On this special mid-week episode of The Collision, we will be talking about the 85th Academy Awards.  We wanted to bring this one to you a little early, so you’ll have time to listen to it before the ceremony Sunday night.  We’ll be talking about the surprise nominations, the awards race since the nominations were announced, our predictions, and more.  As always, we’ll be finishing up with our recommendations.

Click here to listen to the new episode of The Collision, click here for the previous episode (“The Die Hard Franchise, Legacy, and A Good Day to Die Hard“), click here to add the podcast to your RSS, and click here to find us on iTunes. To keep up to date with The Collision, you can follow us on Twitter at @MattGoldberg, @AdamChitwood, and @DrClawMD (Dave Trumbore). Hit the jump to check out the trailers for this week’s recommendations.

Universal Pictures has announced a 25-film Blu-ray collection to commemorate the studio’s 100th anniversary, and it’s a genuinely great box set.  The “Universal 100th Anniversary Collection” includes 25 of the studio’s finest films, a 15-track music CD chock full of iconic film scores, a “100 Years of Universal” 72-page collector’s book and more.  Though the inclusion of HD versions of films like Dracula, Jurassic Park, The Sting, Back to the Future, Jaws, Do the Right Thing, and To Kill a Mockingbird alone would have been worth the purchase, the box set includes a number of vintage cartoons and shorts as well as a collection of featurettes covering the studio’s entire history.

The 25-disc Blu-ray set and 26-disc DVD collection (Schindler’s List is included in the DVD set only) will be available for a limited time starting November 6th.  A price has yet to be announced, but I don’t expect it’ll be cheap.  Hit the jump to read the full rundown of films and special features.

There is one thing concerning the USA that we can be proud of in recent history, one that we all should get excited about no matter what your politics are.  If you are a flower child, heavy metal death rocker, goth, red-neck, square, sports fan, dweeb or whatever… NASA and the United States space program deserve your attention and respect.  Man’s progress in the pioneering of space is really the most exciting endeavor that humankind is involved with, and it is too often overlooked and even ignored.  Cinema fans know one of the best films documenting the epic saga of American space flight is The Right Stuff (1983) that covered everything that we need to know about the early days of the space program from breaking the sound barrier to landing on the moon.  Ten years later, filmmaker Ron Howard gave us a very special movie about the space program that focuses on one particular part of the Apollo missions: the hair-raising and heroic tale of the Apollo 13. More after the jump: