Just in time for the new FX series of the same name, the Coen Brothers’ 1996 classic, Fargo has been given a spiffy new Blu-ray release.

The riotously funny black comedy features an Oscar winning screenplay by Joel and Ethan Coen as well as an Oscar winning performance by Joel’s wife, Frances McDormand as the local sheriff who gets her man. Its seven Oscar nominations also included nods for Joel Coen for Best Director; Roger Deakins for Best Cinematography; the Coens under pseudonyms for Best Editing as well as Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor William H. Macy. It has never looked better.

New to Blu-ray is Martin Ritt’s 1979 film, Norma Rae now celebrating its 35th anniversary.

Sally Field’s Oscar winning portrayal of the union organizing textile worker and mother changed the course of her career like no performer before or after her.

The ever smiling actress was considered a lightweight, best known for TV’s The Flying Nun and Gidget despite a brilliant Emmy winning performance as a woman with multiple personalities in the 1976 mini-series Sybil. Even after that performance, her film career still consisted of such trite material as Smokey and the Bandit and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure until she took on a role turned down by Jane Fonda; Jill Clayburgh and Marsha Mason, all of whom were nominated for 1979 Oscars for other films, all of them losing to Field. Post-Norma Rae the now respected actress was seen in much more substantial material, including a second Oscar winning role as the Depression era farm woman in 1984’s Places in the Heart. Still in demand, she earned a third Oscar nomination forher Mary Todd Lincoln in 2012’s Lincoln.

Norma Rae was also Oscar nominated for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay and won for Best Original Song, “It Goes Like It Goes”.

Warner Bros. has repackaged Humphrey Bogart’s four greatest films into The Best of Bogart Collection on Blu-ray. Included in the package are The Maltese Falcon; Casablanca; The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The African Queen. Nothing new is included, but the collection is a good buy for anyone who doesn’t have all four films and a major shelf space saver for those who do.

1941’s The Maltese Falcon was Bogart’s second major starring role after High Sierra released earlier the same year. The long time character actor was suddenly a major star. John Huston’s film was the third and best version of Dashiell Hammett’s celebrated mystery. Bogart; Mary Astor; Oscar nominated Sydney Greenstreet; Peter Lorre and Elisha Cook Jr. all give indelible performances. In addition to Greenstreet, the film was nominated for Best Picture and Best Screenplay, Huston’s second nomination after the previous year’s Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet.

Released in New York on Thanksgiving Day, 1942 but held back from general release until the Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin conference in Casablanca in January, 1943, Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca was a surprise Oscar winner for Best Picture that has since become the most quoted film in history. Bogart in his first Oscar nominated performance; Ingrid Bergman; Paul Henreid; Oscar nominated Claude Rains; Conrad Veidt; Sydney Greenstreet; Peter Lorre; Dooley Wilson; S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall and others are unforgettable in the film that also won Oscars for Best Director and Best Screenplay. It was also nominated for Best Black-and-White Cinematography; Best Editing and Best Score.

A double Oscar winner for John Huston, the writer-director’s 1948 film, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre also won an Oscar for Huston’s dad, Walter Huston for Best Supporting Actor as the toothless old prospector. It had also been nominated for Best Picture. Oddly Bogart’s portrayal of the adventurer whose greed does him in was not nominated for Best Actor.

Bogart was nominated and finally won an Oscar for Best Actor on his second nomination for Huston’s 1951 film, The African Queen. Also nominated for Best Screenplay (by Huston and James Agee); Best Director and Best Actress (Katharine Hepburn), this adaptation of C.S. Forrester’s novel was an enormous hit upon its release and has remained popular ever since..

The gruff adventurer and gentle lady theme was not new to films but Bogart and Hepburn imbued it with such verve and wit that it seemed like it had never been done before. Indeed, all subsequent attempts at recreating its magic have pretty much failed.

Two such attempts, which met with moderate success when first released, have since become TV and DVD staples. Both have been newly released on Blu-ray.

Clint Eastwood, looking very much like “the man with no name” from Sergio Leone’s so-called spaghetti western trilogy, albeit speaking a lot more, and Shirley MacLaine, as unlikely a nun as Hollywood has ever produced, nevertheless make a clever team in 1970’s Two Mules for Sister Sara, the second of five Eastwood films directed by Don Siegel whose directorial style Eastwood would soon adapt. The film’s chief asset is prolific composer Ennio Morricone’s exhilarating score.

Katharine Hepburn more or less reprises her minister’s daughter character from The African Queen opposite John Wayne reprising his character from True Grit in 1975’s Rooster Cogburn. The pairing raised eyebrows at the time because twenty-two years earlier Hepburn had famously refused to play the part that eventually went to Geraldine Page in Hondo because the highly principled Hollywood liberal wouldn’t work with red baiting Wayne. Alas, time heals everything and the two then 68 year-olds are marvelous together even if they were both too old for their parts. What does them in is the sappy dialogue written by producer Hal Wallis’ actress wife Martha Hyer under a pseudonym. This was the second and last big screen film directed by Stuart Millar, better known as a producer, although he did later work occasionally as a director in TV.

A little Irish film that took the world by storm in 2006, John Carney’s Once tells the simple story of a Dublin street singer and a Czech immigrant who meet, fall in love and write music together in the course of a week. An Oscar winner for Best Song, “Falling Slowly”, the screen musical was later turned into the 2012 Tony award winning Broadway musical that is still running.

The domestic Blu-ray release is a Fox exclusive.

This week’s new releases include Oscar nominees The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and August: Osage County.