This Week (and Last Week) in DVD and Instant Watching

Last week, this feature took a week off to prepare for football season. Of course, after the events of Week 1, pro football is pretty much over considering the Steelers' miserable performance and plethora of injuries. More time to look for something to watch on DVD!

Star Trek Into Darkness: The first J.J. Abrams movie was a pleasant surprise for me, and I look forward to seeing this one, but I think we can all agree that the whole reboot is a failure if it doesn't somehow include naked green 3-breasted women. And Kirk scoring with them.

Now You See Me: A group of illusionists pull off some heists, and that sounds fun, but wouldn't you rather see an Expendables-like group of real magicians getting together to do this instead of a bunch of actors? Like David Blaine, David Copperfield, Penn & Teller...THAT would make a great movie.

The Iceman:  Deceased Contract killer Richard Kuklinski, famous for his HBO documentary appearances,  is the subject of this biopic. Winona Ryder, who plays his wife? She shoplifted, man. How can Hollywood glamorize her by giving her roles?

Sharknado: Finally we can relive that wave of good, clean fun we experienced...weeks ago when it aired on TV.

WWE Legends of Mid-South Wrestling: You can have your "Star Trek," but to me, this collection of 1980s action from the Bill Watts Mid-South territory is THE exciting DVD of the week. I mean, to get good footage of classics like when Ted DiBiase--wow, I just realized I probably sound worse than any "Star Trek" fanatic right now...

Top Cat: The Movie: Now, this is interesting: An Argentina/Mexico co-production, a new feature film reviving one of my all-time favorite cartoon characters. I guess he's a sensation in Latin America, and now we get an American-dubbed version on DVD. Well, this WAS interesting, right up until I read that Rob Schneider is one of the voices (though thank Barbera he's not doing Arnold Stang).

Homeland Season 2: LALALALALALALALALA! Still haven't seen this show yet so I'm not reading anything about it. LALALALALALALALALALALA....

The Best of Hullaballoo: This MPI series of 4 volumes may sound like a good idea, until you realize: 1) MPI put out superior, bigger sets years ago with complete episodes and 2) Look at the track listing on this. Trini Lopez? Jack Jones? Is this really the BEST?

And in Netflix Instant Watching the last few weeks...

The September 1 catalog dump was one of the most disappointing first-of-the-month group of titles in recent memory. Let's hope they do better in October.

A handful of Disney animated features were added, including two Emperor's New Groove movies and several Lilo and Stitch flicks. As a parent of small children, I am a lot happier about this than I am disappointed about the lack of other catalog adds. Hey, to THEM, they aren't "second-tier" Disney.

The latest attempt to adapt Richard Stark's novels, Parker, arrived on Netflix. I love the novels, and I remember seeing the ads when this came out and thinking it looked all wrong. Yet I still feel I need to see it.

Safe Haven is a high-profile recent theatrical. a Nicholas Sparks thing, so, fellas, if you make your lady sit through "Parker," you might want to do her a solid and offer to click this one.

A bunch of Godzilla flicks are back, and, hey, wouldn't it be great if the original "Get Smart" showed up on Netflix? Yeah, it would, but I doubt we'll ever see that streaming. The Nude Bomb is not an acceptable substitute.