This week’s edition of The Digital Wire is a tad on the slim side and for that I blame that 50 Shades of Grey mania that has gripped the nation harder than…..never mind. There’s also heavy snowfall in some areas and that usually slows the march of progress down. Okay, enough of the blame game.

Below you’ll find info on several future home video releases complete with technical specs, release dates, and links to pre-order at Amazon, as well as the DVD/Blu-rays that will be available this week. We would greatly appreciate it if you use those links to order because a small percentage of each order helps keep this website running at max power. The cover art for certain titles has yet to be finalized.

Warren Oates, the gruff, everyman character actor best remembered for his film roles as the dim-witted but intimidating half of the Gorch Brothers in The Wild Bunch and the aptly named Sgt. Hulka in the Bill Murray Army comedy vehicle Stripes, would have been 85 years old today. Oates had succumbed to cancer back in 1982.

Oates seemed to be a chameleon in his roles, a merry-go-round of styles in a various litany of genres; he played famed real-life gangster John Dillinger (in Dillinger), did turns in Sam Peckinpah projects like the aforementioned The Wild Bunch and Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia, and did stints with other famed directors like Terrence Malick (Badlands), William Friedkin (The Brinks Job), and Steven Spielberg (the panned at the time, but semi-cult comedy in today’s climate 1941).