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Welcome to How to Spend $20, BOP’s look at the latest Blu-ray discs and DVDs to hit stores nationwide. This week: Easily the industry’s least exciting list of home media offerings since I took over this column. Sheesh.

I can’t say I have much patience for more than a handful of blurbs this week. Early May isn’t looking too great either - but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Pick of the Week

South Park: The Complete Fourteenth Season

It seems like ages ago, but it was the 14th season of South Park that had me fired up at the start. Near the beginning of the season, Trey Parker and Matt Stone celebrated 200 episodes with a Seinfeld finale-esque episode that brought back just about every celebrity that had ever been humiliated on the Comedy Central cartoon. Yep, even a rebuilt Mecha-Streisand.

Anyway, the two-parter had Tom Cruise making a deal with the town that he’d call off a celebrity-fueled class action lawsuit if it could produce the Muslim prophet Muhammad. In my Make an Argument column at the time, I said the channel had done Trey and Matt wrong by censoring parts of the episode - including a concluding monologue by one of the kids, which would be just one long bleep, and an oversized redaction box that would completely cover “Muhammad” whenever he was on screen. Trey and Matt had been sent death threats between the airings of one and two, and Comedy Central, apparently, decided to just make nice with the extremists and self-police itself.

I stand by what I had to say at the time, because I think the practice of Comedy Central self-censoring itself for the sake of censoring itself sets terrible precedent. As well, South Park arguably built Comedy Central. It seems silly for the network to then stifle the show.

Sure, Trey and Matt are all lowbrow all the time, but I’m generally okay with it because they call attention to nearly every identity we can possibly identify with - the majorities and the minorities. Trey and Matt aren’t so much pushing an agenda as they are broadcasting smart satire that in between its fart jokes and immaturity will probably get you thinking about everyday absurdities. And I don’t know that many other cartoons - let alone shows of any kind - can say the same.

Besides “200” and “201,” I was also particularly fond of “You Have 0 Friends,” Trey and Matt’s take on societal issues stemming from the Facebook phenomenon. It felt a bit late to have aired when it did, but I guess South Park was more concerned with pumping something out before the release of The Social Network than to make any sort of statement at the height of its popularity.

Disc includes: Audio commentaries, delete scenes, “The Coon” bonus episode





Testees: The Complete Series

A series that aired for a season way back in 2008 finally sees daylight on home media. It’s Testees, a Canadian television show that simultaneously aired on FX and Showcase (a Canadian channel) about two-and-a-half years ago to what seemed like a lack of enthusiasm from critics and a viewing public.

Reminding me in setup only to Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s just about brilliant Extras or Starz’s reluctantly canceled Party Down, Testees had two friends hard at work as human test subjects at a product testing facility. Each episode had the boys experimenting with strange products like military-grade vacuums and a shampoo that happens to, you know, blind its users.

Whereas Extras and Party Down relied heavily on changes of scenery from episode to episode - revolving film sets and guest stars for Extras; fresh banquets and parties for Party Down - Testees seems to have staved off staleness by updating the object being tested every 22 minutes. Heck, it’s a reputable way to tinker with our ever decreasing attention spans. Soon enough we’ll have a series that replaces its lead actors every week.

Testees wasn’t renewed by FX past its first 13-episode order, and it’s a safe bet that that’s the way it’s going to be. Its creator Kenny Hotz, of Kenny vs. Spenny, has been tooling with a new show - Kenny
Hotz’s Triumph of the Will - to debut this summer.

Disc includes: N/A

April 26, 2011

Blu-ray
200 MPH
Betty Blue
Blood Out
Blow Out (Criterion Collection)
Bob Dylan: Don't Look Back
Bob Dylan: The Other Side of the Mirror Live
Chawz
Cinderella: Birmingham Royal Ballet
Daylight
Dementia 13
Dinoshark
The Dorm That Dripped Blood
Eden of the East: King of Eden
El Topo
The Enforcer
An Evening with Dave Grusin
Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (Criterion Collection)
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
The Holy Mountain
Human Planet: The Complete Series
Jolene
K-ON! Volume 1
Knockout
The Machine Girl
The Missing Lynx
Muay Thai Giant
NOVA: Making Stuff
Poor Pretty Eddie
Romeo And Juliet
Sacrifice
The Scent Of Green Papaya
Seven
Sniper: Reloaded
South Park: The Complete Fourteenth Season
Taxi
The Terror
The Universe: The Mega Collection

DVD
200 MPH
2010 US Open Mens Semi-Final: Federer vs. Djokovic
Blood Out
Blow Out (Criterion Collection)
Bob Dylan: Don't Look Back (DVD +)
Bob Dylan: The Other Side of the Mirror Live
Chawz
Dinoshark
Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (Criterion Collection)
The Girl Who Leapt Through Space Volume 1
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
Growing Pains: The Complete Second Season
Halloween: H2O (Widescreen)
Halloween: The Curse Of Michael Myers (Widescreen)
Human Planet: The Complete Series
Jolene
Knockout
The Lucy Show: The Official Fourth Season
The Neverending Story III (Widescreen)
NOVA: Making Stuff
Sacrifice
The Scent Of Green Papaya
Sergeant Frog: Season Two
Sniper: Reloaded
South Park: The Complete Fourteenth Season
Stan Lee's Superhumans: Season One
Testees: The Complete Series
The Universe: The Mega Collection