There are some very interesting home video releases this week including the DC Comics-based The Losers, which got short shrift at the box office, though it deserved a better fate, as did Kevin Smith’s Cop Out, which really benefits from a Blu-ray presentation with “Maximum Comedy Mode.”  There are also plenty of deserving TV releases you may never have heard about including Being Human, a BBC series about a ghost, a vampire and werewolf, Desperate Romantics, a biopic mini-series about the Pre-Raphaelities, a Blu-ray edition of SyFy’s Tin Man, and a great TV movie starring Julia Ormond—and then there's also the anime version of the bestselling shojo manga in the U.S. debuting on disc this week.

 

Theatrical Releases

 

After several weeks in the shadows this category steps to the fore thanks to the release of The Losers (Warner Bros., “R,” $28.98, BD/Combo $35.99), an adaptation of Andy Diggle’s Vertigo series about a CIA Black Ops team that is targeted for assassination, but escapes to wreak their revenge.  Well-acted by a solid cast that includes Jeffery Dean Morgan, Zoe Saldana, and Idris Elba, The Losers is not to everyone’s taste—it’s too loud and too violent for many, but it also mines a deep vein of black humor, and deserved a better fate than it received at the box office, where it earned just $23 million domestically.  Perhaps it will reach the action film audience it deserves on DVD.  Comic fans should definitely give it a chance, The Losers is certainly not a cinematic dog’s breakfast like Warner’s other 2010 DC Comics-based summer release, Jonah Hex.

 

Also of interest this week is Cop Out (Warner Bros., “R,” $28.98, BD/Combo Pack $35.98), the latest film from director Kevin Smith (Clerks), and the first that Smith has directed, but not written.  Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan play Brooklyn cop buddies, whose personal plans take a detour when a valuable baseball card, that Willis plans to use to finance his daughter’s expensive weapon, is stolen by a hapless thief (Seann William Scott), who is into “parkour” and taking dumps in the houses he robs.  Critics had a hard time with the film’s mixture of violence and humor as well as with the ways in which it recycled cop buddy movie clichés, but there are some real laughs here, and the Blu-ray edition not only includes a regular DVD of the film, it also sports a new “Maximum Comedy Mode,” a looser, funnier version of Maximum Movie Mode that Warners pioneered with the Watchmen Blu-ray.  Seann William Scott and Smith (sometimes in triplicate) appear on screen to discuss the film in the Max Mode, and the BD version also includes 40 minutes of deleted scenes.

 

The Runaways (Sony, “R,”  $27.96, BD $34.99), which is not to be confused with the Marvel comic, is a better than average musical biopic about the groundbreaking 1970s all-girl rock band starring Dakota Fanning as lead singer Cherie Currie and Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett.

 

TV on DVD

 

Once again the top releases in this category are from the U.K. headed by Being Human (BBC Video, 345 min., $34.98), which is also available in Blu-ray ($39.98), a witty supernatural series about 3 twenty-somethings who lead double lives as a werewolf, a vampire, and a ghost.  With the success of Twilight, True Blood, and other such series, fans of this sort of supernatural fiction will find much to like in Being Human, which is shown on BBC America. 

 

Equally interesting is Desperate Romantics (BBC, $29.98), a series based on the biographies of the leading Pre-Raphaelite painters of the mid-19th Century.  “Entourage with easels” is the capsule description of this series, which chronicles the tangled love lives of the young artists who scandalized Victorian England where they developed a devoted Bohemian following with their paintings and poetry that harkened back to the pre-industrial era.

 

Other U.K. series include Look Around You (BBC, 71 min, $24.98), a parody of a 1970s school science series filled with deadpan presentations of features about igloo-building ants, whistling ghosts, telephone calls from a brain and the like.  Also out this week is Trinity: The Complete First Season (Eagle Rock, 369 min., $29.93), which is set in an exclusive English university that is finally opening its doors to “regular” students.

 

The top U.S. release (at least from a commercial prospective) is a deluxe 2-disc Blu-ray edition of the Emmy Award-winning mini-series Tin Man (RHI, 270 min., $19.97), a re-imagining and continuation of the Wizard of Oz saga that appeared on the Sci-Fi Channel and was the highest rated miniseries of 2007.  Also interesting is the latest release from the cult favorite DeGrassi High series, DeGrassi: The Next Generation: Season 9 (Echo Bridge, $26.98). 

 

But the best U.S. made for TV release of the week is The Wronged Man (Sony, 89 min., $24.96) a TV movie directed by Tom McLaughlin that aired on the Lifetime cable channel.  Like the hugely popular The Blindside, The Wronged Man is the story of a white woman from the South who helps a deserving black man who is a stranger to her, but in this case it’s a man falsely accused of raping a special needs child instead of a football player with pro potential who is the recipient of much needed aid, and therein lies the difference between a blockbuster and a film that will likely be mostly ignored in spite of its considerable merits.  Julia Ormand gives a nuanced and powerful performance as a Louisiana paralegal who is cleaning out her dead boss’ office when she comes across the case of Gordon Willis (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali), who has been convicted on very flimsy evidence of raping an 11-year-old girl.  It takes more than 20 years of determined effort to get Willis freed, and The Wronged Man manages to chronicle this true story dispassionately and avoid the clichés of this type of "falsely-accused genre," while demonstrating the kind of damage than can be wrought by false accusations of child abuse.

 

Debuting series this week include the sleazy “reality” show, Jersey Shore: Season 1 (MTV, 487 min., $19.97), and the animated Cartoon Network series, Courage the Cowardly Dog: Season 1 (Warner Bros., 286 min. $24.98), which is set in “the middle of nowhere" (i.e. Kansas).   Lots of creepy doings occur in this quirky show, which is full of allusions to all sorts of horror and cult films.

 

Special mention should be made of My Boys: The Complete Second and Third Seasons (Sony, 378 min., $34.98), the TBS series about a tomboyish sportswriter that is one of the best written and wittiest sitcoms on American TV.  The Chicago setting is refreshing, the ensemble acting is strong, and Jordana Spiro is immensely likable as the show’s narrator and central character.

 

Also out this week is Gimme a Break: The Complete Series (Visual Entertainment, 3,200 minutes, $59.98), which includes all 137-episodes of the 1980s sitcom starring Nell Carter, Simon & Simon: Season 5 (Shout Factory, 1000 min., $49.98), a prime year for  the underrated 1980s primetime detective series, and Matlock: Season 5 (Paramount, 1023 min., $49.99), in which Andy Griffith portrayed a sort of geriatric, cornpone version of Perry Mason.

 

Anime

 

There are three Blu-ray releases this week including Rin: Daughter of Mnemosyne Complete Series (Funimation, “17+,” 300 min., $59.98), a six-episode tech-noir show about an immortal young female private investigator.  Created to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the AT-X cable and satellite network that shows some of the most adult anime series, Rin fully earns its age rating with plenty of erotic and grotesquely violent images.

 

Also out on Blu-ray this week is Legends of the Dark King Complete Collection (Sentai Filmworks, “17+,” 325 min., $69.98), a 13-episode series from Satelight that is based on a spin-off of the manga series Fist of the North Star by Youkow Osada.  Sentai released this post-apocalyptic series in September of 2009 without an English dub.  The new Blu-ray version and a new regular DVD version ($49.98) do feature English language dubs as well as the original Japanese track with English subtitles.

 

The other Blu-ray release is a 4-episode single-disk second volume of Kurokami (Bandai Entertainment, “13+,” 100 min., $24.98).  Sunrise created the 23-episode series based on the popular Japanese/Korean seinen manga series by Dall-Young Lim and Sung-Woo Park published in Japan by Square Enix and in the U.S. (as Black God) by Yen Press.

 

The other single-disc releases of note are Vampire Knight Vol.1 (Viz Media, “13+,” 90 min., $19.97), the first installment of the anime adaptation of the best-selling shojo manga series in the U.S., and Bleach Vol.30 (Viz Media, “13+,” 125 min., $24.92)., the latest release from the hugely successful anime based on the manga series by Tite Kubo.

 

One of the most interesting new releases is My Bride Is a Mermaid (Funimation, “14+,” 300 min., $49.98), which contains the first 13-episodes of a Gonzo series from 2007 based on a long running manga series by Tahiko Kimura.  While at first glance this saga about a boy who is saved from drowning by a mermaid and then forced to marry her appears to be right out of Rumiko Takahashi territory, the fact that the mermaid girl’s family are yakuza definitely adds several layers of quirkiness to this comedy, which turns out to be a whole lot more original than one might expect.

 

This week’s bargain re-priced anime releases include the S.A.V.E. edition of Air: The Movie (Funimation, “14+,” 90 min., $9.98) and the Viridian version of Shuffle! Complete Series (Funimation, “17+,” 600 min., $49.98).

 

Foreign Films

 

There are a couple of very interesting foreign film releases this week including Joon-ho Bung’s Mother (Magnolia Home Entertainment, “R,” $26.98, BD $29.98).  Just as Bung deconstructed the horror film with his highly original 2006 film, The Host, his Mother turns the conventions of the murder mystery on their head.  This study of extreme parental affection features ferocious performances and a smart shifting narrative.

 

Those who enjoy stop motion animation should check out A Town Called Panic (Zeitgeist, Not Rated, 75 min., $29.99), a 2009 Belgian film by Stephane Aubier and Vincent Patar.  This wildly surrealistic saga is based on a cult series from Belgian TV.  It features three toys who live together in a house.  When they decide to build a barbecue, they order 50 million bricks by mistake and hilarity ensues.  The stop-motion animation is fairly crude--more "Adult Swim" than Coraline--but it’s easy to see why this delightfully absurd series has developed a big following.

 

Classics

 

Those who enjoy vintage mysteries will want to check out Film Noir Classic Collection Vol. 5 (Warner Home Video, 683 minutes, $49.98).  The highlights of this set are Cornered (1945), a twisted postwar tale with fascist villains directed by Edward Dmytryk (Murder My Sweet) that comes complete with atmospheric noir photography by Harry J. Wild, Desperate (1947), a superb Anthony Mann-directed suspense saga about an innocent trucker who gets mixed up in a robbery and cop killing, The Phenix City Story, Phil Karlson’s 1955 documentary-style saga of the battle against gangsters entrenched in a small city, and Armored Car Robbery, a taut heist saga that turns into a battle of wits and wills between a gangster played by William Talman (Hamilton Burger on the Perry Mason TV series) and a cop portrayed by Charles McGraw.