It’s hard to pin down which category has the best bets this week as the gems are spread out.  The latest Mystery Science Fiction Theater compilation leads a strong TV category, while the second Gamera movie and a sneaky smart Danish film noir top “Foreign Films,” and the episodic new Gogol 13 anime marks a return to the narrative values, if not the style, of old school anime.

 

TV on DVD

 

Mystery Science Fiction Theater is the epitome of the “cult” TV series, and fans will rejoice in the release of MSFT 3000: XVIII (Shout Factory, 400 min., $59.97).  The bad movies that get the satiric MSFT commentary treatment in this 4-disc set are Lost Continent, Crash of the Moons, The Beast of Yucca Flats, and Jack Frost, plus a number of shorts including a priceless episode of General Hospital.

 

White Collar (Fox, 600 min., $59.98, BD $69.99), the USA crime series about the strange alliance between a reformed con man and an FBI agent, debuts on both Blu-ray and DVD.  A new set from another USA series, Psych: The Complete 4th Season (Universal, 660 min., $59.95), stars James Roday and Dule Hill as a couple of irreverent young investigators. 

 

Also out this week is Saturday Night Live: The Best of Will Ferrell (Lionsgate, 144 min., $14.98), which adds more than 30 minutes of new material to the previously released compilation of the best stuff from SNL’s top funny man of the modern era, and Saturday night Live: The Best of Tracy Morgan (Lionsgate, 128 min., $14.98), which features more than 25 minutes of all new bits. 

 

Vintage series releasing on Tuesday include The Lucy Show: The Official Second Season (Paramount, 741 min., $39.98), and Street Hawk (Shout Factory, 690 min., $39.97), which collects the entire short-lived 1980s series about a cop with a top secret all-terrain motorcycle tricked out to fight urban crime.

 

The best offering from the U.K. this week is the 3-disc documentary World War I in Color (Acorn Media, 284 min., $59.99).  Narrated by Kenneth Branagh, this series features computer-colored archival footage as well as interviews with surviving veterans of the Great War.  While the colorizing of movies created in black-and-white is an abomination, when it comes to a documentary like this the effect is to add life and realism to the archival footage.  Of all the modern wars, World War I, in which an estimated $10 million fighting men were killed, was certainly the most horrible conflict for the soldiers involved, who were forced to go over the top in the face of withering machine gun fire or remain in muddy trenches under huge artillery bombardment and endure poison gas attacks.  This series, which features lots of rarely seen historic footage, portrays the horrors of the conflict along with detailing the technological advances (planes, tanks, flame-throwers, submarines) that have shaped modern warfare.

 

Selling Hitler (Acorn Media, 256 min., $39.99) is a five-episode mini-series based on the true story of a modern-day publishing fiasco in which the German magazine Stern purchased a “Hitler” diary created by a small time forger.  This black comedy has an excellent cast including Tom Baker (Doctor Who), Barry Humphries (Dame Edith), Jonathan Pryce (Pirates of the Caribbean), Alexei Sayle (The Young Ones) and Alan Bennett (Beyond the Fringe).

 

Animated “TV on DVD” releases include The Super Hero Squad: Quest for the Infinite Sword Vol. 1 (Shout Factory, 300 min., $14.97), the first release of the Marvel Animation/Film Roman series based on the Hasbro line of “super-deformed” cartoonish toy replicas of the key Marvel superheroes.  Thanks to exposure on the Cartoon Network, this series, which debuted in September of 2009, has developed a following among younger viewers.  Hasbro has produced 20 waves of Super Hero Squad toys.  Also out this week is the one-disc Spongebob Squarepants: Triton’s Revenge (Nickelodeon, 89 min., $16.99).

 

Foreign Films

 

The second Gamera movie, Gamera vs. Barugon (Shout Factory, Unrated, $19.99) was produced by Daiei in 1966.  It’s hard to overstate what an excellent job Shout Factory has done in producing this new DVD edition, which comes complete with a full color 12-page booklet and a superb inside-the-case cutaway drawing of the giant spinning turtle.  Gamera vs. Barugon was the first film in the series to be produced in color, and the color (including Barugon’s purple blood and Rainbow Ray) comes through perfectly in the new hi-def anamorphic transfer.  The plot of this kaiju classic features two villains, the greedy human Onodera, and Barugon, the monster who awakens every 1,000 years and wreaks havoc with his freezing vapor spray and powerful rainbow ray.  The monster battles between Gamera and Barugon are clearly worth the price of admission on this classic.

 

Terribly Happy (Oscilloscope, Not Rated, $29.99) is a Danish film noir/dark comedy about a Copenhagen cop exiled to an isolated village in boggy South Jutland.  Viewers who enjoy Hitchock and Coen Brothers movies should check out this clever Danish film where nothing turns out to be exactly what it seems at first.

 

Two of master Japanese filmmaker Yasuhiro Ozu's best early films including his first sound film, The Only Son and the 1942 There Was A Father (Criterion, not rated, $39.95) are now available in a single package.  They explore various aspects of this most "Japanese" of director's central themes, the bonds and obligations of parents and children.

 

Anime

 

The top release this week is Golgo 13 (Sentai Filmworks, “13+,” 325 min., $59.98), which contains the first 13 installments of the 50-episode TV anime based on Takao Saito’s 1970s seinen manga series about a professional assassin.  With its mature characters (no high school kids here) and emphasis on suspense rather than all-out action, this 2008-2009 series recalls “old school” anime, although its gritty real world look is thoroughly modern.

 

The rest of this week’s releases with the exception of the single-disc Naruto Shippuden Vol. 11 (Viz Media, “13+,” 125 min., $24.92) are all re-priced re-releases including the retro 009-1 Complete Series (Funimation, “17+,” 325 min., $19.98); the Viridian Collection edition of Black Cat: The Complete Series (Funimation, “13+,” 575 min., $39.98); the Desert Punk: Complete Collection (Funimation, “17+,” 560 min., $39.98); the Magikano Complete Collection (Funimation, “14,” 325 min., $19.98); and the popular Gonzo series Romeo x Juliet: The Complete Series (Funimation, “13,” 580 min., $59.98).

 

Theatrical Films

 

The Bounty Hunter (Sony, “PG-13,” $28.95, BD $38.96), which stars the immensely likable Jennifer Anniston and Gerard Butler, was universally despised by the critics (only 9% positive on Rotten Tomatoes), but the film still made $136 million at the worldwide box office. 

 

A better bet for discerning moviegoers is Noah (The Squid and the Whale) Baumbach’s Greenberg ( Focus, “R”  $29.98, BD $39.98) , which stars Ben Stiller in a masterful performance as a prickly and damaged forty-something, who may not be as smart as he thinks he is, but is still more intelligent (and neurotic) than 99% of the characters in American movies.

 

Of somewhat lesser interest are Our Family Wedding (Fox, “PG-13,” $29.99, BD $39.99), which features a great cast in a culture clash/family blending saga that can’t avoid the clichés of the genre, and Chloe (Sony, “R,” $27.96, BD $34.95), another film with a solid cast (Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore, Amanda Seyfried) that can’t overcome a weak script.