New Spy DVDs Available This Last Week: Golden Boy And Bourne

Before the onslaught of all the awesome spy titles coming out tomorrow, I need to catch up on the ones that came out last week.  Most excitingly, the Turkish Eurospy gem Altin çocuk (Golden Boy) is (first rumored last summer) is out now and available to order directly from distributor Onar Films!  This is an all-region PAL release, which means that it should be playable on most computers with DVD drives at the very least, but American spy fans should be sure to check your player specs.  If you do have the means of playing this, though, I highly recommend ordering it!  The productions values on this 1966 black and white Bond homage appear far superior to certain other, wider known Turkish ripoff films you may have seen.  I don't even want to call Golden Boy a "ripoff" (a term I always use with affection, anyway) because unlike other copyright-violating Turkish ripoff films, this one is fully its own thing.  It's no more of a Bond ripoff than any continental Eurospy movie.  (Well, except for the bits of John Barry score music rather liberally borrowed...)  And it's got a great beginning involving a speargun.  You can watch the trailer here for a good idea of what the film's like, but be warned that it spoils that opening (which works much better in the context of the film).  Altin çocuk is available only through Onar's website.  See more info at DVD Sleuth.

For more contemporary spy tastes, out Stateside this week (er, last) are new editions of the three Jason Bourne films. The most influential spy movies of the new century, The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum (movie review here) have all been reissued (yet again) by Universal, this time pioneering a new form of old-school double-sided "flipper" technology that the studio is touting.  They are Blu-ray/DVD combos: BD on one side of the disc, standard-def DVD on the other.  While there are some people who hate flippers and claim that it increases the chances of scratches on the disc surface, defects, etc, I've never had that particular opposition.  Just handle all your discs carefully, and you shouldn't scratch them.  I whole-heartedly embrace the Blu-ray/DVD combo model.  There are still lots of people (lots, though the blogosphere probably doesn't reflect that) who have not yet adopted Blu-ray technology (or don't even have the TVs that can take advantage of it), and I think the mere existence of Blu-ray is probably slowing DVD sales to these people.  Personally, I know I bought far fewer DVDs in the days between the advent of hi-def formats and finally acquiring a Blu-ray player.  It seemed pointless to get an old technology when there was a new one out there, and yet DVD is still a perfectly good technology, so I felt no particular impetus to upgrade.  I bet there are more people in that boat.  And a package that offers both DVD and Blu-ray in one go is a good way for studios and consumers to hedge their bets.  While Blu-ray is a fantastic technology, I do put a hefty percentage of the blame for the bottom falling out of the Home Video market on the format, and on the greedy studios who felt the need to force a new format on consumers before its time.  Hopefully this sort of release will help to mitigate that damage.  Believe me, an improving Home Video market, however it happens, would be a great thing for cult movie enthusiasts of any genre.  Right now, many studios aren't even releasing catalog titles! (I'm looking at you, Fox, who is still sitting on a long-ago produced Blu-ray release of the Flint films, as well as the remainder of the Bond movies on BD.) Of course, since most spy fans already own the Bourne movies, a combo release of a brand new film will be a better test of the market.  Even if you do already own all three Bournes on DVD, however, these releases are a good way to upgrade to Blu-ray cheaply.  On sale for half price right now on Amazon (just a few dollars more than the standard-def DVDs, in fact), you can actually get all three movies on BD for considerably cheaper than buying the previously-issued box set.

Stay tuned for this week's new spy releases coming tomorrow...