Blog Posts by Digital Crave Contributor

Django UnchainedDirector Quentin Tarantino's bold and bloody Western Django Unchained – new to DVD and Blu-ray – is not for the faint of heart.

Django has the overall shape of a classic spaghetti Western, but inside those lines Tarantino is playing by different rules entirely. It's a grim but deliberate and artful film that wields its scenes of graphic violence with purpose.

It goes like this: In the antebellum American South, German bounty hunter King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) teams with liberated slave Django (Jamie Foxx) to hunt down outlaws and collect reward money from the U.S. Marshall's office.

Schultz and Django form an unlikely friendship and set out to rescue Django's enslaved wife (Kerry Washington) from a psychotic Mississippi plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio). Things get messy.

There are scenes of appalling cruelty and brutality in Django Unchained, and the film has generated the usual Tarantino-related controversy for its use of racially charged language and explicit violence. It also

Knuckleball on DVD & Blu-RayJust last week Major League Baseball came back in swing, as it were, which is one of Mother Nature's annual signs of spring. So why not celebrate the warmer weather and budding flowers by staying in and spending quality time with your home theater system?

The documentary Knuckleball, new to DVD and digital download, is a fascinating film for even casual fans of America's Pastime. Veteran documentarians Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg (Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work) explore the history of baseball's weirdest pitch by profiling MLB knuckleballers Tim Wakefield and R.A. Dickey during the 2011 baseball season. They also dig deep into baseball's past with former players including Charlie Hough, Wilbur Wood, Jim Bouton, Tom Candiotti and Hall of Famer Phil Niekro.

For the uninitiated, the knuckleball is the rarest pitch in baseball. Unlike other pitches – the fastball, the curve, the slider – the knuckleball doesn't rely on spin and velocity to overwhelm the hitter. Instead, the ball is thrown

Lincoln on DVD & Blu-RayMarch is the traditional time for the prestigious Oscar-nominated films to cycle onto DVD and this year is no exception. You could sprain a frontal lobe trying to keep up with them all. Here are five new releases with Academy Award pedigrees now out on DVD and Blu-ray.

Lincoln: Steven Spielberg's historical drama was nominated for 12 Academy Awards and won for Best Production Design and Best Actor (Daniel Day-Lewis). One of last year's biggest critical and commercial successes, it might be the single must-see film of the year. By narrowing the focus to a particular event in history – passage of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery – the film keeps the story tight. It's a remarkable collaboration between actor and director, with a terrific supporting performance from Tommy Lee Jones as the irascible Thaddeus Stevens.

Extras: Six behind-the-scenes featurettes on everything from the historical context to John Williams' musical score.

Life of Pi: Ang Lee took home the Best Director

Tomb Raider screenshotIn a previous post, we told you five things you didn't know about the new Tomb Raider game, that hit the shelves on March 5th for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows PC. Now we follow up with five things to love about the game, which updates the venerable franchise with skill and style.

The new Tomb Raider is a true reboot – an origin story that recasts Lara Croft as a frightened but determined teenager, shipwrecked on a menacing island at the dawn of her archeological career. The designers have put a heavy emphasis on storytelling and character, which gives the varied gameplay elements a surprising resonance. Deliberate choices with the camera work and cut scenes encourage you to identify closely with the young Ms. Croft.

The designers have also sprinkled in new features such as quick time events, scavenging and limited RPG elements to keep the texture varied. Below are five particular highlights from the new Tomb Raider.

Tomb Raider screen shotCreative platforming: As returning players know, Lara Croft is

Wreck-It RalphIn Disney's latest animated comedy Wreck-It Ralph – new to DVD, Blu-ray and Blu-ray 3-D this week – video game characters have their own lives outside the demands of their profession. Wreck-It Ralph himself is an 80s-style arcade game bad guy, similar to Donkey Kong, fond of stomping and smashing.

He's a blue-collar sort of guy, clocking in each day to suffer ignoble defeat at the hands of the game's goody-goody hero, Fix-It Felix. Voiced with great comic instincts by John C. Reilly, Ralph is tired of being the bad guy all the time. So he sets out to win the love and affection of his game character peers by earning a medal in a violent shoot-em-up game.

Plans go awry, and to save the day Ralph must team with a hard-case female space marine (Jane Lynch), an amine kart-racing pixie (Sarah Silverman) and his old nemesis Felix (the very funny Jack McBrayer, of TV's 30 Rock.)

I can dutifully report that Wreck-It Ralph is a huge hit with my kids and their circle of friends in the coveted

For as long as there have been online videos, it seems, there have been online videos of cute little cats doing cute little things.

It's a curious phenomenon, really. No other animal on the face of the planet, domestically inclined or otherwise, gets the star treatment that we give our cats. Sure, you get the occasional canine breakout star. Or rabbit or bird or even pig.

But in the realm of online viral videos and compilations, cats are king of the digital jungle. Internet cat videos even have their own awards show and film festival.

Perhaps it's because cats are inherently mysterious creatures. You never know what they're thinking. They'll be sitting calmly in the room when suddenly and for no discernible reason they will sprint into another room. Where, cleverly, they sit calmly.

Or maybe it's just that cat owners are more likely to sit around filming their cats. Could be that.

And then there is Henri, le Chat Noir – a very funny, very clever variation on the cute kitty viral video.

Larklife bandsLike so many other well-intentioned souls, I came into 2013 with the firm intention of getting healthier. Among my many New Year's resolutions was the solemn pledge to eat less, exercise more and generally take care of myself a little better.

My plan lasted about a week and a half, as usual. (Maybe I should just resolve to be more self-delusional.) Talking with friends and fellow aspirants who had had more success, I kept hearing the same thing: The first step to maintaining a healthy lifestyle is really a matter of data logging. Track your diet and exercise habits, and you can start changing behavior.

So I was excited to get a chance to test out the new fitness-tracking system Larklife ($149; lark.com) one of many gadget-and-app devices on the market that promise to help you get healthy. Better living through technology and all that.

LarklifeLarklife is a combination wristband and smartphone app that syncs over Bluetooth. Two wristbands, actually – one for daytime and one for night, each with

Argo now on DVD and Blu-RayAn old-school political thriller from director and star Ben Affleck, Argo tells the true story of the daring CIA rescue mission that spirited six Americans out of Iran in the first weeks of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. The details on the escape – so ridiculous, so unlikely – were never fully revealed until declassified documents surfaced a few years back.

Affleck plays the role of CIA agent Tony Mendez, an exfiltration expert whose specialty is getting U.S. citizens out of dangerous hot spots. Mendez' plan? He'll set up a fake Hollywood production company, fly into Tehran, and sneak the hostages out as members of his Canadian film crew.

Mendez must construct a watertight back story, though, because the Iranians are on the lookout for any Americans. So he recruits two Hollywood filmmakers, played by John Goodman and Alan Arkin, to assist in approximating an actual production of “Argo” – a b-movie Star Wars rip-off – complete with offices, advertisements and press coverage.

It's so