This is a somewhat lackluster week.
First, the genre releases:
- Basilisk Vol. 5: Shades of Night (Limited Edition)
- Dark Castle Horror Collection: Includes the newest version of “House of Wax,” “Gothika,” “Ghost Ship,” “Thir13en Ghosts,” and the latest “House on Haunted Hill.”
- Dead Mary
- Flushed Away: Aardman Animation’s first CGI flick, and I missed it in theaters.
- The Impossible Elephant: I wasn’t going to mention this until I noticed Mia Sara and Nicholas Lea in the cast. I don’t know about the quality of this project, but Sara and Lea both deserve higher profile projects than this.
- Kadokawa Horror Collection
- Night of the Living Dorks
- Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Season Two, Volume Two: If memory serves, this finishes the series.
- What’s New, Scooby-Doo? – The Complete First Season
Now, the non-genre releases:
- 49th Parallel – Criterion Collection: This one is about German soldiers stranded in Canada before the U.S. entered World War II, and shows their attempt to get across the border into neutral territory before being caught.
- Alias Smith and Jones – Season One
- The Alice Faye Collection: Some classic musicals.
- Apartment Zero
- Babel: Also available in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD formats.
- Bloody Ties
- The Cuban Masterworks Collection
- Dixie Chicks – Shut Up and Sing: About the backlash the group received when Natalie Maines (wife to Adrian Pasdar, who plays Nathan Petrelli on Heroes) made some anti-George W. Bush comments in concert.
- Family Ties – Complete First Season
- Ghandi: This is a two disc special edition.
- The Johnny Carson Show
- Man of the Year: Robin Williams as a comedian who runs for president. I wonder what Jon Stewart thought of this one…
- Paradise Found
- Penn and Teller – Bullsh*t – The Complete Fourth Season
- The Prestige: Also avaliable in Blu-ray format.
- Speaking of Sex
- Strumpet City
- Through The Fire
- Twitch City
- When A Woman Ascends The Stairs: Criterion Collection
Finally, the pick of the week.
As regular readers know, I don’t pick titles I haven’t seen. The only title on this list I’ve seen is the first season of Family Ties, and the last time I watched it I found that it just didn’t hold up over the 20 years since the first time I watched it. Later seasons show signs of improvement, but I can’t recommend this given the reputation of Ghandi, the Criterion Collection stamp on The 49th Parallel and When A Woman Ascends The Stairs, or the cast of Speaking of Sex.