February is in full swing and this week brings a host of new movies and some great classics hitting Blu-ray for the first time. This week’s releases include the first time on Blu-ray Casablanca, Unforgiven, Gangs of New York, Pan’s Labyrinth and The Godfather I and II.

There are also several Dr. Who TV movies, a couple seasons of TV’s Dynasty, Volume 3 of Batman: The Brave and the Bold and the Blu-ray release of Zombieland with Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin (pictured above).

Check out this week’s new releases:

Movies

Adam ~ Hugh Dancy, Peter Gallagher, Amy Irving (Blu-ray and DVD)

Amelia ~ Hillary Swank, Richard Gere (Blu-ray and DVD)

Casablanca ~ Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains (Blu-ray)

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ~ Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro, Tobey Maguire (Blu-ray)

Gangs of New York (Remastered) ~ Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day Lewis, John C. Reilly (Blu-ray)

Planet Hulk ~ (Blu-ray and DVD)

Love Happens ~ Jennifer Aniston (Blu-ray and DVD)

Mystic River ~ Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon (Blu-ray)

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Looks like the Chinese government has made an offer that gamers can’t refuse. According to The New York Times, the Chinese Ministry of Culture has just banned all online games that feature organized crime. By today, games like The Godfather, Mafioso Hitman, and Gangster were unavailable to gamers. Links to Internet games that included organized crime were also blocked.

The China Youth Association for Internet Development reported last year that 70 percent of all juvenile crimes were “induced by Internet addiction.” These kinds of games, according to the Ministry of Culture, “embody antisocial behavior like killing, beating, looting and raping,” and “gravely threatens and distorts the social order and moral standards, easily putting young people under harmful influence.”

Although the rules are unclear, “severe punishment” is in store for anyone who violates the terms of the decree issued on Monday.

This isn’t the only time China has restricted technology and gaming. In June, China started requiring computers sold domestically to include filtering software to weed out pornography and other things the government found inappropriate. This restriction was recently lifted after computer manufacturers put on the pressure. Back in March, 1Up reported that  yet another World of Warcraft expansion was delayed due to the use of skeleton avatars. When the game was eventually released in China, the entire Death Knight class was not included.

What do you guys think? Is censorship the solution to violence sparked by videogames? Or is moderation the key?

The release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has reopened discussions about what makes a good book to film adaptation. The Potter series often divides fans, and the latest chapter is no exception. I’ve heard from a number of fans of the book series who are  disappointed with the current film’s adaptation, while I’ve also talked to fans who are satisfied. Brad Brevet from RopesofSilicon reflected on some of the more negative fan reactions and he asks, “how faithful should film adaptations be?”

Adapting a book into a film is not an easy process. Squeezing a 300-page novel into a 120-minute film is difficult, especially if the book has lots of exposition or other elements that are not easily cinematic. For books that are rich and deeply characterized, like the Potter books, adaptation is almost always going to mean losing some characters or the minute characterizations that many fans hold dear.

That said, making an adaptation that is too close to the original work can often be just as problematic as making an unfaithful adaptation. Brevet mentions this spring’s Watchmen as an example of a film that while remarkably true to its graphic novel counterpart, still didn’t end up endearing itself to even diehard Watchmen fans. I would argue this was because despite getting the character and plot details correct, Watchmen didn’t effectively bring enough of its own cinematic virtues to the project. In contrast, Frank Miller’s Sin City was a tremendous adaptation of various vignettes from the graphic novel series, and it managed to be both accurate and bring in its own voice.

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