Welcome to ComingSoon.net’s look at all the top entertainment hitting this week on Blu-ray and DVD. Check out the gallery viewer below for a look at all the major new releases, television season sets and catalogue titles hitting the shelves today, March 24, 2015.
Peter Jackson’s second Middle-earth trilogy comes to an end with the home video release of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies while Walt Disney Pictures brings home a very different recent big screen fantasy feature with Into the Woods, director Rob Marshall’s all-star adaptation of the hit Broadway musical. Then, rounding out this week’s recent theatrical releases is Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken, nominated for Best Picture for its dramatic telling of the life of Olympian and POW Louis Zamperini.
Recent indie releases now available on Blu-ray include the romantic drama Song One, starring Anne Hathaway and Johnny Flynn, and the horror mockumentary Digging Up the Marrow, the latest from Frozen and Hatchet‘s Adam Green.
Two key catalogue titles arriving this week include The Beyond, a three-disc definitive edition of Lucio Fulci’s 1981 giallo masterpiece, and, in a new special edition from Shout! Factory, The Sure Thing, Rob Reiner’s 1985 comedy that helped launch the career of leading man John Cusack.
On the TV front, Shout! Factory is delivering (on DVD only) Mr. Bean: The Whole Bean, a four-disc set that includes every episode of the Rowan Atkinson series, available uncut for the first time.
The Criterion Collection, finally, adds some Errol Morris documentary classics with both The Thin Blue Line and a two-disc set of Gates of Heaven & Vernon, Florida, all backed by a host of special features, including Les Blank’s short film “Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe,” the result of a bet between Herzog and Morris.
You can check out all the cover art in the gallery viewer below alongside a listing of each release’s special features (where applicable):
This Week on Blu-ray and DVD: March 24, 2015
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The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
- New Zealand: Home of Middle-earth - Part 3
- Recruiting the Five Armies
- Completing Middle-earth
- The Last Goodbye: Music Video
- The Last Goodbye: Behind the Scenes
- Theatrical and "Legacy" Trailers -
Into the Woods
- Never-Before-Seen Sondheim Original Song
- There's Something About The Woods
- The Cast As Good As Gold
- Deeper Into The Woods
- Filmmaker Commentary with Director Rob Marshall and Producer John DeLuca.
- Music & Lyrics
- 5 Golden Eggs (Easter Eggs) -
Unbroken
- Inside Unbroken: Fifty Years in the Making
- Inside Unbroken: The Fight of a Storyteller – Director Angelina Jolie
- Inside Unbroken: The Hardiest Generation
- The Real Louis Zamperini
- Cast and Crew Concert Featuring Miyavi
- Prison Camp Theater: Cinderella
- Louis' Path to Forgiveness -
Song One
- Behind-the-scenes recording of the soundtrack
- Deleted scenes -
Digging Up the Marrow
- Extended and deleted scenes
- Monsters of the Marrow
- Audio commentary with writer/director Adam Green, Artist Alex Pardee, Cinematographer Will Barratt and actor Ray Wise -
The Beyond
- Commentary by stars Catriona MacColl and genre superstar David Warbeck
- New in-depth interviews with stars Catriona MacColl, Cinzia Monreale and Giovanni De Nava, U.S. production manager Larry Ray, make-up artists Giannetto DeRossi and Maurizio Trani, cinematographer Sergio Salvati, writer Dardano Sacchetti, producer Fabrizio De Angelis, composer Fabio Frizzi, original U.S. distributor Terry Levene, and Antonella Fulci
- Rare archival interviews with director Lucio Fulci and David Warbeck
- Lost German pre-credit sequence in full color
- Liner notes by legendary horror journalist Chas. Balun and EuroHorror expert Martin Beine
- Extensive still galleries and theatrical trailers
- BONUS CD – original soundtrack album by Fabio Frizzi newly remastered in stunning 96khz sound from the original studio master tapes -
The Sure Thing
- Commentary with director Rob Reiner
- Road to The Sure Thing
- Casting The Sure Thing
- Reading The Sure Thing
- Dressing The Sure Thing
- Theatrical Trailer -
Mr. Bean: The Whole Bean
- Missing Scenes from three episodes: "Merry Christmas Mr. Bean," "Do-it-yourself Mr. Bean," and "Back To School Mr. Bean"
- The Best Bits of Mr. Bean
- 40 minute documentary, “The Story of Mr. Bean”
- Never Before Seen-On-TV Sketches "bus stop" and "library"
- Mr. Bean: The Animated Series trailer -
The Thin Blue Line
- New high-definition digital restoration, supervised by director Errol Morris and producer Mark Lipson, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New interview with Morris
- New interview with Joshua Oppenheimer, director of The Act of Killing
- NBC report from 1989 covering Randall Adams’s release from prison
- An essay by film scholar Charles Musser -
Gates of Heaven / Vernon, Florida
- New 2K digital restorations of both films, supervised by director Errol Morris, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-rays
Two new interviews with Morris
- Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980), a twenty-minute film by Les Blank featuring Herzog fulfilling a bet intended to inspire Morris to complete his first feature
- Footage of Herzog professing his admiration for Gates of Heaven at the 1980 Telluride Film Festival
- An essay by critic Eric Hynes
