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Promising Young Woman is the first of this yearโ€™s eight Oscar nominees for Best Picture to be released on DVD and Blu-ray.

Nominated for a total of five Oscars including Best Actress, Directing, Original Screenplay, and Film Editing, first-time writer-director-producer Emerald Fennell has her name on three of them.

Best known for her portrayal of Camilla Parker Bowles in seasons three and four of The Crown, Fennell has said that she intended her film as a dark comedy carefully balancing the horrific with the hilarious. It does just that with Carey Mulligan in fine form as the title character, a highly skilled medical school dropout seeking vengeance on those responsible for her friend and fellow studentโ€™s suicide following a campus rape seven years earlier.

Although some find the film to be anti-male, it really isnโ€™t. Two of the filmโ€™s four principal villains are women, Alison Brie (The Post) as the rapistโ€™s then-girlfriend and Connie Britton (Bombshell) as the give-him-the-benefit-of-the-doubt dean. At least they come to admit they were wrong whereas the principal male villains, Chris Lowell (The Help) as the rapist and Max Greenfield (The Big Short) as his friend who taped the rape remain unrepentant.

Bo Burnham (The Big Sick) as the one seemingly decent guy in Mulliganโ€™s life, Laverne Cox (Charlieโ€™s Angels) as her boss at the coffee shop, and Clancy Brown (The Shawshank Redemption) and Jennifer Coolidge (Legally Blonde) as her parents, turn in interesting supporting performances.

Mulliganโ€™s second Oscar nomination for her tour-de-force performance has been a long time in coming.

The actress made her film debut as one of the Bennett sisters in the 2005 version of Pride & Prejudice and scored her first Oscar nomination for the 2009 coming-of-age film An Education in which Alfred Molina, who makes a brief but important appearance in Promising Young Woman, played her father. In the years since, she has been in the conversation for a second nomination to no avail for such films as 2010โ€™s Never Let Me Go in which she was in an unforgettable love triangle with Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightley, 2011โ€™s Shame in which she played Michael Fassbenderโ€™s disapproving sister, and 2015โ€™s Suffragette in which she was supported by Helena Bonham Carter and Meryl Streep as fellow political activists.

The Blu-ray includes three making-of documentaries.

The next of this yearโ€™s Best Picture Oscar nominees scheduled for a DVD and Blu-ray release is Nomadland on April 27.

In 1955, the Directors Guild of America nominated the directors of twelve films for their top prize instead of the usual five. In addition to Delbert Mann, who won for Marty, they included Richard Brooks for Blackboard. Jungle, Elia Kazan for East of Eden, Charles Vidor for Love Me or Leave Me, Henry Koster for A Man Called Peter, John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy for Mister Roberts, Joshua Logan for Picnic, and Billy Wilder for The Seven Year Itch, all of which have previously been released on Blu-ray in the U.S. They also nominated Richard Brooks for Blackboard Jungle, Ford for The Long Gray Line, and Daniel Mann for The Rose Tattoo, which have yet to be released on Blu-ray in the U.S.

The final nominee was Mark Robson for The Bridges at Toko-Ri, which has been given a stunning upgrade by Australiaโ€™s Via Vision Imprint label, putting forth a series of releases of classic Paramount films.

The Bridges at Toko-Ri received Oscar nominations for Film Editing and Visual Effects, winning for the latter.

Filmed early in 1954, the Korean War epic was filmed at the same time as MGMโ€™s Men of the Fighting Lady, another film about the Korean War, both of which were written by James A. Michener (South Pacific). Men of the Fighting Lady was released in May 1954. To avoid conflict at the box office, The Bridges at Toko-Ri was contractually held back from release until January 1955.

Holdenโ€™s prior two films were Executive Suite and Sabrina. His next three would be The Country Girl, Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, and Picnic. It was quite a period for the actor on the heels of his Oscar win for Stalag 17.

The film is the story of individual sacrifice and the high cost of freedom. Holden plays a World War II veteran called back into service during the succeeding war and given what is likely a suicide mission. Grace Kelly is his adoring wife and mother of his two young children, who pay him a visit on his three-day leave in a lull in the fighting. Fredric March as the commanding admiral and Mickey Rooney and Earl Holliman as fire rescue pilots head the large supporting cast.

Holden didnโ€™t want to make another war film so soon after Stalag 17, but was persuaded to accept the role when March signed on, having become fast friends with the two-time Oscar winner (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Best Years of Our Lives) when they worked together on Executive Suite. He and Kelly would next join Bing Crosby for The Country Girl for which Kelly would an Oscar of her own for a film that would be released prior to the delayed release of The Bridges at Toko-Ri.

Extras include audio commentary by film historian Alan K. Rode and a visual essay on the life and career of Grace Kelly by Kat Ellinger.

This weekโ€™s U.S. Blu-ray releases include Soul and News of the World.

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