Because no one is an island
- Share via
Nim’s Island
Fox Walden, $29.99; Blu-ray, $39.98
A sort of “Romancing the Stone” for the preteen set, “Nim’s Island” stars Abigail Breslin as an adventurous youngster being raised by her scientist father at a remote ocean outpost. When the old man gets lost at sea, his daughter calls for help from her favorite pulp fiction author: a helpless agoraphobic played by Jodie Foster. The DVD adds deleted scenes and commentary tracks, including one in which Foster and Breslin talk about their favorite animals.
--
Code Monkeys: Season One
Shout! Factory, $19.99
If “South Park” lowered the bar for TV animation, G4’s cult cartoon series “Code Monkeys” throws away that bar completely. Designed to look like a low-resolution early ‘80s Atari video game -- complete with jokey graphics about the characters’ health and point totals -- “Code Monkeys” follows the slacker employees of an upstart video-game company as they get high, goof off and engage in slapstick violence. The “Code Monkeys: Season One” DVD contains the show’s first 13 episodes, plus behind-the-scenes featurettes that are a lot like the show itself: sloppy, snarky and fitfully funny.
--
The Counterfeiters
Sony, $28.96; Blu-ray, $38.96
Last year’s Academy Award winner for foreign-language feature dramatizes the true story of a concentration camp prisoner who aided the Nazis in a scheme to destabilize the British economy with a flood of phony currency. Part suspense film, part meditation on what it means to be “genuine,” “The Counterfeiters” avoids Holocaust movie cliches in focusing on a man who probably belonged behind bars -- just not for the reasons the Germans put him there. Director Stefan Ruzowitzky provides a commentary track for the DVD, which also features interviews with the cast and the man on whom the story is based.
--
Pete Seeger: The Power of Song
Genius Products, $24.95
American folk music icon Pete Seeger has a reputation as a political firebrand and a musical purist, and though Jim Brown’s documentary “Pete Seeger: The Power of Song” doesn’t do much to dispel that image, the film does try to explain it. Tracing Seeger’s journey from a privileged boyhood to an ascetic adulthood, Brown shows the close ties between the trad/hootenanny movement and the radical politics of the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s -- as well as illustrating how Seeger treated his music more as a mission than a pleasure. The DVD includes bonus scenes and home movies.
--
And . . .
“The Killing of John Lennon” (IFC, $19.95); “Lonesome Dove” (Genius Products $19.95; Blue-ray, $39.99); “My Brother Is an Only Child” (Velocity/ThinkFilm, $27.98)
-- Noel Murray
More to Read
The biggest entertainment stories
Get our big stories about Hollywood, film, television, music, arts, culture and more right in your inbox as soon as they publish.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.