As DVD shows, there’s always a way to reinvent (or repackage) a classic. Two more are coming around again:

Blade Runner (1982) Dec. 18 —

Details: Blade Runner: Ultimate Collector’s Edition, $79, five standard DVDs. (Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD versions planned; no price yet.) Four versions of the film, plus a remastered “work print.”

Why it’s important: Though Scott re-edited the film for a 1992 release, he has tinkered further, creating his “final cut” for the 25th anniversary. Scott says it “now is in its purest form.”

Among changes: A longer “unicorn” scene. During the commentary, Scott explains that it’s pivotal because the symbolism re-enforces Scott’s thinking that Deckard (Harrison Ford) is not human, but a replicant. Plus: enhanced special effects, a new surround soundtrack. Bonuses include a new making-of documentary.

Also: The “final cut” will be shown in New York and L.A. theaters this fall and at film festivals in Venice Aug. 29 thru Sept. 8 and New York Sept. 28 thru Oct. 14.

— Mike Snider, USA TODAY

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) Nov. 13

Details: Close Encounters of the Third Kind: 30th Anniversary Ultimate Edition (DVD, $40; Blu-ray Disc, $50). Includes three versions of the film: the 1977 original theatrical cut, the re-edited 1980 theatrical special edition, and Steven Spielberg’s director’s cut, released in 1998.

Why it’s important: It’s the first time a Spielberg movie has been issued on high-definition disc, and it’s the first home video release of all three versions

What’s new: An interview with Spielberg created especially for this release and a retrospective documentary.

Plus: Only on the 50 GB Blu-ray edition are new “storyboard-to-scene” comparisons and the original 1977 “Watch the Skies” featurette. Blu-ray, says David Bishop, president of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, “will add yet another new and thrilling dimension to this timeless film.”

— Thomas K. Arnold, USA TODAY

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The hit NBC series “Heroes” is full of characters that could be torn from the pages of a graphic novel. The odd thing is, except for artwork on the show and a series of online adaptations, there has never been a [traditional] “Heroes” graphic novel.

That changes this fall, when DC Comics offers a hardcover collection based on a series of 43 comic-book vignettes that appeared on the “Heroes” website last season.

The book, which will be the first time the stories have been available in printed form, will be announced today by Universal Studios and DC Comics at the International Comic-Con in San Diego.

In addition to the online strip by artists including Michael Turner, Marcus To, Mitch Gunnell and Phil Jimenez, the book will feature new covers by comic-book superstars Alex Ross and Jim Lee.

For true comics fans, there’s also art by Batman and Superman artist Tim Sale, whose prophetic and apocalyptic paintings are used as story devices for many of the show’s cliffhangers.

“It works best when the painting on the show looks creepily like the scene you’ve just seen,” says Sale, who has provided more than 50 paintings for the series.

Sale says he provided illustrations early on to help the series’ creator sell the show to NBC. “Tim Kring is not a comic-book guy,” Sale says. “For all I know, he has never read one. But he has surrounded himself with a number of people who are immersed in it.”

Kring, in a statement, called the DC book “a dream come true.”

Source: USA Today

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Source: Los Angeles Times

The concept of immortality is rich terrain for a writer’s imagination. But late screenwriter Jerome Bixby couldn’t have known just how personally he would embrace the extension of life beyond death.

Although he died in 1998, Bixby’s final screenplay, “The Man From Earth,” has been turned into a film by writer-director Richard Schenkman (“The Pompatus of Love”), and it will screen at Comic-Con on Saturday. It’s a perfect venue for Bixby’s brand of philosophical sci-fi.

A feature writer in the 1950s (“It! The Terror From Beyond Space”), Bixby gained acclaim in the 1960s for writing episodes of “The Twilight Zone,” “Fantastic Voyage” and the original “Star Trek.” His “Mirror, Mirror” teleplay, about an alternate reality for Spock and Co., solidified his legacy in “Trek” lore because the seminal idea became a recurring part of subsequent series spinoffs.

By the late ’90s, he was in his mid-70s and felt mortality creeping in. So he finally began developing an idea he first had 50 years earlier about a thirtysomething college history professor named John Oldman who claims to friends and university colleagues that he is actually 14,000 years old.

As he lay dying, Bixby dictated the rest of the feature screenplay to his son, Emerson, a screenwriter himself (“Last Dance”). Emerson dutifully transcribed his father’s ideas and, after his death, gave the script to Schenkman to direct on a $200,000 micro-budget. Anchor Bay Entertainment acquired the movie for distribution on DVD in the fall.

“The movie definitely provokes discussions, on a lot of levels,” Schenkman says. “You just sit there and think, ‘What would I ask him? If a guy I knew claimed to be 14,000 years old, and has met all these amazing people, what would I want to know?’

“It really gets you thinking about our place in the world, and what’s come before us and what do we leave behind