Guillermo Del Toro’s stylish Pacific Rim leads this week’s home entertainment releases, which also include the final full season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the completely hilarious workplace sitcom The IT Crowd, and a stylish horror film from the 1950s starring a young Dennis Hopper that genre fans won’t want to miss.
 
Theatrical Movies
 
This week’s top release is Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim (Warner Bros., “PG-13,” $28.98, BD/DVD $35.99, BD 3-D $44.95), a sprawling science fiction/fantasy saga that pays elaborate homage to the works of Ichiro Honda (Godzilla) and Ray Harryhausen (20 Million Miles to Earth).  This mash-up of Japanese monster movies and mecha anime is not without its absurdities and is certainly not for everyone, but it was this reviewer’s favorite big budget summer movie of 2013.  There is no denying that Del Toro is a visual stylist of the first order, and though Pacific Rim has about as many over-the-top throwdown battles as any superhero film, the director manages to keep them interesting enough, and the scenes in between the conflicts are also visually interesting and well-choreographed.  The cast, which includes Charlie Hunnam, Rinko Kikuchi, Idris Elba are all good, while two nerdy scientists (Charlie Day and Burn Gorman) provide plenty of comic relief along with Del Toro regular Ron Perlman, who shines in a juicy role as a bootlegger of organs, bones, and parasites “liberated” from kaiju corpses.  In a sense what makes Pacific Rim work is Del Toro’s attention to detail, which is evident in the way he and co-screenwriter Travis Beacham posited a whole industry built around salvaging and selling kaiju remains.  Pacific Rim gets that right and a lot other things too, like humanity’s inability to stick with its Jaeger program, which is abandoned after a few signal failures in favor of the hopeless alternative of building giant seawalls to keep out the giant monsters, who rise from a rift in the Pacific Ocean.
 
The Blu-ray transfer is simply gorgeous with a symphony of colors and effects that erupt naturally.  Del Toro doesn’t go in for shaky camerawork or excessive lens flare, he just really knows how to frame a shot.  This is a film that deserves to be seen in Blu-ray, and the BD version comes with a full disc of extra features.  Because Pacific Rim cost 190 million to produce and only earned $101.7 million here in the U.S., many box office analysts declared the film a flop, but it made $305.8 million overseas so, though it won’t make its cost back theatrically, it came rather close and still has a chance to break even on disc, because if any of this past summer’s big budget movies deserves to attain cult status on disc, it is certainly Pacific Rim, the best cinematic thrill ride of the season.
 
Pacific Rim’s domestic box office total was definitely hurt by the intense competition this summer, and Del Toro’s film may not even be the bestselling disc released on Tuesday since it will have to compete with The Heat (Fox, “R,” $28.98, BD $39.99), this summer’s most popular raunchy “R” rated comedy, which starred the raucous Melissa McCarthy as a highly volatile Boston Police officer and Sandra Bullock as an uptight, by-the-book FBI agent.  The Heat is raw and crude with dialogue that definitely earns its “R” rating.  It’s not a movie for everyone, but those who like raunchy comedies, even those larded with predictable buddy cop clichés, will likely find The Heat to their liking.
 
Also due this week is the comedy concert film Kevin Hart—Let Me Explain (Summit, “Not Rated), $21.98, BD 29.99), which basically presents the audience with a chance to attend one of the comedian’s sold out Madison Square Garden shows.
 
TV on DVD
 
There are some very interesting TV on DVD releases this week including Vikings Season 1 (Fox, $49.98, BD $59.99), which collects the Irish/Canadian series that appears on the History Channel and is based on 13th Century tales about the Viking Chief Ragnar Lodbrok that were written 2-4 hundred years after the events they celebrate, which took place in the early Middle Ages.
 
Even better for those who enjoy rollicking comedy is The IT Crowd (MPI, S39.98), a superior workplace sitcom that takes place in the dingy basement of a giant mega-corporation where an IT support team consisting of an embittered slacker played by hot comic actor Chris O’Dowd, a socially-inept computer nerd played by Richard Ayoade, and a computer-illiterate boss (Katherine Parkinson) create all sorts of mayhem.  This show isn't “tee-hee” funny--it’s roll around on the floor convulsive fun.
 
Science fiction fans will be interested in Defiance Season One (Universal, 559 min., $59.98, BD $69.98), a gritty sci-fi series from Rockne O’Bannon (Farscape) and the producers of Battlestar Galactica.   Like Joss Whedon’s Firefly, Defiance is set on the frontiers of space and has an open-ended “western” vibe. 
 
For many geek viewers the top release in this category is Star Wars: The Clone Wars—The Complete Fifth Season (Warner Bros., 506 min., $44.98, BD $59.98), the final full season of the highly popular Star Wars animated series.  Many viewers feel that the Fifth Season of this series was the best, but Disney cancelled Clone Wars in favor of a new Star Wars: Rebels cartoon series set in a different Star Wars era that will debut in September of 2014.  Whatever the merits of the new series, it is clear that Darth Maul made the Fifth Season of Clone Wars one of the best. 
 
This week’s slate includes plenty of other animated TV shows including the innovative Nickelodeon series Rocko’s Modern Life: Season 4, The Final Season (Shout Factory, $19.98), the animated version of Bewitched: The Complete Series (Sony, 254 min., $55.99), the New Three Stooges: The Complete Cartoon Collection (Madacy Entertainment, 1,144 min., $29.98), which contains all 156 cartoons plus the 40 live-action sequences that went with them, the popular Nickelodeon series Hey Arnold!—Season 5: The Final Season (Shout Factory, 440 min., $19.93), plus a number of single-disc releases including The Smurfs: Smurftastic Journey (Warner Bros., 88 min., $9.97), Monsters vs. Aliens: The Series, Vol.1 Cloning Around (Fox, 176 min., $14.98), Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomenss, Vol.2: The Scorpion’s Sting (Fox, 154 min., $14.98), and the single-episode SpongeBob SquarePants: It’s a Sponge Bob Christmas (Nickelodeon, 22 min., $19.99).
 
Vintage TV series due on Tuesday include I Dream of Jeannie: The Complete Series (Sony, $45.99), which is now available at a very reasonable price for a massive 20-disc collection, The Partridge Family: The Complete Series (Sony, $45.99), and the ursine animal drama Gentle Ben: Season One (Paramount, 710 min., $29.98).
 
Releases from the UK (other than The IT Crowd), include a new improved 40th Anniversary Edition of The Pallisers (Acorn Media, 1,340 min. $99.99), which brings back one of the finest prestige miniseries of all time in a new edition with improved visuals as well as English subtitles, which definitely should help American viewers.  This groundbreaking series was produced in 1974 so the visual quality is not up to that of recent shows like Downton Abbey, but this version is likely to be the best we will see for quite a while.
 
Anime
 
It’s another strong week for anime releases starting with Eureka Seven: AO Part 2 (Funimation, “14+,” DVD/BD $64.98), which contains episodes 13-24 of the solid new Eureka SevenS AO series.  The sky-surfing aerial action continues as Earth is once again menaced by an alien threat.  Watch on Blu-ray to get the full effect.  Extras include commentaries on two episodes, subtitled promo videos, textless opening and closing songs, and the U.S. trailer.
 
Also due this week is One Piece Season 5 Part 3 (Funimation, “14+,” 300 min., $39.98), which includes episodes 288-299 of the long-running pirate anime series that remains one of the most popular anime and manga properties in Japan.
 
The Sword Art Online series is getting airplay on adult swim and Sword Art Online Box Set 3: Fairy Dance (Aniplex of America, “13+,” 125 min., $49.98, Ltd. BD $112.98) includes episodes 15-19 of the saga of an online video game that entraps its viewer.  The Limited Edition Blu-ray comes with a collectible (and playable) game card that can be used in Bushiroad’s increasing popular anime TCGs.
 
Also new this week is the Campione Complete Collection (Sentai Filmwork, “15+,” 325 min., $59.98, BD $69.98), which contains all 13 episodes of the supernatural action thriller about a teenage boy who gets stuck with the title of “God Slayer” and is forced to fight heretical gods whenever they appear.
 
This week’s prime re-release is Royal Space Force Honneamise (Maiden Japan, “15+,” 125 min., $29.98, BD $39.98), a classic Gainax saga about a group of astronaut cadets who overcome political and other obstacles to lead mankind into space.  This is the kind of adult, adventurous, complex narrative that won anime so many admirers among American fans.
 
Classics on Blu-ray
 
Curtis Harrington’s 1954 film Night Tide (Kino, “Not Rated,” $29.95) is a rather exceptional indy horror film starring Dennis Hopper as a naïve sailor who thinks that his new girlfriend, who works as a mermaid at a local attraction just might be a real mermaid and might just be driven to kill during the full moon.  Those who enjoy indy horror films like Carnival of Souls should definitely check out Night Tide.  Harrington was one of the most interesting stylists of the 1950s with a background in experimental cinema and a love for the unabashed pictorialism of Josef von Sternberg.  Night Tide has mood and ambiance galore, and Kino’s Blu-ray presents this black-and-white classic in the best possible light.  Yes there are a few scratches and every scene is not as sharp as it could be, but that is more likely due to the hassles of low budget filmmaking in the 1950s.  Horror film fans looking for a largely overlooked gem of 1950s horror should check out the new Blu-ray of Harrington’s Night Tide.