Thanks to the release of Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo, “Anime” is the strongest category this week, though Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are enlivens the recently dormant “Theatrical Releases,” and there are a number of excellent “TV on DVD” offerings including an updated Alice in Wonderland, some classic Doctor Who Dalek sagas, and one of the best series from Masterpiece Theater.

 

Anime

 

Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo (Buena Vista, “G,” 2-Disc $29.99, BD $39.99) will undoubtedly become the bestselling anime release of 2010.  Every previous Miyazaki release has topped the anime DVD charts, and even though Ponyo, in spite of great reviews (92% positive on Rotten Tomatoes), only earned $15 million at the box office, it was the highest-grossing film from the master anime director ever released in North America and should easily follow in the footsteps of its highly successful predecessors on DVD.

 

While not Miyazaki’s best film targeting younger viewers—it would be nearly impossible to top My Neighbor Totoro—Ponyo, which does have similarities to Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid, but remains strikingly original, is a charming fantasy filled with humor and adventure.  It also has an important message about what mankind is doing to the oceans, but it delivers its warnings obliquely (by demonstrating the fragility of the natural world) and these cautionary elements never get in the way of the film's narrative drive or its characters. 

 

It is difficult to overstate the charm of the film’s vibrant colors and fluid traditional, two-dimensional animation.  Though Ponyo can be thoroughly enjoyed by viewers as young as four or five, there are plenty of treats for older kids and adults including prehistoric sea creatures, a wonderful finned submarine, and a delightfully realized undersea city.  As usual Disney’s crew led by Pixar’s John Lasseter does an excellent job in the creation of the English language version (all nitpicking about variations in the pronunciation of Japanese names aside).  There are plenty of excellent extras including an interview with Miyazaki, documentaries, and storyboards (drawn by the master himself).  The Blu-ray includes a wonderful interactive feature that allows viewers to enter the “worlds” of various Miyazaki movies including Ponyo, Castle in the Sky, and Kiki’s Delivery Service.  The Blu-ray also comes with a standard DVD edition of the film, which is an extremely useful feature for families (and as always far better and more versatile than the relatively useless “digital” copies).

 

These days the fact that an anime project is released in Blu-ray is pretty good evidence of its importance, which indicates that the other major anime release of this week is Eureka Seven—Good Night, Sleep Tight, Young Lovers (Bandai Entertainment, 117 min., $24.98, BD $39.98), an anime movie loosely-based on the 50-episode mecha anime series Eureka Seven, which aired on the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim starting in 2006.  Produced by Bones and directed by Tomoki Kyoda, who also helmed the Eureka Seven TV anime, Eureka Seven—Good Night debuted in Japan in April of 2009.  It features a new version of the rather elaborate Eureka Seven science fiction mythos, but retains the two main characters of Renton and Eureka.

 

Another excellent new series from Bandai due this week is Kurokami, Part 1 (200 min., $29.98), which contains the first half of an ingenious 23-episode fantasy action TV anime from Sunrise based on the manga that is published here as Black God by Yen Press.  Although it is the work of Korean creators Dall-Young Lim and Sung-Woo Park, the Kurokami manga is set in Japan (and Okinawa) and published in Square Enix’s seinen Young Gangan manga anthology.  With a complicated narrative that includes doppelgangers and plot to destroy the natural symmetry of life on Earth, Kurokami is a high stakes fantasy adventure.

 

Also due out from Bandai this week is Hayate, The Combat Butler, Part 4 (175 min. $39.98), the latest installment of the parody-heavy romantic comedy series in which characters are continually “breaking the fourth wall” by talking directly to the audience, a device that is lifted directly from its source material, Kenjiro Hata’s shonen manga that is published here by Viz Media.

 

The other interesting anime out this week is Yozakura Quartet: Complete Collection (Sentai Filmworks, 300 min. $39.98), a 12-episode anime from Nomad that debuted in Japan in late 2008.  Based on a shonen manga series by Suzuhito Yasuda (published here by Del Rey), Yozakura Quartet is the saga of a group of four teens with special abilities who form the Hiizumi Life Counseling Office, an organization charged with protecting the city of Sakurashin where humans and yokai (spirits) live together in relative harmony.

 

For bargain hunters Media Blasters is releasing Phoenix Litebox Complete Collection (325 min., $19.99), which includes the 13-episode anime from 2004 adapting Osamu Tezuka’s manga masterpiece.

 

TV on DVD

 

There’s not a huge selection in this category this week, but there are several well-timed releases that should generate plenty of interest.  Released in time to benefit from the theatrical debut of Tim Burton’s re-imagining of Alice in Wonderland, the 2009 Alice TV Mini-Series (Lionsgate, 180 min., $19.99, BD $29.99) that appeared on the SyFy cable channel updated Lewis Carroll’s timeless tale about 150 years and added a number of science fiction elements.  Directed by Nick Willing, the Alice TV Mini-Series features Caterina Scorsone as an older version of Carroll's Alice.

 

For fans of the vintage Doctor Who series there are two releases of interest this week including Doctor Who: The Dalek War (Warner Home Video, 283 min. $59.98) a four-disc collection that collects two linked six-episode arcs from the series’ tenth season that pit the Doctor against two of his greatest nemeses, The Master and The Daleks.  The four-disc set contains lots of extras including a biography of Roger Delgado, the actor who played The Master as well as a feature on the comic strip adaptation of Doctor Who that covers all the graphic presentations of the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee).  Equally compelling is Doctor Who #152: Remembrance of the Daleks: Special Edition (Warner Home Video, 93 min. $24.98), a two-disc set that contain one of the classic Dalek episodes along with a host of extras including audio commentary from Sylvester McCoy (the 7th Doctor), a “making of” documentary, a feature on Davros, the evil mastermind behind the Daleks, 12 minutes of deleted scenes, and four minutes of outtakes. 

 

Fans of Masterpiece Theater will be thrilled to find that the 1975 mini-series Poldark, which is based on the novels of Winston Graham and was voted one of the ten best shows in the series’ history, is at last available on DVD.  Poldark Series 1 (Acorn Media, 821 min., $69.99) is chock full of swashbuckling action, strong characterizations, and stirring drama as Ross Poldark returns to Cornwall after fighting against the American Revolutionists only to find that his fiancée is about to marry his cousin.  Set in the last decades of the 18th Century Poldark examines class divisions and the changes wrought by the onset of the industrial revolution in a stirring family saga set on the beautiful and rugged Cornish coast.

 

The Road from Coorain (Acorn Media, 97 min., $29.99), is another Masterpiece Theater mini-series that is debuting on DVD.  This coming-of-age saga based on the life of Australian historian Jill Ker Conway appeared on MPT in 2002 and 2003.

 

Another popular mini-series from across the pond, The Beiderbecke Connection (Acorn Media, 240 min. $39.99), makes its DVD debut this week. The Beiderbecke Connection is the third entry in a series written by playwright Alan Plater featuring a witty couple (both school teachers) who get involved in murder mysteries.  Like the two preceding mini-series The Beiderbecke Affair and The Beiderbecke Tapes, The Beiderbecke Connection is an entertaining mystery romp that, thanks to its humorous tone, has been compared to The Thin Man films.

 

The only animated TV series due to be released this week is King Arthur and the Knights of Justice (Image Entertainment, 579 min. $14.99), a toy-based fantasy adventure series from the early 1990s.  Avi Arad, who spearheaded Marvel's push to prominence in Hollywood, functioned as executive producer on this Arthurian cartoon series.

 

Continuing “TV on DVD” releases out this week include Designing Women: The Complete Third Season (Shout Factory, 480 min., $44.99), the stylish western Have Gun Will Travel Season 4, Part 1 (Paramount, 480 min. $39.98), and Matlock: Season 4 (Paramount, 1153 min. $49.99).

 

Classic Movies on DVD

 

The impending debut of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is also responsible for Universal’s decision to release the 1933 Alice in Wonderland (Universal, 76 min., $19.98) adaptation, which features W.C. Fields, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant and other leading lights of the era like Richard Arlen, many of whom are all but unrecognizable thanks to the heavy makeup and bizarre costumes.  But the real star of this very interesting adaptation is art director extraordinaire William Cameron Menzies, whose visual designs, which are based on the famous John Tenniel illustrations, dominate the film and help create its unsettling mood.  There is no doubt that Universal could have done a better job in restoring the movie for its DVD release, but it is great to see this very interesting and surprisingly faithful version of Alice available on disc.

 

Theatrical Films

 

The bestselling new release of this week will almost certainly be Roland Emmerich’s 2012 (Sony, “PG-13,” $28.96, BD $39.95), a disaster film that is based on a misreading of the Mayan calendar, but which offers plenty of cheap thrills for those who want to see the world destroyed via the magic of computers.  For all those America-haters out there, what does it say about the much maligned “taste” of the American people that they accounted for only about 20% of the mammoth worldwide gross of this far-fetched, bloated turkey of a film?

 

The best theatrical release this week is Spike Jonze’s free adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are (Warner Home Video, “PG,” $28.98, BD $35.99).  Though some reviewers found the movie too dark and frightening for younger kids, it is true to the spirit of the book and it is certainly one of the most visually interesting films of 2009. Although given a generous budget, Jonze brings an avant garde, indie sensibility to the material so this version is not for everyone, but then Sendak’s book probably isn’t either. 

 

This week’s most likely film to achieve cult status on DVD is Gentleman Broncos (Fox, “PG-13” $27.98, BD $39.99), the latest movie from Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite).  The nerdy teen hero of this saga is a home-schooled Utah boy who attends a weekend writing camp where he meets his idol, a science fiction writer who promptly rips off the teen’s unpublished novel.  Like Napoleon Dynamite, Gentlemen Broncos derives much of its humor from its characters’ ridiculous costumes and pays plenty of homage to adolescent gross out humor, a formula that has at least some chance to be successful once again.

 

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (Screen Media, “R,” $27.98, BD $29.98) features Robin Wright Penn in a tour-de-force performance as a middle-aged woman married to a much older man (Alan Arkin) and headed toward a nervous breakdown.  Writer/director Rebecca Miller flashes back and forth through Pippa’s life in a film that exemplifies a certain type of independent film that manages to attract top acting talent with an edgy narrative, but never seems able to attract much of an audience.

 

Documentaries

 

Lodz Ghetto: Collector’s Edition (Jewish Heritage, “G,” $39.95) tells the tragic story of the inhabitants of the Lodz ghetto through a combination of first person accounts, archival films, and photos.  With all the Holocaust-denying nonsense that is abroad these days, it is important that documentaries that are firmly rooted in fact like Lodz Ghetto, continue to be available.