This Week's DVD Releases

Here we are in the dog days of summer, and there is basically nothing new out on DVD. That being said, let's still run down the current releases, care of our good friends at Scarecrow Video.

Yes, there's Brooklyn's Finest, Antoine Fuqua's unofficial follow-up to Training Day. Pajiba says it's not as bad as you might think, but I'm not convinced. There's also The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the first film adaptation from Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy (the second, The Girl Who Played with Fire, is in theaters now, locally at the Harvard Exit). You should definitely see the Swedish films before the sure-to-be-horrid Hollywood versions, starring...oh, let's say Brad Pitt and Kristen Stewart. And there's also A Single Man, fashion designer Tom Ford's luminous directorial debut, featuring nuanced Oscar-nominated performances by Colin Firth and Julianne Moore. While it is shot strikingly well (of course), the validity of the ending is up for debate.

But besides that? Nothing. And when I say, "nothing," I mean NOTHING.

Like Season 13 of ER, the latest season of Project Runway, or Squidbillies Volume 3. Blu-ray double features of Last Man Standing and The Last Boy Scout, Practical Magic and The Witches of Eastwick, Funny Farm and Spies Like Us. A collection of sixteen Buster Keaton comedy shorts, along with a double-disk version of his feature Steamboat Bill Jr. The best of The Wiggles. Rodney Dangerfield and Jonathan Brandis in Ladybugs, at long last on Blu-ray. A Brittany Murphy rom-com finally seeing the light of DVD release four years after the fact. The complete series of the original UK version of Life on Mars. Vampire flick Bitten and the killer surveillance robots of Eyeborgs. I could go on, but I won't. You see what I'm working with here. The rest is silence.