Video NewsBriefs, October 1, 2010

On October 26, Acorn Media will release its first British TV Blu-ray with the new adaptation of Agatha Christie's iconic 1934 Poirot mystery, Murder on the Orient Express, which debuted on PBS in July. Among the extras are two featurettes: "David Suchet on the Orient Express" and "120 Years with Agatha Christie." Other actors who have filled the Belgian detective's patent-leather shoes in earlier adaptations of the tale include Albert Finney (in the 1974 Oscar-winning film) and Alfred Molina (in the 2001 made-for-TV version). More at www.acornmedia.com.

New Video is now the exclusive distributor of Tribeca Film home video titles on DVD. The first films to release under the partnership, Julien Nitzberg's The Wild and Wonderful Whites of the West and Josh Appignanesi's The Infidel, will be available on October 26. New Video will continue to release up to two titles monthly leading up to the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival, among them Tarik Saleh's Metropia (Nov. 16), Jacob Tierney's The Trotsky (Dec. 14), and Julian Kemp's My Last Five Girlfriends (Jan. 25, 2011), adapted from Alain de Botton's On Love. More at www.newvideo.com and www.tribecafilm.com.

It is standard practice for the film industry to delay releases to online platforms, instead licensing them first to premium TV channels. But in a move underscoring the increasing popularity of online streaming and the desire among its users for more timely and varied content, Netflix recently entered into a long-term agreement with Nu Image/Millennium Films to license ten first-run theatrical titles annually from the Nu Image/Millennium Group for streaming in general a few months after their release on DVD. The first films covered under the agreement include Dito Monteil's Son of No One and Prachya Pinkaew's Elephant White, both scheduled for a 2011 release.

On September 7, Twentieth Century Fox and MGM Home Entertainment unveiled a new Literary Classics DVD collection comprising 15 film adaptations of classic books from the Fox and MGM archive, among them The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Moby Dick (1956), The Children's Hour (1961), The Lion in Winter (1968), and Of Mice and Men (1992). Each DVD in the collection retails for $15–$20 and includes a removable bookmark incorporating artwork and a quote from its respective film. More at www.foxmovies.com and www.mgm.com.