This week’s offerings include the massive hit, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire plus the “Best Picture” Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave, and one of the best martial arts movies of the decade, plus a new season of The Venture Bros., the first look at the new Doctor Who, a Regular Show disc, and two collections of the original Mr. Peabody & Sherman shorts to accompany the debut of the big Dreamworks blockbuster.
Theatrical Movies
This week’s biggest release will undoubtedly be The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (Lionsgate, “PG-13,” 146 min., 29.95, BD/Combo $39.99), the second film in the series based on the popular YA novel series by Suzanne Collins. Lionsgate decided to dump the director of the first Hunger Games movie in spite of the fact that the movie was a huge success. When helmer Gary Ross couldn’t meet the studio’s aggressive schedule, Lionsgate hired Francis Lawrence and got Catching Fire out just a year a half after the first Hunger Games movie debuted. The Hunger Games’ Battle Royale-like premise taps into the deep feelings of persecution felt by most adolescents, but the real secret of this series success is the extraordinary presence of Jennifer Lawrence in the central role of Katnis Everdeen. Sure this dystopian saga has a strong supporting cast including the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Woody Harrelson, Stanley Tucci, and Liam Hemsworth, but make no mistake, this is Jennifer Lawrence’s movie. While its appeal is pretty much limited to the under 30 set, it should be noted that only The Hunger Games films out of the many YA properties that have been adapted in the wake of the Harry Potter and Twilight movies have enjoyed a similar success, and perhaps that means that cinephiles over 30 should check out The Hunger Games films.
Hollywood’s depiction of slavery in the American South has for the most part been both ahistorical and profoundly dishonest. This makes Steve McQueen’s faithful adaptation of 12 Years a Slave (Fox, “R,” 134 min., $29.95, BD $39.99) Solomon Northrup’s 19th Century true life tale of the horrors of slavery all the more powerful. What happened to Northrup, who was a free black man captured by so-called “slave catchers” was a true nightmare and it exposes the corrupt and indefensible system of slavery that provided the economic underpinning for the gracious plantation “living” depicted in Gone With the Wind and countless other antebellum and Civil War era melodramas. The fact that 12 Years a Slave won the Academy Award for “Best Picture” will undoubtedly create additional interest in this powerful film, and demonstrates that Hollywood is at last going to repudiate its own “Southern strategy,” which distorted history for generations with films that supported the continued repression of African-Americans via Jim Crow segregation with fanciful and invariably positive portraits of the glories of plantation life in the ante bellum South and distorted ahistorical depictions of Reconstruction.
Also due this week is Spike Lee’s adaptation of the Korean cult hit Oldboy (Sony, “R,” 104 min., $29.99, BD $35.99). Genre fans will likely prefer Par Chan-wook’s original film, but James Brolin does give a very powerful performance in Lee’s film, which is better than its 44% positive rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes would indicate.
While Lee’s grisly adaptation of Old Boy is interesting, martial arts fans will prefer The Grandmaster (Anchor Bay, “PG-13” 130 min., $24.98, BD $29.98) Wong Kar-Wai’s epic action movie about the legendary Kung Fu master Ip Man, who taught Bruce Lee. Tony Leung stars as the fabled martial artist, and he is ably supported by a cast that includes the gorgeous and talented Ziyi Zhang (House of Flying Daggers). Wong Kar-Wai is not your typical martial arts movie director and he brings a strong visual style to The Grandmaster that adds to the film’s impact. While it may be too “arty” for some martial arts devotees, this is one of the best films in the genre in several years.
TV on DVD
There are a number of releases in this category of great interest to geek viewers including the cult favorite, The Venture Bros.: The Complete Season 5 (Warner Bros., 200 min., $24.98, BD $31.97), which includes all 8 Season 5 episodes plus two special bonus episodes, “A Very Venture Halloween,” and “Grave: The Shallow Gravy Story;” and Doctor Who: The Time of the Doctor, 2013 Christmas Special (BBC, 60 min., $14.98, BD $19.98), a key episode that sees the transition from the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) to the new iteration of the Doctor played by Peter Capaldi.
Animation fans will be interested in The Regular Show, Vol. 5: Mordecai & Margaret Pack (Warner Bros., 176 min., $19.82), a single-disc collection of the hilarious Cartoon Network series about a Blue Jay named Mordecai and a raccoon named Rigby—the two most engaging slackers on television today, and Teen Titans Go!: Season One, Part 1 Mission to Misbehave (Warner Bros., 325 min., $19.97), which collects the first 13 episodes of the anime-influenced Teen Titans series that is part of the DC Nation block on the Cartoon Network.
Also of interest due to the impending release of the big budget Dreamworks Mr. Peabody & Sherman feature film are two collections of the original Mr. Peabody segments from the classic Jay Ward Rocky & Bullwinkle series, The Original Mr. Peabody & Sherman WABAC Adventures Vol. 1 (Classic Media, 60 min., $8.99) and The Original Mr. Peabody & Sherman WABAC Adventures Vol. 2 (Classic Media, 60 min., $8.99).
Vintage TV offerings include a single-disc collection of the 1997-1998 live action Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation—East Meets West (Shout Factory, 147 min., $6.95), the 1999 Hallmark fantasy miniseries The Magical Legend of the Leprechauns (Mill Creek, 170 min., $9.98), the classic western that made Clint Eastwood a star, Rawhide: The 7th Season, Part 1 (Paramount, 771 min., $45.98), Rawhide: The 7th Season Part 2 (Paramount, 780 min., $45.98), the classic buddy cop drama Starsky and Hutch: Season 1 (Mill Creek, 880 min., $9.98) and the feature length Grizzly Adams: The Renewal (Timeless Media, 70 min., $9.99).
Overseas offerings include a charming Australian series Mr. and Mrs. Murder: Series 1 (Acorn Media, 589 min., $59.99), a modern version of the 1930s screwball crime comedies like The Thin Man series, this four-disc collection includes 13 ingenious mysteries and loads of witty banter. This is a very entertaining show that will appeal to those who like their mysteries light-hearted and clever (Castle fans, you know who you are).
But the premiere overseas release this week is Poirot: Series 11 (Acorn Media, 398 min., $39.99, BD $49.99), which presents ITV’s brilliant series of period dramas featuring David Suchet as Agatha Christie’s Belgian sleuth in their original broadcast order. This meticulously-produced series feature brilliantly crafted Art Deco sets, stunning costumes, and glorious locations, and these four feature-length episodes including the classic archaeological mystery Appointment With Death, are among the very best in the entire series.
Anime
The only “new” release this week is One Piece Season 5: Voyage 6 Uncut (Funimation, “14+,” 320 min., $39.99), which collects episodes 325-336 of the long-running pirate anime that remains one of the most popular anime and manga properties in Japan and in the U.S.
But this week’s offerings include lots of great re-releases and new editions (often in hi-def) of classic anime series. Chief among them are Aria the Natural Part 2 Litebox (Right Stuf, “13+,” 325 min., $39.99), which includes episodes 14-26 of the 2006 series from HAL Film Maker based on the sci-fi slice-of-life, coming-of-age manga by Kozue Amano, and Space Adventure Cobra: The Original TV Series, Part 1 (Right Stuf, “16+,” 375 min., $49.99), which includes episodes 1-15 of the 31-episode 1982-1983 anime series produced by TMS and based on Buichi Terasawa’s science fiction adventure manga that is one of the bestselling Shonen Jump series of all time.
Also of great interest are the Casshan Complete Collection (Sentai Filmworks, “14+,” 875 min., $49.99, BD $59.99), which collects all 35 episodes of the classic 1973 anime series produced by Tatsunoko Productions about a human who turns himself into an android in order to hunt down and destroy the robots that have taken over the world, and the Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water Complete Collection (Sentai Filmworks, “14+,” 975 min., $79.98, BD $99.98), which includes all 39 episodes of the classic Jules Verne-inspired anime series from 1990 that was based on a concept by Hayao Miyazaki and directed by Hideaki Anno (Neon Genesis Evangelion).
Perhaps the best deal of the week is the Galaxy Railways Complete Collection (Funimation, “13+,” 650 min., $29.98), which collects the 26-episode 2003 series produced by Leiji Matsumoto about trains that fly through the outer reaches of space.
Tom Flinn
The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect those of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
Week of March 4th, 2014
Posted by ICv2 on March 2, 2014 @ 10:50 pm CT