Blu Ray

The Adventures of Tintin Paramount, $29.99; Blu-ray, $44.99/$54.99 Steven Spielberg's long-awaited adaptation of Hergé's classic adventure comics comes up a little short, in part because the motion-capture animation gives "The Adventures of Tintin" a weightiness that runs counter to Hergé's lightness, and in part because the cartoony characters of a precocious boy reporter and a drunken sea captain come off a little overbearing when they...

Goodbye First Love Tomboy Available on VOD beginning Tuesday Two outstanding French films by female directors in their early 30s arrive online this week, well in advance of their releases on DVD and Blu-ray. Mia Hansen-Løve's "Goodbye First Love" starts as the story of a teenage romance that ends in heartbreak, and then the movie sticks around for the years-long aftermath. Sebastian Urzendowsky and Lola Créton play the young lovers, separated by circumstance, who reunite years later after their ardor has cooled.

When it comes to DVD releases, it's been feast or famine for vintage film fans. With the home entertainment business in decline, most of the studios have slowed or even stopped issuing classic titles, but June is shaping up to offer the hungry cineaste a veritable banquet of noteworthy movies from Hollywood's Golden Age. Leading the pack is Warner Home Video's Blu-ray release of the 1954 Judy Garland classic "A Star Is Born." Garland made a triumphant comeback in this lavish musical- drama based the 1937 film about a star on the rise who marries a star on the decline ( James Mason)

Death of a Superhero The Giant Mechanical Man Sleepless Night Available on VOD beginning Tuesday The Tribeca Film Festival opens Wednesday, but three of the fest's entries will be available to watch a day earlier, for attendees and non-attendees alike. Those movies are: "Death of a Superhero," a melancholy coming-of-age drama about a teenage cancer patient (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) who is just coming to terms with his own mortality when he falls in love with a rebellious classmate (Aisling Loftus)

You must remember this: That as time has gone by, the Oscar-winning 1942 romantic melodrama "Casablanca" has become one of the most treasured movies of the 20th century. To celebrate its 70th birthday, Warner Home Video is releasing the classic on Blu-ray Tuesday in a handsome collector's set that features a new high-resolution digital restoration, 14 hours of bonus material and even a set of coasters. Winner of three Academy Awards — best film, director (Michael Curtiz) and screenplay (Julius J and Philip G. Epstein, Howard Koch)

The Great Mouse Detective Walt Disney Blu-ray, $19.99 Some people trace the revival of Walt Disney animation to 1989's "The Little Mermaid," but one of the main reasons that "Mermaid" got the go-ahead was because of the success of 1986's "The Great Mouse Detective." Under the supervision of Ron Clements and John Musker (who later helmed "Mermaid," "Aladdin" and the recent "The Princess and the Frog"), "The Great Mouse Detective" tells a Sherlock Holmes story more rooted in tradition than the recent Robert Downey Jr. vehicle -- even though all the main characters are rodents.

A pair of new Blu-ray releases might make the perfect gifts for the cinephile on your list. Gary Cooper, Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins star in Ernst Lubitsch's "Design for Living," a pre-code comedy adapted from Noel Coward's play "Brief Encounter. " The 1933 classic centers on a beautiful commercial artist courted by a dashing painter (Cooper) and a dashing playwright (March) that she meets on a train trip to Paris. Another train-centered film fan favorite, Alfred Hitchcock's 1938 comic thriller "The Lady Vanishes," stars Margaret Lockwood as a woman traveling across Europe when she encounters a spinster (Dame May Whitty)

Das Boot: The Director's Cut Sony Blu-ray, $35.99 One of the most popular foreign-language films of all time, Wolfgang Petersen's "Das Boot" adapts Lothar-Günther Buchheim's novel about a German submarine crew fighting to survive WWII. The film is as exciting now as it was 30 years ago, combining nail-biting combat sequences with rich character detail about the ideological differences between the career sailors and the young Nazis. The new Blu-ray edition contains Petersen's 209-minute cut, with cleaned-up image and sound, plus a commentary track and lengthy retrospective featurettes (with fascinating behind-the-scenes footage)

What's up, doc? How about the release Tuesday of Warner Home Video's "Looney Tunes Platinum Collection Volume I" on Blu-ray, which features more than 50 of the looniest Looney Tunes cartoons. The set includes such beloved cartoons as "Rabbit of Seville," "What's Opera, Doc?," Duck Amuck," "Tweetie Pie," "For Scent-Imental Reasons," "One Froggy Evening," "Duck Dodgers in the 24th 1/2 Century," "Feed the Kitty" and "I Love to Singa. " And that's not all, folks. There are behind-the "Tunes" featurettes, "Chuck Amuck: The Movie," "The Animated World of Chuck Jones," which features nine cartoons from the amazingly fertile mind of Jones, a "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

Netflix Inc., the mail-order movie-rental company, said it would start offering high-definition DVDs exclusively in Sony Corp.'s Blu-ray format. Netflix would phase out Toshiba Corp.'s HD-DVD format by the end of the year after a decision by four Hollywood movie studios to opt for the Blu-ray format over Toshiba's for high-definition films and videos, the Los Gatos, Calif.-based company said. Best Buy Co. also plans to recommend Blu-ray technology.

The Iron Lady/Albert Nobbs Available on VOD April 10 Oscar veterans Meryl Streep and Glenn Close squared off in the lead actress category this year, both nominated for roles that saw them radically altering their appearances and voices. Streep won the statuette for "The Iron Lady," a biography of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that skips through decades of the stateswoman's life in breezy flashbacks. Given how controversial Thatcher's administration was — and how much the conservative-liberal divide continues to be a major story around the world — "The Iron Lady" is something of a missed opportunity by director Phyllida Lloyd and screenwriter Abi Morgan, as they take more of a Wikipedia approach to their subject than one that's relevant to today's headlines.

Pina Available on VOD April 6 Prior to the death of legendary choreographer Pina Bausch in 2009, she and director Wim Wenders had been collaborating on a performance film, which Wenders then re-fashioned into "Pina," as a sort of testimonial. Working in collaboration with Bausch's troupe, Wenders breaks up lengthy dance routines with interviews about the choreographer's spiritual, aesthetic and personal influence on her employees. These interviews are understandably sappy, and they prevent the dances from developing as they would onstage; but Bausch's work is still stunning, with staging that involves the addition of obstacles such as dirt, rocks and water to the dance floor.

You must remember this: That as time has gone by, the Oscar-winning 1942 romantic melodrama "Casablanca" has become one of the most treasured movies of the 20th century. To celebrate its 70th birthday, Warner Home Video is releasing the classic on Blu-ray Tuesday in a handsome collector's set that features a new high-resolution digital restoration, 14 hours of bonus material and even a set of coasters. Winner of three Academy Awards — best film, director (Michael Curtiz) and screenplay (Julius J and Philip G. Epstein, Howard Koch)

In the Land of Blood and Honey Sony Blu-ray, $40.99 Writer-director-producer Angelina Jolie's earnest Bosnian war film received more attention than it otherwise might've because of the presence of her name above its title, but it was subject to undue skepticism as well. This is a well-crafted drama, following the tricky relationship between a Serbian soldier played by Goran Kostic and a Muslim prisoner of war played by Zana Marjanovic. Given the grimness of the subject matter, Jolie drains the film of nearly all lightness and thrills, but as with a lot of actors turned directors, she helps her cast find the emotional truth in every scene and builds a compelling story.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Sony, $30.99; Blu-ray, $40.99 Director David Fincher and screenwriter Steven Zaillian adapt Stieg Larsson's bestseller "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" into a sophisticated and gripping thriller, sporting excellent lead performances by Daniel Craig as a disgraced reporter and Rooney Mara as a punk hacker. Larsson's story of a gruesome missing-person's case is gratuitously violent at times, and the film runs a little too long — in large part because it goes through about four endings before finally lurching to a stop.

The Adventures of Tintin Paramount, $29.99; Blu-ray, $44.99/$54.99 Steven Spielberg's long-awaited adaptation of Hergé's classic adventure comics comes up a little short, in part because the motion-capture animation gives "The Adventures of Tintin" a weightiness that runs counter to Hergé's lightness, and in part because the cartoony characters of a precocious boy reporter and a drunken sea captain come off a little overbearing when they...

Three-dimensional television took a big step forward Thursday with the finalization of a standard for Blu-ray disc machines. The Blu-ray Disc Assn. announced it had reached agreement on the long-awaited standard that allows for full 1080p viewing of 3-D movies on TVs. Blu-ray disc players that use the standard will be delivering two images, each in full resolution, to create the effect. Details on the first Blu-ray machines equipped for full-on 3-D are expected at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January and then be available later in the year.

At the International Consumer Electronics Show, the massive annual expo in Las Vegas devoted to the hard sell of high tech, it's just assumed that the next big thing is always better than what came before. That's why director Oliver Stone managed to sound lonely in a crowded room Saturday when he suggested that, for cinema, the future just doesn't look so bright. "Watching my children and friends look at a computer screen with a movie ? with the lights on, with interruptions, trying to multitask ?

Game of Thrones: The Complete First Season HBO, $59.99; Blu-ray, $79.98 HBO's hit adaptation of George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" novels isn't your typical TV fantasy series. Writers-producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss find echoes of "Deadwood" and "The Sopranos" in "Game of Thrones' " family dynamics and subtle power plays, as well as in the way its characters make bold choices that go dreadfully awry. This is a story about kings in conflict, old grudges and the ancient menaces that lurk in the shadows, yet Benioff and Weiss smartly emphasize the people affected by all this intrigue: an underestimated dwarf, an exiled warrior princess, a bastard patrolling a treacherous frontier and more.