This week's new DVD & Blu-ray

Black Dynamite DVD, Icon Entertainment Most Blaxploitation spoofs – and there have been quite a few – make the mistake of mocking the obvious: the ridiculous characters and situations and the technical shortcomings of the flicks. The makers of Black Dynamite, however, discovered that it's better, and far funnier, to honour the cliches and make a film that truly delivers all the action, nudity, swearing and excitement you'd associate with the genre. These films were always intentionally silly and fun, so why mess with that? The idea behind Black Dynamite was to create a film that appeared to be a newly discovered classic. This a movie you can laugh at and still completely dig. Much of this is down to the lead, Michael Jai White, an actor who has quietly been doing good work since his big push, 1997's Spawn, flopped. Here, in a film he co-wrote, he gives one of the most committed performances ever seen, comedic or otherwise, using his seven martial arts black belts to great effect, as well as a wonderful line in deadpan expressions ("I am smiling!"). While there is plenty of broad stuff, such as the mic in shot or the reused car crash footage, there's an equal amount of subtlety too, like the fleeting pissed-off glare he gives the off-camera director when faced with an actor flatly reading the classic line, "Sarcastically, I'm in charge." Blaxploitation connoisseurs will get a kick out of the references to Shaft, Jim Kelly, Fred Williamson, Dolemite, etc, but newcomers will find a fast-paced, action-packed constantly hilarious movie full of cracking one-liners that are almost drowned out by the loud costumes. Mary And Max DVD, Soda Pictures Claymation, the stop-frame manipulation of little plasticine puppets, is perhaps the most conspicuous of all animation techniques. You don't get the gloss of CGI or the fluid artistry of hand-drawn 2-D styles; with claymation you can clearly see the handiwork – literally, as the soft material dances around with the animators' fingerprints. But despite such obvious artifice, within seconds this wonderful film has you forgetting that the characters aren't real people; Mary And Max is more real than most live action films. Mary Daisy Dinkle is a largely ignored (by everyone except bullies) child of the suburbs of Melbourne. In order to find out if babies in the US come from cola cans, she randomly picks the name Max Jerry Horowitz (voiced by Philip Seymour Hoffman) out of the New York phone book, sends him a letter and immediately finds a best friend in the overweight, middle-aged Jewish man who is as lonely and confused as she. Details about their lives, some happy, some sad, are fed out over the years of their correspondence, resulting in a frequently hilarious and heartbreaking movie. Dynasty: The Sixth Season Thirty episodes of sex, scandal and shoulder pads (pictured) in the Denver oil business. DVD, Paramount Lemmy Motörhead's ace of bass in a none-more-heavy biopic with Metallica, Slash and Ozzy. DVD & Blu-ray, Entertainment One Merlin Series 3 Third outing for the BBC's teenage Arthur and his Camelot companions. DVD, Fremantle Late Mizoguchi – Eight Films 1951-1956 Collection of the Japanese director's work including Oyû-sama (Miss Oyu), Ugetsu Monogatari and Chikamatsu Monogatari (The Crucified Lovers). DVD, Eureka