Don't know about you, but for me this week's "Oh, yeah, baby!" release on DVD (and Blu-ray -- glad I finally got mine hooked up) is the 10th Anniversary Director's Cut edition of Dark City. It's not quite sci-fi, not quite 1940s noir, but it's a whole lot good and not just because the cast is headed up by Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland, William Hurt, and <sigh> Jennifer Connelly. Not to mention that thanks to Dark City, which premiered a year before The Matrix, the Wachowski brothers have an awful lot of 'splaining to do. Expect some feature write-uppage on the Dark City: Director's Cut Blu-ray right around these parts later this week.

Already posted for your pleasure are our up-close and personal looks at some of this week's DVDs such as Stargate: Continuum. Keep coming back throughout the week for Deep Thought perspectives on Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (from The Cargill himself); the Britcom cooking show Two Fat Ladies; Dawn's latest "Married With Movies" spin on -- wait for ir -- the T&A-on-TV boxed set Sunset Tan: Season One (once again, Film.com takes no responsibility for marital discord in the line of duty); a retrospective hat-tip to Dark City director Alex Proyas; a look at not-quite-so-super heroes we shouldn't forget during the current super-cinema wave; tips on what to do when your DVD collection climbs to the thousands of titles (hint: don't live in an earthquake zone); and so much more I'm feeling a little woozy.

Among the other new DVDs hitting shelves this week, you might just find yourself emitting a wee squee! over some of these titles --

The Band's Visit -- "Though it's both a predictable culture-clash comedy and a gentle plea for people of different political backgrounds to 'just get along,' The Band's Visit nevertheless manages to use its central contrivances and inevitable cliches to its favor, and becomes something ethereal and winning," writes Michael Koresky at indieWIRE.

Doomsday -- Authorities brutally quarantine a country as it succumbs to fear and chaos when a virus strikes. The literal walling-off works for three decades -- until the dreaded Reaper virus violently resurfaces in a major city. Don't ya just hate when that happens?

The Princes of Malibu: The Complete Series -- Three years after the fact, the reality show -- cancelled after Fox aired only two of the six produced episodes -- gets a DVD release. Cue sound effects: crickets, crickets, crickets...

Shine a Light -- "The joke that Martin Scorsese seizes on throughout his megawattage Rolling Stones concert movie, Shine a Light, is that the band's members have been asked 'How much longer can you stay together/productive/alive?' every year since Mick Jagger was a soft-faced boy who looked barely out of grammar school. Does the movie penetrate the mystery of the group's supernatural properties of regeneration? No: That’s beyond Scorsese's ken -- and, very likely, beyond the Stones'. What motivates him is both shallower and more fundamental. He stands before Jagger like a pagan sun-worshipper. Merely to capture this magical energy -- this dynamo -- on film would be triumph enough." -- David Edelstein, New York

Witchblade - The Complete Series
This cable TV series brings us New York homicide detective Sara Pezzini, whose quest for justice brings her into contact with an ancient, intelligent, living weapon -- the Witchblade -- a mysterious gauntlet so powerful it can battle Earth's darkest forces. Since prehistoric times it has been worn only by women of unmatched strength of mind and body, but no mortal can elect who wields the power of this weapon; the Witchblade determines its own destiny. Those who are chosen are both its master and servant. Fate has brought Sara and the Witchblade together, forcing her to balance her life and her career as a police detective while learning to govern the power of the Witchblade. Jake McCartey is Pezzini's partner; Kenneth Irons is a billionaire obsessed with possessing the Witchblade; Ian Nottingham is Irons' enigmatic henchman; and Danny Woo is Pezzini's slain partner-turned-guardian spirit.

Warner Home Video releases all 23 episodes of this 2001-2002 TNT series in a seven-disc set. It's based on the Witchblade Top Cow Productions comic book series. Marc Silvestri, who wrote the comic book, wrote for the TV show as well. The DVD also includes the original made-for-TV movie and special features.

Steven Spielberg Presents Freakazoid! - The Complete First Season -- According to TV Shows on DVD, this DVD set includes audio commentary on three "key episodes," promos from the series launch, and a featurette tracking the evolution of the show from an action series to a comedy series.

Surfwise -- "From the on-screen evidence and from all those talking Paskowitz heads, it appears that the family mostly moved on too," concluded Manohla Dargis in the New York Times last May. "That, at least, is the story that both they and Mr. Pray have chosen to tell. It's a good, generally warming story, one that made me want to grab a surfboard or at least check out the family's famous surf camp in San Diego, which, as it happens, was attended by Tommy Means, who along with Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, and Jonathan Paskowitz, helped produce the movie. That further explains its clubby feel and perhaps Mr. Pray's reluctance to push hard. The family that surfs together, it seems, stays together, in poverty and success, wipeouts and comebacks alike."

Wargames -- Young Matthew Broderick (but isn't he always?) saves the Reagan administration from Pong in this 25th Anniversary Edition.

It warms my geekish heart to see how much affection the press is dishing up for the Region 1 DVD edition of the cult TV show Spaced, which MaryAnn gushed over last week. Grady Hendrix in the New York Sun opens his hurrah by calling "this beloved British sitcom" simply "one of the great television shows of the last decade." He adds that saying that synopsizing Spaced as "two loser roommates who pretend to be married in order to land an apartment" is a bit like "describing 'The Dark Knight' as a movie about a guy who's sad his parents died."

Wired.com talked with Spaced co-star/creator Simon Pegg about the show's "deep geek cred, the beauty of American sci-fi and the outrageous possibility of making a good odd-numbered Star Trek movie."

Meanwhile, "but why talk to them," asks Jarett Wieselman at blogs.nypost.com/popwrap, "when I can speak with Jessica Hynes, the co-star and co-creator of the series. From the moment she and Simon Pegg appear on-screen their comedic chemistry is undeniable -- and would forever change what I look for in a star-crossed romance." What follows is his interview with Jessica Hynes (then Stevenson), wherein he discovers "that she is so much funnier than the show she's most famous for."

Also offering up the love is one of our favorite DVD dudes, Greencine Guru, who notes that the first two episodes "contain very arguably the finest Anti-George Lucas/Phantom Menace running jokes ever, including a moment in the comic book store in which Tim works that is almost indescribably funny."

Noel Murray at the Onion A.V. Club observes that "the show works even now because of Pegg and Stevenson's peculiar balance of geek sensibility and chick-lit madcappery. It's funny when Pegg tells the not-yet-26-year-old Stevenson, 'You'd be dead in four years if this was Logan's Run,' and it's funny when Stevenson tries to liven up a party with a mix-tape containing every overexposed rock and pop song of the last 30 years. It's funny because -- as another popular figure from the Spaced era used to say -- we can feel their pain."

When Film.com writer Glenn Erickson asked for reader comments on his piece that asks Whatever Happened to Great Fight Scenes?, ten to one he didn't expect to get a heated response from an Oscar-winning editor who felt unfairly (if indirectly) dissed by one of Glenn's opinions. It's not often that the Film.com talk-smack robo-filter gets engaged, and it's the liveliest reader post on the site since Laremy opined that Hellboy II might not make a big showing at the next Oscars ceremony.

Finally, William Speruzzi at This Savage Art suggests that we all celebrate Stanley Kubrick's 80th birthday (July 27) by gorging ourselves on everything Kubrick -- via the vast and wonderful kubrick.com, naturally. As for me, I'm going to watch Dr. Strangelove again for, like, the 80th time.

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