Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol, which made nearly $700 million worldwide, leads this week’s home entertainment releases that also includes the second season of Treme, one of the very best series on American TV, and the brilliant documentary Frozen Planet.

 

 

The top release this week is Mission: Impossible--Ghost Protocol (Paramount, “PG-13,” $29.99, BD/Combo $44.99).  Director Brad Bird of Pixar fame helmed this Tom Cruise espionage thriller with more than enough style and flair to earn a 93% positive rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.  Utterly preposterous, but still riveting, this movie is a series of elaborate set pieces, each of which is pulled off with great precision and photographed with no-nonsense camerawork that never gets in the way or calls attention to itself unnecessarily.

 

Equally hard to dislike is Born to Be Wild (Warner Bros. “G,” $28.98, BD $44.98), a touching documentary narrated by Morgan Freeman about the dedicated wildlife experts who raise orphaned orangutans and elephants.  It is no surprise that this film received a stellar 98% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

 

This week’s other major release is the art house drama Shame (Fox, “NC-17” BD/Combo $39.99), the no-holds-barred saga of a sex addict whose life is spiraling out of control.  This is obviously not a movie for everyone, but it boasts two of the best performances of the year from Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan.

 

Genre movie fans will have to be satisfied with 7 Below (Arc Entertainment, “R,” $22.99, BD $26.99), a misfire starring Val Kilmer and Ving Rhames that went directly to DVD.  It’s one cliché after another in this saga of a group of strangers trapped in a “time warp” house where a horrible event occurred 100 years ago.

 

 

The top releases this week are Treme: The Complete Second Season (HBO, 660 min., $69.98, BD $79.98), the brilliant series that simultaneously celebrates the survival of New Orleans’ unique civic culture and exposes the corruption and despair in a city still far from recovered from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, and Frozen Planet: The Complete Series (BBC, 300 min., $49.98, BD $54.98), the spectacularly-photographed documentary about the Artic and the Antarctic from the team that created Planet Earth.  By all means get the Blu-ray of Frozen Planet, the cutting edge high-def photography deserves the BD format.

 

There are several excellent animated TV on DVD offerings including Ben 10: Ultimate Alien-Vol.5: Ultimate Ending (Warner Bros., 230 min., $19.97), a two-disc set that includes the final 10 episodes of the very popular, but often overlooked Cartoon Network series created by Man of Action. Also out this week are the latest collections of two prime time Fox series, American Dad: Vol. 7 (Fox, $39.98), and Bob’s Burger’s: Season 1 (Fox, 286 min., $29.98), which includes all 13-episodes of the e coli-spreading Sunday night series.

 

TV toons targeting younger viewers include Young Justice: Season 1, Vol. 1-3 (Warner Bros., 440 min., $19.98), the Cartoon Network series that features young versions of the great DC superheroes, and The Super Hero Squad Show: The Infinity Gauntlet, Vol. 3 (Shout Factory, 150 min., $14.93).

 

The best of the vintage TV releases is The Ernie Kovacs Show: The ABC Specials (Shout Factory, 145 min., $14.97), which includes five of the last eight comedy specials that Kovacs, one of the great TV comedy innovators, made during the last year of his life.  Other vintage releases include Eight is Enough: The Complete First Season (Warner Bros. $24.98), and in a more modern vein there is Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns: Season 5: Episodes 81-100 (Lionsgate, 440 min., $29.98).

 

There’s not much from outside the U.S. this week except for the first season of the Canadian series Murdoch Mysteries, a well-produced, turn-of-the-century crime drama from the dawn of the era of forensic investigation, which is coming out in a Blu-ray edition, Murdoch Mysteries: Season One (Acorn Media, 624 min., BD $59.99), and the long-running British comedy series Last of the Summer Wine: Vintage 1992 (BBC, $34.98).

 

 

It’s a light week for anime releases led by Heaven’s Lost Property Season 2 Complete Set Limited Edition (Funimation, “17+,” 300 min., $64.98), which collects the 12-episode Heaven’s Lost Property: Forte anime series that is as filled with fan service as any harem comedy in years. The other major release of the week is the single-disc Blue Exorcist Vol.3 (Aniplex of America, “13+,” 150 min., $37.48), which includes episodes 14-19 of the 25-episode 2011 anime series produced by A-1 Pictures and based on the popular manga series by Kazuo Kato.

 

The one re-priced release of the week is a S.A.V.E. edition of the Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle OVA Collection (Funimation, “14+,” 150 min., $19.98, BD $24.98).

 

--Tom Flinn

The opinions expressed in this column are soley those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.