From the Big Screen:

The Little Mermaid

(2023) Director Rob Marshall’s live-action reimagining of Disney’s beloved animated musical classic, the story of Ariel, a beautiful and spirited young mermaid with a thirst for adventure. The youngest of King Triton’s daughters and the most defiant, Ariel longs to find out more about the world beyond the sea and, while visiting the surface, falls for the dashing Prince Eric. While mermaids are forbidden to interact with humans, Ariel must follow her heart. She makes a deal with the evil sea witch, Ursula, which gives her a chance to experience life on land but ultimately places her life – and her father’s crown – in jeopardy. Vitals: Director: Rob Marshall. Stars: Halle Bailey, Jonah Hauer-King, Melissa McCarthy, Javier Bardem, Noma Dumezweni, Art Malik, Daveed Diggs, Jacob Tremblay, Awkwafina. CC, MPAA rating: PG, 135 min., Family Fantasy Adventure, North American box office gross: $286.6 million, worldwide $530.4 million, Disney. Formats: DVD, Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Code, 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo + Digital Code, VOD, Digital. Extras: Sing-along version; “Hotter Under The Water” five behind-the-scene featurettes; song breakdowns; “The Scuttlebutt On Sidekicks” featurette; “Passing The Dinglehopper” featurette; gag reel. Read more here

This Week’s Best Bet

A feverishly inspired take on Franz Kafka’s novel, Orson Welles’s “The Trial” (1962) casts Anthony Perkins as the bewildered office drone Josef K., whose arrest for an unspecified crime plunges him into a menacing bureaucratic labyrinth of guilt, corruption, and paranoia. Exiled from Hollywood and creatively unchained, Welles poured his ire at the studio system, McCarthyism, and all forms of totalitarian oppression into this cinematic statement — one of his boldest and most personal, and the film that he himself considered his greatest. Dizzying camera angles, expressionistic lighting, increasingly surreal locations — Welles unleashed the full force of his visual brilliance to convey the nightmarish disorientation of a world gone mad. On Blu-ray, 4K UHD + Blu-ray combo edition, with New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack. In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features. From The Criterion Collection. Read more here.

Buzzin’ the ‘B’s:

In “Past Lives” (2023), starring Greta Lee, Teo Yoo and John Magaro, Nora and Hae Sung, two deeply connected childhood friends, are wrested apart after Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea. Two decades later, they are reunited in New York for one fateful week as they confront notions of destiny, love, and the choices that make a life, in this heartrending modern romance. On DVD, Blu-ray, from Lionsgate. Read more here … “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” (2023 — UK), starring Lily James, Shazad Latif, Shabana Azmi, Emma Thompson and Sajal Aly, is a rom-com about finding lasting love in today’s world. For documentary maker and dating app addict Zoe (James), swiping right has only delivered an endless stream of Mr. Wrongs, to her eccentric mother Cath’s (Thompson) dismay. For Zoe’s childhood friend and neighbor Kaz (Latif), the answer is to follow his parents’ example and opt for an arranged (or “assisted”) marriage to a bright and beautiful bride from Pakistan. As Zoe films his hopeful journey from London to Lahore to marry a stranger, chosen by his parents, she begins to wonder if she might have something to learn from a profoundly different approach to finding love. On Blu-ray from Shout! Studios.

Foreign Films:

In “Bad City” (2023 — Japan), starring Hitoshi Ozawa, Akane Sakanoue, Masanori Mimoto, Lily Franky and Tak Sakaguchi, Kaiko City, long plagued by poverty and crime, has been torn apart by rampant corruption and growing violence between the local Yakuza faction and a notorious Korean crime boss. But when a mafia-connected businessman runs for mayor and begins systematically eliminating his opponents, a former police captain imprisoned for a brutal murder is released in a final desperate effort to reclaim the city. On DVD, Blu-ray, from Well Go USA.

From TV to Disc:

“Fire Country: Season One” (2022-23) contains all 22 episodes of the series about a ragtag team of Northern California firefighters. Bode Donovan is a young convict who seeks redemption and a shortened prison sentence by joining a prison release firefighting program in Northern California, where he and other inmates are partnered with elite firefighters to extinguish massive, unpredictable wildfires across the region. It’s a high-risk, high reward assignment, and the heat is turned up when Bode is assigned to the program in his rural hometown, where he was once a golden all-American son until his troubles began. Now he’s back, with the rap sheet of a criminal and the audacity to believe in a chance for redemption with Cal Fire. From Paramount.

All DVDs and Blu-rays are screened on a reference system consisting of an Oppo BDP-83 Blu-ray Disc Player w/SACD & DVD-Audio, a Rotel RSX-972 Surround Sound Receiver, and Phase Technology 1.1 (front), 33.1 (center), and 50 (rear) speakers, and Power 10 subwoofer.