Hello, my name is Tommy, and I’m a Harry Potter geek. I wasn’t before last week, in fact I had only seen one Harry Potter film in the theater, and I was about 16 years old at the time. I was more of a Lord of the Rings guy.

Well, when the Half-blood Prince was released this summer, I realized that there was a ton of Potter movies now, and that it might be fun to get into it, even if it was a little late. Then Warner Bros. sends me a huge Ultimate Edition Blu-ray, and I’m hooked.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone Ultimate Edition Blu-ray is a massive box set (the largest on my Blu-ray shelf) that contains everything you see above. I like how they’re going about this Ultimate Edition series. Each set will have a documentary that will cover a different aspect of the whole Harry Potter saga. When all the films are released in Ultimate Editions, that will add up to over eight hours, and this is a much better put together documentary than what you’d find on a normal DVD or Blu-ray.

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Good news! The 1982 Rankin/Bass animated fantasy film The Flight of Dragons is finally available on DVD, via the Warner Archive. The movie is based on a couple books from the 70s, and stars John Ritter as a Dungeons & Dragons-type board game inventor who gets transported into the world of his game (which is really the world of his ancestors, go figure).

I had never seen this movie before, as it was just a little before my time, but it was pretty entertaining. Not in the way that Rankin & Bass intended, I’m sure, but it was entertaining nontheless. It kind of feels like a cross between Dungeons & Dragons and Monty Python at times.

It stars John Ritter, James Earl Jones, Bob McFadden, and Don Messick, and even includes a title song by non other than Mr. American Pie himself, Don McLean.

You can pick it up exclusively on the Warner Archive website today.

Further Reading
The Flight of Dragons on Wikipedia.

Fantastic Mr. Fox is probably the most unique movie you’ll see this year, and that’s saying a lot. We’re talking about a year that’s seen films like Coraline, Up, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, and the upcoming Avatar. Still, I think Fantastic Mr. Fox sits on a level of its own.

We saw the movie last night at a free sneak peek in Indianapolis, and there wasn’t an empty seat in the theater. There was a surprising number of adults without kids, but there was plenty of families as well.

The whole theater was rolling with laughter. Fantastic Mr. Fox doesn’t play out like a kid’s movie at all, it’s basically just a Wes Anderson film that happens to be stop motion. The dialog is witty (and hilarious), the voice acting is great, and the staging and attention to detail is what you would expect from an Anderson film.

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Although I’ve never mentioned it here before, I’m a huge Halo geek. I’ve got a couple cool Halo-related reviews coming up soon, so in the meantime here is some fresh news regarding the Halo Legends collection of animated shorts.

It was just announced that Warner Bros will be distributing the collection on Blu-ray and DVD on February 9, 2010. It features seven new stories in CG and traditional anime style, and will be rated PG-13 much like the direct-to-video features coming from DC and Marvel.

You’ll be able to pick up the Blu-ray, a 2-disc DVD, and a single disc DVD in February. Besides the 2 hours of animation there will be bonus features like:

• The Making of Halo Legends – An introduction to Halo Legends followed
  by a making-of segment for each episode.
• Halo: Gaming Evolved – Explaining the Halo phenomenon from its
  inception as an Xbox video game to a present day entertainment
  franchise.
• Audio Commentary with directors Frank O’Connor and Joseph Chou
• Blu-ray Exclusive: – Halo: The Story so Far, an overview of the Halo universe up until
  the end of Halo 3

I can’t wait for this, but I guess I’ll have to. Meanwhile you can check out the official site to see the trailer.

Out today is the newest edition in the Ice Age franchise, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. I received a review copy of the standard-def DVD and had never seen the film. While the movie is not my favorite, the DVD is well put together and if your kids are a fan of the previous two films, I’m sure they’ll like this one too.

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