The Wire: The Complete Fifth Season (HBO, $59.99)

Oftentimes, Emmy voters wait until an acclaimed, but underseen show is in its final season to honor it with a slew of nominations. At least, that’s what everyone though would happen with the fifth and final season of HBO’s The Wire, which is considered by almost every major television critic out there to be one of the greatest shows ever broadcast, but has been routinely passed over by the folks at the Academy of Televisions Arts & Sciences. And, once again, when this year’s nominations were announced, The Wire went almost entirely overlooked, scoring a lone writing nod. Perhaps one day we’ll learn why the voting body apparently hates creator/producer/writer David Simon’s passion project, but until then we’ll just have to content ourselves with the box sets of the show’s five-year run. As every Wire fan knows, each season focuses on a particular institution in Baltimore, where the action takes place. Last year zeroed in on the school system and this time around, Simon zeroes in on the place where he got his start: the city’s local newspaper The Baltimore Sun. (Interestingly, this storyline was criticized by a sizeable number of journalists—both in Baltimore and elsewhere—that normally worship the ground the show walks on. Is Simon settling old grudges, as they claimed, or are they unhappy being turned into the story instead of just observing the story? You decide!) To say anything more about the season’s plotlines would spoil the pleasure of getting lost in The Wire‘s rich, novelistic storytelling. Just sit back, relax and enjoy the final bow of a genuine American classic…no matter what those Emmy voters say.
Extras: David Simon and his cast and crew discuss The Wire‘s legacy in a retrospective documentary and contribute commentary tracks to six episodes.

South Park: The Complete Eleventh Season (Comedy Central, $49.99)

Earlier this year, Comedy Central released the three-episode Imaginationland arc—the highlight of South Park‘s eleventh season—as a standalone DVD. For those of you who missed that disc, all three can also be found here along with the 11 other episodes that made up one of the show’s better late-period seasons. By my count, there was only one flat-out awful episode this year (the appropriately titled “More Crap,” which found Stan’s dad attempting to set the world record for Biggest Dump) and just a few middling half-hours, like “D-Yikes,” yet another entry in the now stale Mr./Mrs. Garrison plotline. These lowlights were balanced by such terrific high points as “Guitar Queer-O,” an absolutely brilliant spoof of “Guitar Hero” fanatics, “Night of the Living Homeless,” a very funny zombie movie take-off and “The List,” where the boys of South Park Elementary attempted to steal a secret list penned by their female classmates that ranked each of them from hottest to nottest. With the show’s twelfth season fast approaching, the South Park crew has definitely set the bar high for themselves. Here’s hoping they’re able to keep this comeback going.
Extras: Co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone contribute their standard mini-commentaries to each episode, which are almost as funny (not to mention expletive-filled) as the show itself.

Felon (Sony, $24.96)

For fans of the show Oz, the idea of watching a prison drama with Harold Perrineau (who played inmate Augustus Hill on that late, great HBO series) as a jailhouse guard sounds too perfect to pass up. And Perrineau is pretty great in Felon as is the movie itself…until it all goes off the rails in the final half-hour. Up until that point, this gritty, absorbing film completely immerses you in the horrors of prison life in a way few movies do. Stephen Dorff plays Wade Porter, a family man and small business owner who accidentally kills a robber that breaks into his home. Because the incident occurred outside of his home, Wade is arrested for manslaughter and ends up pleading guilty to a reduced charge to avoid serving a lengthy prison sentence. Once on the inside though, he makes a series of bad choices that keep him behind bars. Fortunately, help arrives in the form of John Smith (Val Kilmer), a lifer with a gruff exterior that masks a reluctant willingness to help his new cellmate. Watching Wade struggle to navigate the rules of his new environment is nerve-wracking and certainly made me never, ever want to see the inside of a prison. But writer/director Ric Roman Waugh commits the fatal error of romanticizing hardened criminals like Smith, even suggesting that his act of violence was justified because it was in service of a grander kind of justice. The movie’s too-tidy ending feels like a cop-out too, as it all but lets Wade off the hook for his mistakes, instead pointing the finger at corrupt guards like Perrineau. Felon starts out in the real world, but by the end, it might as well be taking place in a fantasy land like Narnia.
Extras: A 13-minute making-of featurette with interviews from the cast and crew.

Also on DVD
This year’s winner of the Best Foreign Language Oscar, The Counterfeiters (Sony, $28.96) is a Holocaust drama with a twist. Imprisoned in a concentration camp, counterfeiter Salomon Sorowitsch agrees to manufacture fake currency in order to keep the Nazi war machine going. In exchange, he receives his own living space and edible food and is left alone by the sadistic guards. In other foreign film news, Stephen Chow’s CJ7 (Sony, $28.96) is an interesting departure from the actor/director’s standard action comedies like Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle. Mixing E.T. with a dash of Gremlins, the movie casts Chow as a devoted single father who brings home a strange green creature as a present for his adorable young son. This creature turns out to be an alien from a distant galaxy and much wackiness ensues as father and son try to keep their discovery hidden from the media and overeager scientists. The Stuart Gordon/Christopher Lambert sci-fi action flick Fortress (Lionsgate, $9.98) turns fifteen this year and Lionsgate is celebrating by reissuing the film in a new edition that’s surprisingly bare-bones in terms of bonus features. The Killing Gene (Genius Products, $19.97) features the unlikely ensemble of Stellan Skarsgard, Melissa George and Selma Blair in a mystery about a vicious serial killer who tries to turn the tables on the cops investigating the case. Belly 2: Millionare Boyz Club (Lionsgate, $26.98) is an in-name only sequel to the 1998 Hype Williams cult classic that casts The Game as an ex-con who gets involved with a smoking hot undercover DEA agent. Speaking of unnecessary sequels, The Art of War II: Betrayal (Sony, $24.96) finds tax evader Wesley Snipes revisiting a character her last played eight years ago, federal agent Neil Shaw. Gorgeous Spanish actress Paz Vega (the thinking man’s Penelope Cruz) plays the title role in Carmen (Lionsgate, $19.98), a new version of the oft-performed French opera about a Gypsy temptress. Finally, the PBS-produced documentary Muhammad Ali: Made in Miami (PBS, $19.99) recounts the famed boxer’s time in Miami, where he honed his fighting skills and made first contact with the Nation of Islam.