Here’s yer DVD goodness…
TV DVD of the Week: The Office: Season One. It looks like the consensus is that this import from Britain has fared a lot better than…well, almost every one from recent memory. Find out for yourself on this Univeral release, which has the six first season episodes on a single disc. The pilot comes with two commentaries and there are three additional commentaries, plus almost an hour of total running time for deleted scenes. Nice. (Buy it)
DVD of the Week: The Transporter. Jason Statham is a Needcoffee fave because he’s just a cool guy. And we’re easy to please when it involves some fu, fast cars, and guns…so this guilty pleasure is a winner in our book. This new Fox special edition replaces the previous offering. You get a commentary from the producer and Statham, behind-the-scenes docu, a making-of featurette, a storyboard-to-film comparison, and fifteen minutes of extended fight fun with commentary. (Buy it)
Docu DVD of the Week: Conquest of America. Well, you can see them there on the cover: Coronado, Hudson, Ribault, and others…the names you recognize from when you weren’t nodding off during history class. But now you can refresh yourself with this two-disc set from the History Channel, featuring all three hours (and four parts) of the series. And if watching a continent get taken over isn’t enough, check out the two-part behind the scenes feature as well. (Buy it)
Anime DVD of the Week: Pom Poko. It’s a Studio Ghibli film that just cries out for Dindrane: raccoons are being given the heave-ho by the continuing sprawl of mankind, so they start to take steps to scare those pesky homo sapiens off. This makes its debut on DVD here in the States thanks to Disney, with a second disc which has the entire film all over again in storyboard form. (Buy it)
Horror Video of the Week: Trauma. Anchor Bay is realing making great strides to give me an even wider selection of genre films to choose from for my self-imposed Halloween weekend movie marathon. And here’s a sweet version of an American Dario Argento flick, starring, among others, his daughter Asia and Brad Dourif. A nice warm murder mystery is at hand, with great bonus bits: an interview with Dario, an audio commentary, behind-the-scenes footage, Tom Savini’s home movies, and more. (Buy it)
Animation DVD of the Week: The Ren & Stimpy Show: Season Five & Some More of Four. Seventeen episodes are all that’s left of the original series and they all hit DVD here in this three-disc set from Paramount. Thirteen audio commentaries are here with the animation teams that brought you this sickness, plus Ren & Stimpy discuss…well, themselves. Completist fans of the series will want to snag this, or at least give it a rental for old times’ sake. (Buy it)
Kids DVDs of the Week: Magic School Bus. Two new volumes of the DVDs have hit from Warner Brothers and Scholastic. Each contains three episodes from the series, each starring Lily Tomlin as the voice of the teacher who takes her students on the most interesting field trips. As you can figure from the titles, their destinations this time around involve both water (Catches a Wave) and the internal workings of the human body (Human Body, natch). The first comes with a quiz, and the second comes with an interactive map of the body. (Buy Catches a Wave and Human Body)
Brit DVD of the Week: As Time Goes By: The Complete Series 8 & 9. The Geoffrey Palmer and Judi Dench series finally draws to a close after nine series, and here’s the final ten episodes brought to you by BBC Home Video across two discs. If you’ve watched any of the previous releases, you know that’s pretty sweet all by its lonesome, but there is bonus goodness to be had: interviews with cast members Palmer, Moira Brooker, and Philip Bretherton and an hour-long special retrospective with the characters. (Buy it)
