This week’s DVD offerings include a brilliant martial arts movie Ip Man 2: Legend of the Grandmaster featuring Donnie Yen, the somewhat conventional, but entertaining Oscar winner, The King’s Speech, and the most extensive collection we are ever likely to see of the work of Ernie Kovacs, the Mad Genius of early television.

 

The King’s Speech (Anchor Bay, “R,” $29.98, BD $39.99) won “Best Picture” and earned a “Best Actor” award for Colin Firth. It might not have been the best film of 2010, but it is a powerful, well-acted, if somewhat conventional drama. It also did surprisingly well at the box office, earning nearly $400 million worldwide, which is not bad for a film that cost just $15 million to make—and it is about to make another killing on disc.

 

The King’s Speech also gained a stellar 95% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, just a shade better than lp Man 2: Legend of the Grandmaster (Well Go USA, “R” $29.98), which managed a 91% positive rating and will gladden the hearts of any and all fans of martial arts movies. Ip Man 2, which stars the amazing Donnie Yen, is a sequel, and it may not have quite as much heart as the original, but any film this good that also has Sammo Hung in it—and a spectacular fight between Sammo and Donnie Yen on top of a rickety table—is way too good to pass up.

 

Peter Weir’s The Way Back (Image Entertainment, “PG-13,” $29.97, BD $29.97) is an amazingly different sort of prison escape movie that follows a group of prisoners who attempt to escape from a Siberian gulag and travel across the huge trackless wastes of the Asian continent. Weir doesn’t shy away from portraying the drudgery of this incredible journey as well as its occasional flurries of action. The Way Back is far from a typical action film, but it is epic in scope and the story builds in a measured but stately way. The Way Back is not a masterpiece, the variety and quality of the cast’s “accents” is off-putting, and there are some problems with the adaptation of the book’s source—it is based on a true story—but it is still one of the most powerful films released on DVD so far in 2011.

 

Two other well-reviewed film are due out on Tuesday including Rabbit Hole (Lionsgate, “PG-13,” $29.99, BD $39.99), which stars Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart in a powerful, unsentimental, but depressing film about parents dealing with the tragic death of their 4-year-old son, and Somwhere (Focus, “R,” $29.99, BD $39.98), Sofia Coppola’s Antonioni-esque film about a Hollywood sybarite played by Stephen Dorff whose vacuous existence is interrupted by the arrival of his 11-year-old daughter.

 

By far the best release in this category this week is The Ernie Kovacs Show: The Ernie Kovacs Collection (Shout Factory, 780 min., $69.97). Kovacs was a true visionary, and this six-DVD set collects some of the best of his pioneering TV work from 1951 to 1962 when he is career was tragically cut short in an automobile accident (he was driving a Corvair, a model that Ralph Nader later proved was “unsafe at any speed”). The set includes footage from his morning show in Philadelphia, his primetime NBC series, and his hugely innovative ABC comedy specials. Also included are Kovacs’ brilliant cigar commercials, his hosting segments from Silents Please, and even behind-the-scenes footage from Our Man in Havana, and Ernie’s trailer for Operation Madball. 

 

Kovacs developed his talent in the rough-and-ready days of live TV in the 1950s, but it was the invention of videotape that allowed him the freedom to let his imagination run rampant and create the kind of comic masterpieces that left an indelible impression on a generation including Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam, “The Ernie Kovacs show knocked me sideways into a world where the bizarre and the daft and the preposterous all lived happily alongside wisdom, wit, and perception. I had never experienced anything so visually absurd and inventive. It was sublime. It hurt.”

 

Kovacs could be a genius with words—and he cleverly and constantly mocked the arena in which he worked, noting: “It’s appropriate that television is considered a medium, since it’s rare if it’s ever well done.” One of his greatest creations was the martini-swilling poet Percy Dovetonsils, who lisped hilarious poetic parodies between sips, “As I grow stupider/My wit dulls/My words disappear/And I find I need/A new medium/A more forgiving form/To accommodate/My fresh limitations/This is it.” 

 

But as gifted as he was verbally, Kovacs was an even better visual artist. He loved the great movie comedians of the silent era and dared to perform modern day silent comedy bits with his signature character “Eugene.” His shows were basically an interwoven tapestry of unrelated running gags. It’s no wonder that Buster Keaton attended Kovac’s funeral. It should be noted that though Kovacs did numerous bits without dialogue, music always played a key role. His love of music of all kinds pervades these discs. His foray into robotic comedy with a “musical office” absurdly set to “Sentimental Journey,” his use of “Mack the Knife” to unify all sorts of blackout sketches and his obvious love of classical music are all present in this superb set. No one captured the bastardized essence of television suspended in the no-man’s land between high art and base popular culture better than Kovacs when he staged Swan Lake with real ballet dancers dressed in Gorilla suits.

 

With his decided penchant for the absurd it is hardly surprising that Kovacs wrote for Mad Magazine for several years. Like those vintage 1950s issues of Mad, not all of Kovacs bits will work for everybody. Also the visual quality of much of the material in this set is not up to modern standards. It must be remembered that the medium for which Kovacs created was the 21-inch black-and-white TV set. Those unfamiliar with his work would probably be better off with compilations like The Best of Ernie Kovacs, but for anyone who loves his work or is interested in the history of TV, this seven-disk set is a true treasure trove.

 

This week’s animated offerings include American Dad Vol. 6 (Fox, 396 min. $39.98), 3-disc set that includes 18 episodes of Seth MacFarlane’s saga of star-spangled insanity featuring bumbling CIA operative Stan Smith, the eco-friendly Captain Planet and the Planeteers: Season 1 (Shout Factory, 600 min., $29.93), which was based on a concept created by media mogul Ted Turner and aired on his network from 1990-1992, and the stop-motion animated Shaun the Sheep, Vol 9: The Big Chase (Lionsgate, 120 min. $14.93) from Aardman Animations.

 

Continuing series include The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: The Complete Sixth Season (Warner Bros., $29.98), which stars the irrepressible Will Smith, and the classic 1950s sitcom Father Knows Best Season Six (Shout Factory, 700 min., $39.98).

 

The bestselling TV on DVD release of the week will likely be Glee Encore (Fox, 142 min., $26.98 BD $29.98) a compilation of the best musical numbers from the first season of the hit show.

 

The only U.K. release is a good one—A Mind to Kill: The Complete Third Season (Acorn Media, 776 min., $69.99), which stars Philip Madoc as troubled Detective Chief Inspector Noel Bain, a widower who struggles in his relationship with his daughter, but who manages to sort out a series of difficult, gritty murder cases set against the bleak and rugged terrain of South Wales.

 

 

Just a couple of releases this week including the Clannad: After Story Collection (Sentai Filmworks, “13+,” 625 min. $69.98), which collects the second 24-episode series from Kyoto Animation that is based on the bestselling bishoujo (beautiful girl) visual novel. The Clannad: After Story DVDs were hugely popular in Japan. Sentai released this series (subtitled only) back in 2009, and is now releasing it again with an English language dub as well as subtitles.

 

The only other release is a re-priced edition Darker Than Black: The Complete First Season (Funimation, “17+,” 625 min., $49.99). Funimation released this on DVD a year ago, but this edition is nearly 30% cheaper. Darker Than Black is a complex psychic “noir” tale set in a future in which contractors, humans who have shed their emotions, but gained psychic powers, carry out the dirty work of others.