The Darkest Hour has five teens in Moscow when alien invaders take over the Earth, and they spend the movie trying to survive. It is not a bad little film, but I think they made a mistake when they opened it in theaters on Christmas day, as it was not exactly holiday fare.
A rather amusing family oriented TV miniseries this time is The Witches of Oz, where best selling author Dorothy Gale discovers the stories she has been writing are based on suppressed childhood memories, and Oz is real.
The other TV choices are all older programs now available for the first time, starting with Night Gallery: Season Three. Joining Rod Serling in Season 3 were Vincent Price, Mickey Rooney, Sally Fields, Sandra Dee, Bill Bixby, and Leonard Nimoy, amongst others. Logan’s Run: The Complete Series ran on TV for the 1977/1978 season and also comes out this week.
Finally, Dark Shadows: Fan Favorites pulls all the way back to the 1960s for its episodes. Dark Shadows ran for five years, but as a soap opera it ran every weekday during that time, so it had over a thousand episodes. Besides being the first TV series to focus on the emotional needs of Vampires, Werewolves, and Witches, it was also one of the few shows of its time to include time travel and alternate universes as regular plot devices in its ongoing story arc. Every one of those details is represented in this small collection.
In western animation, Marvel Knight’s Astonishing X-Men: Dangerous becomes available this week, the second release in the series.
The new release in Anime is Naruto Shippuden: DVD box set 10, which I am not going to bother to describe, on the theory that if you liked the series enough to watch the previous 9 box sets you probably already know the story thus far.
The other anime releases this week are consolidations or Blue Ray or just plain re-releases. Oh! Edo Rocket – Complete Series is a consolidation, previously available in a box set per season, now with both seasons in a single box. Infinite Stratos is a re-release, except it also includes the OVA Infinite Stratos Encore, a short sequel, together for the first time.