New on Blu: The Shape of Water

Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water, winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture, and a nominee for Best Original Screenplay, is now available on Blu-ray and DVD.

New On Blu: The Goodbye Girl

The Goodbye Girl, featuring Neil Simon's Oscar-nominated original screenplay, is available for the first time in high definition with Warner Archive's new Blu-ray release.

Richard Dreyfuss delivers an Academy Award-winning performance in this Neil Simon classic where romance blooms between two complete opposites forced to share an apartment in New York.

Elliot Garfield (Dreyfuss) has just arrived in Manhattan to take the acting role of his life—Richard III in an off-off-Broadway production. Ex-chorus girl Paula McFadden (Marsha Mason in her Oscar-nominated role) has just been dumped again. This time her ex has abandoned her, sublet their apartment—to Garfield—and left Paula and her nine-year-old daughter (Quinn Cummings in her own Oscar-nominated performance) without a job or a place to live.

Garfield legally has claim to the apartment, but he can't throw a mother and daughter out. So, despite Garfield's habits of chanting, burning incense and walking about naked, the threesome forms a home.

The Goodbye Girl is available now on Blu-ray.

New On Blu: The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend

Writer-director-producer extraordinaire Preston Sturges's The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend is finally available on Blu-ray thanks to Kino Lorber.

Clocking in as his 38th writing credit after film classics including Remember the Night, The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story, Unfaithfully Yours, and Sullivan's Travels, Sturges wrote The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend with Earl Felton.

The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend is a romantic comedy-western directed by the legendary Preston Sturges (The Lady Eve, Sullivan’s Travels) and starring Betty Grable (I Wake Up Screaming), Cesar Romero (The Joker of TV’s Batman), Rudy Vallee (The Palm Beach Story) and Olga San Juan (Blue Skies). In this wild six-gun farce set in the old west, Grable plays a hot-tempered racy saloon entertainer named Freddie who’s as quick with a pistol as she is to kick up her heels. During a fray, Freddie accidentally shoots a judge while trying to protect her boyfriend (Romero) - she leaves town disguised as a schoolteacher and woos a mine owner (Vallee) while trying to escape persecution. Sturges co-wrote the screenplay with Earl Felton (The Narrow Margin), based on a story by Felton.

The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend is available now on Blu-ray.

New On Blu: Knight of Cups

New this week from Broad Green Pictures is Knight of Cups, written and directed by Terence Malick, and starring Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Brian Dennehy, Antonio Banderas, Freida Pinto, Wes Bentley, Isabel Lucas, Teresa Palmer, and Imogen Poots.

"KNIGHT OF CUPS follows writer Rick (Christian Bale, The Fighter, American Hustle) on an odyssey through the playgrounds of Los Angeles and Las Vegas as he undertakes a search for love and self. Even as he moves through a desire-laden landscape of mansions, resorts, beaches and clubs, Rick grapples over complicated relationships with his brother (Wes Bentley) and father (Brian Dennehy). His quest to break the spell of his disenchantment takes him on a series of adventures with six alluring women: rebellious Della (Imogen Poots); his physician ex-wife, Nancy (Cate Blanchett); a serene model Helen (Freida Pinto); a woman he wronged in the past Elizabeth (Natalie Portman); a spirited, playful stripper Karen (Teresa Palmer); and an innocent Isabel (Isabel Lucas), who helps him see a way forward."

Knight of Cups is available now on Blu-ray, DVD, and Amazon Video.

New On Blu: The Player

New the week from The Criterion Collection is The Player, written by Michael Tolkin (based on his novel), directed by Robert Altman, and starring Tim Robbins as a Hollywood studio executive who finds himself stalked by a screenwriter whose work he rejected.

"A Hollywood studio executive with a shaky moral compass (Tim Robbins) finds himself caught up in a criminal situation that would be right at home in one of his movie projects, in this biting industry satire from Robert Altman. Mixing elements of film noir with sly insider comedy, The Player, based on a novel by Michael Tolkin, functions as both a nifty stylish murder story and a commentary on its own making, and it is stocked with a heroic supporting cast (Peter Gallagher, Whoopi Goldberg, Greta Scacchi, Dean Stockwell, Fred Ward) and a lineup of star cameos that make for an astonishing Hollywood who’s who. This complexly woven grand entertainment (which kicks off with one of American cinema’s most audacious and acclaimed opening shots) was the film that marked Altman’s triumphant commercial comeback in the early 1990s."

Special features include:

- New 4K digital restoration, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray

- Audio commentary from 1992 featuring director Robert Altman, writer Michael Tolkin, and cinematographer Jean Lépine

- Interview with Altman from 1992

- New interviews with Tolkin, actor Tim Robbins, associate producer David Levy, and production designer Stephen Altman

- Cannes Film Festival press conference from 1992 with cast and crew

- Robert Altman’s Players, a short documentary about the shooting of the film’s fund-raiser scene

- Map to the Stars, a gallery dedicated to the cameo appearances in the film

- Deleted scenes and outtakes

- The film’s opening shot, with alternate commentaries by Altman, Lépine, and Tolkin

- Trailers and TV spots

- An essay by author Sam Wasson

The Player is available now on Blu-ray and DVD, and Amazon Video.

New On Blu: In a Lonely Place

New this week from the Criterion Collection is In a Lonely Place, written by Andrew Solt based on a story by Dorothy B. Hughes, directed by Nicholas Ray, and starring Humphrey Bogart as Dixon Steele, cinema's most hot-tempered fictional screenwriter.

"When a gifted but washed-up screenwriter with a hair-trigger temper—Humphrey Bogart, in a revelatory, vulnerable performance—becomes the prime suspect in a brutal Tinseltown murder, the only person who can supply an alibi for him is a seductive neighbor (Gloria Grahame) with her own troubled past. The emotionally charged In a Lonely Place, freely adapted from a Dorothy B. Hughes thriller, is a brilliant, turbulent mix of suspenseful noir and devastating melodrama, fueled by powerhouse performances. An uncompromising tale of two people desperate to love yet struggling with their demons and each other, this is one of the greatest films of the 1950s, and a benchmark in the career of the classic Hollywood auteur Nicholas Ray."

Special features include a new 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray, a new audio commentary featuring film scholar Dana Polan, the 1875 documentary I’m a Stranger Here Myself, anew interview with biographer Vincent Curcio about actor Gloria Grahame, a featurette from filmmaker Curtis Hanson, the 1948 Suspense radio adaptation from 1948 of the original Dorothy B. Hughes novel, the trailer, and an essay by critic Imogen Sara Smith.

In a Lonely Place is available now on Blu-ray, DVD, and Amazon Video.