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I have an intense appreciation for animation, so I’ve collected just about everything that Studio Ghibli has released here in the states. To call Ghibli ‘the Japanese Disney’ would be a disservice to both studios, but both create things of such epic atmosphere and depth that it’s no surprise they’ve joined forces to make the best possible stateside releases of all of Ghibli’s classic films.

The translation of Japanese animation to a US audience is usually a very dicey procedure when it’s cheaply done. You get subtitles that read like drunken haikus, enormous spans of plot inconveniently cut for brevity and clarity, and subtlety drained from the very core of what makes some Japanese animation stand apart from what US kids are usually given. So, even when Disney loads the American voice cast with celebrity names, and a few names pulled directly from their own teenybopper talent farms, they do a great job, such as with Ponyo, which was just recently released on DVD & Blu-Ray for the first time.

Subtlety is the key. Instead of fairytale princes in this retelling of ‘The Little Mermaid’, we have a regular kid. We have quiet magic interwoven so intimately with everyday life that all of the regular folks approach it calmly and with a sense of wonder, instead of suspicion and distrust. Instead of computer-heavy graphics, we have a film that was drawn by hand in the most tedious, organic way possible – but revealing none of the tedium in the final product. It’s the kind of quiet, real beauty that we don’t get enough of, so I’m thrilled that we’re getting this treat over here – and on Blu-Ray no less.

There are two versions of Ponyo out there – a simple DVD version, and a DVD / Blu-Ray combo pack that’s only very slightly more expensive. Let me just note that, as a collector who is new to Blu-Ray, the only things I have in this format so far are Disney and Pixar films. Both preserve the original soundtrack in Japanese and present the option of subtitles, if you’re a purist – but the English voice acting is really very good and completely undistracting.

The DVD includes a 5 minute featurette about the making of Ponyo, though it doesn’t really explore it in any depth. All of the real details are on the Blu-Ray disc, which explores these things from multiple angles, and adds even more neatness to the behind-the-scenes stuff that’s been accumulating on all of Disney’s Ghibli releases. No Ghibli or Miyazaki collection is remotely complete without this exceptional, inspiring animation.

[DVD graciously provided by BVHE]

As an avid member of the living, it took me a while to really get into the whole zombie thing. At this point, I’m a total convert. From video games to action figures, I’m sold – and with a few friends who are even more dedicated to the zombie genre than myself, it’s almost a kind of social obligation to be able to talk about zombie movies at length (as well as orchestrate survival techniques for the inevitable onslaught).

I recently had the opportunity to see Dead Snow, which one particular friend regards as the best zombie movie ever made, and turned into something of a nightly viewing for a while. After seeing it myself, I think she’s on to something.

Dead Snow combines a few interesting premises into one eerie, scary, funny, nauseating experience. You have an isolated, snowy landscape, you have zombies, and you have Nazis. Despite being a zombie movie, it rarely dips into the realm of the hokey or too obvious. All of this is amplified by the fact that I live in New York and was just hit by the worst, most destructive blizzard that I have ever witnessed and sat in the dark for two days without any power as creepy noises broke the night outside. Needless to say, I’m pretty primed for some crazy snow terror.

While the DVD has been out for a while, IFC has only recently released the 2-disc edition, complete with a whole extra disc full of fan-friendly awesomeness. Spoiler alert : it’s all made worthwhile by behind-the-scenes zombie Nazi dancing.

Every good horror DVD includes a whole lot of details about how the special effects were done, and these are included her as well. Production troubles, the experience of Sundance, trailers, some fight outtakes, and you have just about everything you could possibly want to see about the guts of this movie. It definitely places as a film that I’d want to share with friends, if only for the sheer ridiculousness and the fact that despite this, it is actually chilling. Sure, we never find out why these Nazis became zombies as we might in more pseudo-science oriented zombie flicks, but there are so many body parts flying around that you barely notice.

The cover bills this film as one of the best 25 zombie films of all time, but I’d have to elevate that to the top ten, at the very least – if only to leave some room to be even more deeply creeped out.

[DVD graciously provided by IFC Films]

It’s not as if Stadium Events is an especially great game.

Anyone who has played World Class Track Meet knows the futility of awkwardly pounding the accompanying floor mat with your feet, and then giving up and punching it rapidly with your hands, and then having your mom yell at you for making so much noise. It’s a game that asks you to perform a bizarre, Herculean feat that doesn’t match what the human body can actually do, much less when it is eight years old, and you can play it once or twice before the novelty completely wears off.

And still, that game sold for over $40,000 last week.

While “Stadium Events” was later re-named and re-released as World Class Track Meet (accompanying the NES Power Pad accessory), the original US release by Bandai is one of the rarest retail Nintendo games out there.

Popular legend has it that 2000 copies were produced by Bandai in 1986 and sent to a limited number of retail chains, designed to work with Bandai’s FFF (Family Fun Fitness) accessory – a large mat that could be manipulated with the hands and feet in lieu of a controller. Almost immediately after this release, Nintendo decided that they liked this accessory so much that they were going to buy the exclusive rights to it and rename it the Power Pad.

This created a recall of every available copy of the game so that it could be rebranded with Nintendo’s seal. These same popular legends maintain that only 200 copies of the game were already sold and un-recallable, and furthermore, only two still remain in their shrinkwrap. Of course, these numbers are completely unofficial, as no surveyor has really delved into every dusty nerd basement across America just yet, but people like to throw them around.

Divide 200 copies of a game among millions of Nintendo collectors, and you have a hot item. While one sealed copy sold for just over $13,000 a few months back, this most recent discovery sold for almost $41,000 – but collectors be warned! More than one version of this game exists, and one isn’t that rare at all.

Because Nintendo released games across the world, they had to adjust their programming to accommodate TVs that used both NTSC and PAL technology. NTSC tech dominated America, and PAL was used in the UK.

The rare edition of Stadium Events is the NTSC, or American, version. This is differentiated by a circular ‘Nintendo Seal’ on the cover of the game cart and box in gold and grey. The more common PAL version features a Nintendo seal which is oval shaped, and uses grey and white. This Pal version of the cart itself also includes a small photo of a few people enjoying the FFF Pad in front of the TV (which is featured on both boxes). Of course, the more manuals, boxes and ephemera included, the better off you are. Those who do not understand this difference and are eager to hop into the current Stadium Events frenzy have dropped almost $10,000 per cartridge on one that simply isn’t nearly as rare.

I still regret the day I tossed out all of my old Nintendo stuff in an effort to become more mature, only to realize later that maturity was actually embracing who you were enthusiastically. Just pop in World Class Track Meet if you’re not a purist who strives to play every NES game – you’ll save yourself $40,000.

In fifth grade, I journeyed onto the small stage for the first and last time. I don’t know what possessed me that year, because I was a terminally shy kid for much of my life, but in fifth grade, I was the Mad Hatter.

In the grand scheme of things, the Mad Hatter is a minor, but highly memorable, character that appears near the end of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. The reason that he’s plastered all over the posters for the upcoming Tim Burton candy-colored, hollow monstrosity is to appeal to a cross section of the lowest common denominator : people who like to look at Johnny Depp, people who satisfy themselves at knowing the barest parts of classic literature and can pick out a character, and people who get all excited when they see shiny things. But I digress.

There have been many different film interpretations of Alice in Wonderland over the years. It naturally lends itself to amazing visual and intellectual landscapes. It is, after all, full of anthropomorphized animals, talismans, characters who are mentally ill, and general whimsy – and it presents itself in a manner that can be filmed as a sequential narrative.

Throw all of that away. In 1966, the BBC made their own version of the story. And it’s freaking weird. Which is saying a lot for Alice in Wonderland.

Filmed entirely in black and white, BBC’s Alice presents a deeply atmospheric take on Alice, never letting the viewer forget that the entire thing is a dream. While a knowledge of the book helps to string things together, watching the entire thing without the help of foreknowledge is even more confusing and disturbing. Our sleepy Alice never expresses a single emotion, and rarely looks at the people she’s talking to, instead opting to stare right at the audience in many cases and delivering her monologues in a whisper. Film is double exposed, speeches are run backwards, and you can’t help but feel like you’re watching something that stumbled out of the mind of the most intense surrealist.

All of the fascinating animals – the amphibian doormen, the drugged-out insects, the translucent cats – are now all people. Boring, stuffy, middle-class English people who speak in riddles that are far, far less endearing when they’re not coming out of a mouth that also catches flies. While this is definitely a commentary on society, I have to wonder if these comments are misplaced a little. Maybe I’m just a philistine for expecting a character called ‘March Hare’ to be a rabbit instead of a political cartoon that looks like an old dude.

That aside, the appearance of the film is absorbing, and just a little dark. Taxidermied dogs seem to appear everywhere, and overgrown weeds threaten to take over the entire screen. In place of all of the usual fantasy is a very heightened delivery of the hyper-real, which serves surprisingly wall in its place. The whole thing feels like falling asleep in the middle of a summer afternoon and waking up very disoriented – which is precisely what Alice does anyhow. On this larger scale, it works excellently, even if the narrative is impossible to follow.

This DVD, distributed by Warner Bros., includes a whole lot of great, insightful extras which are even more interesting then the film itself. First, there is a 1903 version of Alice in Wonderland, as well as a 1965 documentary about Lewis Carroll and his relationship with Alice, which becomes creepy very quickly and effectively. Best of all, there’s a full-length commentary provided by the director, which gives a lot of depth to the strange way that this film was interpreted. It’s actually surprising that so much exists around the making of this film, including behind the scenes photographs, given that it was made well before the era of DVD extras, so the experience is rewarding.

The world is going to lose sight of what Alice in Wonderland is about very soon, so this is a sobering look at the exact opposite of what the bombastic, gimmicky Burton is pulling. This title will be available on March 2, 2010, so have a look!

[DVD graciously provided by Warner Home Video Inc.]

Toy collectors are very aware that Mattel’s DC license is probably one of the best things that has happened to toys in years. They’re solid, accurate, and well-articulated.

Sure, they complain vociferously about how hard some of these toys are to find, but that takes nothing away from the excellent quality that Mattel has presented to a generation or two of disillusioned collecting geeks. I usually just avoid the more difficult and disappointing aspects of hunting through my local stores by ordering sets of figures online, but to each their own. I recommend Alter Ego Comics and Corner Store Comics.

I’m always happy to see a set of figures power through twelve waves – especially with the rising costs of plastic and an economy hesitant to spend money on luxury items. Many excellent figure lines have folded in recent years for these reasons, so when we can last long enough to get weird figures like Copperhead and the Metal Men, I can’t help but be excited that my little part of the economy is holding up.

After one hundred or so figures, Mattel continues to listen to the adult collectors and delivers a perfect mix of obscure and popular characters alike – even if this particular set leans more towards the ‘who the heck is that?’ end of the scale. If you collect all seven figures, you can assemble an eighth figure for free. There are also two variants to collect, which is standard for each mass retail set. Every fifth set or so has been a ‘retailer exclusive’, which means that you’ll have to leave the house and drag your feet through the dregs of either Wal-Mart or Target to find the newest figures – or wait for inflated prices on eBay. If you saw my local Wal-Mart, you’d wait for eBay too. I don’t think they’ve named all of the disorders that you see crawling through there.

I’ve written about aspects of these before, but I return today to relay a complete surprise that arrived with these figures in the mail : each figure includes a pin. As a pin collector (with an unconscious focus on DC Comics), this fulfills more than one collection at once – and it’s neat.

See if you recognize any of these DC Universe characters :

- Eclipso (1963). In true Mattel style, we’re given Eclipso’s most classic look – not any of the updated, renovated costumes or characters that he became. This is classic Eclipso.

- The Spectre (1940). Also a classic version of the character, who is one of the ultimate powers in the DC Universe. This figure comes in a common white version, as well as a less common glow-in-the-dark version to reflect his spectral powers. I really love glowing toys. The previous set included a rare glowing Deadman which I hunted down.

- Copperhead (1968). I admit it – I had no idea who this was. Not to be confused with the similarly attired Kobra. There were a lot of snake-themed bad guys.

- Dr. Mid-Nite (1941). Possibly one of the more well-known within this group, as he’s a long-running member of the Justice Society (which is where a bunch of Golden Age comic characters continue to fight crime). Plus, he comes with his owl – Hooty. He was not known for his creativity.

- Desaad (1971). I’m a fan of Desaad just because I love anything that Jack Kirby created – most of which involved huge eyebrows, cumbersome robo-hats or monsters strapped to Aztec-lookin’ machines – though I do question the mid-coitus look on Desaad’s face here.

- Mary Batson (1942) – or as you may know her, Mary Marvel. Because of the possible confusion between the DC Marvel family and the various Marvel Comics characters that have the ‘Marvel’ name, all branding of the Marvel family requires use of their real names, or ‘Shazam!’ Mary comes in two equally common forms – the original red costume, and the later white costume. There was a black costume even later on, but let’s not talk about that one. She matches the already released Shazam! figure.

- Iron (1962). This is probably the figure that I’m most excited about, as it marks the start of the Metal Men, a group of heroic robot-creatures based on the elements. I’m a sucker for teams, and with four more main members inevitably on the way, I’m looking forward to them all. He also includes die-cast parts, which is just fancy.

- Darkseid (1971). All seven figures come together to for a colossal Darkseid figure, complete with scary death-glove. As Desaad is his lackey, they go together perfectly. Also a Jack Kirby creation. While there was a Darkseid figure in Mattel’s early DC Superheroes line, this one is larger and more complex than the original.

So, that’s DC Universe Classics 12 – a weird selection of characters, but one that hardcore collectors and comic fans are sure to be pleased with. Until next time, check out everything that Mattel has released under this banner!