Its title taken from the first of George R.R. Martin’s thus far five A Song of Ice and Fire novels, HBO’s Game of Thrones proved to be both a critical and ratings hit. The ten hour-long episodes that comprise the series’ first season have been released on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

If you’re unfamiliar with either the literary work or TV series, suffice it to say that it is a fantasy series for grown-ups.

Set in the mythical land of Westeros, there are three main plot lines: control of the kingdom being fought over by seven families; defense of the northern wall from otherworldly creatures and the rise of a dragon princess on a neighboring continent.

Nominated for thirteen Emmys, it won two for Main Title Design and Best Supporting Actor – Drama, Peter Dinklage, who also won a Golden Globe for his wry performance. Others in the Season One cast include Sean Bean, Mark Addy, Nicolaj Coster-Waldau, Michelle Fairley, Lena Headey, Iain Glen, Aidan Gillen, Kit Harrington, Richard Madden, Harry Lloyd and Emilia Clarke. The ten hours move swiftly along.

I wish I could say the same thing for the ninety minute running time of Like Crazy, last year’s Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize winner for Drama, but I felt every one of those ninety minutes waiting for the story to play itself out and when it finally does, it left me wondering what all the fuss was about.

Newcomer Felicity Jones plays an English student who overstays her visa in the U.S. and is refused re-entry when she tries to come back to be with the American boy she met. He’s played by Anton Yelchin. Will they work it out? Only time will tell. In the meantime both take new lovers before and after their eventual marriage. He, now a successful Los Angeles furniture maker, beds his secretary (Jennifer Lawrence) while she ,now a hot shot publishing exec’s assistant, beds her next door neighbor (Charlie Bewley). The problem is that the scenes between Jones and Yelchin lack spark and neither brings much emotion to the film’s two best scenes: Lawrence’s emotional farewell to Yelchin and Bewley’s heart-rending proposal to Jones. Both these secondary actors do in a few minutes what the leads couldn’t do in the entire movie – create empathy.

The film has been released on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

What do you get when you remake 1984’s sleeper hit Footloose and move the locale from Utah to Georgia? Answer: pretty much the same thing.

There are just two significant changes to the remake. Instead of waiting until later in the film to find out why the town has banned dancing, we find out in the beginning. The other change is that the main character’s mother, who had accompanied him in his move from Boston in the original, is not around, having died before the opening credits.

Kenny Wormald and Julianne Hough may not be the skilled actors that Kevin Bacon and Lori Singer were, but they can sure dance. The conservative preacher and his stoic wife, played in the original by John Lithgow and Dianne Wiest are played this time around by Dennis Quaid and Andie MacDowell.

The remake has been newly released on both Blu-ray and standard DVD. The original version was released on Blu-ray at the time of the new film’s theatrical release last year.

A dance movie of another kind, 1998’s 54 from director Mark Christopher is the story of the rise and fall of Steve Rubell, the owner of the famed disco on New York’s 54th Street.

Told from the standpoint of one of the club’s pretty boys, played by Ryan Philippe, the cast also includes Salma Hayek, Breckin Meyer, Neve Campbell and Mike Meyers as Rubell.

The newly released Blu-ray does not include the 45 minutes of footage shown in the directors’ cut in 2008. That version is said to flesh out Philippe’s character, both figuratively and actually. As it stands, the only award Philippe won for the film was a Golden Raspberry for Worst Actor, while the now 98 year-old Ellen Albertini Dow won as Worst Supporting Actress as the old crone who dies of an overdose on New Year’s Eve of 1990 after boring us with her dance moves.

One of Alfred Hitchcock’s lesser films, 1955’s To Catch a Thief basically gave the suspense master time to spend in Monaco with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, then that principality’s newly crowned Princess Grace, a character who oddly is much talked abou,t but never seen, in 54.

There isn’t much suspense in Hitchcock’s film about a reformed jewel thief out to catch an imitator. What the film does have is gorgeous Oscar winning cinematography and equally gorgeous Oscar nominated art direction and costume design which have never looked as good on home video before its sparkling Blu-ray upgrade.

For a film that is remembered as the first Oscar winning film about the Vietnam War, The Deer Hunter spends surprisingly little time in the war zone. The film’s protagonist, played by Robert De Niro, is only seen in country for forty minutes of the film’s more than three hour running time, although he briefly returns later just before the fall of Saigon.

The film’s three main characters are extremely well played by Oscar nominee De Niro, Oscar winner Christopher Walken and should-have-been-nominated John Savage. They are ably assisted by John Cazale, who died shortly after completing his scenes, and George Dzundza. I have always been less enamored of Meryl Streep, who received the first of her now seventeen Oscar nominations. To me, she gives a terribly mannered performance as the girl who is engaged to Walken, but in love with De Niro.

The film looks grea, restored to its original luster after suffering from a badly faded transfer in its previous DVD release.

For years when people have criticized Streep’s penchant for accents, one of the films they point to the 1985 Oscar winner, Out of Africa, which Universal has also released as part of its 100th Anniversary program. I happen to think that Streep’s accent, as well as her actin, in this film, for which she received her sixth Oscar nomination, featured both one of her best accents and one of her best performances opposite Robert Redford.

Released in the centenary of author Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke, better known under her pen name of Isak Dinesen, the film chronicles her life in Africa from 1914 until her return to Denmark twenty years later, after which she became an acclaimed author, dying in 1962 at the age of 77.

Although previously released on Blu-ray, that version, like many of Universal’s previous DVD releases, was not up yo the highest standards. The new release does its subject and its stars proud.

This week’s new DVD releases include The Adventures of Tintin; My Week with Marilyn and The Descendants.