When a movie is big enough like the record-setting Avatar, or has a dedicated enough audience like the Twilight films, an ordinary Tuesday release evidently just doesn’t cut it. Avatar has earned over $2.7 billion worldwide, so it can come out any day it wants. Fortunately this week it will be preceded by a parade of interesting titles, a welcome change from the past few weeks that have seen little of substance issued on DVD. Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, Jeff Bridges’ Oscar turn in Crazy Heart, the fantasy series Merlin, Naruto Shippuden Box Set 2, the latest release featuring everybody’s favorite crime-solving lawyer Perry Mason, and two exceptional French films all help make this week the best by far in April, at least so far.
Theatrical Films
James Cameron’s eco-themed Avatar, which is being released appropriately enough on Earth Day (April 22nd) set all sorts of records in theaters, but its release on DVD (Fox, “PG13,” $29.98, BD/DVD Combo $39.99) raises all sorts of questions. There will be an Ultimate Edition with about fifteen-to-twenty minutes of additional footage and all sorts of extras coming out in time for the holidays, but that will also be a 2D version. The real “Ultimate” edition is probably a year or two away depending on how soon the powers that be can decide on a home video 3D format, so unless viewers just have to see a two-hour documentary about how Cameron used green screens and computers to create the film, there might not be all that much reason to wait until the fall and pay a premium price for the Ultimate Edition unless additional scenes of Dr.Augustine’s Na’vi school and Jake’s training as a Na’vi trip your trigger. There isn’t likely to be a better 2D version of the film than the current Blu-ray release, which is solely devoted to the film itself. As Cameron himself pointed out, with a long(162 min.) film like Avatar any extra features tend to reduce the bit rate and degrade the picture. There is no doubt that the film looks great in Blu-ray, though it lacks the immersive 3D quality that made the movie the most popular IMAX film of all time, Avatar is still a visual feast in its current Blu-ray incarnation.
The arbiters of taste were much kinder to Crazy Heart (Fox “R,” $29.98, BD $39.99), which earned Jeff Bridges an Oscar for his portrayal of Bad Blake, a booze-soaked country troubadour in this country music-fueled saga that is more than a little reminiscent of Bruce Beresford’s 1983 film Tender Mercies. But Crazy Heart benefits not only from Bridges’ ingratiating performance, but also from a soundtrack supervised by T-Bone Burnett, who played a major role in making the Coen Brothers O Brother Where Art Thou so good.
Emily Blunt’s performance as The Young Victoria (Sony “PG,” $27.96, BD $34.95) is also worthy of praise. A lavish historical drama with great costumes and sets, The Young Victoria manages to avoid the boredom-inducing perils of so many period dramas by humanizing its royal subjects.
Lovers of indie movies might want to check out Uncertainty (MPI, Unrated, $24.98), a thriller about a young couple at a crossroads whose separate destinies stemming from one apparently innocuous decision are explored in this film by Scott McGehee and David Siegel. While the plot might be a little contrived, Joseph Gordon Levitt (500 Days of Summer) and Lynn Collins (Wolverine) are great as are the crisply filmed NYC locations.
Anime
Most of this week’s anime DVDs have been released here before. The stylish “Gothic Lolita” supernatural saga, Le Portrait de Petite Cossette OVA (Sentai Filmworks, 120 min. $19.95) was previously released by Geneon. Meanwhile Media Blasters is readying a lower priced edition of the stylish, 24-episode Production I.G. period drama Otogi Zoshi (13+, 650 min. $39.95) and also releasing the 12-episode doujinshi epic, Dojin Work Complete Collection (300 min., $49.95), which was produced in 2007 by Remic.
TV on DVD
Anime companies aren’t the only ones re-releasing product. This week Universal Home Video is putting out Hercules: The Legendary Journeys Season 1 ($26.98) and Xena: Warrior Princess Season 1 ($26.98), both of which have been issued before. Anyone who has the
Fans of vintage westerns will enjoy Whispering Smith: The Complete Series (Time Life, 625 min., $24.98), which featured war hero Audie Murphy as a Denver-based railroad detective in the 1870s in stories that were based on actual police records. The set includes all 20 episodes that aired on NBC in 1951 plus 5 that were never broadcast.
Another vintage western making its DVD debut this week is Frontier Circus: The Complete Series (Timeless Media, 1300 min., $49.98), a short-lived western about a circus traveling the Southwest that aired on CBS in 1961 and 1962. Chill Wills ran the traveling show, while John Derek, Richard Jaekel and J. Pat O’Malley were regulars.
The 1979 Canadian/German series Huckleberry Finn and His Friends (Virgil Films, 660 min., $29.99) combines Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn novels into 26 half-hour episodes that have developed a bit of a following over the years.
Animated "TV on DVD" releases include the outrageous Drawn Together: The Movie (Comedy Central, 70 min., $24.99), Bump in the Night: The Complete Series (Shout Factory, 525 min., $29.99), which contains all 26 episodes of the Saturday morning claymation series that ran from 1994-1996 including the hilarious “Night of the Living Bread” episode, and another vintage animation release, this one featuring classic 1980s Saturday morning fare, Transformers 25th Anniversary Edition: Seasons 3 & 4(Shout Factory, 660 min., $29.98)
Foreign Films
