Like most weeks, this time around we’ve got another bunch of new movies and TV shows hitting DVD and Blu-ray. Some of them are new, some are old and some are hitting Blu-ray for the first time.

Of the ones hitting stores today, we’re most interested in the Blu-ray release of The Road, Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, the Criterion edition of Stagecoach, True Blood Season Two, Royal Pains Season One, the western Django and the 50th anniversary of Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 film Spartacus (pictured above with Woody Strode and Kick Douglas).

Movies

Babysitter Wanted ~ Bill Moseley, Matt Dallas, Bruce Thompson (Blu-ray and DVD)

City of the Living Dead ~ Christopher George, Giovanni Lombardo Radice (Blu-ray)

Clash of the Titans ~ Laurence Olivier, Burgess Meredith, Harry Hamlin (Blu-ray)

Dear John ~ Channing Tatum (Blu-ray and DVD)

Django ~ Franco Nero, Loredana Nusciak, Angel Alvarez (Blu-ray)

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog ~ Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, Felicia Day (Blu-ray and DVD)

Flashbacks Of A Fool ~ Daniel Craig, Olivia Williams, Claire Forlani (Blu-ray and DVD)

When I grow up, I want to be Claudia Cardinale.

There are plenty of beautiful women in movies, but few goddesses. Cardinale is a goddess. Even when she’s sunburned and running around in a rag, as she is in The Professionals, she has more charisma, beauty, and sex appeal than most actresses working today. I hesitate to call her “sexy” because that word seems so Maxim Magazine these days — but Cardinale is sexy in such a powerful and womanly way that it’s not threatening, but inspiring.

She also had great hair. What demon do I have to bargain with to end up with a perfect bouffant every day? Hers looks good even in the desert. It’s unfair.

Watching old movies can be a bittersweet experience. They don’t make them like Cardinale anymore, and you’d be hard pressed to find a Lee Marvin or a Burt Lancaster on the big screen these days. I cherish retro crushes on both (especially Lancaster — what a grin he had!) and The Professionals is so chock full of old time machismo that turning it off may actually cause you to experience symptoms of withdrawal.

Which is, oddly, what The Professionals is kind of about.   It’s the kind of movie I love in any genre — the adventure story that’s sandwiched in between the heroes’ misspent youth and their retirement.   These are men with pasts.  They’ve had near misses, they’ve experienced terrible tragedies, and they’ve woken up in their union suits with nothing but a pounding headache to remind them of the night before.   They’re men who die with their boots on out of a sense of nobility and because they have nothing else to do.