As for the Blu-ray, it appears to be identical to the HD DVD release, which is not surprising. It is also not a bad thing, as Beowulf was arguably the best looking HD DVD I reviewed. The main difference here is all of the special features fit onto one disc, which makes the Blu-ray more convenient. Is it enough to make it worth the upgrade? Perhaps, but this release is mainly for people who never had HD DVD or who gave up on HD DVD after Warner Bros. dumped the format and sold their player / collection. For these people, Beowulf - Blu-ray Edition is certainly worth picking up. It may not be the best movie in their collection, but it is entertaining, and it shows off what High Definition is all about.

There are seven episodes on this release, starting with two that have not aired on TV yet. They include...

• Lyle and Leland Lopart
  Manny's nephew, Pepe, entered the Soapbox derby at the last minute, so the gang are working hard to finish the car in time. Meanwhile, Mr. Lowpart's nephews, Lyle and Leland, are having trouble with their car so Manny offers to help.
• Blackout on the Block
  Manny helps Cassie, the owner of the local pet store, after a blackout leaves her newly hatched chicks without the heat light they need to keep warm.
• Squeeze Makes a Promise
  After helping fix a table leg, Squeeze agrees to baby-sit Mrs. Portillo's pet chameleon, Maurice. However, taking care of a pet is harder than it looks.
• Pet Problem
  Manny and the gang head to Cassie's to fix a broken cage and the tools want get a new pet. But Manny warns them that pets are a lot of work, and they will soon find out just how much work.
• Kitty Sitting
  Kelly comes by with a new kitten and the tools immediately want to keep her as their pet. Oh boy. Fortunately, before Manny can answer them, they have to go to a job and fix a broken doorbell, but with the kitten asleep in the toolbox, it tags along for the trip
• Gopher Help
  A gopher it digging up the park and Manny is called in to build a gopher trap and repair the damage it has done. However, Rusty is afraid of gophers.
• Renaldo's Pretzel Castle
  Renaldo is having trouble with the giant spinning pretzel atop his Pretzel Castle, and it's Manny to the rescue. But what could be causing it to fall apart?

Handy Manny is bright and colorful, and should be a lot of fun for pre-schoolers, and while it is rather repetitive (they sing the same two songs in every episode) the animal themed Manny's Pet Roundup should please fans.

Human Lanterns - Buy from Amazon
The Shaw Brothers made a lot of classic martial arts movies. They also made a lot of exploitation films. This is a mixture of both.

Lung and Tan are two rivals who have hated each other for a long time and are constantly in competition with each other. They decide to take their rivalry to the next level and both enter a lantern contest. ... Huh? It probably makes a lot more sense if you understand the significance the lantern festival has in Chinese culture. Personally, I was just willing to go with it. These two hated each other, and they were using this competition as one more way to show off. Simple enough. Lung enlists the help of a master lantern maker, Chun-Fang, to give him the edge. However, Chun-Fang has a dark secret, one that might have something to do with all of the women who keep disappearing.

Human Lanterns is a combination of martial arts action and macabre horror and for the most part it works, but it works better as a gruesome horror film than a martial arts movie. That said, there are some serious flaws here, namely the lead character of Lung. Lung is a jerk. A complete jerk and I had no sympathy for him. Don't get me wrong, Chun-Fang, who spends a great deal of time flaying women alive, is worse, but Lung is still nearly impossible to root for. In the end, I was hoping the two would kill each other in the final battle.

As for the extras, there are more than you would expect given the type of release. Things start with a 14-minute interview with Shawn Yin Yin, who talks about her career and how she was blacklisted from movies at the height of her career because someone once called her a China Doll. (It's a strange story and I can't do it justice here.) There is also an alternate take of one of the more gruesome scenes, and a still gallery.

Human Lanterns is not a classic of the genre, but it should please those into moody, gruesome martial arts horror movies. Additionally, the DVD has more extras than expected and will be worth picking up for many. However, I suggest renting it first.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off - Buy from Amazon
Matthew Broderick stars as the titular Ferris Bueller, a high school student who is much beloved by his fellow students. One day he decides to take a day off and head with his best friend and his girlfriend over to Chicago. Meanwhile, his principal and his sister try to catch him playing hooky so they can bust him for good.

One of the most beloved films of the 80s, and if you asked people today, still the movie that most people will associate Matthew Broderick with. (Although I've always been a fan of his film debut, Max Dugan Returns.) Having just watched the movie for the first time in probably a decade, but the ninth or tenth time in total, I have to say that it still holds up. Sure, some of the fashion is a little too 80s to be legal in all 50 states, but the script is right on key, and the comedic timing of the cast is fantastic.

On to the bad news, there's only one extra on the DVD, an audio commentary of with the director, John Hughes. However, this is more special features than many of the DVDs in the I Love the 80s line have. In addition, the DVD comes with a CD with four 80s songs by the bands Erasure, INXS, a-ha, and Echo & the Bunnymen, but it appears to be the same CD that comes will all of the I Love the 80s DVDs.

Footloose - Buy from Amazon
Kevin Bacon stars as Ren McCormack, a new kid in town who runs afoul of the authoritarian Reverend Shaw Moore who has banned from the town the very vice that Ren lives for. But Ren will help the other kids rise up and overturn the status quo, because Ren's just got to dance!

Oh lord, this is a silly movie. I know a lot of people remember this film fondly, but looking back, it's just silly. Whenever Ren gets angry, he's compelled to perform some elaborate dance to blow off steam. Dancing out of anger; it's just too much to handle. I have a hard time suspending disbelief long enough for the frequent dance numbers to pass. Additionally, the huge conflict between Ren and the Reverend ends far too fast and clean. The movie spends far too much time building it up, just to have Rev. Moore change his mind suddenly.

Moving onto the extras, there are none on the DVD, but it does come with the same 4-song CD as above.

Pretty in Pink - Buy from Amazon
Molly Ringwald stars as Andie Walsh, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks who is in love with Blane McDonough, who is part of the affluent crowd Andie can never be a part of. As well as having to deal with her crush on the unobtainable Blane, she has to deal with her alcoholic father and friend / stalker, and the usual teen angst.

I am not a huge fan of this movie, but I will still admit it is entertaining and it is very close to a very good movie. My biggest beef is with the ending, which was reshot thanks to poor reactions by test audiences. In the original ending, Andie ends up with Duckie and not Blane, who was a much more charming character. Jon Cryer ruled as Duckie, and without him the movie would be nothing. So changing the ending was just wrong.

Like most of the I Love the 80s releases that are coming out this week, there are no extras on this DVD, but it comes with the same 4-song CD mentioned above.

Some Kind of Wonderful - Buy from Amazon
With a plot that is nearly identical to Pretty in Pink, just with a reversal in genders. This time is it a poor boy, Eric Stoltz, who pines after the rich girl, Lea Thompson while his best friend, Mary Stuart Masterson, is secretly in love with him.

Perhaps it is this familiarity that caused Some Kind of Wonderful to become one of John Hughes rare box office flops. He practically owned the 80s, but after writing eight hits in three years, this film ended his winning streak. That said, it is still a very good movie and arguably better than Pretty in Pink, certainly with a more satisfying ending.

Like most of the I Love the 80s releases that are coming out this week, there are no extras on this DVD, but it comes with the same 4-song CD mentioned above.

Top Gun - Buy from Amazon
Due to a strange set of circumstances, I'm reviewing this movie twice this week. However, I also reviewed it once in the past. There's little need to rehash my review of the movie, and I'll just jump right into the extras.

Surprisingly, there are extras. Things start with an audio commentary track filled with participants including the director, the producer, technical advisors, and more. Additionally, there are four music videos for a number of the better known songs from the soundtrack. Most have not aged well.

The I Love the 80s line of DVD releases does have a lot of variety of films from the 80s. Some that are classics like Ferris Bueller's Day Off, while others like Some Kind of Wonderful where unfairly passed over when they first came out. Still others like Top Gun and Footloose were huge hits when they first came out but have not aged well. Sadly, they are double-dips and outside the 4-song CD that comes with every DVD, the same 4-song CD that comes with every DVD, there's little reason to buy these versions as opposed to the previous releases.

There are four episodes on this DVD starting with one that has not aired on TV yet.

• Flight of the Instrument Fairies
  The team half to rescue instrument fairies that become trapped in a cave, a cave that belongs to a polar bear. I don't want to give away the ending, but Stephen Colbert is not going to be happy with this episode.
• The Puppet Princess
  "Funeral March of a Marionette" makes another appearance on the show. It was also featured on the previous release that I reviewed here. This show the kids go to a puppet show and have to help the puppets that were accidentally left behind.
• The Glass Slipper Ball
  June is practicing her dancing and tries to get to the Glass Slipper Ball for her to have a chance to win a glass slipper, but there are many obstacles in the way. All of which can be conquered with the help of the "Blue Danube Waltz. " On a side note, the artist of the day was Andy Warhol, which is almost as weird has having the theme song to Hitchcock Presents as the song of the day.
• Little Red Rockethood
  Rocket and the kids travel to Poland to visit Grandma Rocket. ... Huh? Anyway, along the way, Big Jet tries to stop them, or at least steal the Rocket soup Rocket made for his Grandma and the gang has to get it back.

Fans of Little Einsteins should continue to be pleased with the DVD releases and Flight of the Instrument Fairies is just as good of a value as the older releases.

For the longest time, Pete Seeger was politically active and he knew the power of music to connect people and spread a message. A message that the government was not always keen on and this got him into trouble a number of times. We hear about his work in helping unions and fighting racial discrimination, among other causes, which is why he joined the communist party, which caused no end of trouble later in his life. We also hear about his apolitical goals of spreading music and teaching people to play the banjo, preserving folk music, learning about folk songs from around the world, and more. (I would include environmental causes he supports as apolitical, but sadly opponents have made these causes political.) It's fascinating to watch, and there's more than enough music to satisfy fans.

Probably the biggest problem with the movie is the compression. Pete Seeger is nearly 90 years old, and he is still active today, so this movie had to compress nearly 90 years into under 90 minutes and you lose a lot of the details when you try to do that. Although to be fair, I don't think there's a way to work around that problem and any film long enough to do Pete Seeger's life justice would be too long to sit through in one sitting.

As for the extras, they are lighter than I would like. There's no audio commentary track, but there are three deleted scenes, five short films made by the Seeger family, and two DVD Rom features on two of Pete Seeger's biggest causes SingOut.org and ClearWater.org.

Pete Seeger - The Power of Song is a must see for fans of folk music, politically active music, and especially for fans of Pete Seeger. However, while the movie is excellent, the DVD is rather weak. It is still worth checking out for most, and picking up for many, but I can't be more enthusiastic than that.

There are almost no differences between the two, actually, as there are no additional extras on the latter, but at least they are all in High Definition. Speaking of which, this is one of the best-sounding Blu-ray releases I have reviewed and while seeing the Rolling Stones in High Definition is not a selling point, hearing them is. Normally for a price difference of 40%, I would want at least something additional on the Blu-ray release, but with the nature of this release, the $7 more is worth it to upgrade to Blu-ray.

As I've mentioned previously in this list, I've reviewed the movie before and there's little reason to go over old ground, so let's jump right into the extras. And there are plenty of extras, unlike the other two versions I've reviewed. In fact, it has all of the extras of the 2-Disc Collector's Edition, plus some. Things start with the same extras that the I Love the 80s release (audio commentary track and music videos). It also has a massive, and I mean massive feature-length making-of documentary that covers every single aspect of the movie you could want during its two and a half hour running time. Additionally, there are two multi-angle story-boards presented, interview, behind-the-scenes featurette, and a survival training featurette. New to the Blu-ray is a nearly 30-minute featurette on the real Top Gun school that talks about why it was set up, how it has changed over the years, etc. I found it interesting, and better than the movie itself. Sadly, all of the extras are in Standard Definition, nor is the High Definition presentation top notch. It's not bad given the age of the movie, but it is not something you will use to show off your home theater system. (Of the two Blu-ray reviews on this week's list, Beowulf does that job far better..)

When Top Gun came out on HD DVD last year, I hated it. And that had nothing to do with the quality of the movie, as the disc was 100% devoid of special features. It didn't even have a menu. The Blu-ray release, on the other hand, is packed and has more extras than any other release of the movie thus far and at a price that is in line with other catalog releases. For fans of the movie, it is certainly worth upgrading to High Definition for.