Coming to DVD & Blu-ray August 26, 2008

Two animated fav-films come to DVD on Tuesday, August 26. They are:

“Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas.” This will be its second trip to DVD and will make its first jump to Blu-ray with this outing. “Nightmare” marked Burton’s first attempt at stop-motion animation and it proved to be nothing short of genius. The feature film stars the voice work of Chris Sarandon starring as the film’s anti-hero, Jack Skellington. Jack’s singing is performed by Danny Elfman, who also supervised the music segments. The movie tells the story about the king of Halloween who decides to expand his empire and take over Christmas. Many extras will be included in both versions released including background material about Burton’s early short film career, the horror comedy “Frankenweenie,” about a pet dog killed by a car and brought back to life Frankenstein-style by his mourning owner, commentary with producer Burton, director Henry Selick and musical collaborator Danny Elfman, all the deleted scenes, a digital copy of the movie and a Burton poem read by Christopher Lee. The Blu-ray release also features an introduction from Burton.

Purchase “Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas” Digital Blu-ray Edition:
Purchase “Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas” Digital 2-Disc Collectors DVD Edition:

The second animated feature coming out on Tuesday will be “The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Beginning,” one of Disney’s biggest animated hit franchise’s that goes straight-to-DVD. This one is a prequel that floats an adventure in the early days of the underwater heroine. Jodi Benson returns as the voice Ariel the Mermaid and Samuel E. Wright reprises his voice role of Sebastian the crab. This new made-for-DVD movie follows Ariel and Sebastian into an adventure to restore song and dance to her sea kingdom, where music has been banned. The DVD features deleted scenes, a segment on “mermaid choreography” and a backstage look at the popular Broadway musical version of “The Little Mermaid.”

Purchase “The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Beginning” DVD:

Television will have its share of releases on Tuesday. Including:

“Heroes: Season 2,” the Emmy winning NBC series about ordinary mortals who suddenly gain superpowers. This DVD-Pak contains a four-disc set with all 11 episodes from the shortened second year, which had to be cut back due to the writer’s strike. Some of the extras include deleted scenes and cast and crew commentary. Slice of SciFi will have a review of this DVD release on our online eZine this Sunday, August 24.

Purchase the “Heroes: Season 2″ Blu-ray Edition:
Purchase the “Heroes: Season 2″ DVD Edition:

Three other television shows coming out on DVD, though not SF-related, but worthy of mention here are “The Shield: Season 6″ starring Michael Chiklis, “NCIS: The Fifth Season” with Mark Harmon, and the great television crime-fighting classic “The Untouchables: Season 2, Volume 2″ starring the great Robert Stack as G-Man Eliot Ness. To purchase any or all three of these shows on DVD simply click on the name.