One of the weakest weeks on the home market for a long while, with only one wide release of note. Granted, Law Abiding Citizen's performance at the box office was much better than expected, but it still only managed to become a midlevel hit. The best of the best is Good Hair, which would be a clear Pick of the Week if the DVD had all the extras they mentioned on the audio commentary track. Alas, there's just the audio commentary track.

Note: The Guild: Season Three came out on the 15th and not the 9th as stated in last week's column. The confusion was caused by it being released on a Monday and not a Tuesday like most DVDs.

Black Dynamite - Buy from Amazon: DVD or Blu-ray
An homage / spoof of Blaxsploitation flicks from the 1970s. As expected, its excellent reviews were not enough to save it at the box office, but it should find a more appreciative audience on the home market. Extras on the DVD include an audio commentary track, some deleted scenes, a "making-of" featurette, and a ComicCon Q&A panel. The Blu-ray has an additional featurette and a trivia track and is easily worth the extra cost, even if the audio and video are a little dodgy at times. The movie was meant to look like a film from the 1970s, so there are intentional problems here and there for which you can't fault the transfer.

Blu-ray Releases - Buy from Amazon: Black Dynamite, Cabin Fever: Unrated Director's Cut, Claymore: The Complete Series, Coco Before Chanel, Contempt, Dirty Harry Collection, Goodfellas: 20th Anniversary Edition, Halo Legends, Heroic Age: Complete Series, Hunger (The Criterion Collection), The Ladykillers, Law Abiding Citizen, Lola Montes (The Criterion Collection), Ran, Revanche (The Criterion Collection), and Women in Trouble
There are not many Blu-ray releases coming out this week in terms of first-run releases or even limited releases. Some catalogue titles try to pick up the slack, but overall it is still slim pickings. Some of the releases of note are the Criterion Collection releases and the original version of The Ladykillers. Hopefully I will be getting a copy of the latter to review, but so far the screener is late.

Bugs Bunny's Easter Funnies - Buy from Amazon
I love these cartoons, but I wish the studio would start releasing chronological DVDs. I am more than willing to pay for double-dips if it means that I can get every Looney Tune cartoon ever made. I know I've said this in the past, but I will keep saying it until they announce chronological collections.

Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever - Buy from Amazon
A direct-to-DVD sequel to Cabin Fever. Strike one. It was filmed three years ago, but has sat on a shelf since then. Strike two. There are no reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. Strike three.

Clint Eastwood: 35 Films 35 Years at Warner Bros. - Buy from Amazon
A 19-disc, 35-film collection of Clint Eastwood films. That's every film he has made with Warner Bros. so far, for less than $4 a film. That's an amazing deal, depending how many of these movies you already own or want to own. Also coming out this week is a Dirty Harry Collection on DVD or Blu-ray.

Coco Before Chanel - Buy from Amazon: DVD or Buy from Amazon
A biopic about Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel and her rise in the fashion industry. It earned good reviews and did well in limited release. It even picked up an Oscar nomination. The DVD has an audio commentary track and a trio of featurettes. The Blu-ray is BD-Live enabled and only costs $3 more. Worth picking up and worth grabbing the High Definition version.

The Guild: Season Three - Buy from Amazon
Felicia Day writes, produces, and stars in one of the best TV shows on the web. The series focuses on a guild in W.o.W., the most popular MMORPG around. This show has an incredibly high quotient of geek, but in a good way. Extras include the amazingly popular "Do You Want to Date My Avatar" music video, a "making-of" featurette for that music video, audio commentary tracks, outtakes, and a whole lot more. A must- have for fans of the show or the game and a contender for Pick of the Week. (On a side note, I'm addicted to World of Warcraft, but it most affects my productivity when the server is down, like it is right now. Oh for the love of... now the Realm Status page is down as well. I've gone days without playing it, but as soon as the server is down and I can't play it, I get jittery and anxious waiting for it to come back online.) Yes, this is exactly the same as I said last week, but the DVD came out on the 15th, not the 9th as I thought it did. It was released on a Monday, which is what threw me. No, I'm not sure why it was released on a Monday.

Halo Legends - Buy from Amazon: DVD, Two-Disc DVD, or Blu-ray
A compilation of 8 animated shorts based on the popular video game (mostly anime, but there is one CG short). Extras on the DVD include audio commentary tracks for each episode, a "making-of" featurette for each episode, and a featurette on the video game itself. The Blu-ray has an additional featurette and only costs $2 more, making it easily the better deal. For hardcore fans of the franchise, it is a must own. For causal fans of the game or fans of Anime, it's worth picking up.

Lark Rise to Candleford: The Complete Season Two - Buy from Amazon
It is hard to argue with the BBC's success with costume dramas. Usually these are TV movies, but this TV series shows that they can handle the genre in that form as well. Like most imports, its price per minute is high compared to most domestic TV on DVD release, but for fans of the show it is still worth picking up.

Law Abiding Citizen - Buy from Amazon: DVD or Blu-ray
A film with a plot point so stupid that it destroys the viewer's suspension of disbelief, at least it does with me and many critics. Since it made double its original B.O. expectations, we can assume a lot of moviegoers ignored the reviews. Extras on the DVD include an audio commentary track, two "making-of" featurettes, and more. The Blu-ray has the Unrated Director's Cut as well. However, at the moment the Blu-ray also costs twice as much as the DVD on Amazon.com.

Quads: The Complete First Season - Buy from Amazon
An animated dark comedy about a drunken loser that in the series premiere is hit by a very rich drunk driver and paralyzed. He sues the driver and uses his winnings to move into a mansion right next door, bringing a lot of his fellow disabled friends with him. The show was created by John Callahan, who was left a quadriplegic after a car accident, so he has a lot of cover for some of the more un-P.C. jokes. He takes advantage of this, so the show is not for everyone.

Scooby Doo: Abracadabra-Doo - Buy from Amazon
The latest direct-to-DVD release from the franchise. These have proven to be quite popular with their target audience, which includes kids and adults who watched the cartoons when they were kids.

Shaun The Sheep: A Woolly Good Time - Buy from Amazon
A ridiculously popular claymation kids show made by Aardman Animations. I can see fans of Wallace and Gromit picking this up, even if they don't have kids.

Small Wonder: The Complete First Season - Buy from Amazon
I love Shout! Factory. They put out so many awesome TV shows on DVD that would otherwise be lost to history. This is not one of them. Small Wonder is such a bad show... a bad, bad, show. It's about a man who creates a robot that looks like a little girl and then raises it as part of its family. It's worse than it sounds. That said, while the show is terrible, the DVD is better than expected, with audio commentary tracks on select episodes as well as a few minor extras. If you have a warm nostalgic feeling about this show, it's worth checking out to cure that feeling. That's as strong a recommendation as I can muster.

Spectacular Spider-Man - Buy from Amazon: Volume 6 and Volume 7
I've reviewed a number of the previous volumes of this show and hopefully these two screeners will arrive soon so I can continue to review the show. However, there's a chance that they are not handing out screeners for the separate volumes and will wait till the end of the season to supply screeners to critics.

Women in Trouble - buy from Amazon: DVD or Blu-ray
A movie about a porn star that finds out she's pregnant. The film has a great cast, but little else. There's not much in terms of extras on either the DVD or the Blu-ray, which further reduces its value. At least the Blu-ray doesn't cost too much more than the DVD, but the movie is only worth a rental, at the very most.

- C.S.Strowbridge

Date posted: 2010-02-16