As all of us here in the middle and western parts of the country wait anxiously in the hope that our friends and family on the East Coast will be alright through the landfall of Hurricane Sandy, it’s hard not to become inundated with news coverage. One particular story that has a connection to the film world is that of the HMS Bounty, the replica ship that has been used in films such as Mutiny on the Bounty, Treasure Island and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, which was overwhelmed this morning by the oncoming storm 90-miles off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

This is not at all the first film adaptation of the classic tale, but the 1962 version of Mutiny on the Bounty featuring Marlon Brando, Trevor Howard and Richard Harris might be the most iconic. This trailer boasts that the ship involved in Lewis Milestone‘s film is the first built from the keel up specifically for a motion picture. In a time where matte paintings replaced real world backgrounds, Milestone took his crew over the ocean to film, and the result was something as frighteningly realistic as possible. It also doesn’t hurt that his cast is one of the strongest ever assembled. With On Stranger Tides coming out tomorrow, it seems even more fitting that we should head out for the open sea with a couple of strong personalities.

Re-releases are a tough business, I tell you. And this week is full of them. Be they the re-lighting of the old flame that still burns from Chaplin’s last trip as the Little Tramp or James Cameron’s twice released (this year) mega-event movie Avatar, This Week in Blu-ray is full of stuff that we’ve seen before, in various capacities. That doesn’t mean that some of these titles aren’t worth buying, as you might expect. A few of these titles will be welcomed additions to your collection. They may also have you cursing the names of faceless Fox executives who duped you into buying Avatar the first time around. Or Blu-ray column writers who recommended it, despite the obvious lack of special features… Actually, lets not focus on that last part. Why don’t we just move on to this week’s selection of high definition wonders.