This Week's DVD Releases

Oh, hello there. Now that we've got a weekend of summer rain and Blue Angels under our belt, it's time to take a look at the latest releases on DVD, care of our good friends at Scarecrow Video. The big DVD out this week is Kick-Ass, which was a lot of fun. (And yes, while the film is ostensibly about Kick-Ass, it's really all about Hit Girl and Nic Cage's sly take on Batman.) But don't let the kids see that one--it's actually pretty violent. Instead, steer them towards Diary of a Wimpy Kid, based on the book series of the same name.

The Ghost Writer is the smart thriller that Shutter Island should've been, assuming you can get past the fact that it was directed by Roman Polanski. Oscar-nominated stylized French prison drama A Prophet (Un prophète), in which a new inmate learns how to work the system, also hearkens back to Scorsese's glory days. And there are two crummy releases with the word "life" in the title: To Save a Life, a glorified after-school special, and After.Life, a bad horror flick with Christina Ricci as a dead girl who doesn't accept she's dead just yet.

On the documentary tip, there's a look at the life of Jim Henson in Henson's Place: The Man Behind the Muppets, and a look at D&D nerds in Dungeon Masters. Meanwhile, Sweetgrass is a poetic paean to real-life current-day cowboys driving their sheep flocks through the West, while All God's Children examines the offspring of missionaries who faced abuse at the hands of their parents' colleagues. And if you didn't get enough hardcore harp action with Joanna Newsom in town, check out Harp Dreams: Inside the International Harp Competition, following the thirty-one young contestants who are amongst the best harpists in the world.

As to special editions, there's two more Roger Cormen releases, care of Shout Factory, whose plots are evident from the titles alone: Piranha and Humanoids from the Deep. This week also brings the 25th anniversary edition of The Breakfast Club. And there's a big old release in the form of The Kim Novak Collection, which includes five of the icy blonde's films: Picnic, Jeanne Eagels, Middle of the Night, Bell, Book and Candle, and Pal Joey.

In the random grab bag, there's Open House, a real estate thriller starring True Blood's Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer. And I'm going to close with a title that you would think requires no further explanation: Cop Dog. Except the crime-fighting dog in question is also a ghost. Complicated!