With most of this year’s Oscar nominations coming from films released in October 2013 or later, home video releases of the major contenders have been non-existent until now. Finally we have Captain Phillips, nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Picture and Blue Jasmine, nominated for three, released to home video. In the weeks before the March 2nd Oscar ceremony we will see the release of Dallas Buyers Club on 2/4; Gravity and All Is Lost on 2/11 and Nebraska on 2/25 with 12 Years a Slave and Philomena scheduled for release immediately after the ceremony on 3/4, followed by The Hunger Games: Catching Fire on 3/7; The Book Thief on 3/11 and Frozen on 3/18. Amazon is already taking pre-orders for The Wolf of Wall Street; American Hustle; Saving Mr. Banks and August: Osage County even though those films have yet to be given a street date.

A rip-roaring adventure of the whole school, albeit filmed with the greatest technical accouterments of modern film-making, Paul Greengrass’ Captain Phillips is an exhilarating film about piracy on the high seas. Tom Hanks’ Captain Phillips is no Errol Flynn in Captain Blood or even Clark Gable in Mutiny on the Bounty. He is just an ordinary guy who happens to be the captain of a container ship that has to pass through international waters where an attack from modern Somalian pirates is possible. In this reenactment of an actual 2009 attack, Hanks’ Phillips must use his wits to keep himself and his crew alive.

Captain Phillips is a film that almost everyone who has seen it liked, but I don’t know anyone who considered it their favorite film of the year. I ranked it fourth behind 12 Years a Slave; Gravity and Her.

Because no one seemed to consider Captain Phillips the year’s best film, I had my doubts that it would make Oscar’s list of Best Picture nominees although I had no doubt director Greengrass and star Hanks would make the cut. I was wrong in all three cases. The film did manage to make it through to Best Picture while two films I thought had a stronger chance, Inside Llewyn Davis and Saving Mr. Banks did not. Greengrass, despite a nomination from the Directors’ Guild, failed to make Oscar’s list of Best Director nominees and Hanks, despite nominations from the Golden Globes; Screen Actor Guild and BAFTA, was even more shockingly left off Oscar’s list of Best Actor nominees. Smartly, however, the Academy did nominate first time actor Barkhad Abdi for his thrilling portrayal of the lead Somalian pirate.

Most critics thought that Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine was his best film in years. That may be, but the film doesn’t really work for me.

Best Actress nominee Cate Blanchett has a dream role as the suddenly impoverished widow of a white collar criminal who still maintains her hoity-toity airs while imposing herself on her hard working sister, beautifully played by Best Supporting Actress nominee Sally Hawkins. The film is at its best in scenes with the two actresses either together or with Andrew Dice Clay as Hawkins’ combative ex-husband or Bobby Cannavale as Hawkins’ equally combative current boyfriend. Blanchett’s fairy tale romance and sudden breakup with Peter Sarsgaard doesn’t work, although her last soliloquy talking to herself on a public bench does. Does Blanchett deserve her Oscar nomination? Yes. Does she deserve to win every Best Actress award in sight? Not in my opinion, but judge for yourself.

Producer-director Stanley Kramer (1913-2001) was as serious a filmmaker as one could be. His The Defiant Ones (1958); On the Beach (1959); Inherit the Wind (1960) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) were the epitome of the no-nonsense issue film. Even his acclaimed 1952 western, High Noon, which he produced but didn’t direct, was really about the Hollywood blacklist. Who would have thought that inside this deep-thinking, highly moral man was a larcenous slapstick comedian yearning to break free?

Kramer’s dream project was 1963’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, which he envisioned as a film on a grand scale like Mike Todd’s 1956 Oscar winner, Around the World in 80 Days in which every comedian he could get would appear much as the way many well-known dramatic actor appeared in a cameo in Todd’s film.

The star of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is Spencer Tracy, a police captain who turns out to be just as crooked as the seasoned criminals and petty would-be thieves he is trying to catch. It was an uncharacteristically bad guy role for the quintessential screen good guy and it doesn’t quite work. More to Kramer’s intention are the myriad comedians doing their best to upstage one another throughout the film which has become a cult hit over the course of the last fifty years.

The film in its initial release split critics and audiences, largely along generational lines. The under-30s shrugged it off while their parents who stayed home to watch Milton Berle, Sid Caesar and Phil Silvers in their TV glory in the 1950s enjoyed it more. If you’re a fan, or have become one over the years, you will rejoice in Criterion’s magnificently produced Blu-ray and standard DVD upgrades which include both the film’s better known general release print and the extended road show version which has been restored as much as possible. Certain scenes survive just in audio, with stills shown during playback.

Prominently cast, besides those already mentioned, are Ethel Merman; Mickey Rooney; Terry-Thomas; Jonathan Winters; Edie Adams; Dorothy Provine and Buddy Hackett with Joe E. Brown, Buster Keaton; Zasu Pitts and Jimmy Durante among many others in featured roles. Jack Benny and Jerry Lewis have “blink and you’ll miss them” cameos.

The funniest scene to me are the ones that bookend the film as Jimmy Durante literally kicks the bucket in the first scene and Ethel Merman slips on a banana peel in the last scene. One’s appreciation of the rest relies on one’s appetite for slapstick of which I must admit mine is not too large.

This week’s new releases include Rush and The Fifth Estate.