This week "WB" stands for Whoa. Bitchin'.

Alfred, let's go shopping.
Riding the Batcycle alongside the long-anticipated theatrical debut of The Dark Knight, in July look for these Bat-titles on Bat-discs courtesy of Warner Home Video:

July 8: Batman Begins - Limited Edition Gift Set (on DVD and Blu-ray) and Batman: Gotham Knight - Special Edition.

July 15: A couple of animated TV series -- Birds of Prey - The Complete Series and The Batman - The Complete Fifth Season.

Also from WB in July, we'll be getting new editions of Clint Eastwood's Bird along with Round Midnight, Pete Kelly's Blues, and Blues in the Night all on one awesomely musical Tuesday, July 22.

That's gonna be a big day around here because also on the 22nd I'll be jumping on Spaced - The Complete Series, which I've been waiting to spend a weekend on the couch with ever since so many friends started telling me that the British comedy series, starring Simon Pegg, is so, so, so me.

Come July 29 animation fans can dig into WB's Steven Spielberg Presents Freakazoid! - The Complete First Season and Steven Spielberg Presents Tiny Toon Adventures - Season 1, Vol. 1. Also up will be Witchblade - The Complete Series, and (yeah, oh yeah!) Dark City - Director's Cut on DVD and Blu-ray.

Check back here often for reviews and further coverage.

Smokin'
At DVD Talk, Cameron McGaughy's review of the new Definitely, Maybe DVD includes this info about the commentary track with writer/director Adam Brooks and star Ryan Reynolds:

Brooks "points out that this is one of the first films to get slapped with a smoking warning, which helped contribute to its PG-13 rating.... It's also fun to hear the two talking about the cast: Reynolds notes that [Isla] Fisher has a 'mouth like a sailor', while Brooks talks about [Kevin] Kline's unique acting style and also praises the strong dialogue rhythm between Reynolds and Breslin. 'It was like a romantic whodunit,' says Reynolds of his attraction to the script. 'It was a fresh take on a genre that I thought could use a tune-up.'"

McGaughy also notes parenthetically: "...would someone please cast Fisher, Amy Adams and Rachel McAdams as sisters in some fabulous movie? How amazing would that be?!" Good question.

Speaking of DVD Talk, if anyone can decipher the alien text in Randy Miller III's review of Futurama: The Beast With A Billion Backs (the sequel to Bender's Big Score), please post it in the comments box below. As a Futurama fan, I know that the text really can be translated, but whenever I try to do it the Nibblonian under my desk keeps pushing my chair backward into the cryogenics tube.

At his website, DVD Savant, our own Glenn Erickson reviews Shinobi no mono 2: Vengeance, Hitler: The Last Ten Days (with Alec Guinness as you know who), and William (The Exorcist) Friedkin's The Night They Raided Minsky's. Glenn reviewed Popeye the Sailor, Vol. 2: 1938-1940 for us this week.

Feeling lucky? (Um, not particularly, no.)
Talking about the recent boxed set Dirty Harry Collector's Edition, Greencine Guru's DVD Review Blog notes the curse of the sidekick:

"Being assigned as Harry Callahan's partner is not that different than becoming the latest Spinal Tap drummer in movie mythology -- both positions are seriously bewitched and essentially doomed. This does not go unnoticed by the screenwriters; in even just the second film Magnum Force, Harry (Clint Eastwood) makes his new partner nervous by alluding to this fact."

About the recent release of Michael Haneke's "excruciating" new Funny Games Greencine Guru says "...it's not clear why anyone should subject him or herself to this film, or why a remake was necessary in the first place." He adds, "For some reason, Warner Home Video's DVD looks a lot like something that might have been released in 1999." Our own C. Robert Cargill expressed similar misgivings here.

More WB news (this time with a Gershwin soundtrack)
Fans of the classics know that Warner has earned its gold-standard reputation for treating its 85 years' worth of classic titles very well indeed on home video. Over at The Digital Bits there's news that Warner is prepping a couple of Vincente Minnelli favorites for new DVDs and Blu-ray high-def treatment. Come Sept. 16, American in Paris and Gigi will be available in new "Two-Disc Special Editions." The report says that "BOTH titles are expected to be released on Blu-ray Disc in addition to standard DVD ... though we'll have to wait for the official announcement for more specific details. What we do know for sure is that Gigi has been given a full 4K restoration and An American in Paris will be the first new Ultra Resolution restoration to debut on Blu-ray." The report includes DVD cover art for both titles.

To everyone out there who, like me, always gets caught up in An American in Paris's colorful, painterly scenic design -- just imagining what it'll look like in "Ultra Resolution restoration" on Blu-ray is enough to add a few million hexadecimal hues to my dreams at night.

Blu-ray.com has more details, including the DVD bonus features, typically one of WB's very best virtues.

Over at the blog for Seattle's Scarecrow Video, "the largest video store on the West Coast," The Best of 2008...so far is David Mamet's way-under-the-radar Redbelt. Says blogger "laird," Redbelt "has hands down been the best time I’ve had at the movies this year." Looking forward to seeing this one on disc before too long.

In his weekly DVD column for The New York Times, Dave Kehr gave his usual excellent words on Criterion's new edition of Anthony Mann's dark Western The Furies (reviewed at Film.com by Glenn Erickson), and First Run Features' edition of Solo Sunny, which "was widely regarded at the time of its 1980 release as perhaps the best film to come out of the unhappy nation then known as East Germany, and with the passing of time the 'perhaps' might safely be removed."

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