.95
When Calls The Heart: It Begins With Heart	$9.99
When Eight Bells Toll	$12.49
The Woman in White	$21.99
Wonders, The	$34.99
You’re Killing Me	$24.95

Weekly RoundUp 3-8-2016

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Mike Frezon

Matt Hough

TravisR

Sam Posten

Peter McM

Screenwriter

Adam Lenhardt

Jake Lipson

Dennis Nicholls

bujaki

Bill Coolidge

Stunt Coordinator

David Norman

Joseph Bolus

Aaron Silverman

Jake Lipson

TravisR

Jake Lipson

Jake Lipson

Adam Lenhardt

Jake Lipson

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