It's quite a week for vintage-film fans as an array of favorites earn Blu-ray upgrades, including Gregory Peck's Oscar-winning turn, and classics from directors Alfred Hitchcock, Woody Allen and Billy Wilder.
"To Kill a Mockingbird: 50th Anniversary Edition" (Universal/Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy, 1962, b/w, two discs, $39.98). Harper Lee's Pulitzer-winning novel became this Academy Award-winning film, which details small-town life in the South during the Depression. Gregory Peck is perfect as Atticus Finch, a white lawyer standing up for truth in a small racist town as he defends a black man (Brock Peters) wrongly accused of raping a white woman.
Deservedly a much-beloved picture even after 50 years. All of the previous special-edition features are here, along with a gorgeous high-def buff and packaged with a photo-filled hardcover booklet.
Extras: widescreen; Blu-ray, DVD and digital versions; audio commentary, featurettes, documentary feature on Peck, excerpts from award shows, trailer; 44-page booklet (also available as two-disc Blu-ray, DVD and digital without the book packaging, $26.98, and as a single-disc DVD, $19.98)
"Rebecca" (MGM/Blu-ray, 1940, b/w, $24.99).
"Spellbound" (MGM/Blu-ray, 1945, b/w, $24.99).
"Notorious" (MGM/Blu-ray, 1946, b/w, $24.99). These new Blu-rays are three of Alfred Hichcock's best films from his early American period. Though he never won an Oscar, Hitchcock earned five nominations, and two of them are here, his first for "Rebecca" and another for "Spellbound," though the third, "Notorious" is arguably the best of the three.
"Rebecca" is a riveting adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's novel about a young woman (Joan Fontaine) who marries an English aristocrat (Laurence Olivier) but finds herself living in the shadow of his former wife. "Spellbound" has Ingrid Bergman as a psychiatrist treating (and falling for) amnesiac Gregory Peck. And "Notorious" stars Bergman again, as a spy recruited by Cary Grant, who becomes terribly jealous when she is assigned to seduce a Nazi spy (Claude Rains).
Extras: full frame, audio commentaries, featurettes, screen tests, trailers, audio interviews with Hitchcock, radio adaptations
"Manhattan" (MGM/Blu-ray, 1979, b/w; R for language, sex; $24.99).
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