Yeesh, talk about feast to famine- after last week’s bumper crop of good releases, this week’s release chart’s looking like pretty slim pickings.
In fact, there’s so little good stuff out this week that I’ve decided to forego the DVD of the Week feature altogether. Instead, I’ll move on directly to the new releases. This week: the Abigail Breslin/Jodie Foster family adventure
Nim’s Island (Fox, also Blu-Ray); the Best Foreign Language Film-winning Holocaust epic (kind of redundant, no?)
The Counterfeiters (Sony, also Blu-Ray); and two acclaimed documentaries about two very different artists,
Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis (Arts Alliance America) and
Pete Seeger: The Power of Song (Genius Productions/The Miriam Collection). Also, a new Spanish-language take on
Carmen (Lionsgate), which I’m only including here as an excuse to post a picture of the lovely Paz Vega. You’re welcome.
In “classics”, this week brings two box sets: Universal’s
High School Flashback Collection, which includes
Sixteen Candles,
The Breakfast Club, and
Weird Science, also available separately; and the
Starship Troopers Trilogy Box Set (Sony, also Blu-Ray), which includes the new direct-to-DVD sequel
Starship Troopers 3: Marauder, as well as the new-to-Blu-Ray original film and its first sequel
Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation. On a side note, I’m consistently amazed by how much Sony has flogged the
Starship Troopers name brand, considering how big a flop the original film was back in the day.
Finally, in tie-in news, this week brings the DVD premiere of the 1984 miniseries
The First Olympics Athens 1896 (Sony), just in case around-the-clock coverage over the next two weeks isn’t to cool down your Olympic fever.
