Animation DVD of the Week: Tripping the Rift: The Complete Second Season. The series that an animated online bit spawned returns with thirteen episodes across two discs, all from Anchor Bay. Stephen Root and Maurice LaMarche return in a series of adventures that involve identity theft in deep space, the crash at Roswell, and near death experiences, plus the same array of sick, twisted innuendo that fans appreciate the show for. Comes with a season featurette, bloopers and more. (Buy it)
Sci-Fi DVD of the Week: Event Horizon. I know this movie didn’t crank the tractors of many. But it did mine. I’m not saying it’s perfect. By any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I’m disappointed the damned thing turned into Hellraiser in Space (before that movie was made), because sweet Christ, if they had just made the original script into a movie your heads would have exploded. But alas. Anyway, this new edition of the outer space creepfest sports a director/producer commentary, featurettes, deleted scenes with optional commentary, and more. (Buy it)
DVD Boxed Set of the Week: The Mae West Glamour Collection. Fans of the immortal Mae West will want to grab this, just because it’s, from what I can tell anyway, three films hitting DVD for the first time, one re-hitting DVD as it’s been out of print, and another with W.C. Fields that’s fine to reissue. Sure, some bonus bits would be nice, but for a little over five bucks a flick you can’t beat it. The films are Go West Young Man, Goin’ To Town, I’m No Angel, My Little Chickadee, and Night After Night. And this hits from Universal. (Buy it)
Scary Retro DVD of the Week: The Bugaloos: The Complete Series. There will never be another world like the one that the Kroffts brought to us. Because “trippy” doesn’t even touch it, brother. Here you’ve got a rock band, made up of four “bugs,” a nemesis in the form of Benita Bizarre (played by Martha Raye), and all the live action weirdness you’ve come to expect and admire from the Kroffts. Fans are going to go nuts for this Rhino release, seeing as how it’s the complete show, plus commentary tracks from Sid Krofft, the cast and others on multiple episodes, plus interviews and more. (Buy it)
DVD Anime Box Set of the Week: Saiyuki Reload: Gunlock, Vol. 1. For those that grab these things by the single volume and then have nowhere to put them, Geneon offers a limited edition collector’s box of this new series. Here, our heroes are off to the races with a setup for a plot for the rest of this series, and plenty of detours, which will bring them face to face with demons, illusions, and bears, oh my. The DVD comes with clean opening and closing animation, and the box comes with collectible mini pencil boards. (Buy it)
Romantic Comedy DVD of the Week: Something New. This Universal release is a story about one of comedy’s great themes: not getting what you expected and liking it anyway. That’s what happens when a successful young black woman finds herself on a blind date with a young male landscaper (we’re talking yards, folks)…who happens to be white. Race, family, personal expectations, career…all of it gets paraded about as these two folks try to figure out what the hell they want out of life. Harmless and well-acted, it’s worth a watch. Comes with two featurettes. (Buy it)
Docu DVD of the Week: The Goebbels Experiment. Joseph Goebbels was the man who ran Hitler’s propaganda machine. This First Run release is striking, since it takes film footage from the archives and pairs it with Kenneth Branagh reading from Goebbels’ own diaries that he kept from 1924 until 1945. As a human being and a family man, it’s an important reminder that monsters among the human race are nothing special–we forget that at our own peril. (Buy it)
