Shin Chin Season 3

It’s almost impossible to explain what happens in any given episode of this hilarious anime series. Think of Eric Cartman cranked up to 11 and you’ve got an idea of the attitude of the lead character, a small boy with a bad attitude and a penchant for dropping his pants and adding his butt dance just for the hell of it (he never needs a reason). Foul as he is, though Shin’s antics often pale in comparison to the things the adult characters in the show say and do. It’s rude and crude, but it’s also one of the smartest comedies out there today, because  the show’s creators seem to have a sixth sense about pacing each episode perfectly: Just when you start to realize an episode doesn’t have a point, Shin looks at you through the camera and apologizes for the show not havng any point. Spooky.

Stargate Atlantis: The Complete Series on Blu-ray

Fans of this popular series will not be happy until they own this Blu-ray edition of the show. Not only will they get the best high definition transfers of the series, but there is a plethora of extras (more than 50 hours of extended episodes, behind-the-scenes extras and commentary from the cast and crew) to keep them in Stargate Atlantis nirvana well into 2012. The great news is that even if you have never seen a single episode of any of the four Stargate series, you will find a lot to love in this box set. The episodes are well written, and the special effects are top notch. The characters are a bit of a cliche (the tough female leader, the quirky doctor with the Scottish accent), but the actors do a great job of making them come to live over the course of the series.

American Bully

Brandon O’Leary (played with raw intensity by Matt O’Leary) is one of the angriest teenagers you will ever see in a movie. He’s angry about school. He’s angry about his life and, in the months following the 9/11 terrorist attack, he’s mad at the world outside his limited middle-America range. Suspended from school for sending a fellow student a link to a graphic video of terrorists beheading an American soldier, Brandon spends the day drinking with friends and looking for trouble. He finds what he is after when he meets the student who turned him in over the video and decides to teach him a lesson. Passionately directed by Dave Rodriguez, the film is almost too relentless in its effort to portray Brandon’s anger. There’s no other point of view offered to any believable degree, and without it, the film lacks the balance it needs to make the story complete.

Baka and Test: Season One

With the preponderance of serious and seriously violent anime being brought out these days, its a relief to watch a show that’s seriously silly. The series follows the adventures of the students at Fumizuki Academy, a school where students can summon Avatars, pint-sized versions of themselves, to battle each other to settle any and all disputes between classes. The school losers of Class F, lead by the always poor and always hungry Akihisa Yoshii, take on all comers to better their standing in the school, leading to some eye-popping anime battles. It’s the interaction between the kids, though, that gives the show heart.

John Pinette: Still Hungry

This concert DVD starts out kind of slow as Pinette, a big guy with a big appetite, centers all his jokes on food. It’s kind of funny, but kind of predictable, too. Around 10 minutes into the show, though. Pinette stops with the fat jokes and starts telling stories about his life, stories that grow increasingly hilarious as the show movies along. Sure, he still throws in a fat joke here and there, and some of them are pretty funny, especially when they’re not piled on top of each other, but it’s the humanity of his humor that makes Pinette such an enjoyable performer.

Stake Land

It starts with a man and a teenage boy driving down a dusty, deserted road. They aren’t talking and the silence is growing ever more oppressive. Then someone (or something?) starts pounding on the trunk. From the inside. Demanding to be let out. In a lot of ways, Stake Land is a modern day classic of its kind, a vampire movie with lots of gore, lots of grisly killings and lots of the undead being dispatched by the hero in some pretty intense and interesting ways. But it’s more than just a horror movie. With a strong script, a talented cast and the visionary flair of director Jim Mickle, it’s the kind of classic action movie genre fans thought filmmakers had forgotten how to make anymore.

Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, Part Five

Over the course of the preceding 52 episodes of this epic anime series, audiences have watched Edward and Alphonse Elric grow from two little boys who did a really bad thing (trying to bring their mom back from the dead using the power of alchemy) into two heroic young men who are willing to risk everything to save the world from an unholy enemy bent on wiping out the human race. It’s been a hell of a ride so far, and the final 12 episodes deliver the perfect ending. The action is still intense, but it is the way the various plot lines are brought together in such a satisfying way that makes you want to go back to the beginning after episode 64 and watch it all over again.