Warner Bros advises that from 4 March to 1 April 2009 you will be able to purchase The Shawshank Redemption and Casablanca in Australia, in high definition on Blu-ray, for $AUS29.95. Number 1 and Number 11 refer, respectively, to their positions on the Internet Movie Database Top 250 list.
I place a lot of weight on the IMDB ratings because they are open to public votes. While some gaming is, I suppose, possible, with votes of between 100,000 and 400,000 unique registrants for most of the movies, it doesn’t seem that it would significantly influence the results. Those who distrust the common person would probably fear that such a list would fill with blockbuster shoot-em-ups, but the list has 12 Angry Men at number 10, The Seven Samurai at number 14, City of God at number 17 and so on. Neither parochialism nor poor taste there.
Not to say that I, personally, agree with everything on the list. But, then, some movies I consider to be masterpieces are not well regarded by most other people. Rather, it is a solid distillation of widely-spread wisdom.
Shawshank usually jostles at the top of this list with the first two Godfather movies. Casablanca has always been included in critics’ ‘best ever’ lists.
I have high hopes for the quality of Shawshank (Warner press release PDF: right click here to download). The DVD re-release of a couple of years ago was pretty good, and it is a fairly recent movie.
I know for sure that Casablanca is going to look lovely, because I purchased the HD DVD version from the US a couple of years ago and it looked lovely. Warner Bros typically ports them to Blu-ray pretty much unchanged and the extras collection seems pretty much unaltered. (Press release PDF: Right click here to download.)
Also releasing on Blu-ray by Warner:
| Body of Lies | 25 February 2009 |
| RocknRolla | 4 March 2009 |
| ‘Smallville‘ (Seasons Six and Seven) | 4 March 2009 |
| Interview with the Vampire | 4 March 2009 |
| Eraser | 4 March 2009 |
| Outbreak | 4 March 2009 |
| Pale Rider | 4 March 2009 |
| Every Which Way But Loose | 4 March 2009 |
| Gods and Generals | 4 March 2009 |
| Poltergeist (Deluxe Edition) | 4 March 2009 |
| Justice League: The New Frontier | 4 March 2009 |
| ‘Supernatural (Season Three)’ | 4 March 2009 |
| ‘Sarah Connor Chronicles‘ (Season One) | 4 March 2009 |
| Superman Doomsday | 1 April 2009 |
| Another Cinderella Story | 29 April 2009 |
| ‘Pushing Daisies‘ (Season One) | 29 April 2009 |
| An American in Paris | 29 April 2009 |
| Gigi | 29 April 2009 |