It’s the past in the form of a Blu-ray edition of Ray Harryhausen’s Jason and the Argonauts and a potent set of Columbia film noir that provides the biggest thrills on DVD this week, though there are also plenty of solid anime and "TV on DVD" releases plus The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, a masterful adaptation of the first volume of Stieg Larsson’s worldwide publishing phenomenon.

 

Classics

 

There are plenty of problems with the 1963 Jason and the Argonauts (Sony, Unrated, BD $24.95)—the performances are uneven, Honor Blackman is a sexy and convincing Hera, while lead actor Todd Armstrong had to have his voice dubbed and actress Nancy Kovack is positively comatose—but it still remains one of the most interesting and compelling fantasy films of the 20th Century largely due to Ray Harryhausen’s special effects and Bernard Herrmann’s score, both of which come across beautifully in Sony’s re-mastered Blu-ray edition, which also contains copious extras including several Harryhausen documentaries and a commentary track from Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, who provides plenty of evidence of just how influential Harryhausen’s work has been.   The super sharp Blu-ray visuals reproduce all the details in the costumes and in Harryhausen’s meticulously created stop motion set pieces like the climactic battle with the Hydra and skeleton warriors, while Bernard Herrmann’s score also really benefits from the extended audio capabilities of the Blu-ray format.  All things considered, the Blu-ray edition of Jason and the Argonauts is a definite “must-have” for fantasy film fans.

 

For those who enjoy the gritty crime films known as film noir, the release of Columbia Pictures Film Noir Classics Vol.2 (Sony, 5-Film Set, $59.95) is very good news indeed.  All five of these stylish films were photographed in black-and-white and most were made on relatively low budgets.  Fritz Lang’s 1954 film Human Desire reunites Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame, the starring duo from Lang’s The Big Heat, in an adaptation of Emile Zola’s La Bete Humaine, which had previously been made in France in 1938 by Jean Renoir.  As its title indicates, this a noir film driven by elemental passions, and like New York Confidential (see “DVD Round-Up: Week of June 29th”) Human Desire features a brilliant performance by the underrated Broderick Crawford. 

 

Like Lang, Jacques Tourneur (Out of the Past) was a key noir director and Nightfall (1957) benefits from a taut script, gritty location shooting, and strong performances from Aldo Ray, Anne Bancroft and Brian Keith.   Phil Karlson (The Phenix City Story) came into his own as a noir director in the 1950s and his realistic style can be seen to great effect in The Brothers Rico (1957), which features Richard Conte in another brilliant but apparently effortless performance as a mob accountant trying to escape his past and extricate his family from the family. 

 

Noir films didn't just bring out the best in directors, there were plenty of actors who reached the pinnacle of their dramatic careers in these dark film.  Fred MacMurray gave a breakthrough performance in Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity, one of the best noir films of the 1940s, and a decade later MacMurray reprised his role as the ultimate "patsy" in Pushover, a similar saga about a guy who gets way too involved with a poisonous dame—only this time MacMurray’s a cop, not an insurance investigator. 

 

The final film in the set, City of Fear (1959) brings noir into the nuclear age with the story of an escaped convict on the lam with a canister full of deadly radioactive material.

 

Anime

 

There’s quite a bit of action in this category this week.  New releases include Maria Watches Over Us Season 4 (Nozomi Entertainment, “13+,” 325 min., $49.98), a 13-episode series that aired in Japan in 2009 and is presented in anamorphic widescreen with the original Japanese soundtrack (plus English subtitles) and packaged in a well-designed thinpak box.  Based on a series 36 light novels, the Maria Watches Over Us anime is set in a Catholic girls school in Tokyo and involves the relationship between two school girls.  Produced by Studio Deen, this character-driven series typifies the “yuri” (girls’ love) genre at its best.

 

Viz Media’s blitz of One Piece manga titles has gotten the American editions nearly caught up with their Japanese counterparts and given this property, which is arguably the most popular manga and anime title in Japan, a real boost here in the States.  This week Funimation is releasing One Piece Season 3 Part 1 (Funimation, “13+,” 325 min., $49.98), which presents 13 more episodes from this rollicking pirate saga.

 

Also new this week is Bandai Entertainment’s Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Season 2 Part 2 (Bandai, “13+,” 150 min. $39.98), which builds toward a climactic battle.  Gundam 00, which aired on the SyFy Network, was the first Gundam series since Gundam SEED to get major U.S. TV exposure.  Bandai is also releasing  Hayate: The Combat Butler Part 6 (13+, 150 min., $39.98), and all three Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam movies in a Complete Movie Collection (Bandai, “13+,” 297 min., $64.98) and individually as Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam Movie 1: Heirs to the Stars (13+, 96 min., $24.98), Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam Movie 2: Lovers (13+, 100 min., $24.98), and Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam Movie 3: Love is the Pulse of the Stars (13+, 101 min., $24.98).

 

The American football-themed Eyeshield 21 Collection 2 (Sentai Filmworks, “13+,” 325 min., $49.98) rounds out this week’s new releases. 

 

Re-priced re-releases include the Ghost Slayers Ayashi Complete Collection (Bandai, “13+,” 775 min., $49.98), The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Complete Collection (Bandai, “13+,” 350 min., $39.98), Mushshi: The Complete Series (Funimation, “13+, 625 min., $39.98), and D. Gray-Man Season 1 Complete Collection (Funimation, “13+,” 600 min., $69.98).

 

TV on DVD

 

The best releases in this category come from across the pond and include four different Doctor Who discs: Doctor Who: Story 15/16: The Space Museum (BBC Video, 250 min., $49.98) a saga from 1965 featuring the first Doctor (William Hartnell); Doctor Who: Story 64: The Time Monster (BBC Video, 150 min., $24.98), a 1972 story arc featuring the third Doctor (Jon Pertwee); Doctor Who, Story 096: Underworld (BBC Video, 100 min., $24.98) which was produced in 1978 and features the popular fourth Doctor (Tom Baker); and Doctor Who, Story 108: The Horns of Nimon (BBC Video, 100 min., $24.98), which was produced in 1980 and also features Tom Baker.

 

Equally interesting is Doc Martin: Series 4 (Acorn Media, 367 min., $39.98), a superior "dramedy” about a small town GP with hemophobia (he’s all right with gays, he just vomits at the sight of blood), who longs to return to a surgery practice in London.  Beautifully photographed on the Cornish coast, Doc Martin, which is shown on many PBS stations, features a bunch of great character actors in deliciously funny roles.  Offbeat, clever, consistently funny, and occasionally romantic, Doc Martin is a series to savor.

 

Sometimes head wounds lead to criminal anti-social behavior but in the case of Detective Inspector Dave Creegan in Touching Evil (Acorn Media, 780 min., $79.98), his gunshot wound shatters his personal life, but leads him to discover an almost mystical ability to connect with the criminal mind, which he does in a series adventures tracking down heinous criminals including serial killers, pederasts, and demented doctors.  Created by Phillip Abbott in 1997 and written by Abbott and Russell T. Davies (who revived Doctor Who) the first season of Touching Evil consisted of six 50-minute episodes.  Two sequel series followed in 1998 and 1999 and all three series are included in this excellent collection.

 

Even better is Life on Mars: The Complete Collection (Acorn Media, 930 min., $79.98), a high concept 2006 police drama about a contemporary Manchester cop who has a traffic accident and wakes up in 1973 working at the same precinct but under very different conditions.  In spite of a few anachronisms, period details such as clothing, cars, and music are handled perfectly and the serial drama story remains compelling for 16 episodes thanks to strands which tie what happens in 1973 to the present.  There was a short-lived American version on ABC, which lasted just one season.  It was good and deserved a better fare, but the U.K. original is far better--in fact it is simply one of the best series yet produced in this new century.

 

Continuing series out this week include Dragnet 1967 Season 2 (Shout Factory, 810 min., $44.99) featuring Jack Webb and Harry Morgan, ER: The Complete 13th Season (Warner Bros., 1100 min., $49.98), Have Gun, Will Travel: Season 4, Part 2 (Paramount, 491 min., $38.99), and Rhoda: Season 3 (Shout Factory, 570 min., $29.93).

 

The sole animated TV on DVD release this week is Squidbillies Vol.3 (Warner Bros., 220 min., $19.98), the flash-animated Adult Swim series about an impoverished family of anthropomorphic redneck squids living in North Georgia.

 

Theatrical

 

The big releases in this category are Antoine (Training Day) Fuqua’s gritty cop drama, Brooklyn’s Finest (Overture, “R,” $29.98, BD $39.98), which has some surprises (the most corrupt cops in this drama aren’t the ones who have been around the longest), and Tom Ford’s A Single Man (Sony, “R,” $27.96, BD $34.95) in which Colin Firth gives a notable performance as a grief-stricken gay man (and the best-dressed college professor in screen history). 

 

But the most interesting release of the week is The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Music Box, $29.95, BD $34.95), a faithful and bloody adaptation of the first volume of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy about political and economic corruption in modern Sweden.  There is an American version of this film in the works, but it is unlikely that anyone will be able to match Noomi Rapace’s portrayal of the alienated Goth Girl hacker Lisbeth Salander,while Michael Nyquist, who was brilliant in As It Is In Heaven

(see the “Feb. 2nd DVD Round-Up”), is equally effective here.  Directed by Niels Arden Oplev, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo earned an 86% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes and over $100 million world wide--check it out.