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 its original run was airing, I would rarely miss a new episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (Paramount, Not Rated, Blu-Ray-$129.99 SRP). As years have gone by, my love of the show has waned, and I find more and more flaws in its stories with the truly outstanding episodes dwindling to a handful. But I must applaud and support the phenomenal effort that has been put into making the show available in HD, which includes going back to the actual film source and constructing the show from all of the original elements in HD, rather than the original video mastering… Which means the show has never, ever looked as good and, frankly, modern as it does now. So for that reason alone, I recommend these sets, especially in hopes that their success will ensure Deep Space Nine gets the same treatment. As far as bonus features go, not only do we get the original DVD features, but also brand new documentaries, and the now-legendary blooper reel.
With the Holga iPhone Lens Filter Kit ($29.99), you have the ability – via a simple rotary design – to rotate in nine different filters, from gels to duplications and more. It’s a fun little add-on to muck around with on a summer’s day.
The gap between releases is an endurance test, but when a new Cinematic Titanic Live DVD arrives, the beautiful little comedy gem makes you forget just how long it’s been since the last one. And oh, does Rattlers (Cinema Titans, Not Rated, DVD-$14.99) deliver some comedy gold, as a discount Ken Doll (and tenured herpetologist) intones his way through a ham-fisted entry in that honored 70’s genre – animals gone scholockily wild. Get this, and hope that the wait for the next release is far shorter.
Another month, another pair of classic Doctor Who releases bringing us that much closer to having all of the almost 30 years of stories on DVD. And this month brings a pair of corkers – Patrick Troughton’s 2nd Doctor in Doctor Who: The Krotons (BBC, Not Rated, DVD-$24.98 SRP) and Jon Pertwee’s 3rd Doctor in Doctor Who: Death To The Daleks (BBC, Not Rated, DVD-$24.98 SRP). As usual, both are loaded with bonus features, the real standout being the nearly hour-long 2nd Doctor retrospective on Krotons.
Yes, American Masters: Johnny Carson – King of Late (PBS, Not Rated, Blu-Ray-$29.99) is just as brilliant and welcome and ultimately unsatisfying as I hoped it would be. Really, any attempt to paint a portrait of the famously private Carson was going to leave a viewer left wanting, but I’m delighted that a portrait even exists, which is a brilliant appreciation of what made Johnny king – a crown no one else has come to claiming.
I’ve said it before, and I shall continue to say it as long as he continues to write them – If you’ve not yet read John Swartzwelder’s series of brilliantly comic novels starring dim detective Frank Burly, than you do not deserve to be literate. So yes, do catch up, and also pick up the latest – The Million Dollar Policeman (Kennydale Books, $15.95 SRP) – or just walk away and never read again.
The fine folks at Fantagraphics continue to do more to keep classic Disney characters in front of audiences than Disney does, with the release of both the 3rd volume collecting Floyd’s Gottfredson’s classic Mickey Mouse comic strip, Mickey Mouse: High Noon At Inferno Gulch (Fantagraphics, $29.99 SRP), and the 2nd volume collecting the works of the great Carl Barks, Uncle Scrooge: Only A Poor Old Man (Fantagraphics, $28.99 SRP). Presented in beautiful hardcover form and supplemented by essays and insight, they are must have additions to the library of fans and sure-to-become-fans alike.
And speaking of a company doing fine work for those who truly love comics, the folks at Twomorrows have released a pair of books which are both worth picking up – Marie Severin: The Mirthful Mistress Of Comics (Twomorrows, $24.95 SRP) looks at the silver age Marvel Bullpen legend, while Modern Masters: Eric Powell (Twomorrows, $15.95 SRP) takes a look at the art of the man behind The Goon. Both are packed with interviews and art and yes, both should be on your shopping list.
While the US remake has me worried, the must-see feature film is getting it’s US debut soon and the original UK series has finally been released in the US. So what does that mean? That means you should get The Inbetweeners: The Complete Series (eOne, Not Rated, DVD-$39.98 SRP) immediately, and partake of the immature misadventures of Will, Neal, Simon & Jay. Bonus materials include audio commentaries, featurettes, and more.
The show may be running out of steam, but there’s still a lot of fun to be had in the 4th season of iCarly (Nickelodeon, Not Rated, DVD-$19.99 SRP), which comes bearing 10 episodes in widescreen for the first time, all of which are full of hijinks. Hi-jinks, I tells ya. Bonus materials include 5 episodes of the show How To Rock.
Warners has brought a pair of much-requested sci-fi titles to high definition with the arrival of Peter Hyams’ Outland (Warner Bros., Rated R, Blu-Ray-$19.98 SRP), starring Sean Connery as a colonial marshal on Jupiter’s moon investigating the mysterious deaths of miners, and Ken Russell’s still-bizarre Altered States (Warner Bros., Rated R, Blu-Ray-$19.98 SRP). As far as bonus materials go, Outland gets an audio commentary and trailer, while Altered States gets only a trailer. Still, at least we finally have both of these flicks on Blu-Ray.
Been waiting for another UCB movie? I have. Is there another UCB movie, written and helmed by Matt Besser and starring his brilliant partners? Yes, there is. Does it have dance? Not only does it have dance, it has Freak Dance (Image, Not Rated, DVD-$27.97 SRP) – The greatest dance of them all. Just watch it. Now. Bonus materials include an audio commentary, featurette, and deleted scenes.
Still one of the greatest concert movies ever put to film, Peter Gabriel: Secret World Live (Eagle Vision, Not Rated, Blu-Ray-$19.98 SRP) makes its way to high definition in a phenomenal presentation whose sound is an improvement over the already-stellar DVD from a few years back. Get this.
Seeing as how every season since the third has gotten a concurrent high-definition releases, Warners has gone back to fill in the blanks with high-definition releases of The Big Bang Theory: Season 1 & The Big Bang Theory: Season 2 (Warner Bros., Not Rated, Blu-Ray-$39.99 SRP each). Both have the same featurettes and gag reels of their original DVD versions, but now the picture looks oh so much better.
Yeah, I don’t know if I really wanted to catch up with the characters of American Pie almost 15 years later, and seeing them coming to terms with adulthood and families and maturity and stagnation in American Reunion (Universal, Not Rated, Blu-Ray-$24.96 SRP) proves my initial trepidation to be prescient, as boy, is this just an awkward trudge. Bonus materials include an audio commentary, deleted scenes, featurettes, and a gag reel.
What a world we live in when Mel Gibson has so damaged his reputation that his new film essentially goes direct-to-video, as is the case with the action flick Get The Gringo (Fox, Rated R, Blu-Ray-$29.99 SRP), where he’s a grizzled thief whose last heist lands him in a Mexican prison, and mixed up with corrupt cops, druglords, and a 10-year-old boy with a special liver. Bonus materials include featurettes and a music video.
Many years ago, the book Salmon Fishing In The Yemen (Sony, Rated PG-13, Blu-Ray-$35.99 SRP was recommended to me by the great Neil Innes. I enjoyed the book immensely. The film, while not as great as the book, is a worthy adaptation of the source material. Bonus materials include a pair of featurettes.
There’s nothing altogether wrong about Friends With Kids (Lionsgate, Rated R, Blu-Ray-$39.99 SRP) – in fact, it has a great cast (everyone from Maya Rudolph and John Hamm to Chris O’Dowd and Kristen Wiig) – it’s just that its romantic comedy tropes feel like warmed over Judd Apatow… Which is no mean feat, considering Judd Apatow movies feel like warmed over Judd Apatow. In a nutshell, it’s about a pair of friends (Adam Scott & writer/director Jennifer Westfeldt) who, upon seeing the rest of their friends have kids, decided to have a baby together… But remain platonic friends and still actively pursue outside relationships. See? Bonus materials include an audio commentary, deleted scenes, a gag reel, and more.
Hans Zimmer’s score to The Dark Knight Rises (Water Tower Music, $10.00 SRP) wraps up Christopher Nolan’s trilogy with cues as dark, brooding, and majestic as you’ve come to expect, aided by a powerful sonic arrival of baddie Bane.
For a unique view of history, look no further than Michael Wood’s Story Of England (BBC, Not Rated, DVD-$34.98 SRP), which charts the country’s history using a single village over the course of 2000 years, from the Roman occupation to the present day.
Warners, MGM, and Sony have all jumped into the MOD catalogue business, but one of the studios with the biggest libraries has finally arrived on the scene with the 20th Century Fox Cinema Archives, dropping 15 never-before-released titles that cinema fans are sure to want to snap up. That initial batch is comprised of Dangerous Years, Fraulein, Love Is News, Mr. Belvedere Rings The Bell, My Wife’s Best Friend, Rings On Her Fingers, Suez, Diplomatic Courier, They Came To Blow Up America, Way Of A Gaucho, Claudia, The Foxes Of Harrow, Kidnapped, Frontier Marshal, Life Begins At Eight-Thirty (Fox, Not Rated, DVD-$19.98 SRP each).
MGM’s MOD Limited Edition Collection has dropped a new clutch of titles from the vault, the highlights of which are Dave Thomas and Sally Kellerman in the Boris And Natasha: The Movie (MGM, Rated PG, DVD-$19.98), Tab Hunter and Jim Backus in Operation Bikini (MGM, Not Rated DVD-$19.98), Boris Karloff in Mr. Wong In Chinatown (MGM, Not Rated, DVD-$19.98), and Mickey Rooney in Leave ‘Em Laughing (MGM, Not Rated, DVD-$19.98).
Disney continues to fulfill their promise to unleash a slew of catalogue titles on Blu-Ray this year, with this week bringing a new release, including Robert Redford in The Horse Whisperer (Touchstone, Rated PG-13, Blu-Ray-$20.99 SRP), Diane Lane in Under The Tuscan Sun (Touchstone, Rated PG-13, Blu-Ray-$20.00 SRP), and John Travolta in Phenomenon (Touchstone, Rated PG, DVD-$20.00 SRP).
The Three Stooges film (Fox, Rated PG, Blu-Ray-$39.99 SRP) just confuses me. I want to hate it. It wants to be loved. We meet in the middle at “eh.” But I did walk away wanting a film with Nun Larry David. So that’s something, right? Bonus materials include deleted scenes, featurettes, and a screen test.
If you’ve got kids, Scholastic’s ever-expanding library of animated adaptations of children’s books is worth picking up, the latest of which is My First Collection Volume 3: Featuring Chicken Little (Scholastic, Not Rated, DVD-$24.95 SRP), which collects 13 award-winning stories across 3-discs.
In this week’s reality dump, we get another pseudo-nailbiting season of IRT Deadliest Roads (History Channel, Not Rated, DVD-$29.95 SRP), in which another batch of truckers truck their way through deadly trucking territory in a truckmanlike fashion, this time in the high Andes. Also available is the third volume of Storage Wars (A&E, Not Rated, DVD-$19.95 SRP), in which the usual suspects lift a lot of doors to pull out a lot of junk.
Slowly but surely we’re creeping towards catching up as Roy Clarke’s long-running Last Of The Summer Wine (BBC, Not Rated, DVD-$34.98 SRP) brings its vintage up to 1992, which also features that year’s special “Stop That Castle”.
This week’s spotlight of what those purveyors of wonder over at Sideshow and Hot Toys have on tap features a pair – yes, that’s two! – figures that are available right now, both from the same film. First up is the very limited San Diego Comic-Con exclusive Captain America – Rescue Version ($219), sporting the outfit Steve Rogers quickly assembled in order to save his fellow soldiers. Next up is the dastardly villain Cap was rescuing those solders from – The Red Skull ($199.99). As you can see from the photos, both figures feature exquisitely tailored costumes and eerily lifelike head sculpts. I mean, just look at that swappable Hugo Weaving head! The work that Hot Toys is doing is, quite simply, amazing. If you can get them both, do so. You’ll regret passing them up later.
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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While the MST3K version is still near and dear to my heart, it is fun to see the restored original 
Matt Smith’s tenure as the new Doctor on Doctor Who isn’t the only change that producer Steven Moffat has wrought – there’s also a brand new 
One of the things I eagerly await is the arrival of a new volume of classic Charlie Brown & co., and 
You know what other book always delights me when it arrives? A new installment in the wonderfully awkward misadventures of dim-witted detective Frank Burly, courtesy of author John Swartzwelder (writer of 59 episodes of The Simpsons). The latest is 
There’ve been plenty of young actresses tackling vintage royalty in recent years, but a gold crown to Emily Blunt’s portrayal of a young Queen Victoria in the appropriately named 
There’s many a stand-up release that comes down the pike where I merely shrug my shoulders and say, “Eh.” And then there’s the new release from Reggie Watts, 
With 
It’s by no means a bad film – in fact, 
I still haven’t figured out what I think of 
A trio of cryogenically frozen astronauts return to an asteroid-devastated, rough-and-tumble post-apocalyptic Earth 150 years in the future in Gene Roddenberry’s 
What doe Tom Selleck, Yul Brynner, Leonard Nimoy, and Sam Elliott have in common? They all star in at least one of the three movies contained in Warners 
If you were to make the It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World of romantic films, it would be director Garry Marshall’s 
You know the Warner Archive is dedicated to fulfilling every obscure nostalgic wish when they release Kid ‘N Play’s 
It’s not only the picture frame that’s expanded in the third season of 
OK, there is something blatantly geeky about keeping your change in a bank that’s also an exact replica of the 
Much like Freaks & Geeks and Arrested Development before it, another brilliant but short-lived series comes to DVD, where it will hopefully be discovered by those who didn’t get to experience it during its first go-round. So what series am I celebrating this time? 
For years now, I’ve been reiterating that you should buy, post-haste, the comedic sci-fi novels of Simpsons writer John Swartzwelder. Every one so far has been the delightfully quirky literary equivalent of a fine gem, and the greatness keeps on coming with his latest tale of slow-witted detective Frank Burly, 
As much as I love RiffTrax, it’s with Cinematic Titanic that I feel like I’ve come home to the Mystery Science Theater experience that I fell in love with lo’ those many years ago. Awful movie? Check. Brilliantly, hilariously eviscerating comedy at said film’s expense? Check. An endearingly goofy conceit prompting the experience? Check. The folks behind MST? Check. So what’s their latest target? A cheesy vampire flick called 
For years it’s been available in a sub-par 4×3 version, but finally the first (and best) Sesame Street feature film gets so much-deserved respect with the newly-remastered, widescreen edition of 
When a comedian decides – at the age of 32 – to write his autobiography, it’s understandable to be a bit wary. But when that comedian is Russell Brand – and the tome deals in large part with his years of heroin and sex addiction – my curiosity is piqued. The book itself – whimsically titled 
Picking up where Casino Royale left off, 
What many people consider to be the worst Bond film – even though it’s technically not in the Bond canon proper – is Sean Connery’s last turn, 
Add another must-have title to the list of those that have finally made it to Blu-Ray with the arrival of 
Letterman, Leno, Conan, and Kimmel may get all of the attention, but the brilliant dark horse of late night TV is Craig Ferguson. Most don’t know that the lost of The Late Late Show was also a stand-up, but you can easily rectify that lack of knowledge by picking up his brand new stand-up DVD, 
Knowing its tortured production history, I had pretty low expectations for the Disney (non-Pixar) CG animated film 
While most catalogue high-def releases have focused on comedies and action flicks, the drama side of things gets serviced with a trio of new releases to Blu-Ray – 
If you walked out of Watchmen wanting to recreate the aural experience, there’s a pair of discs that fit the bill. For the songs featured in the flick, you’ll want 
Of the more recent crop of Disney animated flicks, one of the few I’d say is a classic on par with their golden age is 
It was occasionally a bit rocky, but I wound up enjoying 
Filmed in 1993, Rod Stewart’s stint on Unplugged was a rousing, rollicking jaunt through his back catalogue, with Ronnie Wood by his side. The CD has been re-released with a pair of bonus tracks as 
I’m delighted that Paramount has decided to stick with their remastered, 2-disc special editions they’ve branded as the “Centennial Collection”. The latest releases are Alfred Hitchcock’s 
I am not a teenage girl or an emotionally needy woman, so the 
Many nerds noted the absence of the comic book story 
If you want a bit of the great outdoors this weekend, you might want to check out a pair of new releases from Animal Planet. 
Originally available as an exclusive pack in with Kung Fu Panda, the animated follow-up 
See just how fun, frolicsome, and positively risqué pre-Code Tinseltown was in the 
I’m not a terribly big fan, so the less I say about the CG animated Star Wars series the better. Suffice it to say, the first episode collection, 
First and foremost, take a moment to celebrate the glorious demise of the ill-conceived American version of Spaced with the news that this July brings the release with the original Britcom that put Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jessica Hynes, and Edgar Wright on the geek map. Loaded with bonus features from not only the UK release, but also exclusive to the US edition, this is a must-have set. Keep an eye out at your favorite online retailer or DVD emporium.
By the third season of 
For years now, I’ve been reiterating that you should buy, post-haste, the comedic sci-fi novels of Simpsons writer John Swartzwelder. Every one so far has been a gem, and he’s managed to keep the plate spinning with his latest tale of slow-witted detective Frank Burly, 
With a new Indy flick in the offing, it was a foregone conclusion that we’d see some form of re-release on the original trilogy – and so we have with the 
Cinema geeks rejoice! Universal has seen fit to collect 10 of their catalogue’s most genre-tastic titles into one box set – 
As much as I liked the “official” history found in the deluxe tome To Infinity And Beyond, it’s nice to have a complementary, unauthorized book about the early days and rise of Pixar to balance out the picture, and David Price’s 
The movie’s not yet in theaters, but everything I’ve seen of Kung Fu Panda has made me keen to do so. It’s taken awhile for rival studios that the way to fight Pixar is not to make knock-off Pixar flicks, but to realize the same thing that Warners did in their heyday – leave the heart to Disney and focus on the comedy instead. If you want to whet your appetite for this flick, look no further than 
I wasn’t alive to experience firsthand growing up in the 50’s, but I’m certainly aware of the shows and celebrities that made up the pop culture diet of that generation. If you’re as interested as I am in that period, you’ve got to get yourself a copy of 
It’s been 10 years since the passing of the Chairman of the Board, and Warners has seen fit to celebrate his passing with a quartet of box sets celebrating Frank Sinatra’s cinematic legacy – 
Everyone’s favorite sleuthing antiquities dealer returns in the complete third season of 
It’s not like I would have paid to see it in the theater, but 
The fourth season of 
Just when my nephews have nearly burned out the previous release, along comes 
One of my nephews is fast approaching the one-year mark, and getting him to sleep is quite a feat with all that teething going on. We’ve found that a big help in the seemingly never-ending battle is Nickelodeon’s 
The off-color puppets are back with 
Have you ever picked up a book and thought “This is an idea that was a long-time coming…”? I thought that very thing when I thumbed through 
You’ll weep, you’ll awww, you’ll get plenty of points from your significant other if you pick her up a copy of the new 
Like According To Jim, 
Surprisingly enough, Sean Combs acquitted himself quite well in last year’s TV adaptation of 
One of those programs that will always grab my attention if insomnia or boredom has me scanning channels at 4 in the morning is anything with forensic examiner Dr. Michael Baden. An all-new edition of