Christopher Walken

CHICAGO – Did Universal know that Meryl Streep was going to win her third Oscar for “The Iron Lady”? Someone should investigate because two of her most acclaimed performances hit Blu-ray this week as a part of Universal’s 100th Anniversary Collector’s Series — “Out of Africa” and “The Deer Hunter.” With a combined twelve Oscars among the two, these are two of the most powerful films in the Universal library and great choices for the Collector’s Series upgrade. Meanwhile, Universal continues to supply this catalog, released “Charade,” “My Man Godfrey,” and “Sullivan’s Travels” under the same banner on DVD-only.

CHICAGO – I’ve long said that one of the main reasons that Blu-ray didn’t take off as quickly as people thought it would is because too many of movie lover’s favorite movies weren’t available on the format. It took years to get “Alien,” “Star Wars,” and even “Back to the Future.” “Jaws” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark” still aren’t in HD. Well, a wave of catalog releases last week that included some of my personal favorite films ever made should help the format overall. With several Oscar winners and some of the most influential filmmaking of all time, this is an amazing catalog wave. Buy all six.

CHICAGO – In our latest crime edition of HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film, we have 10 admit-two run-of-engagement movie passes up for grabs to “Kill the Irishman” with Christopher Walken and Val Kilmer!

CHICAGO – The amalgamation of big time unions and organized crime in post-WW2 industrial America is as enlightening as any struggle for power. Cleveland, Ohio, in the 1950s thru the ‘70s was both on the waterfront and had the East Coast influence of New York City’s most notorious crime families. That history is wasted in “Kill the Irishman.”

CHICAGO – Here’s a knee-jerk horrorshow with a premise so monumentally galvanizing and profoundly disgusting that it manages to upstage the film itself. Once you’ve discovered what the “Human Centipede” is, in all of its grotesque awfulness, your mind instantly creates a vision more viscerally disturbing than anything that could possibly be captured on film.

CHICAGO – Time to catch up with the DVD Round-Up, a collection of titles that may have slipped under your radar while you were busy blogging about Inglourious Basterds” or programming your DVR for the new Fall TV season.

Blu-Ray Rating: 3.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Dwayne Johnson, the artist formerly known as ‘The Rock,’ has a new movie hitting theaters next month, “Race to Witch Mountain,” so the time seems right to revisit the action extravaganzas that almost made this former wrestler a massive star with the release of three of his early films on Blu-Ray in “The Rock Collection”.

CHICAGO – While it’d be embellishment to say you’d have the time of your life at the new musical film “Mamma Mia!,” any dancing queen or an admirer of seeing Pierce Brosnan croon a tune instead of trigger James Bond destruction can at least have some of the time of your 108 minutes.