Today is going to be an expensive day for cineastes like myself and possibly even more expensive for Blu-ray enthusiasts (not so much like myself, yet.)

Let’s get the nerd movies out of the way before we talk about the others.

The Animated Hellboy movies are being re-released in a special edition two pack in advance of what looks to be July’s first comic-book masterpiece film, Hellboy II: The Golden Army.  It comes with a really cool looking animated Hellboy figurine.  (Amazon has pictures here.) Bottom line is this: If you’re a frequent reader of this site and haven’t yet bought these, this means that there is officially no longer any excuse for their exclusion from your DVD collection.  These animated features are great additions to the Hellboy mythos, they’re well-animated and share the movie actors for all of its voice talent.  They really funny and kick-ass, too.  So, get off your ass and get it.

The other nerd release of the week is Batman: The Movie on Blu-ray.  This movie is really bad but preposterously entertaining on about a hundred different levels.  Granted, the 60’s Batman series set the cause of kick-ass Batman stories in live action series back 30 years, but it’s still fun to watch.  This is a brand new special edition and is $30 or so on Blu-ray.  Is it worth that for Blu-ray?  I don’t know.  The regular DVD version of this new edition hits the streets at under $10.

The other big Blu-ray release for the day is Martin Scorsese’s period masterpiece, Gangs of New York.  I know a lot of people are down on this movie, but I would boldly call those people morons to their face.  It’s the best movie Cameron Diaz has ever been in and, to date, it’s the only movie she’s ever been in that didn’t suck.  And Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day Lewis burn the house down with their portrayals of Amsterdam Vallon and Bill the Butcher, respectively.  I must have seen this movie six times in the theatre and it gets better every time I revisit it.  I’m excited to see how it looks in the Blu-ray format.

The next two films on our list are companion pieces and are both Criterion releases that I am very much looking forward to.  I’m not sure how many of you guys are Yukio Mishima fans but he’s the Japanese equivalent of Steinbeck or Hemingway and his novels are fantastic (might I recommend The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea).  Long story short though, he sort of went a little crazy and led a coup of the Japanese government in the 1970s.  When it failed, he committed public seppukku in the uniform of his private army.  Paul Schrader (whom you’re all fans of (he wrote Taxi Driver, Hardcore, Raging Bull, Affliction and Bringing Out The Dead among many, many others)) directed a film of his tragic death under the lens of four of his novels and plays and reenactments of his life.  It’s called Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters.  It’s a beautiful and bold piece of art that I would give my highest recommendation to, to anyone interested in literature, history and art films in thier highest forms.  Another plus about the film: it was produced by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas.

The companion piece to this film is actually a film called Patriotism that was the only foray into filmmaking by the ill-fated Mishima himself.  Made  four years before his own suicide, Patriotism depicts a navel officer commiting a very public suicide.  All prints of this film were thought to be lost because, after Mishima’s own suicide, all remaining film prints were destroyed.  Fortunately, Criterion got their hands on a lost negative and this important piece of film and literary history has been saved.

That’s all for this week.  Next week we’ll be discussing a variety of Batman releases (including Gotham Knight) and some cool Blu-ray releases.