Next week the fall DVD season starts off with a bang with the release of X-Men: First Class, but this week the most interesting releases are Blu-ray editions of material that has been available on conventional DVD for years including the final season of The Twilight Zone and Sergio Leone’s best two Clint Eastwood westerns.

 

 

The top release in this category is the Blu-ray edition of The Twilight Zone: Season 5 (Image Entertainment, 916 min., $99.98), which contains all 36 episodes of the final season of Rod Serling’s groundbreaking science fiction TV series, which set a standard for intelligent TV sci-fi that has rarely been matched. This 5-disc collection includes a number of standout episodes including “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” Uncle Simon,” “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” “Number 12 Looks Just Like You,” “Living Doll,” and “Stopover in a Quiet Town.”

 

Other interesting releases include the sexy and suspenseful Nikita: The Complete First Season (Warner Bros., 1012 min., $59.97, BD $69.97), which stars Maggie Q, The Vampire Diaries: The Complete Second Season (Warner Bros., 935 min., $59.98, BD $69.97), the teen supernatural series that airs on the CW network, Sons of Anarchy: Season 3 (Fox, $59.97 BD $69.98), the motorcycle gang drama starring Ron Perlman that airs on the FX cable channel, and House: Season 7 (Universal, $59.98, BD $74.98), the medical drama starring Hugh Laurie.

 

Additional continuing series out this week include 90210: The Complete 3rd Season (Paramount, $49.99), Cougar Town: The Complete Second Season (Disney, 506 min., $34.99), Desperate Housewives: The Complete 7th Season (Disney, 989 min., $45.99), the tween girl favorite iCarly: Season 3 (Nickelodeon, 312 min., $19.99), the “one-and-done” 2010-2011 sitcom Mad Love (Paramount, 312 min., $39.98), the witty family drama Parenthood: Season 2 (Universal, 800 min., $59.98), and Running Wilde (Lionsgate, 286 min., $29.98), another “one-and-done” sitcom that was cancelled after 13 episodes.

 

The top U.K. release here in North America is Doc Martin: The Movies (Acorn Media, 162 min., $39.99), which stars Martin Clunes in two very interesting movies in which he plays a character that is much closer to the one he played in the movie Saving Grace than to the hemophobic surgeon in the Doc Martin TV series. Nevertheless these movies, which were made before the TV series, are lots of fun and feature the same spectacular Cornish Port Isaac locations utilized in both Saving Grace and the Doc Martin TV series.

 

Far less humorous, but equally compelling is Murphy’s Law: Series 4 & 5 (Acorn Media, 300 min., $39.99), which chronicles the hardboiled adventures of an undercover Irish cop (played by James Nesbit). In Series 4 he infiltrates and brings down a drug ring, while in Series 5 he goes after a human trafficking operation that has snuffed two other undercover cops. Excellent writing (by novelist Colin Bateman) and gritty realistic mis-en-scene make this suspenseful series well worth checking out.

 

 

This month MGM released Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (MGM, “R,” BD $16.99), which previously had been available on Blu-ray only as part of a Man With No Name trilogy set. A Fistful of Dollars marks the first collaboration between director Leone, composer Ennio Morricone, and star Clint Eastwood. Unfortunately this Blu-ray is based on a 2002 restoration, which of course leaves room for an even better high-def edition in the future. That said, the film appears quite sharp and the Blu-ray edition is definitely superior to the earlier DVD versions. The colors may be a tad washed-out, but that works just perfectly for the arid desert border town locale for this western adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (which in turn was an adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest).  A Fistful of Dollars was a key film in Eastwood’s career and this disk includes some excellent extras such as the “A New Kind of Hero” featurette that put the film in its proper historical context.

 

A Fistful of Dollars and its sequel For A Few Dollars More (MGM, “R” BD $16.99) are definite “must haves” for both western aficionados and Eastwood fans despite the dubbed soundtracks and Leone’s “operatic” approach to violence, which can seem overblown and rub some western fans the wrong way. If anything For a Few Dollars More is even better than A Fistful of Dollars. This time Eastwood’s nameless hero has two formidable adversaries, a competing bounty hunter played by Lee Van Cleef, and a crazed bandit El Indio (Gian Maria Volonte). Once again MGM’s Blu-ray may not be perfect, but it’s still far better than any previous home entertainment version.

 

A Fistful of Dollars is hardly the first western based on a Kurosawa samurai movie. John Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven (MGM, $16.99) effectively transposes Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai to a Mexican village.  Steve McQueen, the paragon of cool who blazed the trail that Eastwood followed from TV western to major movie stardom, leads a strong cast that also includes Yul Brynner, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Robert Vaughn, Brad Dexter, Horst Bucholz, and Eli Wallach.  Add in Elmer Bernstein’s stirring soundtrack and The Magnificent Seven, in spite of its measured beginning, deserves some consideration as a classic western. MGM’s Blu-ray is sharp and the film’s dusty palette has been reproduced with great fidelity. This is by far the best home entertainment version of The Magnificent Seven yet produced.

 

Unfortunately unlike the case of For A Few Dollars More, which actually improved on A Fistful of Dollars, The Return of the Magnificent Seven (MGM, $16.99), which came out in 1966, six years after the first film, is an example of Hollywood “sequelitis” at its worst. The screen deaths of numerous characters in the original film didn’t help.  Yul Brynner is the only actor from the original to reprise his role in the sequel. But the real problem with the sequel is the failure to change the “save the village from bandits” storyline, which is just tedious the second time around.

 

The latest release in Kino’s line of Blu-ray editions of classic films is Sergei Eisenstein’s Strike: Remastered Edition (Kino, $29.95, BD $34.95) a silent film from 1925. Brilliantly restored from a 35mm print by the Cinematheque of Toulouse this version of Strike certainly deserves the high-def treatment, which means that the BD version is well worth extra five bucks. Eduard Tisse’s photography is the star here in Eisenstein’s first feature film, which also includes the director’s first halting steps toward his famous mode of editing (dialectical montage) that was on full display in Eisenstein’s next feature Battleship Potemkin. Strike, which is based on an actual factory strike in Tsarist Russia in 1903, is a good example of Soviet agitprop filmmaking with over-the-top performances that often slip into caricature, especially in the portrayal of the factory owners and the “rabble” that the bosses enlist as agent provocateurs to discredit the strikers. Still in spite of its simplistic politics, Strike remains a visually arresting film especially notable for numerous shots of reflections whether in pools of water, streams, mirrors or windows as well as for a number of dynamic compositions, which manage to conjure expressionistic effects without violating the basic canons of documentary-style filmmaking. From a historical perspective it is interesting to see this version of Strike which is so pristine in order to get an idea of the visual richness and sophistication these silent films had when they were first released, something that is often not apparent in surviving prints of many silents, which exist only as fuzzy dupes that are many generations away from the original. Potemkin is a far better film than Strike, but the Strike Blu-ray is far closer to how the original appeared than is Kino’s Potemkin Blu-ray (see “DVD Round-Up: Week of May 18th”).

 

Things will really heat up in this category next week, but this is the weakest session for theatrical films yet this year. The bestselling new DVD will probably be Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family (Lionsgate, “PG-13,” $29.95, BD $39.99), the latest installment in Perry’s ongoing slapstick chronicle of the trials and tribulations of the Simmons/Brown family, which delivers his typical blend of insults, insights, and ethnocentric family values.

 

The other major new film release this week is Prom (Disney, “PG,” $29.99, BD/Combo $39.99). This is a “PG” release from Disney so there’s no bad language, drinking, sex, or drugs, so viewers should know what to expect. The characters may be stereotypes--the high school jock, the popularity queen, the teen brainiac, the clumsy nerd, the gossip girl, etc.--but it must be said that at least the movie’s writers and director (Joe Nussbaum) actually seem to like the kids, and the young cast does well in the absence of any of the major motivating “issues” that actors love to portray.

 

 

The number of anime Blu-ray releases continues to increase. This week Funimation is debuting Spice and Wolf Season 3 Complete Collection (Funimation, “14+,” 325 min., $69.98) on Blu-ray in a convenient combo pack that includes all 13-episodes on two Blu-ray disks and 2 regular DVD disks. Yen Press is releasing Isuna Hasekura’s fantasy/adventure novels here in the States. The second season of the anime, which was produced by Brains Base, aired in Japan in 2009. Funimation is also putting out the first season of Spice and Wolf, which was previously released on conventional DVD, out on Blu-ray for the first time Spice and Wolf Season 1 Complete Series (Funimation, “14+,” 312 min., $49.99).

 

Sentai Filmworks is releasing both seasons of the shojo anime series Neo Angelique Abyss Complete Collection (Sentai Filmworks, “13+,” 650 min. $59.98). All 26 episodes of this series have been released by Sentai before (see “January 26th DVD Round-Up”), but this collection represents a price break since the two seasons were released separately at $39.95 each.

 

Viz Media is releasing two single-disc Pokemon collections, Pokemon: Diamond & Pearl Galactic Battles #5 (Viz Media, “5+,” 150 min., $14.97) and Pokemon: Diamond & Pearl Galactic Battles #6 (Viz Media, “5+,” 150 min., $14.97) as well as Pokemon: Diamond & Pearl Galactic Battles Box Set 02 (Viz Media, “5+,” 300 min., $24.92), which contains both #5 and #6.