The weekend’s here. You’ve just been paid, and it’s burning a hole in your pocket. What’s a pop culture geek to do? In hopes of steering you in the right direction to blow some of that hard-earned cash, it’s time for the FRED Weekend Shopping Guide – your spotlight on the things you didn’t even know you wanted…

(Please support FRED by using the links below to make any impulse purchases – it helps to keep us going…)

As nearly every extant Doctor Who story has made its way onto DVD, the BBC has decided to dip back into their original DVD releases and remaster/expand them into special editions, the latest of which is a story from Peter Davison’s 5th Doctor era – Doctor Who: The Visitation (BBC, Not Rated, DVD-$34.98 SRP), as the Doctor faces down an alien menace in the time of the Great Plague. Bonus materials include an audio commentary, featurettes, film trims, and a lovely spotlight on the Doctor’s adventures in audio.

The fine folks at Thinkgeek know you can never have too many figural representations of Doctor Who‘s faithful robotic canine companion, so they’re offering an exclusive Mego-scale K-9 action figure ($9.59), a companion piece to Bif Bang Pow’s line of classic Who figures. It’s not articulated, but at such a large scale and accurate sculpt for such a low price point, is it a nifty display piece? Affirmative.

Now that the announcement has come down, the 7th season of Dexter (Paramount, Not Rated, Blu-Ray-$65.99 SRP) is the serial killer drama’s penultimate, as the titular sociopath finally comes clean to his sister as the police close in on solving the Bay Harbor Butcher killings.

Oh, Cloud Atlas (Warner Bros., Rated R, Blu-Ray-$35.99 SRP) – you are a big, crazy bloated, James A Michener-esque epic of love and loss across the modern and future history of Earth, and for the life of me I still don’t know if I either understand or like you, but good on you for being you. Give it a spin and see if you can figure it out, or at the very least keep a straight face through Tom Hanks’ various accents. Bonus materials include a clutch of featurettes that try to explain it all.

I don’t watch it as religiously as I once did, but when the trio of Clarkson, May, & Hammond are on their game, as they are through most of Top Gear 19 (BBC, Not Rated, DVD-$24.98 SRP), it blows away anything being done by the middling (and unnecessary) American version. Just check out the epic Africa special on this set to see why.

If you want to see Charlie Sheen have a quirky meltdown in a film that feels like a pale Wes Anderson flick, look no further than the second directorial turn from Anderson’s frequent co-writer Roman Coppola, A Glimpse Inside The Mind Of Charles Swan III (Lionsgate, Rated R, Blu-Ray-$24.99 SRP). At least it manages to squeeze enjoyable moments from Bill Murray and Aubrey Plaza, so hey – there’s that. Bonus materials include an audio commentary and featurettes.

The folks at Scholastic continue to put out brilliant little animated adaptations of charming children’s books with their Scholastic Storybook Treasures line, the latest installment of which is Bink & Gollie …and More Stories About Friendship (Scholastic, Not Rated, DVD-$14.95 SRP).

This week’s kid-friendly release is a brand new volume of Nick, Jr.’s Team Umizoomi, Animal Heroes (Nickelodeon, Not Rated, DVD-$14.98 SRP), featuring a quartet of animal-centric tales with monkey, dogs, bears, and more.

So there you have it… my humble suggestions for what to watch, listen to, play with, or waste money on this coming weekend. See ya next week…

-Ken Plume

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