This Week in DVD and Instant Watching

Oblivion: Tom Cruise keeps making big movies, and I guess they're making money. He's not going away anytime soon, unless of course [SCIENTOLOGY JOKE DELETED BY CULTURESHARK LEGAL COUNSEL].

Mud: This movie garnered enough decent reviews to make me think it belies my theory that the more fun a movie it is to say, the less fun it is to watch.

The Place Beyond the Pines: Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper headline the cast, but I'm drawn to Ray Liotta as a corrupt police detective. Hasn't Ray Liotta played a corrupt cop in a dozen movies by now? (That's a rhetorical question. I don't want facts to get in the way of my presumption.)

To the Wonder: Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko (hey, she's in "Oblivion," too) star in this drama from Terrence Malick. I know virtually nothing about it, but I think it's safe to say it's long, often impenetrable, and features at least one long take of a blade of grass.

The Sapphires: As a big Chris O'Dowd fan, I must mention this period piece about an Australian aboriginal girl group

On the Road: Between this and "Gatsby," everyone's taking a crack at the unfilmable novels lately. What;s next, "Gone With the Wind"? I'd like to see them try to do THAT one.

The Best of Fridays: When it was announced that the early-80s ABC 'Saturday Night Live" knockoff was coming to DVD, fans got excited for the complete run. Then when they discovered it would be a best of set, fans got excited for handpicked complete episodes. Then when they discovered even the selected episodes were cut (apparently it's mostly musical performances that are deleted), they...well, they decided that if they want more episodes, they'd better buy this, anyway. In fairness to Shout Factory, it was probably a difficult process (in other words, it cost money) to clear all the music for this series. The company did put together a pretty impressive list of bonus features. Plus it looks like most if not all of the Andy Kaufman material is here. But does anyone have any reason to think there'll be more sets of this show? I say buy this because you want this, not because you think that eventually the rest of it will appear on video.

Community Season 4: Season 4 is now on DVD! Buy it now...and bury it in a pile next year when it winds up as clearly the weakest of the 5. I would have loved to hear showrunner Dan Harmon, who spent this season in exile, do commentary tracks for this set. As it is, you know, the show wasn't at its best, but it had some great moments and some fine episodes in season 4.

Duck Dynasty Season 3: I wish Dan Harmon did commentary tracks for THIS series, too. Why? I dunno, I just think it would be funny. I didn't know this show was such a big deal until I saw entire displays of licensed merchandise at a bookstore a while ago. Big, comfy chairs and dedicated staff are on the way out in the bookselling biz; "Duck Dynasty" t-shirts are in!

And in streaming...

Netflix gained some interesting new titles this past week, including Erased, an action/adventure flick starring and Aaron Eckhart and...Olga Kurylenko??? Seriously, if this is National Olga Kurylenko week, then someone needs to do a better job of hyping it.

Also "new" to streaming are a bunch of James Bond movies, which will probably expire at the end of the month if past history is any indication. The 007 movies go, they come back, they go, they come back...

I haven't seen David Fincher's Zodiac, and I don't remember it being on Instant Watching before, so maybe now I'll check it out.

Hulu premiered Seth Myers' animated series The Awesomes, which may or may not be worthwhile. I was struck by an article about Hulu that referred to Myers as a "fading TV star." Ouch! The guy is taking over Fallon's show. Isn't that worth anything?