New Releases:

“Haywire” (Lionsgate) is Steven Soderbergh’s version of a drive-in action movie: lean, sleek, and disciplined. The thoroughly conventional script (by Lem Dobbs) involving outsourced international espionage, corrupt players, dirty tricks, and righteous vengeance moves at the speed of mixed martial arts champion Gina Carano’s reaction time and Soderbergh designs the film around her skill set. The superb supporting cast (Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor, Bill Paxton, Channing Tatum, Antonio Banderas, and Michael Douglas) get to play in the genre sandbox with entertainingly stylized performances. Blu-ray, DVD, and On Demand and available at Redbox. Videodrone’s review is here.

“New Year’s Eve” (Warner), Garry Marshall’s inevitable follow-up to “Valentine’s Day,” puts another mostly-star cast through the contrivances of mixed messages, romantic yearnings, and generically happy endings at the drop of the ball. Blu-ray, DVD, and On Demand.

“Joyful Noise” (Warner) stars Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton (in her first big screen role in 20 years) as rivals who have to put aside their differences to help their church choir in the national championships. Blu Blu-ray, DVD, and On Demand.

“W.E.” (Anchor Bay), Madonna’s second feature as a director, dramatizes the love affair between King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson (Blu-ray, DVD, and On Demand, and available at Redbox), and the Korean war drama “The Front Line” (Well Go) dramatizes the human cost of the politics in the final days of the Korean War. (Reviewed on Videodrone here.)

Browse the complete New Release Rack here

TV on Disc:

“Suits: Season One” (Universal) adds a new wrinkle to the familiar legal drama of high-powered lawyers: aggressively arrogant and flinty superstar attorney Gabriel Macht hire a brilliant young hustler (Patrick J. Adams) with a photographic memory and no law degree. The light, deft, entertaining series is more about office politics and gamesmanship than the actual law, but then when has a lawyer drama even been accused of fidelity to the law? 12 episodes on three discs, with supplements and an UltraViolet digital copy. DVD only. Videodrone’s review is here.

“Covert Affairs: Season Two” (Universal) continues the adventures of junior CIA agent Annie Walker (Piper Perabo), juggling a private life (where she keeps her career a secret) and the moral conflicts of field assignments. It’s still quite the globetrotting production for a cable series. 16 episodes on four discs. DVD only. Videodrone’s review is here.

“The Mystery of Edwin Drood” (PBS) is the latest of many productions to tackle the final, unfinished, unresolved novel by Charles Dickens. This British production comes up with an inventive solution more beholden to modern psychology and contemporary British TV mystery than Dickensian drama, but it works just fine. Blu-ray and DVD. Reviewed on Videodrone here.

“Level Up: The Movie” (Warner) is the (barely) feature-length pilot for the live-action series of video gaming teens fighting fantastic foes in the real world, originally made for the Cartoon Network.

Also new this week: the “Roots” of the stars series “Who Do You Think You Are? Season 2” (Acorn), the four-disc collection “A Woman of Substance Trilogy” (Acorn), and the three-disc anthology “The Dick Van Dyke Show: Carl Reiner’s Favorites” (Image).

Flip through the TV on Disc Channel Guide here

Cool, Classic and Cult:

“Bird of Paradise” (Kino), directed by King Vidor, came out of a vogue for exotic South Seas romances in the late 1920s and early 1930s. This one stars Joel McCrea as a sailor who runs off with the island chief’s beautiful daughter (Dolores Del Rio) for an idyll far from civilization. Long available only in poor public domain editions, this is remastered from a preserved print for Blu-ray and DVD. Reviewed on Videodrone here.

“StoryCorps: Animated Shorts” (PBS) is a half-hour program of ten animated versions of the audio recordings from the StoryCorp project.

“Power” (aka “Jew Süss“) (VCI), the first film based on the anti-Semitic novel by Lion Feuchwanger, is a British production starring Conrad Veidt as the scheming Jewish villain.

Also recently released: “I Was a Spy” (VCI), a 1933 World War I thriller  with Madeleine Carroll and Herbert Marshall, and “Carry On Double Feature Vol. 3: Carry On Camping / Carry On Again Doctor” (VCI), both from 1969.

The MOD Movies section this week looks at a batch of music and music-related movies recently released on the manufacture-on-deman​d format, including the rock, pop, and trad jazz party “Ring-A-Ding Rhythm” (Sony Pictures Choice Collection) and the 1945 Gershwin bio-pic “Rhapsody in Blue” (Warner Archive).

All of the Cool, Classic and Cult here

Blu-ray Debuts:

“Mimic: 3 Film Set” (Lionsgate) presents the Guillermo Del Toro’s recently-released “Director’s Cut” of the original 1997 “Mimic,” the creepy underground horror of genetically enhanced insects, in a set with the Blu-ray debuts of the two direct-to-disc sequels. Features commentary on two films and numerous featurettes among the supplements. Videodrone’s review is here.

“Men in Black” (Sony) is rereleased along with the Blu-ray debut of “Men in Black II” (Sony), just in time for the new “Men in black 3″ coming to theaters. Both editions are packed with all the supplements from the previous special edition releases.

“Clueless” (Paramount), the reworking of Jane Austen’s “Emma” as a Beverly Hills high school romantic comedy, is really quite clever, and such a nineties time capsule. Aren’t the classic, like, you know, timeless?

“Pillow Talk” (Universal), the first of the chaste sex comedies with Rock Hudson and Doris Day, arrives in an illustrated Blu-ray book case as part of Universal’s 100th Anniversary Collector’s Series.

Peruse all the new Blu-rays here

New on Netflix Instant:

“The First Grader” (2010), about an 84-year-old man who demands his right to universal education under Kenyan law, is an uplifting true story of triumph over adversity in a third world setting turned into a conventional, maddeningly cliché-riddled tale of triumph.

Ron Eldard is a “Roadie” (Magnolia) who heads back home after fired from a life on the road. Bobby Canavale and Jill Hennesy co-star in the character piece by director Michael Cuesta.

Standout nonfiction includes the provocative “Marwencol” (2010) and “The People Vs. George Lucas” (2009), an entertaining look at this strange and sometimes contentious symbiotic relationship.

Browse the Instant offerings here

Available from Redbox this week:

Day and date with video stores: Steven Soderbergh’s “Haywire” (Lionsgate) on DVD and Blu-ray and Madonna’s “W.E.” (Anchor Bay).

Also arriving in Redbox kiosks this week: “We Bought a Zoo” (Fox) with Matt Damon and Scarlett Johansson (on DVD and Blu-ray), Ti West’s indie horror “The Innkeepers” (Dark Sky), and the British drama “Birdsong” (PBS).

For a calendar of upcoming releases, click here

John Berendt’s original 1994 book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was a work of non-fiction told in novel form, ostensibly a portrait of the antebellum culture of Savannah, Georgia, as told by a visiting writer turned resident Berendt, that becomes a true-life crime story: a rich antique dealer and member of the city’s social aristocracy, Jim Williams, was accused of murdering his younger lover, a male prostitute named Danny Hansford. The book, rich in atmosphere and filled with vivid characters and larger-than-life personalities, became a bestseller, remaining on The New York Times list for 216 weeks.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997) was not a typical Clint Eastwood project. The book was a meandering portrait of a town and a culture with numerous diversions and supporting characters and a murder mystery weaving through the narrative, but it nonetheless intrigued the director. “This isn’t the South the way it’s portrayed most of the time, with an overabundance of clichs,” he explained. His intention was to show modern Savannah society as “sophisticated, cultured, intelligent, very much in the public view, people no one would ever think could be interested in sorcery.”

It was Clint Eastwood’s twentieth feature as a director but only his third directorial effort in which he did not appear on screen. John Cusack took the lead, playing a fictional replacement for the author, renamed Kelso for the film and given an active role in the story beyond mere observer. Kevin Spacey, fresh from an Oscar®-winning turn in The Usual Suspects (1994), brings an easy confidence and lived-in drawl to the charming, enigmatic Williams. The actor spent weeks researching the part in Savannah, talking to people who knew the real person and soaking up the atmosphere. Jude Law, whose star was on the rise (he appeared in Wilde and Gattaca the same year Midnight was released), is his lover and murder victim (renamed Billy Hanson for the film). Mandy, a minor character in the book, was changed and expanded for the film, transforming her into a flirtatious love interest for Kelso. The part was tailored for Alison Eastwood, Clint’s daughter, as a way to launch her fledgling acting career with a substantial role.

Continue reading at TCM.com

Plays in the week hours of Friday morning. Also available on DVD.

Mimic: 3 Film Set (Lionsgate) presents the Guillermo Del Toro’s recently-released “Director’s Cut” of the original 1997 Mimic, the creepy underground horror of genetically enhanced insects, in a set with the Blu-ray debuts of the two direct-to-disc sequels. I haven’t seen the original Mimic since its theatrical release so I can’t say with certainty whether Del Toro’s new, longer, somewhat re-edited cut is more interesting than the original version or I just appreciated it more after all this time, but I’m favoring the former. It comes off smarter and creepier than I recall the original, less about scares than a sustained atmosphere of eerie unease and skittery threats. The threat here comes from mutant bugs that have evolved from genetically-altered cockroaches to monstrous predators with the uncanny and ingenious adaptive mechanism that allows them to mimic human forms in the creepiest ways. Even Mira Sorvino seems more convincing as the entomologist who reluctantly plays Doctor Frankenstein with insect genetics in the face of a deadly viral outbreak. But only just. Del Toro outlines the project in a video introduction (this is the closest he’ll come to his original intentions given the material at hand, he explains) and provides a commentary track, and the disc includes three featurettes and more deleted scenes.

A second disc features both the direct-to-disc sequels Mimic 2, which turns the creepy stalker bugs into a genuine stalker on the streets of New York, and the more interesting Mimic 3: Sentinel, which adds a dash of Rear Window to the tale of giant, predatory Judas Breed bugs and tosses in Lance Henriksen as a skulking creeper known as The Garbageman. Director J.T. Petty was handed the project due to the strength of his superbly unsettling indie-horror debut Soft For Digging and he makes something genuinely interesting from it. It’s what the direct-to-video market should be all about: a training ground for young filmmakers to stretch their wings, even if said wings belong to giant predatory insects. Includes featurettes, deleted scenes, audition footage, and commentary by Petty.

More Blu-ray debuts at Videodrone

The Mystery of Edwin Drood (PBS) is indeed a Victorian murder mystery but the real mystery of “Edwin Drood” is how Charles Dickens intended to end his final, unfinished novel. He died leaving a half-written, unresolved manuscript with no indication of his intended solution to the mystery. No unfinished novel has seen so many adaptations and interpretations on the big screen, on the small screen, and on stage. This British production comes up with an inventive (if not exactly Dickensian) solution. Matthew Rhys plays John Jasper, opium-addicted choir master and uncle to Edwin (Freddie Fox), a likable if sometimes insufferable beneficiary of a small trust. To complicate things, Edwin is betrothed  to Jasper’s beautiful young student Rosa Bud (Tamzin Merchant), not the subtlest of Dickens’ character names, and Jasper is so infatuated with the young woman that he dreams of strangling Edwin, and sure enough a strangling comes to pass, but that’s the beginning of a tale that offers a missing corpse, the sudden appearance of two orphans from India, and the sudden, unsettling transformation of Japser into an overbearing stalker. Alun Armstrong co-stars as Rosa’s guardian who turns detective when the suspicion falls on the hot-tempered Indian ward of the local priest, and David Dawson is what you might call his legman, chasing evidence in the procedural portion of the story.

Gwyneth Hughes scripts this new production and offers third act that is as beholden to modern psychology and contemporary British TV mystery as it is to the Dickensian drama of bloodlines, legitimacy, denied identity, and the barriers of class and culture, and director Diarmuid Lawrence shifts the film into a register of shadowy Gothic mystery in the second half. It’s unlikely Dickens had something quite so intricately contrived in mind, but it is quite clever, entertaining, and in its own satisfying as both a murder mystery and a Victorian drama. Blu-ray and DVD, no supplements, presented with the “Masterpiece Classic” introduction seen in the U.S.

More TV on Disc at Videodrone

Suits: Season One” (Universal) adds a new wrinkle to the familiar legal drama of high-powered lawyers: arrogant and flamboyant attorney Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht), the “top closer” in his top flight firm of Harvard Law School graduates, hires Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams), a brilliant but frustrated hustler with a photographic memory, as his new associate, despite the fact that he arrives at the job interview by accident with a briefcase filled with drugs and he’s never been to law school.

Mike has passed the bar, just never under his own name (he made his living taking scholastic tests for lazy students), so he crams for his role and learns the ropes of practical law on the fly with Harvey as his boss and mentor and Harvey’s rival Louis (Rick Hoffman) bedeviling him at every turn. Like a lot of TV lawyers, they use quite a few unethical (or at the very suspect) tactics, but it’s really about the personalities and the ingenuity applied to the latest case of the week, with a dash of office politics to complicate matters.

The show is light and deft and as entertaining as these things can be, reversing expectations with Macht playing up Harvey’s confidence and calculating schemes in public and only revealing his sense of personal loyalty and justice in private, and Adams showing Mike as a decent and sincere guy giving his all for this second chance at a legitimate career. Gina Torres plays the firm’s senior partner and Meghan Markle, Sarah Rafferty, and Vanessa Ray co-star.

12 episodes on three discs, including the extended international version of the pilot, plus commentary on the pilot and season finale, a fan Q&A, deleted scenes and a gag reel, plus an UltraViolet digital copy for download and instant streaming. DVD only.

More TV on Disc at Videodrone

One of the most popular Korean films of all time, The Front Line (Well Go) puts a visceral, conflicted spin on the familiar war drama of brother against brother and the sacrifice of soldiers in the last push for territory in the days before the end of hostilities. While the Korean War armistice talks drag on through the second year, a military investigator in the South Korean army heads to the front lines to investigate the death of a commanding officer and finds a meat grinder of a war of attrition as the two sides keep retaking the same worthless patch of mountain on the soon-to-be finalized national border. The only thing that keeps them human is leaving little gifts (and no, I don’t mean booby traps but liquor, food, and sometimes even letters) for their brothers across the demarcation: drink their booze one day, kill or be killed in a firefight with them the next.

That brutal reality of this kind of trench warfare in mid-20th century Korea, and the way they’ve been able to compartmentalize feelings of camaraderie with unwavering commitment to battle, is what makes the film so interesting. The themes and characters are right out of any number of classic war movies, but the grueling battle scenes are quite effective and the frontline culture born of this war, so at odds with military discipline and command, is fascinating.

In Korean with English subtitles. The DVD and Blu-ray+DVD Combo pack both include the featurette “The Making of The Front Line.”

More New Releases at Videodrone

Covert Affairs: Season Two (Universal) continues the adventures of junior CIA agent Annie Walker (Piper Perabo), juggling a private life that she struggle to keep separate from the moral conflicts of field assignments.

Think of this stylish, small-scale spy TV-lite series as a scaled-down cable version of “Alias” or “Nikita,” without the network spectacle or high-concept gimmickry. What it has is Piper Perabo, the best (but certainly not the only) reason to see the show. She has spirit and personality, the natural presence of a star and a modesty born of confidence.

In the show’s first season, Annie Walker was a talented CIA recruit pulled out of training for an assignment that called for some mad linguistic skills (she speaks a half dozen languages fluently) and kept on as a junior agent in what appears to be a seriously understaffed department. She works with intel veteran Auggie Anderson (Christopher Gorham), a former field agent blinded on a mission, and reports to unit head Joan Campbell (Kari Matchett), who fights to hold her team together while under attack in company politics. Peter Gallagher plays the section boss, who is also married to Joan. Needless to say, it all puts a little extra strain on the marriage.

The show follows the general USA formula, with a light tone, a sleek, budget-minded style, and just enough of an overarching storyline running through the season to suggest a bigger picture. The second season doesn’t really expand that world much, but it does give the supporting cast more opportunities, including an impromptu mission for Auggie (complete with flashbacks to the assignment that cost him his eyesight) and an expanded part for Sendhil Ramamurthy’s Jai Wilcox, an agent trying to find his place in the department while his estranged father (Gregory Itzin), the former section head, plays power games with the team.

Continue  reading at Videodrone

Haywire (Lionsgate) is Steven Soderbergh’s drive-in assassin action movie by way of a sleek art-house conspiracy thriller. According to the director, the film sprung from his desire to develop a film around the talents and skill of mixed martial arts fighter Gina Carano, and the finished film — which casts Carano as a covert agent in a shady private international agency that contracts out for government spy ops — gives you no reason to assume otherwise.

Soderbergh’s camera (he serves as his own cinematographer, under the pseudonym Peter Andrews) is focused on watching her in action and he designs her scenes to play out in long, unbroken cuts, paced at her reaction time. It’s like watching a dancer in action, only her partners end up beaten and broken by the time she finishes her moves. There’s a plot, of course, a meticulously constructed but still thoroughly conventional script by Lem Dobbs that involves outsourced international espionage, corrupt players, dirty tricks, and righteous vengeance, and gives accomplished supporting players Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor, Antonio Banderas, and Michael Douglas plenty of opportunity to play around in entertainingly stylized performances. Channing Tatum provides able (if colorless) support and Bill Paxton is her protective dad, thoroughly (and correctly) convinced that no one in her circle can be trusted.

It’s not a knock to admit that Gina Carano is a limited actress, because her limitations still surpass those negligible talents of Steven Seagal, Steve Austin, Randy Couture, and most athletes and fighters gone big screen in recent decades. She plays the part close to the vest, making her inexpressiveness part of the character, but really we just wait for her to click back into fight mode. Her body language tells us more about her character than any dialogue exchange.

Continue reading at Videodrone

Ring-A-Ding Rhythm (Sony Pictures Choice Collection) is a 1962 British music performance film originally titled “It’s a Trad, Dad” (you can see why they retitled for the U.S.). The first feature by American-born but British-based Richard Lester (who went on to redefine the rock movie with “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Help”) is basically a succession of performances connected by the thinnest of plots: a couple of teenagers defy a ban on jazz by recruiting bands for a big concert. And by jazz, I mean the traditional Dixieland style that had a big youth following in Britain in the early sixties: modern sixties youth listening to music that was new during prohibition. Can you believe those starchy adults and parents are still horrified? Dropped in with the dozens of trad jazz acts (including Kenny Ball and His Jazzmen and the funky Temperance Seven) are a handful of pop and rock performances by the likes of Chubby Checker, Del Shannon, Gary U.S. Bonds, Gene Vincent, and Britain’s Helen Shapiro, who also plays one of the leads.

This is a prime example of a director making something out of nothing. Handed a script that does little more than stitch together a succession of musical performances, Lester doodles in the margins, dropping oddball, surreal gags between the numbers and sometimes during the performances. The script is credited to producer Milton Subotsky but the cheeky asides and slapstick flourishes are clearly from the mind of Lester, who came to the film from a series of collaborations with Peter Sellers. It’s not that Lester makes anything particularly memorable from it all, but that his light touch and whimsical attitude keeps it buoyant and bouncy and far more engaging than you have any right to expect.

Also from Britain is Just For Fun (Sony Pictures Choice Collection), another Subotsky production with a nominal plot stitching together performances by a more familiar line-up of pop performers, including Bobby Vee (singing “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes”), The Crickets, Freddy Cannon, The Tremeloes, The Tornados, and a batch of other British acts. Both of these, by the way, are the Amicus, before the company redefined itself as Britain’s trashier, second-tier house of horror.

More music-oriented manufactured-on-demand titles at Videodrone

New Releases:

“Contraband” (Universal) stars Mark Wahlberg as a legendary smuggler in a familiar “one last score” story, this one taking him from New Orleans to Panama and back while a psycho drug dealer terrorizes his family. It’s a pretty far-fetched plot but Wahlberg meets it with the stalwart street-smart practicality that grounds most of his films, and Kate Beckinsale, Ben Foster, and Giovanni Ribissi provide support. Blu-ray, DVD, digital download and On Demand. Videodrone’s review is here.

“Pariah” (Universal), about a young African American woman coming to terms with her identity as a lesbian in a cultural environment hostile to the idea, won awards at Sundance and the Independent Spirit Awards. Blu-ray and DVD, available On Demand.Read a review here.

Linda Cardellini stars in “Return” (eOne), about an American soldier back from Iraq struggling to come to terms with civilian life. DVD only.

“The Wicker Tree” (Anchor Bay) is Robin Hardy’s follow-up to “The Wicker Man,” set and shot nearly forty years since his original cult classic, and “The Innkeepers” (Dark Sky), is a ghost story from director Ti West (of “House of the Devil”). Both on Blu-ray and DVD.

“Let the Bullets Fly” (Well Go), highest-grossing Chinese film of all time and a wild mix of Hong Kong action and spaghetti western in twenties-era China, leads off the foreign releases of the week. Videodrone’s review is here.

Also new this week: “Young Goethe In Love” (Music Box) from Germany, “Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story” (Facets/ArtMattan) from Egypt, and “Dark Tide” (Lionsgate) with Halle Berry and a killer shark.

Browse the complete New Release Rack here

TV on Disc:

“Cinema Verite” (HBO), a made-for-cable feature from directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, dramatizes the story behind the revolutionary “An American Family,” the nonfiction 1973 PBS series that shattered all stereotypes of middle class idealism with intimate, raw, revealing portraits of the stresses and contradictions of American life. The movie, which stars Diane Lane and Tim Robbins as the parents and James Gandolfini as the producer, is oddly less daring than the show it recreates but it’s engaging and accomplished and follows their story after the end of the show. Blu-ray and DVD. Videodrone’s review is here.

“Titanic” (2012) (eOne), a four-part miniseries that ran on ABC earlier this year, marks the anniversary of the infamous disaster with an intelligent drama written by “Downton Abbey” creator Julian Fellows and starring a superb cast of British talent. Blu-ray and DVD. Reviewed on Videodrone here.

“Birdsong” (PBS), a made-for-BBC movie starring Eddie Redmayne and Clemence Poesy, was seen in the U.S. on “Masterpiece Classic.” Blu-ray and DVD. And from Japan comes “X-Men: Animated Series” (Sony) and “Iron Man: Animated Series” (Sony), anime takes on the American heroes that ran in the U.S. on G4. DVD only.

Also new this week: “Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Series 4” (Acorn) and “Car 54, Where Are You?: The Complete Second Season” (Shanachie Entertainment).

Flip through the TV on Disc Channel Guide here

Cool, Classic and Cult:

“The Organizer” (Criterion), a portrait of a labor walkout in a textile mill in late 19th Century Turin, is both a provocative portrait of social action and a rich, compassionate story of a community struggling to hold together to get the smallest of concessions from an employer that demands 14-hour days for a wage that keeps them all in poverty. Marcello Mastroianni plays against type as a threadbare intellectual and labor activist whose idealism keeps running into reality. On Blu-ray and DVD, with an introduction by director Mario Monicelli. Videodrone’s review is here.

“Pearls Of The Czech New Wave (Eclipse Series 32)” (Criterion) collects six stand-out films from Czechoslovakia in the late 1960s, when a brief period of relaxed censorship inspired creative and satirical films from young directors. The four disc set gets its name from the omnibus film “Pearls of the Deep” (1966) and includes one feature from each of the participating directors: Věra Chytilová, Jan Němec, Evald Schorm, Jiří Menzel, and Jaromil Jireš. DVD only.

“The Buccaneer ” (1938) (Olive) is the first version of the historical adventure / pirate movie starring Fredric March as Jean Lafitt and directed with a dash of brio by Cecil B. DeMille. DVD only. Reviewed on Videodrone here.

More contemporary is “The Girl on a Motorcycle” (Kino Lorber/Jezebel), a psychedelic odyssey of sexual liberation with Marianne Faithfull and Alain Delon from the swinging sixties, and “Hit!” (Olive), with Billy Dee Williams as an American agent on a private mission of revenge against a French heroine cartel with a civilian hit team. Both Blu-ray and DVD.

Also new this week: “Lassiter” (Hen’s Tooth) with Tom Selleck, “Badge 373” (Olive) with Robert Duvall, and “Stony Island” (Cinema Libre), the feature debut from director Andrew Davis.

Plus see a round-up of direct-to-disc and B-movie releases of the past few weeks here.

All of the Cool, Classic and Cult here

Blu-ray Debuts:

“Camelot” (Warner), the 1967 musical epic starring Richard Harris as King Arthur and Vanessa Redgrave as a flower-child Guenevere, is considered a classic by many. And while it features a fine score by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe and a lavish canvas, the new Blu-ray only reminds us how clumsily directed, haphazardly edited, and stultifying long and lumbering the whole misguided enterprise is. It is packed with supplements, though, and comes in an illustrated Blu-ray book with a sample CD.Videodrone’s review is here.

“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” (Acorn), the superb original 1980 British TV mini-series adapted from the John le Carre novel and starring Sir Alec Guinness as George Smiley, also debuts on Blu this week with new bonus features.

Also new this week: “Killer Nun” (Blue Underground), an Italian nunsploitation thriller with Anita Ekberg, and “Murder Obsession” (Raro Video), a 1981 erotic thriller from Italy by Riccardo Freda.

Peruse all the new Blu-rays here

New on Netflix Instant:

Will Ferrell puts aside his buffoon persona for a more everyman role in the tragicomic “Everything Must Go” (2011), a small but lovely film adapted from a Raymond Carver short story.

Also new: “The Passion of the Christ” (2004), Mel Gibson’s passionate, personal, and cinematically visceral take on the final 12 hours of Christ’s life on Earth, and ”Sweetgrass” (2010), a quietly mesmerizing documentary of a year in the life of sheep farmers grazing their herds in the Beartooth Mountains of Montana.

New streaming TV this week includes Ken Burns’ epic documentary series “The Civil War” (1990), arguably the most influential piece of historical non-fiction ever produced for television, plus the recent animated shows “Bob’s Burgers: Season 1” and “American Dad! Season 6” from Fox’s Sunday night animation block.

Browse more Instant offerings here

Available from Redbox this week:

Day and date with video stores: “Dark Tide” (Lionsgate), the surf-and-shark thriller with Halle Berry and Olivier Martinez.

Also arriving in Redbox kiosks this week: “Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked” (Fox) with the animated singing rodents, “Let Me In” (Anchor Bay) with the adolescent vampire girl, and the TV series “Downton Abbey: Season One” (PBS) with the British aristocracy and their servants.

And in anticipation of “The Avengers” coming to the big screen, Rebox is restocking DVD and Blu-ray versions of “Iron Man,” “Iron Man 2,” “Thor,” and “Captain America.” Start your team building exercises now!

For a calendar of upcoming releases, click here

Camelot (Warner), the 1967 musical epic starring Richard Harris as King Arthur and Vanessa Redgrave as a flower-child Guenevere, is considered a classic by many and a disaster by others. I’m in that other camp.

The original 1960 Broadway production of the musical version of the King Arthur legend by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe was a smash hit turned cultural touchstone, associated forever with the idealism and youth of the John F. Kennedy. But by the time it came to the big screen in 1967, the old studio system was breaking down and youth culture was challenging establishment tastes. The movie version, directed by Broadway veteran and musical specialist Joshua Logan, tried to straddle the gap between old-fashioned Hollywood musical spectacle and the energy and color and themes of sixties culture. The resulting compromise is big and ungraceful and plodding, a lumbering three-hour spectacle.

Richard Harris, famous for playing rebellious, rough-hewn characters, took over the role of King Arthur (originated by Richard Burton) with a mix of regal dignity and working-class origins and Vanessa Redgrave brought youth and unapologetic sexuality to Guenevere (played by Julie Andrews on stage).

Italian actor Franco Nero, however, is neither a charismatic romantic lead nor much a singer as the conceited and sincere Lancelot, the night that captures Guenevere’s heart. He’s just one tone-deaf element to the simplistic take on the Arthurian myth. Lavishly mounted, with magnificent sets and costumes and castle backdrops, it’s also clumsily directed and haphazardly edited, alternately lighthearted and heavy-handed, often in the same scene. And while it has its fans, the bloated, overlong production was a huge financial flop and helped kill the old-fashioned musical.

The Blu-ray release features commentary by film historian Stephen Farber and two well made (if overly admiring) documentary featurettes among the supplements, and comes in an illustrated Blu-ray book case with a soundtrack sampler CD.

More Blu-ray releases at Videodrone

The Organizer (Criterion), a portrait of a labor walkout in a textile mill in late 19th Century Turin, is both a provocative portrait of social action and a rich, compassionate story of a community struggling to hold together to get the smallest of concessions from an employer that demands 14-hour days for a wage that keeps them all in poverty. The story of a labor strike among the socially tight but politically disorganized community to textile workers in a mill outside of Turin in the late 1800s, this is not a political statement nor a social protest. It is lively, funny, chaotic, appreciative of the foibles and failures of the frustrated collective that hasn’t any faith in their power to effect change.

Marcello Mastroianni plays against type as a threadbare intellectual and labor activist whose idealism keeps running into reality. Warm, modest, passionate in his conviction and sincere in his actions, the Professor is an idealist with a practical side, whether he’s rousing a deflated collective to hold out or scrounging for a meal. Even under a scraggly, unwashed beard and patchy clothes, he has an easy dignity and the comportment of a gentleman.

But while Mastroianni is the lead, he’s also an outside to the rich community that director Mario Monicelli creates through the dynamic collection of characters and the density of physical detail, from the chilly, overcrowded homes (morning begins by chipping a layer of ice form the pitcher holding their washing water) to the thrum of rows upon rows of clattering looms in a suffocating, steam-powered factory. The seriousness of the drama is buoyed by wonderful comic streak running underneath, not as satire but as simply human comedy in a tough world. It only makes the tragic dimensions more resonant, right down to the resignation of the final image, while still holding out some hope for next time.

On Blu-ray and DVD, with a video introduction by director Mario Monicelli recorded in 2006, and a fold-out booklet with an essay by J. Hoberman.

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