This week’s home entertainment offerings include Pixar’s innovative and highly original animated film Inside Out, the raunchy sequel/remake of National Lampoon’s Vacation, the DVD debut of the latest Doctor Who series, the second season of the stylish pirate epic Black Sails, and visually brilliant re-mastering of the original Gundam anime series.

Theatrical Movies

This week’s top release is Pixar’s Inside Out (Disney, “PG,” 120 min., $29.99, BD/DVD $39.99, 3DBD $39.98), the most popular animated film of the past summer here in North America (Minions has it beat worldwide) as well as the most innovative and original animated film of the past few years.  The story is simple, an 11-year-old girl moves from Minnesota to San Francisco and has trouble adjusting.  Director Pete Doctor takes us inside Riley’s head to view the tug of war between her conflicting emotions in a film that zeroes in on how we cope with the events and upheavals of everyday life.  Inside Out provides kids (and adults) with a perspective on our inner struggles that is far more sophisticated and useful than one would expect from an animated (or any other kind of) film.  It is not hard to understand how this highly original, groundbreaking animated film earned a sterling 98% positive rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

Also due on Tuesday is Vacation (Warner Bros., “R,” 99 min., $28.48, BD $44.95), a remake/sequel to the Harold Ramis-helmed 1983 comedy National Lampoon’s Vacation.  The new film features Ed Helms as Rusty Griswold, the son of the put-upon middle class dad played by Chevy Chase in the 1983 film.  The remake is funny, but it gets most of its humor from raunchy, sex-themed jokes.  The 1983 film had a few risqué moments, but the 2015 version is pretty much nothing else.  Still it is funnier than its lowly 26% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes would suggest. Those who enjoy raunchy “R” rated comedies won’t be disappointed in Vacation, but this is definitely not one for the kids.

For art movie lovers there is The End of the Tour (Lionsgate “R,” 106 min., $19.98, BD $24.99), which stars Jason Segel as novelist David Foster Wallace, whose most famous work, the 1996 novel Infinite Jest, captured turn-of-the-century angst about as well as any work in any medium.  Jesse Eisenberg plays journalist David Lipsky, who interviewed Wallace over a five day road trip, but The End of the Tour belongs to Segel, who, forsaking his usual comic antics, gives a powerful performance as he lays bare both the talent and the torment that infused Wallace’s work.

Peter Bogdanovich has directed several films of major interest including The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon, but his periodic attempts to revive the screwball comedy in films like What’s Up Doc in 1972 and the 2015 film She’s Funny That Way (Lionsgate, “R,” 93 min., $19.98, BD $19.98) have been less than successful.  Perhaps comedy is just too closely tied to the zeitgeist of a particular period, or perhaps Bogdanovich is not the right avatar to bring back the spirit of Howard Hawks or Preston Sturges?   Though She’s Funny That Way, which stars Jennifer Anniston, Owen Wilson, and Imogene Poots, only received a 38% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, fans of old school comedy should check it out, though it is far from a complete success, it is more enjoyable than its rating suggests.

The best documentary of the week is The Best of Enemies (Magnolia, “R,” 89 min., $26.98, BD $29.98), which chronicles the 10 debates held on the ABC TV network during the political conventions in 1968 that pitted the conservative editor of The National Review William Buckley against the liberal novelist Gore Vidal.  While the intellectual heft of the conversations between Vidal and Buckley dwarfs the drivel we get today in our Presidential debates, they also demonstrate conclusively that there was plenty of vitriol between liberals and conservatives back in 1968, even if politics were not nearly as polarized as they are now.  The difference is that today there are very few moderates who can make it through the ideologically-driven primary process today and get into positions of power, so that we are increasingly left with “pure” liberals on one side and “true” conservatives on the other.  So while back in 1968 Buckley and Vidal represented the “extremes” of right and left, with the politicians of both parties mostly somewhere in the center between their positions, today the ideological divide between the two parties is as stark, sharp, and nasty as the confrontation between Vidal and Buckley.

TV on DVD

This week’s top release is Doctor Who: The 9th Series, Part 1 (BBC, 300 min., $24.98, BD $29.98), which includes the first half of the second series featuring Peter Capaldi, the twelfth and current incarnation of the BBC Time Lord. 

Another genre compilation of great interest is Black Sails: The Complete Second Season (Starz, 450 min., $49.98, BD $59.98), which collects the swashbuckling second season of the Starz pirate series that is sort of a prequel to Robert Lewis Stevenson’s classic Treasure Island.

Also of great interest to those comic book fans who didn’t buy the complete series, is Batman: The Complete 3rd Season (Warner Bros., 650 min., $39.98), which collects the final season of the campy 1960s Caped Crusader series.  It has taken a long time to get this series on disc, and there is no doubt that Warner Bros. has done a solid job of restoring the Batman series’ potent comic book-influenced color schemes.

As the holidays approach the number of “Complete Series” releases increases, and many are festooned with elaborate packaging gimmicks like The Empire: The Complete First Season—Gold Record Edition (Fox, 528 min., BD $59.99), or the metal-clad Game of Thrones: Complete First Season Steelbook (HBO, $79.98) and Game of Thrones: Complete Second Season Steelbook (HBO, BD $79.98), or the unadorned Californication: The Complete Series (Paramount, $84.98), the classic I Love Lucy: The Complete Series (Paramount, 5398 min., $79.98), and That Seventies Show: The Complete Series (Mill Creek, 4700 min., BD $149.98).

Geek viewers will be happy to see that the original Star Trek series is finally available in an affordable collection—though alas, Star Trek—The Complete Series: Remastered Edition (Paramount, $79.98), is in DVD only and not on BD where the remastered visuals shine even brighter.  Maybe next year?

Other contemporary shows available on Tuesday include Getting On: Season 2 (HBO, $39.98, BD $49.98), which includes the second 6-episode season of the U.S. series starring Laurie Metcalf that is based on the U.K. series of the same name, and is set in the ECU of a seedy, second-rate hospital.

Vintage releases include a new edition of the fantasy miniseries The 10th Kingdom: 15th Anniversary Edition (Mill Creek, 447 min., $24.98), which collects the entire miniseries that cost a hefty $44 million, and aired on NBC in 2000, plus a single-disc DVD-R Q-Bert: The Best of Q-Bert (Sony, 195 min., $26.99), which collects some of the arcade game-based Q’Bert cartoon segments that were produced by Ruby-Spears in 1983-1984 and included in CBS’s Saturday Supercade cartoon collections.

Anime

This week’s top release is actually a beautifully re-mastered edition of the very first Gundam series, Mobile Suit Gundam: Collection 1 (Right Stuf, 525 min., $59.98, BD $74.99), which includes the first 21 episodes of the classic 43-episode anime series from 1979 that was created and directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino.  The new edition was mastered from a 35mm print of exceptional quality and the results are a “must have” item for mecha fans.  Also due on Tuesday is the Turn A Gundam: The Movies Collection (Right Stuf, 257 min., Subtitles Only, $49.99), which collects the 2002 movies Turn A Gundam: Earth Light and Turn A Gundam II: Moonlight Butterfly, both of which were compiled from the 50-episode 1999-2000 Turn A Gundam series, which was also directed by Tomino and produced by Sunrise Animation.  These compilation movies have never been here in North America before, though Right Stuf released the complete Turn A Gundam series this summer.

Also of great interest is Fairy Tail: Collection 5 (Funimation, 600 min., BD/DVD Combo $54.98), which contains episodes 97 to 120 of the fantasy/adventure anime series based on the manga by Hiro Mashima.  The ongoing D&D-influenced Fairy Tail anime series is produced by Satelight and has reached 259 episodes in Japan.  The Fairy Tail Collections contain episodes that have been previously released in 12-episode collections (at a much greater per-episode cost).

Other new anime releases this week include the Glasslip Complete Collection (Sentai Filmworks, 325 min., Subtitles Only, $49.98, BD $59.98), which includes all 13 episodes of the 2014 slice-of-life/romance anime series produced by P.A. Works and directed by Junji Nishimura, the Umi Monogatori Complete Collection (Right Stuff, 300 min., Subtitles Only $39.98), a 12-episode 2009 series directed by Junichi Sato (Sailor Moon) that is based on a popular pachinko game, and the Hidamara Sketch x Honeycomb Complete Collection (Sentai Filmworks, 300 min., Subtitles Only, $49.98), which collects the fourth anime season (from 2012) based on the 4-panel comic strip by Ume Aoki.

Re-priced re-releases include the mecha-heavy Fafner TV & Movie Complete Collection (Funimation, $24.98, BD $29.98), the He Is My Master Complete Collection (Sentai Filmworks, 300 min., Subtitles Only, $29.98), which was released in 2012 at $49.98, and the Blessing of the Campanelia: Complete Collection (Right Stuf, 300 min., Subtitles Only, $34.98), which was previously available at $49.98.