It’s rare when the most interesting releases are Blu-ray debuts of classic movies, but such is the case this week with the release of superb hi-def versions of the first Academy Award-winning film and Godzilla, the movie that jumpstarted the radioactive monsters genre in Japan.

 

 

The big news during a week in which the silent, black-and-white film The Artist took top honors at the Golden Globes is the Blu-ray debut of William Wellman’s 1927 Academy Award winner Wings (Paramount, $29.99), which starred Richard Arlen, Charles Buddy Rogers, and Gary Cooper in a relatively small role that nevertheless made him a star.  Paramount performed a “state-of-the-art” restoration on Wings, which looks spectacular with superb detail, the original film grain, and lots of touches from the original film including tinting of night scenes and hand-stenciled machine gun-firing color effects.  Produced for $2 million dollars, Wings was an epic production that involved assembling a fleet of more than 200 airplanes.  A lack of special effects, especially those phony-looking “process shots” that weren’t invented when the film was made, actually works to the movie’s advantage.  The flying sequences were all filmed in the air, and special cameras mounted in the planes provided gripping shots of the actors, who in many instances actually flew planes during the production.  The Artist, which pays homage to the silent era, is an exceptional film, but it necessarily compresses the actual history of silent films, which didn’t jump from the acrobatic antics of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. (who was already passé years before sound approached).  Films like Wings were much more sophisticated than viewers of The Artist would be led to expect—and anyone who enjoyed The Artist should certainly check out the superbly restored Wings.

 

Also due on Blu-ray this week is the classic kaiju film, Godzilla: King of Monsters (Criterion, BD $39.95) from 1954.  While previous releases of the Godzilla movies by Classic Media had improved on the poor quality of earlier DVD releases, the Criterion version is far superior and has to be recommended for serious monster movie fans.  While earlier versions look good at first glance, when compared with the Criterion version, it is clear that lots of detail was sacrificed in earlier transfers that smoothed out the original film’s grain.  The Criterion restoration, which incidentally includes both the original Japanese version and the American release that stars Raymond Burr, does an excellent job of retaining the original film’s grain and the result is much more detail, something that is especially evident in the night scenes.  The cost for this detail is the fact that some small scratches remain visible, but they are a very small price to pay for what is a major improvement over any previous home entertainment release of this original kaiju film.

 

 

The top-selling release this week will probably be Real Steel (Disney, “PG-13,” $29.98, BD/DVD Combo $39.99), an action film starring Hugh Jackman set in a future where robot combats have taken over the role of prizefighting in today’s world.  Jackman plays an ex-fighter who cobbles together a fighting machine from spare parts in a film, which, in spite of its predictable plot, earned $85 million at the domestic box office and nearly $300 million worldwide.

 

The “found footage” horror movie Paranormal Activity 3 (Paramount, “R” $26.99, BD/Combo $44.99), is a leaner and scarier prequel that lays bare the diabolical entity that plagued the sisters Katie and Kristi in the first Paranormal Activity film.  Don’t expect any great acting from PA3, but there are plenty of thrills and chills.  Produced for just $5 million, PA3 earned $104 million at the box office, and helped sustain the theatrical franchise that has remade the look (and subject matter) of the contemporary horror film.

 

The comedy/drama 50/50 (Summit Entertainment, “R,” $26.99, BD $30.99) stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a young man afflicted with cancer, who tries to cope with his condition with the help of his best friend played by Seth Rogen.  There’s enough humor here to keep the film from degenerating into a “TV movie of the week,” but there’s also a “cheese” factor at work as sentimentality occasionally intrudes on the proceedings, but in general this is a comedy with considerably more substance that most of Hollywood’s “R” rated gross-out humorfests.

 

The Whistleblower (Fox, “R,” $22.98, BD $29.99) is a gritty movie about sex trafficking in Bosnia in the wake of the ethnic conflicts in the Balkans.  It features a strong performance from Rachel Weisz and earned a 74% positive rating from Rotten Tomatoes, but its grim, unrelenting subject matter did not find favor with audiences.  The film earned a mere $1.1 million at the domestic box office, and its appeal would appear to be confined to the more masochistic portions of the art house crowd.

 

 

The top TV release for geeks is Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Season 1 (Universal, 1166, $24.98), which includes all 21 first season episodes featuring Gil Gerard as the classic comic strip science fiction hero.  Guest stars in Season One, which aired from 1979-1980 (and suffered in terms of “big hair” and shoulder pads because of it), included Jamie Lee Curtis and Julie Newmar.

 

The bestselling TV on DVD release this week will likely be Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns: Season 4 (Lionsgate, 440 min., $29.98), which includes episodes 61 to 80 of the popular sitcom that airs on the TBS network.

 

The lone animated TV release is Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated: Season 1, Part 2 (Warner Bros, $19.98), a two-disc set that includes 14 episodes of the eleventh incarnation of Hanna-Barbera’s Scooby-Doo property, and the first that wasn’t aired first on Saturday mornings.

 

Classic TV offerings this week include Mike Connors as hardboiled detective in Mannix: The Sixth Season (Paramount, 1214 min., $49.99), and Kojak: The Complete Movie Collection (Shout Factory, 800 min., $34.93), which contains all seven TV movies starring Telly Savalas as Kojak on four discs.

 

 

The Blu-ray revolution continues to make major inroads in the world of anime.  This week’s top two releases are debuting in North America in the high def format.  The top release is Fairy Tale Part 3 (Funimation, “14+,” 300 min., $54.98), which contains episodes 25-36 of the ongoing series, which is based on Hiro Mashima’s popular manga (published here by Kodansha).  The Fairy Tale anime, which looks superb in the hi-def format, has reached well over 100 episodes in Japan in an era when new long-running anime series are few and far between.

 

The World God Only Knows (Sentai Filmworks, “14+,” 300 min., $69.98) also debuts on Blu-ray on Tuesday.  The disc contains all 12 episodes of the anime from Manglobe that is based on the shonen manga series by Tamiki Wakaki that appeared in Japan in 2010.

 

Also new on Blu-ray, though it was released on conventional DVD last January, is Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom (Funimation, “17+,” 650 min., $74.98), which contains all 26 episodes of the 2009 anime series from Bee Train based on the action/drama/romance visual novel created by Nitroplus.

 

Other releases this week include Blue Exorcist Vol.2 (Aniplex, “13+,” 175 min., $39.95), which contains episodes 8-13 of the anime series from A-1 Pictures based on the very popular shonen manga series by Kazue Kato (published here by Viz Media), and the bargain-priced Tenchi Muyo GXP Complete Series (Funimation, “13+,” 650 min., $29.98).