The Batman: The Complete Series (Blu-ray + Digital) (Blu-ray) by Kurt Dahlke The Batman: The Complete Series: The Batman (premiering on The WB in 2004) finds the caped crusader just a couple of years into his career as a crime fighter in DC's Gotham City. The five-season show represents an engaging mix of aspects of the Batman mythos, from the character's first appearance in 1939 and on into the era of Christopher Nolan's cinematic take, starting with Batman Begins in 2005. Lively and brisk, both episodic and serialized, funny, often spooky, and eminently entertaining, it's an animated version of the character that should please all fans of the Dark Knight. My relationship with Batman extends back to the '60s TV series, but doesn't include any of the animated versions that weren't on Saturday Morning TV in the '70s. So instead of saying this is the best animated Batman, or my favorite, I'll just say I really like what I see. It takes a bit of getting ...Read the entire review »

To Sleep So as to Dream (Blu-ray) by Ian Jane The Movieirected and released in 1986 by filmmaker Kaizô Hayashi, To Sleep So As To Dream tells the story of a private eye named Uotsuka (Shiro Sano) and his right hand man Kobayashi who are approached by a Madame Cherryblossom (Fujiko Fukamizu), a one-time actress who has aged and left her best years behind her. She tasks them with tracking down her daughter, who is known by the name of Bellflower (Moe Kamura), who she believes has been kidnapped.As Uotsuka and Kobayashi start working the case, they follow what few clues they can find and eventually things start pointing towards a film studio called The M. Pathe Company. While in the studio, Uotsuka experiences a vision where he meets a beautiful actress from a Chanbara film made way back in 1915 that was never finished. From here, the lines between the ‘real world' that Uotsuka and Kobayashi exist in and the one in...Read the entire review »