This Week on Blu-ray and DVD - June 19, 2012

The life of a samurai is sure changing. Next they'll have me singing and clicking my heels like a newsboy.

James

Plath

First online:

Monday, June 18, 2012 - 4:32pm

This past week it was announced that BuzzFeed will team with The New York Times to cover the Republican and Democratic nominating conventions. Talk about a circus in the making. Next thing you know, it’ll be like the Olympics—broadcast in 3D. It sends chills down my spine, because there isn’t a politician alive that I want projected into my living room.

And I’m getting the same sort of feeling looking over the list of new releases for this week. It’s kind of a scattershot Tuesday, unless you happen to be a rabid Spalding Gray fan (I’m not) and are wetting your pants over the Criterion release of “And Everything Is Going Fine” (trailer) and “Gray’s Anatomy.” It’s a shrug for me.

The 2012 movies on home video this week are “Big Miracle” (trailer), “Wanderlust”(trailer), and “Project X” (trailer), with "Big Miracle" and its save-the-whale narrative maybe appealing to families and "Project X" a possibility for those who are easily amused. In the latter, three high school seniors decide to host a bash to increase their social standing, and, predictably, it gets out of control in a hurry. Thomas Mann, Oliver Cooper, and Jonathan Daniel Brown star in the raunchy comedy, which Movie Met's John J. Puccio hated.

Even the catalog titles new to Blu aren’t going to excite a lot of people—unless you’re a fan of musicals. The Disney folks are releasing three “anniversary” editions this Tuesday: “Evita” (trailer), “Newsies” (trailer), and “Sister Act” (trailer). “Evita,” starring Madonna, Antonio Banderas, and Jonathan Pryce in Alan Parker’s edgy 1996 film version of the Broadway play by the same name, could stir the most interest. Based on the life of Evita Duarte, the B-movie actress who became Argentina’s first lady, it was a film that drew as much love and hate as Evita herself.

The best bets this week look to be other period films. Lauren Bacall and Herbert Lom (of “Pink Panther” fame) star with Kenneth More in “Flame over India,” which was originally released as “North West Frontier” in 1959. It’s about a prince who must be escorted by train across rebel-held territory in kind of a British colonial version of “Stagecoach.” But those old-time adventures were always entertaining.

A newer adventure is “The Hidden Blade,” Yoji Yamada’s historic drama about the samurai culture in its twilight (trailer). Transitional periods are fascinating, and Yamada’s film earned 12 Japanese Academy Award nominations because of the deft way he handled it.

As for TV-on-DVD, the best bet seems to be “Franklin & Bash: Season 1,” which is kind of like “Ally McBeal” meets “Simon & Simon” for the gamer-and-gadget generation: Breezy, irreverent, and blurring work and play the way comedy and drama blend into dramedy (review). But come to think of it, I’m not sure I could take these guys in 3D either.

Here are select new releases for the week of June 19, 2012:

BLU-RAY

And Everything Is Going Fine (Criterion) (2010 Spalding Gray documentary)
Bag of Hammers, A (2011 dramedy)
Big Miracle (+DVD + UV Digital Copy) (2012 Drew Barrymore drama/romance)
Cat Run (2011 action comedy)
Colossus of New York, The (1958 B-movie sci-fi)
Evita (15th Anniversary Edition)
Flame over India (a.k.a. North West Frontier) (1959 British colonial adventure)
Gray’s Anatomy (Criterion) (1996 Spalding Gray dramedy)
Hidden Blade, The (2004 samurai drama)
Invisible Man, The: Complete Series (1975-76)
K-ON!: Season 2, Collection 1 (anime)
Lee Ritenour: Overtime (concert intercut with interviews)
Louie: Season 2
Newsies (20th Anniversary Edition)
Project X (+ DVD + UV Digital Copy) (2012 comedy)
Project X (+ UV Digital Copy)
Seeking Justice (+ DVD) (2011 Nicolas Cage action-drama)
Sister Act (20th Anniversary Edition + Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit) (comedy-musical)
Space Children, The (1958 B-movie sci-fi)
Wanderlust (+ DVD + Digital Copy + UV Copy) (2012 Jennifer Aniston comedy)
Wilfred: Season 1