It’s another light week for DVD releases, but “Hokey Smoke,” any slate that includes the complete Bullwinkle Show can’t be all bad, plus there’s David Fincher’s near-brilliant film about the rise of Facebook, one of 2010’s better horror movies, and a searing look at the Rwandan genocide.

 

 

In the first decade of nationwide American television there were still opportunities for exceptional regional talents to develop even as the hegemony of the networks was developing. The chaotic decade of the 1950s yielded Ernie Kovacs, who developed his idiosyncratic brand of humor in Philadelphia, and Jay Ward, a Berkeley-born and educated real estate man who revolutionized TV cartoon humor with a mixture of zany plots, mind-numbing puns, and topical references in his greatest creations, Rocky and His Friends (1959-1961) and The Bullwinkle Show (1961-1964). Now at last the entire Rocky and Bullwinkle TV legacy is available in The Bullwinkle Show: The Complete Series—100% Bull (Classic Media, 3,670 min, $99.98), an 18-disc set that includes all four previously released Bullwinkle Show Complete Seasons as well as the previously unreleased Fifth Season. (For those who have been collecting the show, Season Five will be released on its own in March).

 

With the sinister machinations of villains Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale, who proved to be as inept as they were dastardly, the Rocky and Bullwinkle show deftly parodied the Cold War as well as the emerging consumer culture.  With animation as crude as its scripts were clever, The Bullwinkle Show managed to appeal to both kids and adults, paving the way for today’s explosion of cartoon series for adults such as The Simpsons, Futurama, and Family Guy.

 

The Bullwinkle Show is not the only release of interest this week. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea Season 4, Part 2 (Fox, 663 min., $39.98) continues the full color 1960s saga of the nuclear-powered submarine, the Seaview.   The series was produced by Irwin Allen and spawned a popular comic book series (see “Hermes to Reprint Irwin Allen Comics”).

 

Other classic American TV series out this week include Adam-12 Vol.1 (Shout! Factory, 240 min., $7.93), which contains ten episodes of the gritty cop show, the groundbreaking sitcom All in the Family: Season 8 (Shout! Factory, 575 min., $29.93), Dragnet-1968: Vol.1 (Shout! Factory, 240 min., $7.93), a 10-episode sampling of the popular police procedural, ER: The Complete 14th Season (Warner Bros. 914 min., $49.98), Rules of Engagement: The Complete 4th Season (Sony, 390 min., $29.95), and Spin City Vol.1 (Shout! Factory, 225 min., $7.93), a low-priced 10-episode sampling from the first season of the sitcom starring Michael J. Fox.

 

There are two vintage Doctor Who releases this week, Doctor Who—Story 044: The Dominators (BBC, 221 min., $24.98) is a 5-part saga from 1968 featuring the second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) that introduced The Quarks, and Doctor Who—Story 111: Meglos (BBC, 86 min., $24.98), a four-parter from 1980 starring the popular Fourth Doctor, Tom Baker.

 

American viewers who enjoy “the tradition of quality” sort of U.K. produced period dramas like The Pallisers and Brideshead Revisited are in for a treat with Downton Abbey (PBS, 368 min. $34.99), an Upstairs Downstairs-like show set in the waning years of La Belle Epoque just prior to the Great War. Downton Abbey, which debuts on PBS this week and has already been renewed for a second season, is the most expensive British TV series ever produced and it earned the best ratings in the U.K. for any period drama since Brideshead Revisited, averaging over 10 million viewers.

 

There is another great tradition of U.K. TV and that is inspiring American adaptations such as All in the Family and The Office. New Brit-sourced dramas for 2011 include Showtime’s Shameless and Episodes as well as MTV Skins. The release of Skins Vol.4 (BBC, 376 min., $39.98) gives American viewers another chance to check out this critical darling of a series that explores the “real issues” of contemporary teens including of course, sex, sexual orientation, substance abuse, suicide, dysfunctional families, and eating disorders with a cast of talented young “amateur” actors that changes every two years.

 

 

The top theatrical release this week is The Social Network (Sony, “PG-13,” $28.96, BD $34.95) David Fincher’s movie about the creation of the mega-popular Facebook. Written by Aaron Sorkin, The Social Network is a smart, well-acted film about a hugely important contemporary social phenomenon. Critics loved the movie, which amassed a sterling 97% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes.  The Social Network has earned over $190 million worldwide and will likely receive a number of Oscar nominations. In terms of capturing the zeitgeist and incorporating the top economic, cultural, and social trends of 2010, it’s hard to imagine a film that comes close to The Social Network in scope or importance.

 

Alexander Aja’s Piranha (Sony, “R,” $28.95, BD $34.95, 3-D BD $39.95), a remake of Joe Dante’s clever 1978 send-up of Jaws, is a gory and relentless exercise in gratuitous violence leavened with copious amounts of nudity—in short it’s everything the modern, largely male, horror film audience appears to want.   Although the screenplay for the new Piranha isn’t nearly as dense as John Sayles’ 1978 script, the modern Piranha makes up for its deficiencies with plenty of cheap and gory 3-D thrills, which are now available for home entertainment viewing thanks to a 3-D Blu-ray edition, though viewers have to have 3-D TV’s in order to enjoy the extra dimension.

 

Equally disturbing in its own way is Shake Hands With the Devil (Entertainment One, “R,” $24.98). Unfortunately the events in Shake Hands With the Devil, which deals with the Rwandan genocide, are real—and the indifference of U.N. and U.S. authorities to the urgent pleas of the Canadian officer, whose memoirs are depicted here, is truly sickening. This is a difficult film to watch, and when that is said about a film based on real events, it is even more important that it be seen. Unfortunately this film, which was made in 2007, is just now appearing on DVD here in the U.S. where the memories of what happened in Rwanda in the 1990s are already fading.

 

 

It's a very slim week in the anime category, but one A-list anime series, Black Butler, makes its North American debut with Black Butler: Season 1, Part 1 (Funimation, “14+,” 300 min., $64.98). Based on the popular supernatural black comedy shonen manga series by Yana Toboso (published here by Yen Press), the 24-episode Black Butler anime series was produced by A-1 Pictures and aired in Japan in 2008 and 2009. 

 

The only other release this week is the 11 Eyes Complete Collection (Sentai Filmworks, 325 min., $49.98), a 13-episode anime series from Dogakobo that is based on an adult visual novel published by Lass.

 

 

Two very different foreign films are debuting on disc this week, and each is excellent in its own way. The touching, but largely unsentimental, Alamar (Film Movement, Not Rated, $24.95), directed by Pedro Gonzalezx-Rubio, is a gorgeously photographed neo-realist saga about a fisherman and his son set against the dazzling azure backdrop of the Caribbean. Heartbreaker (MPI, Unrated, $24.95) is a French romantic comedy confection that blends farce, action, and spectacular Riviera settings. Heartbreaker (L’Arnacoeur) features two of France’s leading young stars, Romain Duris and Vanessa Paradis and earned a solid 68% positive rating from critics surveyed by Rotten Tomatoes. Predictably, given its subject matter, Alamar did even better with the film scribes, earning an 89% positive score.