Big Tuesday for Blu-Ray releases, today we’ll be taking a look at Captain America: The First Avenger, the Jurassic Park Ultimate Trilogy, and Winnie The Pooh.

Captain America: The First Avenger

The Joe Johnston directed Captain America: The First Avenger continues Marvel’s streak of solid – if not slightly underwhelming – comic book adaptations, as the studio gears up for next year’s The Avengers.

Johnston has an excellent eye for period pieces (see his remake of The Wolfman for further proof) and Captain America truly shines in its homage to days past (although the presence of lasers I find slightly troubling.)

Performance wise, Chris Evans is an excellent square-jawed Steve Rogers/Captain America, like Ryan Reynolds (which some may argue), Evans can quite capably pull off both drama and comedy in the same film without either feeling like a stretch.

Hugo Weaving – in some of the year’s best casting – plays Cap’s villain the Red Skull.  Really could anyone else have played him?  Weaving layered on just the right amount of cheese onto his performance, making him an admirable adversary to Evans’ Cap.

Other solid performances by Tommy Lee Jones, Hayley Atwell, and many more howling commandos makes Cap one of the better casted movies of the year.  Unfortunately the film never quite reaches the heights of Spider-Man 2 or X2: X-Men United. Johnston is a great director and the cast is excellent, but it really didn’t leave much for subtlety (much like Favreau’s Iron Man 2).  The film just felt as though it was content with being good and wanted to leave it at that, and well, maybe that’s not a bad thing.

As to be expected, Paramount has loaded on a 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track and a strong 2.39:1 aspect ratio picture.

The special features are as follows:

- Audio Commentary with director Joe Johnston, cinematographer Shelly Johnson, and editor Jeffrey Ford
- Outfitting a Hero
- The Assembly Begins
- Howling Commandos
- Heightened Technology
- The Transformation
- Behind the Skull
- Captain America’s Origins
- Deleted Scenes
- Marvel One Shot: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor’s Hammer
- The Avengers animated series trailer

Here is the theatrical trailer for Captain America: The First Avenger:

Jurassic Park Ultimate Trilogy

In one of the more anticipated catalogue releases of the year, Universal Studios Jurassic Park Ultimate Trilogy is finally being released.  As is to be expected, the release is coming with  all the previous special features from past DVD releases along with an all new six-part documentary.

I don’t have to say how popular these movies are, and I also don’t have to speak to the sheer quality of the first film.  The first Jurassic Park is one of the greatest movies of the 1990′s and the two sequels are good flicks as well.  On an interesting note, Jurassic Park 3 was directed by Joe Johnston, the man who directed Captain America: The First Avenger.

All the films feature brand new digital restorations along with 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and the following special features:

ALL-NEW BONUS FEATURES ON BLU-RAY™ & DVD

- “Return to Jurassic Park” – this six-part documentary features all-new interviews with the many of the cast members from all three films, the filmmakers and Steven Spielberg.
- Dawn of a New Era
- Making Pre-history
- The Next Step in Evolution
- Finding The Lost World
- Something Survived
- The Third Adventure
- The Making of Jurassic Park
- The Making of The Lost World: Jurassic Park
- The Making of Jurassic Park III
- Steven Spielberg Directs Jurassic Park
- The World of Jurassic Park
- The Magic of Industrial Light & Magic
- Location Scouting
- The Jurassic Park Phenomenon: A Discussion with Author Michael Crichton
- Industrial Light & Magic and Jurassic Park: Before and After The Visual Effects
- Industrial Light & Magic and The Lost World: Jurassic Park Before & After
- The Dinosaurs of Jurassic Park III
- The Special Effects of Jurassic Park III
- Feature Commentary with Special Effects Team
- Deleted Scenes
- Theatrical Trailers

Here is the trailer for the Blu-Ray release:

Winnie The Pooh

While I have yet to see Winnie the Pooh, I have heard nothing but praise for the return of the much beloved character.  I have an huge soft spot for Walt Disney’s legacy of characters (although he did not create Winnie) and it is nice to see the return of hand-drawn animation and painterly backgrounds to the big screen.

The film features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track and a  1.78:1 1080p/AVC-encoded video transfer.

Unfortunately the Blu-Ray is relatively light on special features, but I guess you can’t win them all:

- “Mini-Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: The Balloon” bonus short film where Pooh comes up with a daring plan to get a hold of some honey by fooling a group of bees

- “The Ballad of Nessie” bonus short film detailing how Nessie found her new home in the Loch Ness

- Blu-ray Exclusive – Winnie the Pooh and His Story Too behind-the-scenes featurette – hosted by John Cleese – which explores Pooh’s history from the A.A. Milne books through the Disney movies

- Deleted scenes with introductions by directors Stephen Anderson (Meet the Robinsons) and Don Hall (The Princess and the Frog): “The Tummy Song,” “”Rabbit’s Friends and Relations,” Blu-ray Exclusive – “Original Eeyore Intro,” Blu-ray Exclusive – “Original Tigger Intro,” and “Pooh Searches for a Tail”

- Blu-ray Exclusive – Sing-Along with the Movie feature for seven song lyrics featured in the film

- Blu-ray Exclusive – Disney Song Selection feature: “Winnie the Pooh Theme Song,” “The Tummy Song, “A Very Important Thing To Do,” “The Backson Song,” “It’s Gonna Be Great,” “Everything is Honey,” and “The Winner Song Finale”

Winnie the Pooh first appeared in a 1926 collection of stories titled Winnie-the-Pooh and in an interesting note, the “Winnie” in his name was taken from the POA crews hometown of Winnipeg.

Here’s Winnie the Pooh’s theatrical trailer:

Other Blu-Ray’s worth checking out this week: Tom & Jerry: Golden Collection, The Conversation, Attack the Block. If you have any suggestions for other Blu-Ray’s to watch out for please comment below!

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