New on DVD and Blu-ray: Box Set Bouillabaisse with Parks and Recreation, Boardwalk Empire, and The Wire
It may seem that DVD and Blu-ray box sets are becoming unfashionable these days, what with expanding online streaming and video-on-demand options. But they're still a good option for a certain variety of binge watcher, and prices on these premium box sets are actually coming down.
Me, I love ginormous multi-disc box set collections. With my favorite movies and (especially) TV shows, I like having physical media I can shelve and sort into an actual library. I'm also geeky enough to actually dig into all those exclusive bonus materials you get on disc.
Three of television's premium marquee series have recently been released to DVD and/or Blu-ray. If you have several hundred hours to spare this summer, put them in your binge-watching queue.
Boardwalk Empire: The Complete Series
$160 (Blu-ray + Digital HD) and $130 (DVD version)
A solid critical and commercial hit by any measure, Boardwalk Empire never quite hit the heights of popularity of contemporaries like Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad. But artistically, it's a series you can savor and really lose yourself in. Steve Buscemi headlines as crime kingpin Nucky Thompson, king of the bootleggers in the Prohibition Era.
Nucky's five-season run features rich storytelling and characters, but it's the series' incredibly immersive production design that may get you hooked. Sets, costuming, art design -- all are pitched and delivered with A-list moviemaking skill and style. Empire feels like going back in time.
The box set features all 59 episodes on 19 discs, with more than four hours of bonus materials. Featurettes include a final look back with cast and crew, plus individual behind-the-scenes tours of design, visual effects and cinematography.
Parks and Recreation: The Complete Series
$103.60 (DVD)
Amy Poehler's inspired mockumentary about life in a small town bureaucracy just kept getting better over the course of seven seasons -- a tricky maneuver to pull off in situation comedy. The show's creative team consistently found way to mine better and deeper humor from the characters, portrayed by an ace ensemble cast including Rashida Jones, Aziz Ansari, Aubrey Plaza, and the inimitable Nick Offerman.
The DVD box set gathers all 125 episodes, along with the previously-released bonus materials from each season set -- including deleted scenes, blooper reels, various commentary tracks and lots of weird odds and ends. Look for guest star Patton Oswalt's legendary "science fiction filibuster" speech, largely improvised, and impossibly funny.
$86 (Blu-ray +Digital HD) and $79 (DVD)
Considered by some very serious pop culture critics to be the single greatest television series ever made, The Wire ran for five seasons on HBO, exploring social and political themes with unprecedented depth and sophistication. Each season documented a different institution in the city of Baltimore -- government, schools, illegal drug trade -- and managed a cast of hundreds of recurring characters.
It's the epic novel as television series, and as a binge-watching adventure, hugely satisfying when consumed in big chunks. The Blu-ray set includes all episodes, plus four behind-the-scenes documentaries, 22 audio commentaries on selected episodes, three prequel stories and a recently convened reunion of cast and creators.
Also New on DVD and Blu-ray:
The spy movie action goof Kingsmen: The Secret Service-- starring Colin Firth, Sam Jackson, Michael Caine, and newcomer Taron Egerton -- is one this year's most underrated movies. Clever, bloody and surprisingly fun.
The sci-fi adventure Project Almanac follows a crew of time-traveling teenagers, and is smarter and funnier than it strictly needs to be as a found-footage genre toss-off.
For family movie night, you can't go wrong with SpongeBob Squarepants 2: Sponge Out of Water, which successfully preserves the TV series' tone of gentle, surreal weirdness. Kids and parents will laugh at the same scene, for totally different reasons.
Also:
Camp X-Ray, The Duff, Focus, Jupiter Ascending, McFarland USA, Red Army, Serena, and the sci-fi sequel Monsters: Dark Continent.
