DVD/Blu-ray for Week of April 17

One of the best action films in years comes to Blu-ray and DVD this week with Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Other releases include the well reviewed Shame and a couple excellent documentaries.

•Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (Buy at Amazon: DVD or Blu-ray/DVD Combo)
This is not just another mission. The IMF is shut down when it’s implicated in a global terrorist bombing plot. Ghost Protocol is initiated and Ethan Hunt and his rogue new team must go undercover to clear their organization’s name. No help, no contact, off the grid. You have never seen a mission grittier and more intense than this.

•Shame (Buy at Amazon: Blu-ray/DVD Combo)
Brandon (Michael Fassbender) is a New Yorker who shuns intimacy with women but feeds his desires with a compulsive addiction to sex. When his wayward younger sister (Carey Mulligan) moves into his apartment stirring memories of their shared painful past, Brandon’s insular life spirals out of control.

•IMAX: Born to Be Wild (Buy at Amazon: DVD or Blu-ray/DVD Combo)
Narrated by Academy-Award winner Morgan Freeman, Born to be Wild is an inspiring story of love, dedication and the remarkable bond between humans and animals. This film documents orphaned orangutans and elephants and the extraordinary people who rescue and raise them – saving endangered species one life at a time. Stunningly captured in IMAX, Born to be Wild is a heartwarming adventure transporting moviegoers into the lush rainforests of Borneo with world-renowned primatologist Dr. Birut‚ Mary Galdikas, and across the rugged Kenyan savannah with celebrated elephant authority Dame Daphne M. Sheldrick, as they and their teams rescue, rehabilitate and return these incredible animals back to the wild.

•The Divide (Buy at Amazon: DVD or Blu-ray/DVD Combo)
In this graphic and violent, post-apocalyptic thriller, nine strangers-all tenants of a New York high rise apartment-escape a nuclear attack by hiding out in the building’s bunker-like basement. Trapped for days underground with no hope for rescue, and only unspeakable horrors awaiting them on the other side of the bunker door, the group begins to descend into madness, each turning on one another with physical and psycho-sexual torment. As supplies dwindle, and tensions flare, and they grow increasingly unhinged by their close quarters and hopelessness, each act against one another becomes more depraved than the next. While everyone in the bunker allows themselves to be overcome by desperation and lose their humanity, one survivor holds onto a thin chance for escape even with no promise of salvation on the outside.

•7 Below (Buy at Amazon: DVD or Blu-ray)
A supernatural thriller in the vein of The Ring meets The Grudge with explosive terror and spine-chilling suspense and action about a group of strangers who must ride out a storm while stranded in a foreboding house where they encounter an evil presence. In the midst of a hurricane in 1910, a 10 year-old boy named Sean brutally murdered his mother, father, aunt and two little sisters. Now, Adam (Matt Barr) his brother Isaac (Luke Goss) along with four strangers, McCormick (Val Kilmer) and his wife Brooklyn (Bonnie Somerville), a young Doctor (Christian Baha) and a local girl (Rebecca Da Costa) find themselves trapped in the same home where the murders occurred one hundred years later, after a tour bus accident has left them stranded. Their host, a mysterious loner named Jack (Ving Rhames), has his own personal reasons for wanting the group to remain in his home. As the storm rages outside, strange and horrifying things begin to happen inside! This cinematic thrill ride will keep you on the edge of your seat from the stunning opening to the shocking conclusion!

•Frozen Planet: The Complete Series (Buy at Amazon: DVD or Blu-ray)
From the Emmy-winning team behind Planet Earth and The Blue Planet comes Frozen Planet, the epic tale of two disappearing wildernesses. The Arctic and Antarctic remain the greatest wildernesses on Earth. The scale and beauty of the scenery and the sheer power of the elements are unmatched anywhere else on our planet. And against all odds, these vast, frigid environments are teeming with life. Using the latest camera technology, Frozen Planet captures unimaginable imagery above and below the ice, and follows the extraordinary fluctuations that accompany the changes of seasons in this most extreme of environments, often for the first time. Frozen Planet takes you inside a polar bear’s den to witness a mother polar bear and her newborn cubs, showcases the thrilling hunting tactics employed by a pod of killer whales to launch a seal off an ice floe, uses time-lapse photography to allow you to witness the amazing underwater fauna thriving around Mr. Erebus, the world’s most southerly volcano, and much, much more. Using crystal clear high definition cinematography, Frozen Planet will open your eyes to the remarkable colors and variety of life in this frigid environment. With the Poles under grave threat from climate change, this extraordinary series provides a chance to explore these great wildernesses before they change forever. The Frozen Planet DVD and Blu-ray will feature the original BBC broadcast version, with narration by world-renowned naturalist David Attenborough (Planet Earth, Life, The Blue Planet).

•Treme: Season 2 (Buy at Amazon: DVD or Blu-ray)
Fourteen months have passed since Hurricane Katrina, but residents of the Crescent City are finding it harder than ever to rebuild their lives, much less hold on to their unique cultural identity. Some have become expatriates in distant cities. The insurance checks that never arrived for homeowners were followed by the bureaucratic nightmare that was the Road Home program, and a land-grab is underway as developers and disaster capitalists press their advantage. Crime and drug use are up, and corruption and graft are endemic, with civic institutions unable to counter any of it. And yet the culture of New Orleans somehow endures.