This Week in DVD and Instant Watching

Gravity: To the tune of "tragedy" by the Bee Gees:

It's gravity
When your spaceship's gone and you can't go on
It's gravity
When...eh, never mind. But it's been in MY head ever since the movie came out.

Hey, I really want to see this, but I don't have a 3-D IMAX Ultrasphere Supercalibrated THX-NRBQ auditorium in my home. Should I even bother renting the DVD? Everybody says, "You gotta see it in a theater!"

Blue is the Warmest Color: This is a serious FILM, ladies and gentlemen, and it deserves more than just a tag of "that erotic NC-17 lesbian movie." So I'm gonna try to think of something else to say about it.

Nebraska: Alexander Payne's acclaimed black-and-white dramedy may give Bruce Dern an Oscar. But as a Penn State fan, I'm still bitter over 1994 (look it up), and I refuse to watch anything with "Nebraska" in the title.

Thor: The Dark World: He's back. He's bigger, stronger, THORer...but I still suspect he's faking that accent when I see him doing non-Thor stuff. I was all set to go on a rant about how I'd like to see a superhero sequel go "light" instead of "dark" for a change until I remembered "Spider-Man 3." And much of "Superman II." And "V for Vendetta II." OK, I made that last one up. But it would have stunk.

Blue is the Warmest Color: Eh...nothing yet. Hang on a minute.

King of the Hill (Criterion): This early Steven Soderbergh joint was unavailable on video for a long time, and that kind of built it up in my mind to the point where when I saw it on cable and found it only really good instead of an instant classic...I was almost disappointed. Let that be a lesson: Never get your hopes up for anything.

LA Law Season 1: Let's go back to the 1980s! This was a pretty big deal back in the day but was all but forgotten not long after. I'm glad Shout Factory is giving it a shot. Perhaps more Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere will follow.

Blue is the Warmest Color: Uh...not much else to say yet...

WWE Royal Rumble 2014: This PPV event will be notorious for years because of the way the fans crapped all over the main event. I feel like I have to reassure non-wrestling fans that I don't mean that wrestling fans literally crapped all over it.

And in streaming...

Netflix had another slow week. I guess the new normal is waiting for the high-profile releases like the originals and kind of looking for surprises and the monthly mostly-MGM catalog dumps.

Hey, look what IS on streaming this week, though: Blue is the Warmest Color. It's on streaming day and date with the DVD release. There. I did it!

The final episodes of Breaking Bad are available, according to an email Netflix sent me, and that's cool, but I just saw them a few months ago. The Guild looks like it could be an interesting series to try. Some documentaries are back, like Casino Jack, Crazy Love, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room...but these are all re-adds.

Hey, Hulu Plus, I'm still waiting for those CBS/Paramount series! I did see that nearly all episodes of 1955 single-season CBS horse show The Adventures of Champion are now up there, but those come not from CBS, but from American Pop.

Warner Archive Instant disappointed me this weekend. Nothing new was added except a "Warner Goes to War" showcase row of titles. It's a great idea, packaging 7 WWII-themed films and making a neat category, but all 7 were already on the service. That's two empty weeks in a row. I will say this for WAI, though: since the channel's upgrade several weeks ago, it launches faster than it did before on Roku.