This week’s home entertainment offerings include Disney’s mega-smash animated hit Frozen, Frank Miller’s stylized Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, the self-aware comedy sequel 22 Jump Street, anime Grandmaster Hayao Miyazaki’s final masterpiece The Wind Rises, and for the first time on DVD, the complete Nash Bridges TV series.
 
Theatrical Movies
 
This week’s biggest release (and potentially the biggest DVD/BD release of the year) is the Disney animated feature film Frozen (Disney, “PG,” 102 min., $29.99, BD/Combo $44.99), which earned over $400 million at the domestic box office.  Inspired by “The Snow Queen” by Hans Christian Anderson, Frozen is heavy on musical numbers and will appeal to girls more than boys, but, that said, Frozen is one of the most successful “family” films of the past decade.
 
On the other end of the “raunch spectrum” is the R-rated comedy sequel 22 Jump Street (Sony, “R,” $30.99, BD 40.99), which reunites Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill in sequel that derives much of its humor from the fact that it is a “sequel” that makes merciless fun of other sequels that simply recycle the elements of a popular film to create another moneymaking vehicle.  If you enjoy a mix of raunchy, situational humor and clever “meta” references, this smart, self-aware film is your cup of tea.
 
Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For was an out-and-out bomb that earned just $13.5 million, earned less than 20% of the first Sin City film brought in back in 2005 ($74.1 million).  There is no doubt that Frank Miller’s neo-noir saga works better on the page than it does in the hyper-realistic world of the movies where the “graphic look” the filmmakers used rubs mainstream audiences the wrong way, but that said, comic book fans will get a thrill from this hyper-stylized film, which, while not as striking and fresh as the original 2005 Sin City, is better than its dismal box office performance would indicate.
 
The rest of this week’s theatrical offerings are not nearly as interesting.  If I Stay (MGM, “PG-13,” 106 min., $29.98, BD $39.98) stars Chloe Grace Moretz (Hit Girl) in a teen-targeting weepie based on a YA novel by Gayle Forman, that is about as mawkish a film that has been released in the past decade. 
 
Equally disappointing are the “found footage” disaster film Into the Storm (Warner Bros., “PG-13,” 89 min., $28.98, BD $35.99), which could manage only a 21% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and the geriatric-skewing And So It Goes (Fox, “PG-13,” $22.98, BD $29.99), which stars Michael Douglas as an old curmudgeon who is forced to take care of his ten-year-old granddaughter with all too predictable results.
 
Anime
 
This week’s top release is The Wind Rises (Disney, “PG-13,” 135 min., $29.99, $36.99), the final film in the illustrious career of anime grandmaster Hayao Miyazaki.  The Wind Rises is an animated biography of the man who designed the Japanese Zero, and as such has created some controversy, but at its heart this is a film about man’s desire to fly and to overcome his limitations, gravitational and emotional.  The Wind Rises is a major departure from such classics as Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service in that it tells an adult story rather than animating children’s literature.  Younger kids will find the film too adult in its theme and narrative, but the rest of us can only marvel at a the superb artistry involved in every aspect of this superb hand drawn animated feature, which is a welcome relief in this age of 3-D computer-animated cartoons with their doll-like “puppet-toon” conical characters. 
 
Also due on Tuesday are the first U.S. Blu-ray editions of two classic Miyazaki films, the powerful ecological fable Princess Mononoke (Disney, “PG-13,” BD $36.99), and the thoroughly delightful magical girl saga Kiki’s Delivery Service (Disney, “G,” 105 min., BD $36.99).
 
Another key anime release is A Certain Magical Index: Season 1 Collection (Funimation, 600 min., BD/DVD Combo $49.98), which includes all 24 first season episodes of the 2008 TV anime created by J.C. Staff and based on the action-packed fantasy/science fiction light novels by Kazuma Kamachi.
 
Funimation’s other major anime offering this week is One Piece: Season Six: Voyage 2 (Funimation, 300 min., $39.98), which includes the popular “Thriller Bark” story arc.  One Piece remains a major anime hit in Japan, and fans will find Season Six much to their liking.
 
Also new on disc (though it did air on Crunchyroll) is the I Couldn’t Become a Hero, So I Reluctantly Decided to Get a Job Complete Collection (Sentai Filmworks, Subtitles only, 325 min., $49.98, BD $59.98), which collects all 12 episodes plus an OVA created by Asread in 2013 and based on the light novel series by Jun Sakyou that adds a delightful demonic touch to a typical harem comedy narrative.
 
Sentai is also releasing a Blu-ray edition of the Tari Tari Complete Collection (Sentai Filmworks, 325 min., $49.99), which was previously released on DVD in 2012.
 
 
TV on DVD
 
Animated offerings dominate this week’s TV on DVD releases led by Young Justice, Season 2: Invasion (Warner Bros., 440 min., BD $29.99), which is now available in a sparkling Blu-ray edition that does right by the well-produced series about the younger heroes in the DC Universe.  Season 2, which aired in 2012 and 2013, takes place five years after the show’s first season and is much darker in tone.  Fans of DC Comics’ many animated TV series will want to acquire this set, which is now available at a very reasonable price.
 
Other TV animated offerings include Mike Judge’s groundbreaking King of the Hill: The Complete 7th Season (Olive Films, 529 min., $34.95) and King of the Hill: The Complete 8th Season (Olive Films, 493 min., $34.95), plus the Robot Chicken: Christmas Specials (Warner Bros., 55 min., $14.97), which collects the six “Christmas specials” produced for the edgy Adult Swim series.
 
Other holiday releases include Power Rangers Megaforce, Season 1, Vol. 6: Robo Knight Before Christmas (Lionsgate, 92 min., $14.97), which collects the holiday episodes from the twentieth season of the long running live action kids’ adventure series.
 
This week’s top release for many will be Nash Bridges: The Complete Collection (VEI, 3600 min., $149.98), which includes all 122 episodes of the San Francisco-set police procedural starring Don Johnson and Cheech Marin.  Nash Bridges was Don Johnson’s popular follow-up series to Miami Vice, and only the first two seasons of the six-year series have been released on DVD before.
 
Other vintage series due out on Tuesday include the Rock Hudson/Susan St. James mystery series McMillan and Wife: The Complete Series (VEI, 4350 min., $49.99), and the Leonard Nimoy-narrated documentary series, In Search Of…: The Complete Series (VEI, 3228 min., $24.99).
 
The major UK series debuting Stateside this week is elaborately-produced costume drama The Paradise: Season 2 (BBC, 464 min., $39.98, BD $44.98), a literate adaptation of Emile Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames that was co-produced by BBC Worldwide and Masterpiece.
 
One of the more interesting TV cultural documentaries of 2014 is also due out on Tuesday.  How to Look at a Painting (Acorn Media, 278 min., $49.99) is a two-disc set that anyone who is interested in art (including comic book art) will find interesting as museum curator Justin Paton provides a fresh perspective as he visits museums to point out key features of the seminal works that have spawned the major movements in Western art.  In addition to the 12 episodes of the original series, this set also includes “What is Beauty?”, an hour-long documentary that explores the concept of “beauty” in the visual arts.
 
--Tom Flinn
 
The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect those of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.