Today is not a very big day for releases, but there are a few noteworthy releases.  First on the list is an animated Disney film, and one of my favorites from the 80s: The Great Mouse Detective.  Basically a Disney-fied version of a Sherlock Holmes yarn with mice as the lead characters and a rat named Ratigan in the Moriarty role (played by Vincent Price!).  Even Basil Rathbone has a cameo as the real, human Holmes.  This seems to be an oft overlooked Disney film from the 80s, overshadowed by The Little Mermaid, The Fox and the Hound, and The Black Cauldron.  It also came out the same year as Don Bluth’s An American Tail, which was a smash hit.  This is a solid little movie, though, and is incredbily entertaining and fun for the whole family.  Today, though, sees only the DVD release of the film.  So maligned is it in the popular consciousness that it doesn’t seem to have earned its Blu-ray yet.

Broken Lizard’s The Slammin’ Salmon came out.  I looked for it in theatres, but it never seemed to make its way around.  This tells the story about a group of waiters in a competition set forth by their boss, an ex-pro Boxer.  He sets up a sales competition for all of his waiters and the loser will take a beating at the hands of the boxer.  These guys have delivered solid, funny work with Super Troopers, Club Dread, and Beerfest.  I see no reason why this would be any different.

Next on the list is one of Ron Howard’s pretty good movies: Apollo 13.  I think that really sums it up: It was pretty good.  Tom Hanks was pretty good, Bill Paxton was pretty good, the directing was pretty good.  That really describes most of Ron Howard’s movies.

The intensely funny, sort of true story Pirate Radio is coming out on Blu-ray.  Starring Nick Frost, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, and others, this tells the story of when rock music was outlawed by the British government and a group of deejays in a boat off the coast work to keep rock and roll alive on a pirate radio station.

And those are the biggest releases of note for the week, in my humble opinion.