The week of July 5th is a slower one, largely made up of catalog titles. Perhaps the biggest release is Warner Bros. Home Entertainment's Space Jam, which will come to 4K UHD just in time for the sequel, Space Jam: A New Legacy, to hit theaters later this month. The first film was a blend of live-action and 2D animation, which saw basketball legend Michael Jordan team up with the Looney Tunes to save them from aliens who want the toons for their theme park. While critical reception was mixed, Space Jam was a huge hit back in 1996, earning over $250 million worldwide and generating billions of dollars in merchandise sales. This week, the film comes to 4K UHD with HDR and a new Dolby Atmos sound mix. Randy Miller writes that the Atmos track "takes many opportunities to both zip around the surround channels with cartoon chaos and go for a more heavily immersive arena-like experience during the basketball sequences, especially the rather lengthy third-act showdown between the Tune Squad and the Monstars. Height channels are put to good use during both scenarios (the opening trip through space and a height-adjustable chair gag in WB land, for example), although it most consistently favors the latter in the form of towering crowd noise and monster dunks." For more information, including screenshots sourced from the new 4K UHD disc, read Randy's full review. A Best Buy Exclusive SteelBook edition will also be available.
Two more 4K UHD upgrades this week come from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. First up is Willard Huyck's Howard the Duck, starring Lea Thompson, Jeffrey Jones, Tim Robbins, Ed Gale and Chip Zien. Decades before the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this sci-fi comedy, produced by George Lucas, would be the first feature for a Marvel Comics character since the 1940s. However, unlike modern Marvel films, Howard the Duck was not a success on release in 1986, garnering seven Razzie Award nominations and "winning" four, including a tie for Worst Picture. However, in the decades since, the reputation of Howard the Duck has improved steadily, turning the film into a cult classic and vaulting the title character into cameo appearances in the Guardians of the Galaxy films and even Avengers: Endgame. Now the film will be released on 4K UHD with HDR and a DTS:X remixed soundtrack. A SteelBook edition will also be available.
Also from Universal this week is a 4K UHD upgrade for Edgar Wright's Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, starring Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kieran Culkin, Mark Webber, and Alison Pill. The film will come to 4K UHD with HDR and a Dolby Atmos remixed soundtrack. A SteelBook edition will also be available.
Turning to Blu-ray, this week Paramount Home Media Distribution will bring two more films to its Paramount Presents lineup: Walter Hill's 48 Hrs. and Another 48 Hrs., both starring Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte. 48 Hrs. was originally released on Blu-ray by Paramount in 2011 (over ten years ago!) and for this new release, it has been remastered from a 4K scan and accompanied by Space Kid, a 1966 animated short that appears in the film. The sequel, Another 48 Hrs., will be making its Blu-ray debut, also from a new 4K scan. As part of the Presents line, both films will include Filmmaker Focus featurettes with Walter Hill, as well as the special slipcover packaging seen in previous releases.
Finally this week, there are two films from the Criterion Collection. First up is the Blu-ray debut of Howard Hawks' Bringing Up Baby, starring Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Walter Catlett, Charles Ruggles and May Robson. Initially a flop, the screwball comedy, in which Grant plays a paleontologist who meets a scatterbrained heiress and a leopard named Baby, is now recognized as one of the pinnacles of the genre, and was selected for preservation by the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 1990. Criterion present the film from a new 4K scan, with uncompressed original mono sound. Extras include an audio commentary from 2005 with filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich, new interviews about the cast and crew and the 1977 documentary Howard Hawks: A Hell of a Good Life, which features the director's last filmed interview.
Also from Criterion this week is Andrei Tarkovsky's Mirror, starring Margarita Terekhova, Oleg Yankovsky, Nikolay Grinko, Anatoliy Solonitsyn and Alla Demidova. The two-disc edition features the film from a new 2K scan with uncompressed original mono sound. A glut of extra material is spread over the discs, including the 2019 feature-length documentary Andrei Tarkovsky: A Cinema Prayer, two other documentaries on the film and its cinematographer, Georgy Rerberg, a new interview with composer Eduard Artemyev, and more.