It’s a rare week indeed in which “Foreign Films” is our top category, but it’s hard to resist a chance to savor the original 1965 Gamera: The Giant Monster in a pristine new transfer, and there are other delights available as well including a chance to look at Dragon Ball Z in full 1080p hi-def, and a Blu-ray version of Battleship Potemkin, Sergei Eisenstein’s groundbreaking political film from 1925, a somewhat creaky classic, which nevertheless remains one of the most effective bits of cinematic agitprop ever created, plus an inexpensive collection of the complete The Greatest American Hero TV series.

 

Foreign Films

 

Great news for kaiju fans—Shout Factory has released the original Gamera: The Giant Monster (78 min., unrated, subtitled, $19.93), Noriaki Yuasa’s 1965 film that is available here in the States in its original form for the first time.  Produced by Daiei, the studio that brought you the Zatoichi series, the Gamera films were the only true rivals to Toho’s kaiju classics.  This superb new print taken from an all-new hi-def master looks stunning in a sharp wide screen black-and-white anamorphic transfer— a true must-have item for kaiju lovers.

 

The Indonesian film Jermal (Indiepix Films, Not Rated, 88 min., $24.95) presents an unsparing look at third world poverty that makes Slumdog Millionaire look like an episode of Dallas.  At times this story of a sensitive 12-year-old boy who is sent to a jermal, a fishing platform perched on log stilts in the middle of the ocean, after his mother dies, is almost unbearable.  Rejected by his father, who oversees the jermal, and relentlessly bullied by the other boys on the platform, the young Jaya somehow summons the strength to survive, and the film ends on a hopeful note, but this is far from a conventional happy ending or a conventional narrative.

 

Anime

 

The key anime release this week is Dragon Ball Z Kai (Funimation,13+, 325 min. $49.98, BD $54.98), the new streamlined high-def edition of the popular Dragon Ball Z martial arts comedy anime.  Not only has the material been cleaned up and superbly rendered in high definition so that it looks better than it ever did, the series itself was streamlined and stripped of filler so that it hews more closely to the narrative in Akira Toriyama’s DBZ manga.  The thirteen episodes in this set cover the same narrative territory as the first 30 episodes of the original DBZ series, which has been trimmed from 291 episodes to just 100 in the Dragon Ball Z Kai version.  Given the small price difference the Blu-ray edition is clearly the way to go, given the superb visual quality of hi-def transfer.  4Kids will begin broadcasting the hi-def DBZ Kai series on Saturday morning in the fall of 2010.

 

Another key new release this week is Eyeshield 21 Collection 1 (Sentai Filmworks, 13+, 325 min., $49.98), which is based on Riichiro Inagaki’s popular manga about the sport of American football (published here by Viz Media).  Although sports manga and anime have never gotten much traction here in the States, this is a saga that should have some resonance with football-crazed fans, and it did receive some exposure thanks to a short-lived deal with the NFL.

 

Media Blasters is releasing a new English dub version of the comedy anime series Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-Chan Special Edition (16+, 180 min., $29.99), which had previously been issued in a subtitles-only version.  Single-disc releases this week include Queen’s Blade Vol.1 (Media Blasters, 16+, 100 min., $24.99), a delightfully trashy sword and sorcery series, and the popular Naruto Shippuden Vol.9, (Viz Media, 13+, 125 min., $24.92), which is seen on the Disney XD cable channel.

 

A number of budget-priced releases are coming out on Tuesday including the Ah! My Buddha Complete Collection (Media Blasters, 13+, 650 min. $49.98), a 26-episode series from Studio Deen about a young monk whose superpowers are initiated only by lust, the Air TV Series Complete Collection (Funimation, 14+, 340 min., $19.98) from Kyoto Animation, and the xxxholic Complete Viridian Collection (Funimation, 13+, 600 min., $49.98) based on the manga from Clamp.

 

TV on DVD

 

Among the top TV on DVD offerings this week are a couple of animated series with impeccable comic strip pedigrees that were previously released on DVD by BCI, but are now available at a bargain basement price.  Defenders of the Earth (Mill Creek, 1380 min., $24.98) is a 65-episode series that debuted in 1986 and featured King Features heroes Flash Gordon, The Phantom, and Mandrake the Magician in a Saturday morning style kids’ animation series that spawned a short-lived comic book series from Marvel’s Star imprint and featured a theme song with lyrics by Stan Lee.  The Legend of Prince Valiant (Mill Creek, 1380 min., $24.98) is a 65-episode animated based on the comic strip created by Hal Foster that ran on the ABC Family Channel from 1991-1994. 

 

Mill Creek is also re-releasing another series with something of a cult following among comic book fans.  The Greatest American Hero: The Complete Series ($29.98) is a 9-disc set collecting the 1980’s superhero/comedy/drama that starred William Katt.  The complete series was previously released in a 13-disc collection by Anchor Bay, which was more expensive and undoubtedly of higher visual quality, but this is enjoyable series is certainly now a major bargain.

 

The one new American series debuting this week is The Jeff Dunham Show: The Complete Series (Comedy Central, 154 min., $16.99), the sketch comedy show that appeared on Comedy Central and was cancelled after one season not because of poor ratings, but because production costs for this hybrid series featuring stand-up comic Jeff Dunham were too high.

 

The first two seasons of the colorful British comedy-drama Minder (BFS, 542 min., $49.98 per season), which is set in the London underworld, are also due out.  This long-running series, which aired from 1979 to 1994, was responsible for putting the word “minder” as a synonym for “bodyguard” in the English lexicon.

 

Continuing series out on Tuesday include 21 Jump Street: The Complete Second Season (Mill Creek, 600 min., $14.98), The Barbara Stanwyck Show: Vol.2 (E1 Entertainment, 312 min., $29.98), the anthology drama series from 1961, California Dreams: Season 3 (Shout Factory, $29.99), a 3-disc, 17-episode collection of the NBC live-action Saturday morning show, Hunter: The Complete Second Season (Mill Creek, 600 min. $14.98), Law & Order: Criminal Intent: The 5th Year (Universal, $59.98),  and Relic Hunter: Season 2 (Alliance Home Entertainment, $25.99), the syndicated adventure series featuring Tia Carrere.

 

Theatrical Films

 

There are some interesting offerings in this category, but nothing is all that exciting among the better known movies.  The highest grossing film due out this week is the episodic romcom, Valentine’s Day (New Line, “PG-13,” $28.98, BD $35.99), which boasts a star-studded cast and managed to earn $110 million.  Oren Moverman’s somber Iraq War-themed Messenger (Oscilloscope, “R,” $29.99, BD $34.95) and Clint Eastwood’s inspiring rugby drama, Invictus (Warner Bros., “PG-13,” $28.98, BD $35.99) are the best reviewed new DVD releases with 91% and 77% positive Rotten Tomatoes ratings respectively.  All these are more interesting than Extraordinary Measures (Sony, “PG-13,” $28.95, BD $34.95), which wastes Harrison Ford in a made-for-TV movie-type plot and The Spy Next Door (Lionsgate, "PG," $29.95, BD $39.99), yet another Jackie Chan film where the outtakes are far better than the film itself.

 

Genre fans who savor the unconventional will have much more fun with Mark Young’s Southern Gothic, an “arthouse meets grindhouse” horror film that features a potent, balls-to-the-walls performances from William Forsythe (The Devil's Rejects) as a psychotic vampire preacher and a stoic turn from Yul Vasquez (American Gangster).  Director Mark Young has a good visual sense and an eye for telling details in the seedy motel room, strip club, and shotgun shack locations that root this dark fantasy in some semblance of red state reality.

 

Classics on Blu-ray

 

Kino’s Blu-ray version of Sergei Eisenstein’s landmark 1925 silent film Battleship Potemkin doesn’t match the visual quality of the same company’s BD of Buster Keaton’s The General, but in spite of copious scratches and uneven contrast (not surprising given the fact that this version has been put together from several different sources), this is far better than previous versions of the film on DVD, and likely to be the best version in our lifetime.  It also has Edmund Meisel’s excellent 1926 score rendered in superb DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and seamlessly expanded to service a slightly longer version of the film, which is presented in its original edit before cuts demanded by the German censors in 1926.  As is explained in a very enlightening 42-minute documentary, Eisenstein himself re-edited the film after the German-demanded cuts, which made the job of re-integrating the lost footage very difficult, since Eisenstein’s film is notable for the rhythmic precision of its montage.  It is interesting to see the restored titles (which look fantastic) that now include a quote from Leon Trotsky that was removed after Trotsky became a non-person in the Stalin era.