Another seven days of movie watching, another week of Blu-ray releases to be dissected. As we move through the back-end of awards season, it’s going to be time for all of those hot Oscar hopefuls to make their play toward cashing in on all the buzz. The benefit to you is that you’ll get to see or own most of them very soon, and you don’t even have to leave your couch. This week brings us Animal Kingdom, the still under-the-radar crime thriller from down under. It also sees the streak of Criterion continue, with two more of their films ending up in my Buy section. I’m not pandering, I promise. They are just really good at releasing films on Blu-ray. It’s almost unfair to everyone else. Except for those of us who buy their stuff, of course. All this and more is just one click away in the latest entry of This Week in Blu-ray.

Everyone is imprisoned in Stone, but Edward Norton’s character is the only one physically locked up in the big house. The movie leaves a lot unanswered, delivers one of Robert De Niro’s best performances in years, and presents something audiences have clamored for since American History X: Edward Norton in cornrows. I was fortunate enough to sit down with the actor during the film’s run at Fantastic Fest, and we dug deep into the nature of imprisonment, the nature of storytelling, and the De Niro film that makes Norton stop breathing. Special Thanks to Luke Mullen for his keen editing skills.

Fans rejoice!! Robert De Niro can still act. I know this because he’s been given his most complicated material in well over a decade.

Fans rejoice!! Edward Norton is still one of the most versatile actors we have. I know this because I never questioned his portrayal of a corn-row sporting arsonist with a colorfully street form of Detroit dialect.

Fans rejoice!! Milla Jovovich is more than a zombie killer. I know this because despite De Niro’s best work in years and Norton’s further solidification of top-tier performers Jovovich steals the camera’s attention from both with an impressively complex depiction of a conniving seductress with an innocent outer candy shell.

Stone, if you can’t already tell, is very much an actors film. Each character is given a prominent arc with each’s affective behavior causing changes, or an exposing of something already there under the surface, in each other. Jack Mabry (De Niro) is a parole officer a few weeks shy of retirement when he meets Gerald “Stone” Creeson (Edward Norton), a man serving time for setting the house of his grandparents on fire after they were murdered by one of his friends. Creeson is to be one of Mabry’s final cases before heading off into the sunset and it’s up to him to determine whether he feels Creeson has been rehabilitated and can rejoin society. Creeson, not feeling particularly confident in his relationship with Mabry decides to get his wife (Jovovich) to seduce Mabry to hopefully sway his decision to get him released. This leads to a sequence of emotional turmoil, religious enlightenment and regretful indulgences that are met with uncomfortable revelations.

And the hits keep right on coming… and by “hits” I mean awesome movie announcements from Fantastic Fest 2010′s already incredible film schedule. The first wave of titles was announced last month and included several highly anticipated films like Let Me In, Ip Man 2, Golden Slumber, Outrage, Red Hill, and more. Earlier today the second round of titles was released, and as expected the list of upcoming movies represents probably the greatest gift to mankind since pizza. Fantastic Fest 2010 runs from September 23rd through September 30th. The official press announcement is below…

Forgive me if you’ve seen this already, but a new trailer for the Overture Films release Stone, starring Edward Norton, Robert De Niro and Milla Jovovich has hit the web. We’re not sure exactly where it originated from — it was sent to us by a reader named Rabid Rabbit (clever, I suppose) — but we do find it interesting. It’s a crime thriller about an inmate and his girlfriend trying to set up a corrections officer using the one thing that usually works — sex.