What are the Best Paramount Blu-rays of 2021

Today’s subject: Paramount Blu-rays

Due to a variety of calamities that hit in the first part of 2021, AndersonVision has been spending the Spring catching up. However, we noticed something among the newer readers. They want quick answers, rather than longer in-depth pieces. So, we’ve compromised. A long in-depth piece with a variety of quick answers about what are the Best Paramount Blu-rays of 2021.

Today, we’re going to watch the Paramount Blu-ray of Elizabethtown and a ton of John Hughes movies.

Paramount Presents: Elizabethtown

Elizabethtown is one of the movies I’ve been on the set of during production. While I started during the 00s, I wasn’t the kind of film writer that got swagged out to sets. Naturally, that meant waiting for the films that came to me. Being a huge fan of Cameron Crowe, it was a slam dunk. While I saw them shoot things out of sequence, I had no idea what the final film would look like. Then, I saw it.

16 years after its original release, Elizabethtown feels like a fresh relic. Old enough to feel bizarre the modern 18-21 year olds, yet recent enough to have faces they well recognize. As my age group grows older, it’s going to get stranger and stranger to see younger movie fans respond to material. A lot of their ignorance has to do with the fact that everything they discover is on a Top 40 basis.

Filtered down to its roots and most popular offerings. Yet, these are the same kids that will not see any Star Wars or Godfather movies until they are in their 20s. The Elizabethtown Paramount Blu-ray offers up a lot, but I wish we got a commentary. It’s not like Cameron Crowe talking over alternate, deleted and extended scenes will provide any new info for first time viewers. But, it allows the old heads to learn something about a movie that plays differently now.

Yet, it also feels more relevant in 2021. Orlando Bloom plays a young professional who goes straight to suicide when faced with his first big debacle. While every business professional has a story of this happening to them, there’s a reason why we see Bloom wanting to kill himself immediately. It’s because he bases his life on reputational value and not self worth.

I didn’t get any of that from the five days I saw them shoot Elizabethtown. But, that’s the beauty of the re-watch. While you get a ton of featurettes, trailers and TV spots ported over from the prior release, there is something wonderful to behold here. By bringing the film into the HD age, Paramount Blu-ray gives Elizabethtown a chance for more younger viewers to discover the film and process what it means.

John Hughes 5-Movie Collection

John Hughes movies hit different as you get older. I think part of the reason this got delayed was because She’s Having A Baby plays so much better the older you get. When I was a kid, it was always the sad comedy with everyone offering baby names in the end credits. But, who cares about that? Some Kind of Wonderful and She’s Having A Baby are finally getting Blu-ray releases.

Yeah, I know Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Pretty in Pink and Planes, Trains and Automobiles are also in the collection. But, those movies get releases all the damn time. Paramount Blu-ray releases tend to repeat a lot, but let’s not blame our corporate masters at Viacom for that. All hail Redstone! All hail Redstone!

You get Digital Copies on all of the movies, so that’s cool. What’s cool is the majority of special features are in HD and they’re also imported in from the Archives. Paramount Blu-ray tends to be good about that sort of thing. So, what does any of this have to do with my original spiel?

Well, you get the Hughes movies available to Paramount on rather amazing looking Blu-rays. I’d love to see the bigger movies get upgraded to 4K UHD, but I’ll take what I can get. Sometime in the future, we’ll spotlight the standalone movies with specific focuses.

Now, we’re hopefully caught up on our Paramount Blu-ray coverage.