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This week on Off The Shelf, Ryan is joined by Brian Saur to take a look at the new DVD and Blu-ray releases for the week of June 23rd, 2015, and chat about some follow-up and home video news.

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Episode Links & Notes Follow-up Den of Geek article News Arrow Video Sale Disney Movie Club Blu-rays: More Herbie on Blu-ray (Herbie Goes Bananas & Herbie Goes To Monte Carlo) Warner Archive – Showdown in Little Tokyo in July on Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics – Pitfall (1948) Warner Archive’s July Slate – Sam Fuller’s Run of the Arrow, The Snorks Season 2, Centurions Part One: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbYbvaLNsKY

(They also tease Atom Ant coming to DVD – to be discussed at Comic Con, along with their upcoming release of Twice Upon a Time) Severin: Three Cult Horror Films heading to Blu-ray in August New Releases 3-D Rarities Bank Shot...

The weekend’s here. You’ve just been paid, and it’s burning a hole in your pocket. What’s a pop culture geek to do? In hopes of steering you in the right direction to blow some of that hard-earned cash, it’s time for the Fred Weekend Shopping Guide - your spotlight on the things you didn’t even know you wanted…

(Please support Fred by using the links below to make any impulse purchases - it helps to keep us going…)

By now, fans know what to expect from Warners deep, dense, impressively comprehensive Harry Potter Ultimate Editions, which means the wait for the rest of the series to get the treatment has sometimes been quite a hard one to bear. Thankfully, we’re nearing the end with the release of Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix: Ultimate Edition & Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince...

The Movie Pool stays on guard for Harry in Your Pocket on DVD!

This film is offered as part of MGM's "Limited Edition Collection" on DVD, which is available from select online retailers and are manufactured only when the DVD is ordered. The DVD features a simple menu with no menu for chapters or scenes. Manufacture-On-Demand (Mod) DVDs are made to play in DVD playback units only and may not play in DVD recorders or PC drives. This DVD did not play in our laptop DVD drive but did play in our Toshiba DVD recorder.

DVD Specs

Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 enhanced for widescreen TVs

Running Time: 103 minutes

Rating: PG

Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0

Subtitles: None  

Special Features: Trailer

The Set-up

A struggling pickpocket and his girlfriend team up with a couple of pros, who go on a spree lifting wallets from unsuspecting victims. Soon, a love triangle threatens to ruin the team's efforts.

DVD Playhouse June 2011

By

Allen Gardner

Kiss Me Deadly (Criterion) Robert Aldrich’s 1955 reinvention of the film noir detective story is one of cinema’s great genre mash-ups: part hardboiled noir; part cold war paranoid thriller; and part science- fiction. Ralph Meeker plays Mickey Spillane’s fascist detective Mike Hammer as a narcissistic simian thug, a sadist who would rather smash a suspect’s fingers than make love to the bevvy of beautiful dames that cross his path. In fact, the only time you see a smile cross Meeker’s sneering mug is when he’s doling out pain, with a vengeance. When a terrified young woman (Cloris Leachman, film debut) literally crossed Hammer’s path one night, and later turns up dead, he vows to get to the bottom of her brutal demise. One of the most influential films ever made, and perhaps the most-cited film by the architects...

Sun City - What are you going to when it comes time to retire? Do you really have enough money saved up to last you for the rest of your life? Can you hold out till Willard Scott puts you on the Smuckers jar and wishes you a happy 100th? Will you really be enjoying the good life with round the clock sponge baths from young orderlies? Have you done the math to figure out how much it’ll cost for a day at a retirement community in 20 years? Can your 401K hold out?

Odds are the answer is a resounding, “Maybe?”

The golden years require platinum reserves. With talk that Medicare is about to be destroyed, your budget for health insurance is about to go completely out of control. When is the last time Blue Cross hyped individual policies for people hitting 90? Even the most frugal of senior citizens...

Updated through 4/23.

"Michael Sarrazin, a tall, dark-eyed Canadian actor who starred opposite Jane Fonda in Sydney Pollack's 1969 film They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, died of cancer Sunday," reports Claire Noland in the Los Angeles Times. He was 70. Noland quotes from a 1994 interview given to the Toronto Star in which Sarrazin recalled working on Horses: "You could have paid me a dollar a week to work on that. It hits you bolt upright; I still get really intense when I watch it. We stayed up around the clock for three or four days.... We stayed in character. Pollack said we should work until signs of exhaustion. Fights would break out among the men; women started crying."

"Sarrazin was one of the last actors to come up through the old studio system, signing with Universal in 1965," writes John Griffin in the Montreal Gazette. "After an indifferent start in television and movies-of-the week,...

Canadian actor who had a decade of Hollywood success playing anti-heroes

The Canadian-born actor Michael Sarrazin, who has died of cancer aged 70, was so visible in Hollywood movies from 1967 to 1977 that one may wonder what happened to his subsequent career. A facetious answer might be that he moved back to Canada and made Canadian movies. Another answer might be that his sensitive, gently rebellious, flower-child persona and his lanky, boyish looks, with his long hair and soulful eyes, were no longer appropriate to the roles he took as he got older.

However, during the decade of his stardom, Sarrazin seemed to fit the anti-hero ethos of the era, often playing rootless characters, typically in his most celebrated role as the ex-farmboy drifter in Sydney Pollack's They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969). Sarrazin, idealistically willing to let fate take a hand, is paired with an embittered Jane Fonda in a dance...

Originally cast as Joe Buck in Midnight Cowboy, only to be replaced at the last minute by Jon Voight, Sarrazin never achieved real stardom and his career sort of faded away but he did star in a string of memorable films in the 1970′s including They Shoot Horses, Don't They (1969), Sometimes A Great Notion (1970), Harry In Your Pocket (1973), and as the title character in The Reincarnation Of Peter Proud (1975). Originally from Canada, he was an excellent actor who will always be best remembered for the 1973 made-for-tv epic Frankenstein The True Story in which he played the soulful monster opposite Leonard Whiting’s Dr. Frankenstein.

From Yahoo News:

Michael Sarrazin, best known for starring opposite Jane Fonda in 1969′s “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?,” has died in Montreal after a brief battle with cancer. He was 70.

Sarrazin died Sunday surrounded by family.

In Sydney Pollack’s Depression era-set “Horses,...

Thanks to our eagle-eyed contributor Graham Hill, we can alert readers that Turner Classic Movies (North America) will be airing a rare showing of Harry in Your Pocket, the 1973 film about a master pickpocket and his young protege. The film will air tonight at 10:00 Pm (Est). James Coburn stars along with a great supporting cast that includes Michael Sarrazin, Walter Pidgeon and Trish Van Devere. It was directed by Bruce Geller, the creator of the Mission: Impossible TV series. The film has never been available on video.