Though there are no big blockbusters debuting on DVD this week, there is something of interest in each category including the excellent anime feature Summer Wars from the director who some are calling “the next Miyazaki,” a Blu-ray edition of Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol, the direct-to-DVD horror comedy that is a must for all devotees of H.P. Lovecraft, two provocative documentaries, and a platoon of classic movies debuting on Blu-ray including what many call the best boxing movie of all time.

 

 

There are not a lot of anime releases this week, but there are some interesting new series, which are debuting on both Blu-ray and conventional disk, including Needless Collection 1 (Sentai Filmworks, “13+,” 300 min., $59.98, BD $69.98), which contains the first 12 episodes of the post apocalyptic action comedy produced by Madhouse and based on the seinen manga series created by Kami Imai. After a bomb devastates Tokyo some survivors (known as “The Needless”) receive superpowers. The anime series tones down the gore and violence of the manga, but actually increases the amount of fan service (i.e. panty shots).

 

But the top release of the week is Mamoru Hosoda’s anime feature film Summer Wars (Funimation, 120 min., $29.98, BD $34.98). Produced by Madhouse, Summer Wars focuses on a shy teenager who has been falsely implicated in the hacking of a virtual world. With the help of his high school friend he has to prevent the virtual world from colliding with the real one. Sensitively produced by the same creative team that produced The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars has been screened and numerous film festivals and earned a 72% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Hosoda has been hailed as "the new Miyazaki” and even if that is a bit of an overstatement, Summer Wars is certainly a cinematic breath of fresh air.

 

Also new this week is One Piece Season 3 Part 5 (Funimation, 14+, 325 min., $49.98), which includes 13 more episodes of the rollicking pirate saga that is the most popular anime and manga property in Japan.

 

Queen’s Blade: The Exiled Virgin Collection (Media Blasters, “17+,” 300 min. $59.98) collects the first 12-episode season of anime series produced by ARMS and released in Japan in 2009. The series is based on visual combat books published by Hobby Japan and based on licensed works from Flying Buffalo’s Lost Worlds. These episodes were previously released by Media Blasters as three single-disc DVDs in 2010.

 

 

The top releases this week are on Blu-ray starting with The Twilight Zone Season 3 (Image Entertainment, 950 min. $99.98). This 5-disc set includes tons of extras along with 37 classic episodes including “A Game of Pool,” “Kick the Can,” and “The Hunt.” The Twilight Zone was easily the best science fiction anthology series in the history of television and its appearance in hi-def is great news.

 

Also on Blu-ray and not to be missed is Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol (BBC Video, 60 min., $14.95, BD $19.95), which features the sixth Doctor Who Christmas Special of the modern (21st Century) era. Broadcast in 2010, this episode stars Matt Smith (the eleventh Doctor) and features the acting debut of Welsh singer Katherine Jenkins who stars along with Michael Gambon, Micah Balfour and Pooky Quesnel.

 

Mystery Science Theater 3000, the cult hit series where the object is create humor at the expense of grade Z movies, is now available in single-disc, single show editions that feature two of the worst movies ever made. MST 3K: Beginning of the End (Shout Factory, $19.95) makes fun of the 1957 science fiction film directed by Bert Gordon in which scientist Peter Graves’ giant irradiated vegetables lead to an outbreak of gigantism in locusts, which then attack Chicago. MST3K: The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies takes it to the 1964 monster movie written and directed by Ray Dennis Steckler, who also starred in the movie under the pseudonym “Cash Flagg.”

 

Animated TV shows out this week include a bargain basement edition of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: The Complete First Season (Mill Creek, 1320 min., $29.98), the 2005 Canadian-produced Cartoon Network series, Johnny Test: The Complete 1st & 2nd Seasons (Mill Creek, 657 min., $14.98), and a 10-episode sampling of the Archie Comics based Sabrina: The Animated Series: A Touch of Magic (Mill Creek, 250 min., $9.98).

 

Continuing series include the always exciting police chase series The Fugitive Season 4, Vol 2 (Paramount, 772 min., $39.98), which contains the final episode of the series, one of the most watched dramatic episodes of all time, The Rich Little Show: The Complete Series (MPI, 720 min., $29.98), which includes the entire 1976 series featuring the Canadian impressionist, and Spin City: The Complete 4th Season (Shout Factory, $39.97), the sitcom starring Michael J. Fox from 2000.

 

There are not a lot of U.K. series this week, but what there is, is choice. Murphy’s Law: Series 3 (Acorn Media, 352 min., $39.99) is a tense undercover cop drama starring James Nesbit as Tommy Murphy who poses as a hit man in an effort to bring down one of London’s top crime bosses. Guest stars include the always compelling Michael Fassbender, who plays Magneto in the new X-Men: First Class movie.

 

There are lots of car and motorcycle shows on cable, but nothing comes close in entertainment value to the BBC’s Top Gear, which mixes plenty of humor in with its parade of sleek machines. Two seasons of the series, which was revived and revamped for the better in 2002, are now available for the first time in the U.S.---Top Gear: Season 14 (BBC, 406 min., $24.95, BD $29.98), and Top Gear: Season 15 (BBC, 406 min., $24.95, $29.95).

 

Whether you agree with Bill Moyers’ political point of view or not, it is clear that he consistently presents some of the most intellectually challenging programming on American TV (not that there’s that much competition). Bill Moyers, A World of Ideas: Writers (Acorn Media, 432 min., $79.99) finds him engaged in serious and often fascinating discussions with Isaac Asimov, Tom Wolfe, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and Nadine Gordimer. With all the current emphasis on the Constitution, Bill Moyers: In Search of the Constitution (Acorn Media, 627 min., $79.99), which was produced in conjunction with the founding document’s bicentennial, is incredibly relevant. Moyers discusses the document with a wide range of experts from Mortimer Adler to Judge Robert Bork, whose appointment to the Supreme Court was blocked by Democrats, an action that has spurred much of the partisan hostility over judicial nominations in recent decades.

 

 

A weak slate in this category is led by Unstoppable (Fox, “PG-13,” $29.98, BD $39.99), an “all killer, no filler” action movie about a runaway train full of toxic chemicals. Loosely based on a true story, Unstoppable features solid performances from Denzel Washington and Chris Pine as well as “white-knuckle” return to form by director Tony Scott. How good is Unstoppable—well for a film with such a simple, basic premise to earn an 86% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it has to be pretty good.

 

Those who like Bollywood movies should definitely check out Kites (Image Entertainment, Not Rated, $27.97, BD $29.98), a wonderfully overwrought exercise in lovers-on-the-lam romanticism set in the deserts of Nevada. Director Anurag Basu has a strong visual style, and Kites was produced (by Brett Ratner) in a sexier, edgier English language version that actually made it into the American box office Top Ten, while earning an 82% positive rating from the Bollywood-friendly critics surveyed by Rotten Tomatoes.

 

Glorious 39 (Entertainment One, “R,” $24.98, BD $29.98) is an attempt at a Hitchcockian thriller set amongst the right wing Hitler-appeasing upper classes of Britain on the eve of World War II. A strong cast that includes David Tennant, Julie Christie, Christopher Lee, and Bill Nighy can’t quite save this film, which has an interesting premise, but somehow misfires.

 

Woody Allen’s career has been on a long slide, a trend that You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (Sony, “R,” $28.95, BD $38.95) does nothing to reverse. Allen’s musings on mortality and romance appear increasingly idiosyncratic and irrelevant.

 

 

Devotees of H.P. Lovecraft will certainly enjoy The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu, (MPI, Not Rated, $24.98), a low-budget horror comedy that demonstrates a fair amount of inventiveness in its comic book-like synopsis of Lovecraftian demonology and its low-rent special effects. A lowly office plebe discovers that he is the last living relative of H.P. Lovecraft. He and his best friend team up with an overweight Lovecraft maven to track down a relic that is the key to preventing the release of that ultimate evil known as Cthulhu. Anyone well-versed in the world of Lovecraft will enjoy the inside jokes—Shoggoth humor is hard to come by these days.

 

 

Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting for Superman (Paramount, “PG,” $28.95, BD $39.99) is a powerful, but simplistic indictment of the American educational system. There are indeed a lot of bad public schools in this country, but there are also excellent ones, and charter schools aren’t quite the easy “solution” that this film appears to suggest.

 

Avant garde novelist William S. Burroughs was a key influence on the Beat Generation, and Yony Leyser’s William S. Burroughs: A Man Within (Oscilloscope Laboratories, Not Rated, $29.99) is a great introduction to his life and work, even if it is marred by the fawning observations of Burroughs’ acolytes like Patti Smith, John Waters, and Laurie Anderson—the crusty Burroughs would have thrown up at the prospect of this sort of fulsome praise.

 

 

So many films are now being released on Blu-ray that it’s difficult to keep up. Here are a few that have been released in recent weeks.

 

Many people consider Martin Scorsese’s 1980 film Raging Bull (MGM, “R,” BD $29.99) to be the greatest boxing movie ever made. It may not be that, but this biography of the troubled fighter Jake LaMotta is certainly one of the best. Robert DeNiro, who gained 60 pounds to film the 1960s framing sequence, is simply superb in the title role. The saga of an out-of-control boxer entangled with the mob was hardly a new one for Hollywood, but then no previous film was so unsparing and unsympathetic in its depiction of the central character in a boxing drama. DeNiro is ably assisted by Joe Pesci and Cathy Moriarty and Michael Chapman’s evocative black and white photography looks fantastic in the hi-def Blu-ray transfer. The extras on the Blu-ray, which also contains a standard DVD version of the film, are as much as one could expect from an anniversary edition. Vintage newsreel footage of LaMotta, a new documentary about Scorsese and DeNiro, Cathy Moriarty’s appearance on the Tonight Show, a 4-part Fight Night documentary, and a shot-by-shot comparison of DeNiro and LaMotta in the ring—this disc has it all!

 

Some movies that both create and reflect the zeitgeist of their times appear somewhat diminished when seen again. Such is the case with Ridley Scott’s Thelma & Louise 20th Anniversary Blu-ray (MGM, “R,” BD $19.99). A breath of feminist fresh air when it was released in 1991, Thelma & Louise still packs a punch, but the years have made the film’s contrivances more apparent. The repeated encounters with a sexist trucker that end with the demolition of his rig are simply not credible given the trajectory of Thelma and Louise’s flight to Mexico, and the sympathetic Arkansas State Cop played by Harvey Keitel rings false. Also the California and Utah locations don’t even begin to resemble the story’s Arkansas and Oklahoma locations. Still Adrian Biddle’s photography really shines and the young Brad Pitt does likewise in a showy, but limited supporting role.

 

Kevin Costner’s 1990 revisionist western Dances With Wolves was a huge hit when it was first released. The Dances With Wolves 20th Anniversary Blu-ray (MGM, “PG-13,” $29.99) includes 55 minutes of extra footage as well as an entire disc of extras. The film, which was produced for just $22 million, looks great in the all-new hi-def transfer, but it doesn't need the padding--it is best seen in its original theatrical cut. Like Thelma & Louise, Dances With Wolves is still a powerful film, though in retrospect its “Lawrence of Arabia” of the plains aspects are too obvious to ignore.

 

One of the more interesting trends in the release of classics on Blu-ray is the current trend that has seen the production of BDs based on public domain movies. While many PD films have been released in truly execrable versions on DVD, it doesn’t make sense to put them out on BD unless they have been digitally restored and re-mastered in hi-def. Now some of the better public domain movies with decent prints extant are getting the BD treatment. Out this week are Orson Welles’ The Stranger (HD Cinema Classics, Not Rated $14.98) and Phil Karlson’s Kansas City Confidential. The Stranger, which stars Welles, Loretta Young, and Edward G. Robinson, is not one of Welles’ best films, but even mediocre Welles is well worth watching, and with the new hi-def transfer the film looks better than it ever has since its original release. The opening sequence in which a released Nazi war criminal slips into a Central American country on his way into the U.S., is pure Welles and pure visual poetry.

 

Phil Karlson’s Kansas City Confidential (HD Cinema Classics, Not Rated, $14.98) looks even better—its sharp 1952 location photography really pops in the hi-def transfer. KC Confidential is a superior 1950s film noir about an ordinary Joe who is wrongly implicated in an armored car robbery. By the time he is released by the cops, he has lost his job and his life is ruined. With the police completely stymied by the skillfully planned crime, Joe takes it upon himself to track down the gang that includes three nasty hoods memorably played by Jack Elam, Lee Van Cleef, and Neville Brand. Kansas City Confidential is a landmark 1950s noir film from the director of another noir essential, The Phenix City Story.