Home Entertainment News: January 13, 2014: JAMESY BOY, FROZEN

Phase 4 Films and XLrator Media have acquired the North American distribution rights to writer/director Trevor White’s coming-of-age film Jamesy Boy. Based on a true story, the film stars Ving Rhames, Mary-Louise Parker, James Woods, Spencer Lofranco, Taboo, and Taissa Farmiga. Lofranco plays James Burns, a teen caught up in the street life of a gang banger. He ends up trying to survive in prison with career criminals. There, he is befriended by a murder (Rhames) who helps him to turn his life around. Jamesy Boy streets on February 25, 2014.

Disney’s animated hit Frozen will hit the shelves on March 18, 2014. Princess Anna (Kristen Bell) sets off on a quest to find her sister Elsa (Idina Menzel) with the aid of mountain man Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) and his reindeer Sven. Elsa’s powers have plunged their kingdom into perpetual winter and it is up to Anna to save them. Disney’s 53^rd animated feature will be available on both DVD and 2-disc Blu-ray combo pack; the combo pack will have the following extras: The Making of Frozen, D’Frosted: Disney’s Journey from Hans Christian Anderson to Frozen, Breaking the Ice: The Real Making of Frozen, four deleted scenes, a short entitled “Get A Horse,” three music videos, and the theatrical trailer.

Abdallah Omeish’s documentary The War Around Us (2014) will be released by MPI Home Video on May 6, 2014. The documentary chronicles the ordeal of the only two western journalists on the Gaza Strip in 2008, trapped there after what was supposed to be a 24-hour assignment. Despite their professional rivalry, Ayman Moheldin and Sherine Tadros forge a bond in a quest for survival amidst mortar shells and with the whole world watching.

The Cinema Guild has acquired the North American distribution rights to Tsai Ming Liang’s Stray Dogs. The film was an official selection at the Toronto Film Festival and the New York Film Festival and won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2013 Venice Film Festival. The Taiwanese film tells the story of a father and his two children who wander along the edges of Taipei from the woods to the city center. The father eeks out a living as a human billboard for a luxury condominium while his daughter and son wander amongs food stalls in the open market surviving on free food samples. At night, they take shelter in an abandoned building without electricity or running water huddled together on one dirty mattress. One day the father decides to take them on a sailing adventure. Stray Dogs will first open in theaters then receive home video and digital distribution later in the year.

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