There are no really big DVD releases this week, but there are some solid anime offerings, some great U.K. TV shows, and a couple of interesting genre movies including the Grindhouse spin-off Machete, the mockumentary horror film The Last Exorcism, and the comedy Dinner With Schmucks.

 

Anime

 

There’s a compact, but nice selection of anime releases this week including the Gravitation Complete Collection (Right Stuf, 15+, 385 min., $59.99), which collects for the first time the entire 13-episode Gravitation TV series that aired in Japan in 2000-2001 and the Gravitation: Lyrics of Love OVA, which was produced in 1999.  Maki Murakami’s 12-volume manga series is the most popular shonen ai (boy’s love) series ever published in the U.S. with over a half-million copies of the Tokyopop series sold, and Gravitation, which takes place in the world of popular music, works even better on video thanks to its J-Pop soundtrack performed by Daisuke Asakura, Kenichi Ito, and Kappei Yamaguchi and great opening and closing themes from Yosuke Sakanoue, Kinya Kotani, and Mad Soldiers.  Gravitation’s comedy and musical elements broaden its appeal beyond those who just like shonen ai.

 

The classic Chinese novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms has not only spawned modern film adaptations like Red Cliff, it has also influenced a number of manga ranging from Sangokushi to Ikki Tousen, as well as the adult visual novel and strategy game Koihime Muso, which in turn spawned an anime adaptation produced by Dogakobo, which began airing in Japan in 2008.  The anime’s storyline is quite different from that found in the visual novel, and the characters are sometimes depicted to great effect in the super-deformed manner.  The Koihime Muso Complete Collection (Sentai Filmworks, “13+,” 325 min. $49.98) collects the first season of the anime series.  Sentai plans on releasing the second and third seasons later in the year.

 

There are two anime Blu-ray releases this week including, most notably, the Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle OVA Collection (Funimation, “13+,” 150 min., $29.98, BD $34.98), which contains the 3-episode OVA (Tsubasa: Tokyo Revelations) from Production I.G. that was released in 200-2008 and the subsequent 2-episode OVA (Tsubasa: Spring Thunder) for I.G. that appeared in 2009.  These OVAs are set after the end of the TV anime series (previously released by Funimation) based on the shonen manga from Clamp and continue the story.

 

Also due out on Blu-ray is Kurokami Part 5 (Bandai, “13+,” 100 min. $24.98), the penultimate release of anime series from Sunrise that aired in Japan in 2009 and is based on the Korean/Japanese manga series that is published here under the title Black God by Yen Press.

 

For a change there are no re-priced bargain sets out this week.  The only other anime release on the slate is Hayate The Combat Butler Part 8 (Bandai, “13+,” 150 min. $39.98).  Produced by Synergy SP, the 52-episode Hayate the Combat Butler anime is based on the humorous, fourth wall-breaking shonen manga by Kenjiro Hata, published here by Viz Media.

 

TV on DVD

 

There’s not a lot stirring in this category early in January, especially on the American side.  Battlestar Galactica Season 4 (Universal, BD $89.98), the 20-episode final season of the science fiction hit makes its solo bow on Blu-ray (the complete series debuted on Blu-ray in April).  Other American releases include the quirky (and often entertaining) polygamy saga Big Love: The Complete Fourth Season (HBO, $59.99), the classic detective series Mannix: The 4th Season (Paramount, 1216 min., $49.99), and the Nickelodeon tween comedy iCarly, Season 2, Vol.2 (Nickelodeon, 332 min., $19.99).

 

By far the best stuff for this week comes from across the pond led by The Ricky Gervais Show: The Complete First Season (Warner Bros., 390 min., $29.98), a 13-episode animated series that appeared on HBO and is based on the humorous podcasts featuring Gervais, Stephen Merchant, and Karl Pilkington that earned a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most “downloaded” podcasts ever.  The show is basically the podcasts animated with characters drawn in the style of classic Hanna Barbera TV animation, and the results are hilarious.

 

Other excellent fare from the UK includes Enemy at the Door: Set Two (Acorn Media, 660 min., $59.99), a 1978-1980 series produced for ITV that deals with the German occupation of the Channel Islands during World War II.  Production values are not up to the standards of later UK period dramas like Foyle’s War, but the saga of the occupation of Guernsey is both gripping and nuanced as it explores tensions between various factions of islanders as well as the rivalries on the other side between the regular German army and the gung-ho SS.

 

Even subtler and much more compelling is The Guilty (Acorn Media, 201 min., $39.99), which features Michael Kitchen (Foyle’s War) in a tour de force performance as an amoral, social-climbing London attorney who is about to obtain his life’s ambition when his past indiscretions come back to haunt him.

 

Doctor Who fans will no doubt be very intrigued by The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Complete Third Season (BBC Video, 335 min., $29.98).  Produced by Russell T. Davies, this teen science fiction drama series follows the adventures of investigative journalist (and former Doctor Who companion) Sarah Jane Smith.  The Complete Third Season, which consists of 12 episodes (six 2-part stories), aired in 2009. 

 

Also worthy of mention is Dirty Tricks (Acorn Media, 146 min., $29.99), a hilarious black comedy about an Oxford educated underachiever, who is among other things, a most unreliabe narrator of his own twisted saga.  Based on a novel by Michael Dibdin (the Aurelio Zen mysteries), Dirty Tricks includes plenty of nudity, strong language and lots of sexual situations as it cleverly dissects modern mores.

 

Theatrical Movies

 

Genre movie fans who like their action movies, “R-rated,” violent and rife with double crosses and conspiracies won’t be disappointed with Machete (Fox. “R,” $29.98, BD $39.99), which Robert Rodriguez developed out of one of the trailers created for Grindhouse (2007).  Danny Trejo stars as the eponymous hero, a disgraced Federale who is forced to work in at odd jobs in Texas where he becomes unwittingly embroiled in a plot to stir up nativist sentiment against Mexican immigrants.  Critics surveyed by Rotten Tomatoes gave Machete a strong 72% positive rating.

 

The mockumentary horror film, The Last Exorcism (Lionsgate, “PG-13,” $29.95, BD $39.99) also earned a 72% positive rating from Rotten Tomatoes.  The film supposedly follows the final exorcism performed by disillusioned evangelical minister Cotton Marcus who takes a documentary crew with him to backwoods Louisiana where he is set to expose his phony trade.  There is a very clever film here if you can make it through the shaky camerawork and the over-the-top ending.

 

The same can’t be said for Case 39 (Paramount, “R,” $29.98, BD $34.98), a lackluster horror movie starring Renee Zellweger, which was filmed in 2006, but not released in the U.S. until 2010—always a very bad sign.  Unsurprisingly the film earned a miserable 22% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

 

More promising, though not entirely successful, is Howl (Oscilloscope, “R,” $29.98, BD $34.95), which features James Franco who gives an excellent performance as poet Alan Ginsburg, though the film, in spite of its excellent cast, only comes to life intermittently.

 

Dinner for Schmucks (Dreamworks, “PG-13,” $29.98, BD $39.99) is a remake of a great French comedy (Le Diner des Cons).  If it doesn’t sparkle like the original, it still has more laughs than the critics (44% positive) gave it credit for, and has to rank as one of 2010's better comedies (though that's not saying a lot).

 

One of the better “message” pictures of recent years, The Lena Baker Story (Lionsgate, “PG-13,” $14.98) chronicles the sad, but true story of Lena Baker, a young African American mother, who worked as a maid for an abusive drunk.  Baker became the only woman put to death in the electric chair in Georgia, when she was convicted of murdering her employer, who had sexually assaulted her.

 

Documentaries

 

Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, the directors of Catfish (Universal, "PG-13," $29.98, BD $39.98), maintain that their film about a bizarre Facebook romance between Schulman’s brother and a woman in Michigan is a real, unstaged documentary, while others have questioned its authenticity.  Even if elements of this film were fabricated (and so far there is no evidence that they were), it remains a fascinating commentary on the bizarre use of social media to create virtual personae to compensate for the mundane realities of “real” life.