After six straight weeks of mega-releases, this week’s home entertainment offerings are more modest, but they do include one of the year’s best comic book movie adaptations, the Blu-ray debut of the visually sophisticated Pee-wee’s Playhouse TV series, along with the first half of the final season of Mad Men, and a couple of very interesting (and very different) anime movies.
 
TV on DVD
 
This week’s top “geek” release is Pee-wee’s Playhouse: The Complete Series (Shout Factory, 1600 min., BD $149.99), the award-winning (15 Emmys) kids’ show starring Pee-Wee Herman, which is now available on Blu-ray for the first time.  With stylish visual design by artist Gary Panter and others, Pee-wee’s Playhouse is a quintessential “cult” TV show, full of postmodernist tropes that exploded racial and ethnic stereotypes, as well as cutting edge pop music from an incredible range of contemporary performers including Mark Mothersbaugh, Danny Elfman, Todd Rundgren, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, Stanley Clarke, and Van Dyke Parks to name just a few—and now this cutting edge series that aired from 1986-1990 is available in a format that shows off its visual brilliance to great effect.  
 
The top contemporary series release is Mad Men: The Final Season, Part 1 (Lionsgate, 336 min., $39.98, BD $39.97), which presents the first half of the seventh and final season of Matthew Weiner’s Gatsby-esque saga of ad-man/everyman Don Draper and his liquor and cigarette-fueled journey through the Golden Age of mass advertising in the wake of World War II.  This is a truly brilliant series, it is just an unfortunate sign of the times that Lionsgate saw fit to break season seven up into two parts to maximize profits at the expense of the fans.
 
The only other new series out on Tuesday is The Soul Man: The Complete Second Season (Shout Factory, 225 min., $19.97), which collects the 10-episode second season of the TV Land sitcom starring Cedric the Entertainer as an R&B singer-turned-evangelist.
 
The top vintage release is The Red Skelton Show: The Early Years 1951—1955 (Shout Factory, 2110 min., $59.97), which includes 90 episodes on 11 discs along with a lot of great extra features including a filmed bio of Skelton, who was perhaps along with Danny Kaye, the iconic clown of the “Greatest Generation” that came of age with World War II.  Skelton’s loose comedy anthology show gave the comedian ample opportunity to engage in skits featuring his signature characters like the ultimate hick, Clem Kadiddlehopper, brain-addled ex-boxer Cauliflower McPugg, and “knight of the road” and all-around slacker Freddie the Freeloader.  The visual quality of these early TV black-and-white shows is a long way from today’s high-definition, but it is a fair approximation of how these shows originally looked and likely the best that we will ever see.  Like most 1950s TV comedians, Skelton’s show included a wide variety of musical acts, and there are some hidden gems in some of the musical performances included in this set.  To his credit, Skelton didn’t shy away from hiring black performers, and Diahann Carroll and many others make the musical segments on the show something special.
 
Other vintage series due this week include Square Pegs: The Complete Series (Mill Creek, $9.98), which collects all 19 episodes of the 1982-83 CBS series starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Amy Linker as two awkward teenage girls trying to fit in at Weemawee High School in a comedy created by SNL writer Anne Beatts, and the Fox Network sitcom Married… With Children: Seasons 5&6 (Mill Creek, 1100 min., $14.98).
 
The lone U.K. release is Silent Witness: Season 1 (BBC, 363 min., $34.98), which includes 8 episodes of the new series about a female forensic scientist—kind of like Bones without all the soap opera moments.
 
Anime
 
This week’s top anime release is Bayonetta: Bloody Fate (Funimation, 90 min., BD/DVD Combo $34.98), a 2013 anime film produced by Gonzo and based on Platinum Games’ 2009 supernatural action videogame Bayonetta, which follows the adventures of a witch, who awakens from a 500-year slumber at the bottom of lake with no memories, and has to battle hordes of angels as she endeavors to learn her identity.  This anime features extremely stylish character designs (by Ai Yokoyama) and an English dub with the voice cast from the videogame reprising their roles in the anime, which follows the storyline of the game.
 
Another new anime film that is definitely worth seeing is A Letter to Momo (GKids, 120 min., $19.97, BD/Combo $29.95), a 2011 film written and directed by Hiroyuki Okiura.  Produced by Production I.G., A Letter to Momo bears comparison with Studio Ghibli’s movies in its sensitive depiction of an 11-year-old girl, whose world is coming undone after the untimely death of her father.   A Letter to Momo was screened at numerous international festivals, and won the Grand Prize at the Future Film Festival in Italy in 2012.
 
Also new this week is Kill la Kill Vol. 2 (Aniplex of America, 100 min., $39.98, BD $49.98, Ltd.Ed Combo $74.98), which contains the episodes 5-8 of the 2013-2014 TV anime produced by Trigger about a high school where students wear special “Goku” uniforms that confer special powers on those who wear them.  This imaginative action-packed “Magical Girl” comedy-drama was written by Kazuki Nakashima and directed by Hiroyuki Imaishi, both of whom worked on Gurren Lagann.
 
The other major new release is the Sunday Without God: Complete Collection (Sentai Filmworks, 300 min., $59.98, BD $69.98), which collects the 2013 anime series produced by Madhouse and based on the supernatural/mystery light novels written by Kimihito Irie.
 
Theatrical Movies
 
After a couple of weeks of major releases, comes a bunch of non-descript titles led by the “horror” movie The Purge: Anarchy (Universal, “R,” 208 min., $29.98, BD $34.98), the sequel to the “high concept” film about a yearly 12 hours of anarchy during which no crime is punishable under the New Founders of America.  While better (and more ambitious) than the first Purge film, this is still a gussied-up home-invasion thriller (and an overlong one as well).
 
The second highest-grossing film this week is a found-footage cheapo remake of ET, Earth to Echo (Fox, “PG,” 90 min., $29.98, BD $39.98).  Originally produced by Disney, the studio didn’t want to release it, and sold the rights (for a song) to Relativity Media.  Critics hated the film for its lack of originality, but a lot of kids will like the story of a cute little robot who is able to get back to his home planet thanks to the efforts of a group of cute kids.
 
Also out this week is Sex Tape (Sony, “R,” 94 min., $30.98, BD $35.99), which stars Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel as a married couple, who accidently post a sex tape designed to reinvigorate their marriage to a batch of iPads they have given to friends and co-workers.  The strained humor here results from their attempts to retrieve the iPads and keep the tape private.  There is less nudity here than one might expect, but the film does earn its “R” rating with lots of f-bombs and sexual situations.
 
The one really interesting film due out on Tuesday is Snowpiercer (Anchor Bay, “R,” 126 min., $24.99, BD $29.99), one of the year’s most interesting comic book adaptations.  Directed by Korean helmer Bong Joon-ho and adapted from the French graphic novel Tansperceneige by Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand, and Jean-Marc Rochette, Snowpiercer stars Chris Evans (Captain America), John Hurt, Jamie Bell, Tilda Swinton, Octavia Spencer and Ed Harris in a post-apocalyptic saga about a group of survivors on a massive train that travels around the globe (and through the snow).   The train is divided in a crude sort of caste system, and the unfortunates in the end cars attempt a revolution of sorts.  A dispute with the U.S. distributor kept this film relegated to art houses, but fans of serious science fiction will want to check it out.
 
Tom Flinn
 
The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect those of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.