This is the week of Thanksgiving. At least in the United States it is. Though I suspect that has started to take hold in other countries as well. At least the pre-Christmas sales aspect anyway. Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, was traditionally the biggest sales day for American retailers. But the Internet ruined that. Why do we need to go to the store at some un-godly hour Friday morning to get the sales, when you can just shop at home in your pajamas?

First, there was Cyber Monday, then Small Business Saturday. Then the big box stores started opening up on Thanksgiving Day for their sales, now it seems like everyone starts running sales the day after Halloween and they don’t stop until Christmas Day.

I’ve been writing a Pick of the Week column for many years now. Traditionally this week saw a huge collection of new releases, boxed sets, and special editions. Then every week until Christmas week there would be more.

This week seems pretty tame for some reason. Last week saw some good releases, and I’m sure there will be even more in the coming weeks, but that bonanza we usually see this week seems to be missing.

Oh, lots of stuff is coming out, mostly 4K UHD editions of films you probably already own on Blu-ray. I suppose I should be excited about those, but I’m not. They won’t even get a mention. Someday I might be excited about those bumps in video quality, but today is not that day.

Instead, my pick this week is an old Peter Bogdanovich film getting a 4K release from Criterion. Which, come to think of it, I guess I’ve just contradicted myself because here I am getting excited about a UHD release of a film that has already had a Blu-ray release.

I contain multitudes.

I’ve not actually seen Paper Moon before, but I recently watched Bogdanovich’s debut film, Targets, and quite liked it and when he died everyone talked about Paper Moon so here we are.

The film is set during The Great Depression and stars Ryan O’Neal as a man who gets saddled with Tatum O’Neal (who is Ryan’s real-life daughter and may or may not be his character’s daughter in this film) with whom he forges a unique bond. Criterion is filling it with their usual extras and care.

The Shape of Water: Criterion Collection is also giving Guillermo del Toro’s unusual love story between a woman and a fish-man the 4K UHD treatment.

That’s Entertainment: To celebrate their 50th anniversary in 1974 MGM created this clip-reel compilation of many of their best musicals. Then they got many of the stars of those films to introduce the clips. I can remember watching this as a kid on television and I guess it started my love of musicals. This release has cleaned up a lot of those old clips so it should look better than ever.