This week’s big release is Season 4 of The Walking Dead, but there are some hidden gems like the 1999 anime Cybersix, the zany P.G. Wodehouse comedy Blandings: Series 2, the first DVD appearance of the interesting sci-fi series Now and Again, the controversial anime WataMote, and newly restored versions two classic film noir B movies, one of which presents DeForest Kelley (Bones) in his film debut.TV on DVD
This week’s top release is The Walking Dead: The Complete 4th Season (Starz, 600 min.,$69.98, BD $79.99, Ltd. Ed. $129.99). The most popular comic book-based TV series ever, The Walking Dead averaged 13.6 million same-day viewers throughout its fourth season during which the biggest evil turned out not be the zombies, but other “survivors.” All the editions include the complete as-broadcast episodes plus hours of intriguing bonus material. The Limited Edition “Tree Walker” version includes the Blu-ray of Season 4 packaged in a truly innovative way thanks to McFarlane Toys’ inspired creation.
Also of great interest to geek viewers are Haven: The Complete 4th Season (eOne, $39.98, BD $49.98), which collects the most recent season of the American/Canadian supernatural drama series that is loosely based on Stephen King’s novel The Colorado Kid, the improving Sherlock Holmes series Elementary: Season 2 (Paramount, 55.98), the hipster/indie comedy Portlandia: Season 4 (VSC, 220 min., $19.95), and the edgy motorcycle gang drama Sons of Anarchy: Season 6 (Fox, $69.98).
Other contemporary series due out on Tuesday include Revenge: The Complete 3rd Season (Disney, $45.99), Criminal Minds: The 9th Season (Paramount, $55.98), five-episode single-disc releases of three Disney network kid shows Austin & Ally: Vol. 2-Chasing the Beat (Disney, 132 min., $15.99), Good Luck Charlie: So Long, Farewell (Disney, 132 min., $15.99), and the animated Gravity Falls, Vol. 2: Even Stranger (Disney, 176 min., $15.99).
Other vintage TV releases due out this week include the very interesting Now and Again, which is appearing on disc for the first time. This 22-episode series starred Eric Close, Dennis Haysbert, and Margaret Colin and aired on CBS for just one season (1999-2000). In the series intriguing premise, an overweight family man killed by a train gets a new life when his brain is transplanted into a bio-engineered perfect human developed for use in espionage.
Additional vintage offerings include the excellent CBS series The Equalizer: Season 2 (VEI, 990 min., $29.99), a new edition of The Twilight Zone: The Complete Series (Image Entertainment, 2125 min., $55.98), which collects 65-episodes of the “second” Twilight Zone series that aired from 1985-1989, the vintage western, The Virginian: The Complete 9th Season (Timeless Media, 1829 min., $49.97), and the classic “Sweathogs” comedy series, Welcome Back, Kotter: The Complete Series (Shout Factory, 2280 min., $129.98).
History buffs will enjoy Medieval Lives (Acorn Media/Athena, 186 min., $34.99) in which Cambridge history professor Dr. Helen Castor provides modern viewers with an engrossing glimpse into the experiences of ordinary people (birth, marriage, death) in the high Middle Ages.
Anime
This week’s top release is the WataMote Complete Collection (Sentai Filmworks, “17+,” 300 min., $59.98, BD $69.98), a 12-episode anime series produced by Silver Link in 2013 based on the manga by Nico Tanigawa (published here by Yen Press) about a 15-year-old girl who thinks she will be popular in high school because she played so many dating games. This well-received anime series created some controversy with its depiction of social anxiety among teens. The WataMote anime was simulcast on Cruncyroll, but this version includes an English language track as well as the original Japanese soundtrack.
Also new are Uta no Prince-sama: Season 2 Complete Collecton (Sentai Filmworks, “14+,” 325 min., $49.98, BD $59.98), a Japanese-language-only release, which collects the13 episodes of 2013 series from A-1 Pictures based on the popular visual novel game in which the player assumes the role of an idol singer, and Kinmoza Kiniro: Mosaic Complete Collection (Sentai Filmworks, “13+,” 300 min., $49.98, BD $59.98), a subtitles-only release based on the 12-episode 2013 anime series from Studio Gokumi adapting Yui Hara’s 4-panel seinen comedy manga. The series about a quartet of cute teen girls.
Re-priced re-releases include the Toriko DVD Collection, Part 1 (Funimation, “14+,” 650 min., $34.98), which includes the first 26 episodes of the incredible anime “food adventures” series, Cardcaptor Sakura: The Movie (Eastern Star, 80 min., $24.95), Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit Complete Collection (Viz Media, “13+,” 600 min., $44.82, BD $54.97), and two martial arts anime offerings, Fatal Fury Complete OVA Series (Eastern Star, 120 min., $24.98), and Fatal Fury: The Movie (Eastern Star, 100 min., $24.95).
Theatrical Movies
The best film in a roster of weak releases is Belle (Fox, “PG,” 104 min. BD $27.95), a sensitive period film about a mixed race daughter of a British aristocrat, who finds some love from her family, but has considerable difficulty with the racism of the “polite society” of the era in this novelistic film, which is loosely-based on a true story. Actress Gugu Moatha-Raw is scintillating in the key role, and those who love dramatizations of Jane Austen novels will revel in the romance of the story and in this extraordinarily good-looking film’s faithful evocation of the era.
The biggest box office “hit” out this week is the Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore “Brady Bunch” comedy Blended (Warner Bros. “PG-13,” 117 min., $28.98, BD $34.99), which brought in $46.2 million in North America, though that is well below what Sandler’s comedies typically earn. The reason for the film’s poor performance could be its shopworn gags and uneven tone, which earned it a pitiful 14% positive rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
The popularity of animated feature films has spawned all sorts of efforts from smaller studios, some of which are quite excellent. That is not the case however with Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return (Fox, “PG,” 88 min., $22.98, BD $30.99), which is based on the adventure books by Roger Stanton Baum, the great-grandson of L. Frank Baum. A big name vocal cast (Dan Ackroyd, Kelsey Grammar, Lea Michelle) can’t save this film which suffers from poor animation and lackluster musical numbers—and which could only muster a 16% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
For art movie lovers the best choice this week could be The Double (Magnolia, “R,” 93 min., $26.98, BD $29.98), which stars Jesse Eisenberg (soon to be Lex Luthor) in a double role as a timid soul and as that character’s confident doppleganger. Director Richard Ayoade, who may be best known as Chris O’Dowd’s chief mate in The IT Crowd, is becoming quite the cineaste, and The Double, with its excellent performance from Eisenberg and its central theme of identity is sure to add to the director’s growing reputation for creating challenging movies.
Film Noir Classics on DVD
There are a lot of very interesting B-movie made during the 1940s and 1950s in the then dominant film noir style. Unfortunately many of them went into the public domain, so acquiring good looking versions of the films today is not always easy. The Film Chest Media Group has done its best with digital restorations of two B-movie noir classics, Fear in the Night, which stars DeForest Kelley (Bones on Star Trek), and Quicksand, which features Mickey Rooney, but though the films are now free of scratches, lines, and marks, they are not truly sharp-looking, most likely because the new versions were made from positive prints rather the movies’ original negatives. Nevertheless these are both quite watchable films in their restored state, and quite likely the finest versions of them we are likely to see for quite some time.
Fear in the Night (Film Chest, Unrated, $11.98), which is based on the Cornell Woolrich story “And So to Death” (later retitled “Nightmare”), was adapted and directed by Maxwell Shane, who later became a key writer/producer on the excellent Thriller series for NBC. Fear in the Night is full of “dream-state” noir touches in its saga of a man who thinks that he dreamed about committing a murder only to find that when he wakes up all sorts of things that happened in the dream have left very real clues in his waking life. As in many noir films, the ending/explanation of the protagonist’s dilemma is disappointing, but that doesn’t diminish the power of the film’s dream-soaked first half.
Quicksand (Film Chest, Unrated, $11.98) is a more conventional (and more realistic) noir that stars Mickey Rooney as a young auto mechanic, whose impulsive decision to “borrow” $20 from the cash register leads him deep into a life of crime, especially when he falls for a hard blonde (Jeanne Cagney) with a lust for mink coats and a strange relationship with a seedy arcade owner (played with great finesse by Peter Lorre).
Tom Flinn
The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect those of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.