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If you're like me, you've got a special place in your heart for Nick Frost. Aside from being a genuinely kind and friendly guy, he's got some of the funniest moments in "Spaced" and "Shaun of the Dead". Giving him his own show was just a matter of time and as host of a somewhat tongue-in-cheek series of safety documentaries, your fan-dom will know no bounds.

With actual experts as guests and properly researched facts, the show comes off somewhere between "Fishing With John" and, and I hate to use such an obvious Brit reference, the first few "Ali G" shows. The difference is, you feel that Nick is just being himself. You can't believe that any of it is scripted and he's genuinely interested in what his guests have to say. Nothing mean-spirited and condescending here.

Over this double disc set that covers the entire first season, he explains to the viewer how to survive everything from a kidnapping to hippo attack to bat wielding thugs. Interspersed are equally hilarious animated vignettes dubbed "Too Dangerous To Film" such as "Forest Fire!", "Avalanche!" and "Lightning". The flash style is funniest enough just for the artist renditions of Frost.

Two things make this a sure winner. First of all, he uses to determine what is the most fearsome arachnid is the funniest thing I've seen this year. Second, the DVD comes with the bonus feature "Danger! 50,000 Zombies!" where Frost re-teams with "Spaced"/"Shaun" co-star Simon Pegg in the only episode that's a complete spoof. Also, look for the Easter Egg with the blooper reel. (Princess Productions)

There's a lot of great stuff coming from Japan these days and it's not on horror flicks about stylized spirits and discordant ghostly sounds. "Ping Pong" has something and it captures a feel that many people I know who have visited Japan felt on first viewing "Lost In Translation". It looks like Tokyo and it looks like hyper-real Tokyo at the same time.

But this is a very, very different story from "Lost In Translation". Based on a manga, this is a surreal and existential and neo-Zen comedy about the competitive world of young ping pong players in modern Japan. Peco and Smile are two players who have been friends since their youth. Peco (Yosuke Kubozuka of "Go" and "Tomie: Replay") is the brash and outrageous champion who crushes all opponents while rubbing their face in it. Smile (Arata from "Afterlife") is the better player (he's called Smile because he never does - Excellent!) but isn't especially interested and often loses on purpose to Peco out of some sort of loyalty. Not only does this anger his coach (a former ping pong star) but it gives Peco a further inflated ego.

During an inter-school competition, both are defeated. Peco loses to the champ of the disciplinarian, militaristic school of skinheads named Dragon (newcomer Shido Nakamura). Smile loses to China (Sam Lee of "Gen-X Cops" and "Public Toilet"), so named, as that's where he is a pro and he's just in Japan to kick start his career (sort of like when a ball player gets sent back down to the minors for a tune-up). Needless to say, the rest of the movie involves the two needing to pick themselves up off the floor solving the inequities of their friendship along the way. And of course, it all is heading back to a great rematch.

This is a lot of fun as the competitions are startling in their originality and quite beautiful at times. There are some amazing epiphanies from one character re-christening himself in a river, one of the skinheads getting his due and when Dragon learns to play ping pong completely for pleasure.

I'll also say this; the soundtrack is amazing. I don't know who any of these groups are. They're all Japanese. But we were all jumping up and down to the music the first time we saw it. If you have an all-region DVD player, I would suggest you get the Japanese disc as it comes with a feature where you can watch the whole movie with just the music soundtrack.