Liam Neeson says, “Take that Paul Blart!”

After two weeks atop the box office charts, the surprisingly mighty Paul Blart: Mall Cop was knocked down a peg by Liam Neeson‘s killer daddy routine in the balls-to-the-wall action flick Taken.  (Read my review here.)  The Pierre Morel-directed film earned a healthy $24.6 million this weekend, not bad for a movie that’s already passed through theaters in virtually every other country (it opened in France in February 2008–almost exactly one year ago) and is apparently widely available online and via pirated DVD.  Kevin James still has plenty to crow about though–Blart still cleared $14 million in its third week in release.  With $83.3 million currently in the bank, the comedy is officially 2009′s highest-grossing picture to date.  Who the heck coulda seen that coming?

Taking the bronze was the Paramount-distributed horror flick The Unborn, which grossed a so-so $10.5 million; expect to see it on DVD by April.  At least the studio can take heart in knowing that its family friendly dog picture Hotel for Dogs is holding up like a champ.  The movie finished fourth for the second week in a row and will easily clear $50 million by next Friday.  Clint Eastwood‘s Gran Torino rounded out the top five with an $8.6 million gross, bringing its total to $110.5 million.  If you’re curious why Paul Blart still gets the credit for being the young year’s biggest box office success, that’s because Gran Tornio is technically a 2008 film having opened in limited release in December before going wide in January.  Somehow I don’t think that Eastwood is complaining, though–after all, at the tender age of 78, the dude has directed and starred in his biggest hit ever.

This year’s likely Best Picture winner Slumdog Millionaire dropped a spot to sixth place, but remains the second most successful film of the five nominees with $67 million to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button‘s $117 million.  (That film, by the way, officially slipped out of the Top Ten this week so whatever Oscar bump it enjoyed was short-lived.)  Underworld: Rise of the Lycans tumbled from second to seventh place in its second week out, meaning that the chances for a fourth film are pretty slim–at least in theaters anyway.  For the right price, it could become a direct-to-DVD franchise.  One-time box office draw Renee Zellweger got the cold shoulder for her winter-themed romantic comedy New in Town, which opened dismally in eighth place.  My Bloody Valentine 3-D and Inkheart took the last two slots, while Notorious continued its rapid descent to seventeenth place.  Here’s hoping the soundtrack sold better.

Complete Top Ten is below, courtesy of the-numbers.com.  On Friday, four new releases crowd into theaters, including the all-star rom-com He’s Just Not That Into You, the super-powered Push, the stop-motion animated film Coraline and Fanboys, a Star Wars-themed comedy that many assumed would never see the light of day.

1. Taken: $24.6
2. Paul Blart: Mall Cop: $14/$83.3
3. The Uninvited: $10.5
4. Hotel for Dogs: $8.7/$48.2
5. Gran Tornio: $8.6/$110.5
6. Slumdog Millionaire: $7.6/$67.2
7. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans: $7.2/$32.7
8. New in Town: $6.8
9. My Bloody Valentine 3-D: $4.2/$44.6
10. Inkheart: $3.7/$12.8

A playlist that’s more than meets the eye.

If you’re a child of the ’80s or early ’90s like me, chances are that you spent every Saturday morning glued to the TV watching half-hour after half-hour of cheaply animated cartoons based on comic books, video games, music and sports stars while eating sugary breakfast cereals based on said cartoons. Seen in the harsh light of adulthood, it’s obvious that these cartoons were terrible wastes of time. Back then though, the were must-see TV and the theme songs were part of the soundtracks of our childhood. These days of course, Saturday morning cartoons have all but vanished from the airwaves in favor of Hannah Montana repeats.  So here’s a trip down memory lane with some of the best (and worst) theme songs from those more innocent times.

The Gummi Bears (1985-1991)

Hammerman (1991)

ProStars (1991)

Transformers (1984-1987)

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983-1985)

Teen Wolf (1986-1988)

G.I. Joe (1985-1986)

The Real Ghostbusters (1986-1991)

Muppet Babies (1984-1991)

Darkwing Duck (1991-1995)

The Daily Show correspondent discusses life in (fake) news and his dramatic debut in the new film Medicine for Melancholy.

Since joining The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in mid-’08, Wyatt Cenac has emerged as one of the program’s most reliably hilarious correspondents.  It’s also given the Dallas-born comic a great way to see the country; his job has taken him to both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions in Colorado and Minnesota respectively, as well as an old-age home in Florida and other stops along the campaign trail.  Before landing his current gig, Cenac spent a month in San Francisco filming the indie drama Medicine for Melancholy, in which he plays Micah, a perpetually pissed-off Bay Area resident who tries to turn his one-night stand with the beautiful Jo (Tracey Heggens) into a real romance.  Here, Cenac talks about taking on his first dramatic role, the appeal of his “hobo” lifestyle and which classic Nintendo game he’s obsessed with.

GIANT: You shot Medicine for Melancholy before you joined The Daily Show, right?  How did the role come your way?
Wyatt Cenac: Yeah, we shot it in November of 2007.  I wasn’t on The Daily Show at that point, I was just living in Los Angeles doing stand-up and stuff with the Upright Citizens Brigade.  This came together in a really odd way.  Justin Barber, a producer on the movie, saw a clip of me in an online video called “My Black Friend” that was on the website Acceptable.TV.  It was this fake reality show where this guy tries to find a black friend and I was one of the contestants.  At that time, Justin and Barry [Jenkins, the film's director] had been looking at people for awhile and Justin remembered me and found a way to get in touch.  It wasn’t a traditional way to get a job as far as I could tell.

GIANT: Had you been looking to flex your dramatic muscles after being a comedian for so long?
Cenac: No, I never really planned for the movie to be my first dramatic thing.  When I agreed to do the movie it was essentially, “Hey, we want you to be in this movie.”  And I was like “Oh, cool, I need a place to stay for three weeks.”  So it just sort of worked out that my homelessness coincided with their shooting schedule.  That’s actually how I work a lot of times—it’s always “Does your schedule fit with my hobo lifestyle?”  And usually it does.

GIANT: San Francisco is a major character in the film and a recurring theme is the radical changes that are going on in terms of the city’s racial and class demographics.   Were you able to relate to that as a non-Bay Area native?
Cenac: I definitely felt like I could relate to that aspect of the movie—that’s going on everywhere, definitely in Los Angeles when I was living there.  So there was a relatability there that made sense for me.  And that’s something that other people who’ve seen the film tell me about; they share their personal stories about watching their cities change before them.  It’ll be interesting to see what San Francisco will be like in five or ten years.  Will everybody be living in Oakland?  And San Francisco will just be where they come to work?  Only Robin Williams will have a house because he’s the only one who can afford to still live there.

GIANT: Your character Micah isn’t exactly the most likable guy at times.  Did you approach the character as a misunderstood hero or did you want the audience to see his flaws?
Cenac: Wow. You’ve given me much more credit as an actor than I probably deserve.  [Laughs]  You know, going through the film and talking to Barry and being in the city, it just seemed like he was a frustrated guy.  He was frustrated about a lot of things and seemed to be looking for a proper way to channel all that.  Tat was the thing that kind of carried me through the film, that frustration of losing everything that you feel like you hold dear and how do you express that?  If it came off as mean that was hopefully what Barry was going for at that particular point and time.  But my performance was based first of all on that frustration and then the mantra: “Remember my lines, don’t fuck up anything, and don’t look in the camera.”

GIANT: You’ve filed some great pieces for The Daily Show since you joined the cast last year.  Has the experience been fun for you?
Cenac: Oh yeah.  I’ve learned so much and being able to do field piece and in the studio stuff has been really great.  There are definitely those moments that are hard too, though.  I did a piece last year where I had to interview some old people in Florida about the Obama getting the Democratic nomination.  That was my first week on the job and I had to deal with eight old people yelling and arguing with each other while I’m trying to get them back on topic.  I was like, “I don’t know if this is gonna work out, because I can’t even hear everything that’s going on.”

GIANT: As the show’s only full-time black correspondent, are you expected to focus primarily on black issues?
Cenac: Actually, Larry Wilmore is the official Black Issues correspondent—he pokes fun at the idea that all of these news networks have their own black correspondents.  When they hired me, I was brought on to be both a writer and a correspondent so I’m in the writers’ room just throwing out ideas for anything, not just myself, but for day-to-day stuff on the show.  They’ve always seen me not as “the black correspondent” just a correspondent.  And I appreciate that.  A lot of shows would say, “Let’s just keep you on black issues.”  But here I deal with everything and anything.  I think that’s what diversity is about or something.  I don’t know.  [Laughs]

GIANT: Is the “Wyatt Cenac” that’s on The Daily Show a character like “Stephen Colbert” on The Colbert Report or just yourself with better punchlines?
Cenac: So you’re saying that I don’t have enough punchlines in regular conversation. Wow. That hurts.  [Laughs]  No, I feel like it’s pretty close to me.  The piece I auditioned with—and the first thing I did on the show—was about how sick I was of the Democratic primaries and how Lost was much more interesting so the primaries should be more like Lost.  That came from a real place of frustration and thankfully we have a talented group of people who were able to recognize my frustration and help me channel it into something that hopefully other people found funny and that maybe they could relate to.

GIANT: How do you respond to those folks who wonder whether The Daily Show will still be funny now that Bush is gone and Obama’s in office?
Cenac: You know, I fell like we’re still doing everything the same way.  The characters may have changed, but the goal is still the same: to poke fun at politicians and the 24-hour media coverage of all this stuff.  From a historical standpoint, it’s great that Obama was elected President, but remember that he’s also been elected President of a giant turd!  And now he has to dig us out of this turd that just seems to be growing and growing.  It’s become sentient!  If we lived in a utopian society, coming up with material may be difficult, but there’s still a lot of stuff in this world for us to deal with.

GIANT: Forget what I implied about not putting enough punchlines in your regular conversation!  Now that you’ve had your dramatic film debut, do you view yourself as a comedian who acts or an actor who tells jokes?
Cenac: I dunno, I guess I’ve always sort of looked at myself as somebody who can hopefully continue to pay his bills in ways that he’s proud of and in ways that he wants to.  I guess I’m a comedian first; I don’t know if I necessarily have the acting chops to measure up to whoever the greater actors are.  That’s probably a sign right there—I don’t even know who the great actors are so, I’m probably not an actor first.

GIANT: Well, Brad Pitt is among the Oscar nominees for Best Actor.  Think your chops probably measure up to his?
Cenac: Is he on a Best Actors list?  I seriously didn’t know.  I haven’t even seen Benjamin Button.  I’m sure it’s great and I’m sure he’s wonderful in it, but I have Nintendo Wii to play.  If they could make a Benjamin Button video game, that would be great.  They’d have to make it for Xbox though, because honestly the only thing I play on the Wii is old Nintendo games.  Over the holidays, I downloaded the original Legend of Zelda and I beat it for the first time!  It took me 15 years to beat it.  When I played it as a kid, I remember getting like five pieces of the Triforce and saying “Ah, I can’t do this anymore.”  So to go back as an adult man and save all of Hyrule and Princess Zelda was a great feeling of accomplishment.  Of course, you probably don’t want to go around saying to people, “Yeah, I saved Hyrule.”  [Laughs]

Read more about Wyatt Cenac on his official website wyattcenac.com Medicine for Melancholy opens in limited release tomorrow.  See the trailer below:

That bumbling mall cop Paul Blart stays on top, while Notorious takes a second-week nosedive.

The economic chill that’s currently blowing through the music industry seems to have carried over to the big-screen as well.  After banking a healthy $20 million during its opening weekend, the Notorious B.I.G. biopic Notorious tumbled to tenth place in its sophomore outing with a sluggish $5 million gross, pushing its total cume to $32 million.  While that’s not an embarrassing number by any means, it does indicate that the film failed to cross over outside of Biggie’s built-in fanbase.  A decline that steep also indicates that there was little in the way of repeat business, which suggests his fans may not have loved what they saw.  But there’s always a silver lining: the film should do strong business on DVD, particularly if Fox Searchlight decides to package it with some kind of collectible Biggie keepsake.

Repeating in the top spot was the family-friendly comedy Paul Blart: Mall Cop starring Kevin James as an accident-prone security officer.  With $65 million in the bank so far, this is one mall cop who’ll be able to retire a wealthy man.  Underworld: Rise of the Lycans fell just short of dislodging Mr. Blart from his perch, earning $20.7 million to Paul Blart‘s $21.5 million.  Next weekend will be the real test as to whether the Underworld franchise returns for another installment.  The first two films grossed $51 million and $62 million respectively, so if Rise of the Lycans is able to enter similar territory, you can probably expect a fourth film in another year or two.

Oscar nominations were announced on Thursday and the movie that benefited the most from the Academy’s attentions was Slumdog Millionaire, which now sits comfortably in the #5 spot with a $55 million to-date gross and plenty more coin on the way.  Once a longshot to join the $100 million club, Slumdog should hit that mark by the time it wins the Best Picture Oscar on February 22.  Meanwhile, its fellow nominees Frost/Nixon and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button didn’t experience much of a post-Oscar bounce, although the latter film has already grossed over $100 million so the studio probably isn’t sweating that too much.

The full Top Ten (courtesy of the-numbers.com) is included below.  Come back next week to find out whether the horror film The Uninvited or the action movie Taken will be able to take down the seemingly unstoppable Paul Blart.

1. Paul Blart: Mall Cop – Weekend: $21.5/Total: $64.8
2. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans – Weekend: $20.7/Total: $20.7
3. Gran Torino - Weekend: $16/Total: $97.6
4. Hotel for Dogs - Weekend: $12.4/Total: $37
5. Slumdog Millionaire - Weekend: $10.6/Total: $55
6. My Bloody Valentine - Weekend: $10/Total: $37.7
7. Inkheart - Weekend: $7.7/Total: $7.7
8. Bride Wars - Weekend: $7/Total: $48.7
9. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – Weekend: $6/Total: $111
10. Notorious - Weekend: $5.7/$31.7

Battlestar Galactica veteran Grace Park tells all about bidding the good ship Galactica farewell, which keepsakes she brought home and where she wants her to career to go next.

For five years, Grace Park has juggled not one, but several roles on the beloved sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica.  And even though the show is heading into its final 10 episodes starting tomorrow night, her workload isn’t getting lighter.  On deck, the 34-year-old actress has a Galactica flick that will arrive on Sci Fi and DVD later this year, a recurring role on the Canadian immigration series The Border and just landed a role in the big-screen comedy Punctured opposite Eugene Levy.

GIANT: Congratulations on making it across the finish line in one piece.  Has it sunk in for you that the show is over?
Grace Park: That’s a multi-ended question, because we wrapped the series for the most part last July, but I still had a couple of re-shoots, as well as the movie and then some web episodes.  So I was sort of the last person standing.  In July it was great because all of us where there and we had two soundstages going until the wee hours of the morning.  When we ended it, we popped champagne and watched the sun come up.  Then everyone stuffed their souvenirs in their cars and drove home.  This time around it was quite different, because the set started coming down while we were there.  It was easier to end on a high note with everyone there.  To come back to the party and break the sets down by yourself and be the last janitor sweeping everything up is kind of depressing.  The last night I was there I found my last call sheet ever and wrote a little thank you note to Battlestar.  Then I started crying!

GIANT: What souvenirs did you grab from the set?
Park: I took my flight suit, a chair back and the sign for Eddie [James Olmos'] parking spot.  It was the last thing there, so I told my driver to wait, grabbed it and threw it in the back of the car.  There are a couple of other things that I took, but I can’t say anything about them because it would give away plot stuff.  Towards the end, it was a little weird because we would want a prop to work with and someone would have taken it!  We couldn’t even shoot because parts of the show were missing. [Laughs]

GIANT: Was there anything you didn’t get to take home that you covet now?
Park: Yeah, I really wanted those little wooden versions of the Raider, Raptors and the Galactica that are always shuffled along the war board.  I heard they were all taken on the day I had to leave early.  I’m sure I’m going to go online and buy some more things!

GIANT: The new movie is set before the show ends, but was filmed after you shot the series finale.  Was it difficult keeping the timeline straight in your head?
Park: Absolutely and not just because the show was over.  The film is set so far back [in continuity] and sometimes when you create the story in your head you fill in all the blanks yourself.  So when you go back and have to revisit those pieces, it doesn’t always seem to fit because it doesn’t follow the storyline in your head or what was discussed on the day you filmed it originally.  Fortunately, the movie does a beautiful job of filling in a lot of gaps and its quite seamless because they use pieces of what we filmed four years ago with what we filmed a month ago and it ties a whole bunch of things together.  I can say that there will be a few things about the movie that will raise eyebrows.  Like, I didn’t know there was going to be so much nudity!  It’s just blatant nudity, like Porky’s meets Battlestar.

GIANT: Like many of your fellow Battlestar actors—both male and female—the series has turned you into something of a sex symbol.  Has that been a weird experience for you?
Park: I’m happy that it’s happened to both Tricia [Helfer] and Katee [Sackhoff] as well, because it’s easier to have strength in numbers.  Someone did just send me a link to this “Hottest Women on Television” list and I started going through it.  Tricia was up there and then I found myself lower on the countdown and it finally started hitting me.  I think I’ve always done a decent job turning a blind eye to that stuff.  It’s fun, but it’s obviously not my whole life.  I don’t strut around out there in chaps and a bikini on my motor bike.

GIANT: How does your husband feel about it?
Park: He loves it!  He’s like, “That’s my girl.”  The only awkward thing is when I have a love scene coming up.  He always says “Who is it this time?”  So those conversations get weird.  I’m like “Babe, do we have to do something to even out the score?”  But he only works in business, so I’m not really worried. [Laughs]

GIANT: Battlestar is often praised for the way it tackles weighty real-world topics.  Did the series ever cause you to re-examine or change your opinion on a specific issue?
Park: Not particularly, though I do feel that by working on a lot of the hot topics, my opinions grew more defined.  It gave me a clearer outline of what I do thing.  Because we did have big issues that were thrown on the table, we’d wrestle with them and attack from all different angles, not just in terms of filming, but our emotional and mental approaches as well.

GIANT: Now that you’ve done sci-fi, is there a particular genre you want to explore next?
Park: I don’t have a super overall plan, but I kind of want to do features.  I didn’t realize how much Battlestar was a bride between television and movies, because we had the luxury of doing multiple takes.  On the other shows I’ve been on since, it’s like bang, bang, bang.  One area I’d really like to tackle is comedy, because I’ve never really done it.  I think there is a definite art to making people laugh and it’s very challenging.  Personally, I like comedies that are on the quirkier side.  I enjoy Will Ferrell—I killed myself laughing Talladega Nights and Blades of Glory.

GIANT: You made a film about two years ago that I caught at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival—West 32nd, a crime drama about the Korean community in New York.
Park: That was one of those scripts that came my way that I started reading then and right off the bat I was drawn in.  I was like “Who’s in this thing?” and it was John Cho [from Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle].  And I was like “Oh fucking John Cho!”  I ran into him at a party one time several years ago and he totally dissed me.  It was one of those make-your-own-drama situations: go to a party get dissed by someone and keep bringing it up over and over again.  I wish him the best now but when I used to see him I’d be like “Did you hear what he did to me?”  The first time we got drunk together while making West 32nd I told him about it and he was like “What?  No!”  I was like, “It’s true!  I almost didn’t do the movie because of you!” [Laughs]

GIANT: Do you feel any pressure to represent the Korean community positively onscreen?
Park: No, I don’t feel any obligation or pressure whatsoever.  When I started doing press for Battlestar, I was surprised how many questions were about Asian Americans and what I thought about them.  Part of it is that I didn’t grow up in the States where there is a strong Korean American contingent that’s very proud and vocal.  I get it, but that’s not exactly how I portray myself.  It’s great to get in touch with, but it’s not the only story I’m interested in doing.

GIANT: You play a Homeland Security agent on the Canadian series The Border. Have you ever had any rough border crossings?
Park: I’m a dual Canadian/American citizen, so every time I would go to the States, I’d be super cocky and whip out my US passport.  But one time I got in trouble because my passport had expired.  I was telling the dude, “Look, I’m a freaking American citizen!”  And the guy actually said: “There are two types of people in the world—Americans and foreigners.”  I bit my tongue because I knew he could delay me for two hours.  He gave me a speech and then typed an essay in passport.  So it’s always best to be wise about what you say at the border.

GIANT: What do you hope viewers take away from the last episode of Battlestar?
Park: I hope people take a glimpse at the other side are willing to embrace all parts of themselves and others, both ugly and beautiful.  That’s Battlestar to me.  Amongst all the ugliness is a lot of beauty.  You’ve just got to wipe away the dirt and the grime and the blood to find it.

Coming off his acclaimed turn in The Wrestler, former Sin City star Mickey Rourke suits up for a possible role in Iron Man 2.

What a difference a critically beloved star turn in a gritty low-budget movie can make.  With a likely Oscar nomination on the horizon for his work in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, Rourke’s phone is ringing off the hook with new offers.  He’s currently filming the remake of the European thriller 13 and yesterday both Variety and The Hollywood Reporter published word that the actor is being wooed for a role as a bad guy in 2010′s blockbuster sequel Iron Man 2.

Interestingly though, neither paper can agree which member of Iron Man’s rouges gallery Rourke is being considered for.  While Variety reports he’ll be donning Soviet armor to play The Crimson Dynamo, THR claims he’ll be wielding the deadly energy whip belonging to Whiplash (a.k.a. Blacklash).  Iron Man 2 scribe Justin Theroux and director Jon Favreau are currently refusing to clear up the confusion, but based on the pictures below, we’re thinking the Crimson Dynamo might be a better look for Rourke.  Then again, it would be pretty hilarious to see him decked out in Whiplash’s S&M style gear…might be tough getting a PG-13 rating though.

The Crimson Dynamo

Whiplash (aka Blacklash)

Both Variety and THR also report that Sam Rockwell is coming aboard as an additional villain (specifically Tony Stark’s billionaire rival Justin Hammer, according to THR, though Rockwell seems a bit young for the part), which suggests that Iron Man 2 could be in danger of going the way of the Batman sequels by loading up on too many villains.  Or maybe one of these folks is being prepped for a War Machine spin-off starring Don Cheadle, who is famously stepping into the armor that Terrence Howard never got the chance to wear.  Expect to hear confirmation this summer when Favreau, Downey and Rourke appear onstage at the geek extravaganza known as the San Diego Comic-Con.

Be glad we live in the YouTube era–it means you don’t have to make the trip to Japan to see the international version of the Watchmen trailer that offers dozens of new scenes (and much less slo-mo) not seen in the American cut.

Things to look out for:

*The first glimpse of Richard Nixon, who is still the Commander in Chief in Watchmen‘s alternate America.

*A peek at Nixon’s war room, complete with Doomsday clock.

*Numerous shots of the various conflicts happening all over the globe, which are pushing the world towards the brink of nuclear war.

*A clip of the JFK assassination that strongly suggests The Comedian was responsible for Kennedy’s death.

*A shot of an exploding Manhattan that basically confirms that Dr. Manhattan has taken the place of the giant space squid.  (Fanboys will know what I’m talking about.)

Also up today is the first in a new wave of behind-the-scenes featurettes about the making of the movie.  This installment covers how the filmmakers created the costumes for the Minutemen, the first generation team of heroes that ran around New York in colorful tights.  Check that video out here.

This week, Seth Rogen and James Franco get high on life in Pineapple Express; the crew of Battlestar Galactica fights for their frakkin’ lives; and a New York teenager is exposed to the wack side of life in The Wackness.

Pineapple Express
Sony
Single Disc: $28.96
Two-Disc: $34.95
Blu-ray: $39.95

Plot: A process server (Seth Rogen) and his pot-dealer (James Franco) accidentally run afoul of a local drug kingpin (Gary Cole) and are forced to go on the lam before they’re added to the list of his victims.

Opinion: It took me two viewings to really start grooving on the latest Judd Apatow comedy, Pineapple Express and even the second time around I didn’t come away with a complete contact high.  This fitfully funny, but wildly uneven picture tries to blend a stoner comedy with an ’80s action movie and the two genres never really fit together comfortably.  The fact that this is director David Gordon Green’s first experience directing a comedy doesn’t exactly help matters.  Unlike Apatow, Green doesn’t have a great feel for his actors’ rhythms; he allows some scenes to run on way too long, while others feel ultra-abbreviated, ending before anything really funny happens.  He’s also not certain how to direct Rogen, a very funny guy who needs a strong presence behind the camera to help him deliver an actual performance, not just a series of riffs.  The best thing about the film is Franco, who delivers a comic tour-de-force that ranks amongst the best pot performances ever captured on film. In fact, I’d watch a Saul solo sequel in a heartbeat, particularly if he somehow managed the make the acquaintance of Harold and Kumar.

Bonus Features: The single-disc edition offers a commentary track with the cast and crew (including Apatow, Franco, Rogen and Green), extended and alternate scenes (most notably a longer version of the final diner scene, which may just be the funniest bit in the movie), a gag reel and making-of featurette.  The two-disc version offers the slew of additional outtakes, deleted scenes and meta featurettes that are featured on every two-disc set released by the Apatow Factory.

Verdict: Rent It

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Battlestar Galactica: Season 4.0
Universal
$49.98

Plot: The long-suffering crew of the starship Galactica makes their final push to Earth while confronting some earth-shattering revelations (Tigh’s a frakkin’ Cylon!), jaw-dropping deaths (so long Callie!) and a galaxy-spanning Cylon civil war.

Opinion: It’s always sad when a great TV show leaves the airwaves, but I’m thrilled that Battlestar guru Ronald Moore is bringing his remarkable sci-fi series to an end while its still on a creative upswing.  Truth be told, BSG‘s third season was a little rocky, so giving his writers a definite endpoint was a smart move on Moore’s part.  The first half of the show’s fourth year offered one breathtaking episode after another—with only one or two duds tossed into the mix—climaxing in an incredible final shot that has had the show’s small, but devoted following buzzing for a whole year.  At this point, any predictions I might have had about where the series is headed have gone completely out the window.  Don’t bother asking me who the fifth and final Cylon is or how Starbuck returned from the dead.  I.  Have.  No.  Idea.  And you know what?  I’m fine with that.  Like everyone else, I’m just looking forward to seeing how things will end for Adama, Apollo, Tigh, Roslin and everyone else aboard that ship.  Naturally, I’m expecting plenty of heartbreak and pain along the way, but it wouldn’t be Battlestar Galactica if their lives weren’t constantly frakked up.

Bonus Features: In case you don’t listen to Moore’s weekly podcast commentaries, they’re all included here along with lots and lots of deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes documentaries featuring the oh-so-beautiful cast and oh-so-brilliant writers, directors and production folks.

Verdict: Buy It

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The Wackness
Sony Pictures Classics
$28.96
Blu-ray: $39.95

Plot: Luke (Josh Peck), a recent high-school grad, cruises the streets of New York City in the summer of ’94 toting a walkman filled with hip-hop mixtapes and an ice cart packed with dime bags of weed.

Opinion: One of the Ten Commandments of screenwriting is to write what you know and Jonathan Levine clearly took that lesson to heart while penning his sophomore feature, The Wackness.  The writer/director drew on his own experiences as a mid-’90s Manhattan teenager to craft this seriocomic tale and strives to connect Luke’s coming of age to the growing pains New York experienced in 1994, when Giuliani came to power.  But let’s be real for a sec: the ‘94 setting is mainly a gimmick to distract the audience from the film’s overly familiar narrative. Fortunately, this gimmick pays off like gangbusters. Packing the soundtrack with classic hip-hop tracks.  Levine gets the audience grooving on his flick’s funky vibe from the first frame.

Bonus Features: Levine—who talks in the same woozy cadences of his leading man by the way—reveals what’s real and what’s not in his semi-autobiographical feature.  The director also stars in a pointless “day in the life” featurette that follows him around Hollywood as he talks to various journalists and industry folks.  There’s also a 17-minute making-of featurette, two pretty funny episodes of a fake early ’90s public-access show starring the film’s main character and a batch of deleted scenes.

Verdict: Rent It

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Also on DVD

January is the month where Hollywood burns off some of its more dubious movies in theaters (Paul Blart: Mall Cop and Undeworld: Rise of the Lycans anyone?) and the same goes for DVD.  That’s why three of 2007′s biggest box-office bombs are slinking onto  disc this week, beginning with the Vin Diesel sci-fi flick Babylon A.D. (Fox, $39.98), which was famously disowned by its director right before its release last August.  This two-disc edition offers a longer cut that is supposedly closer to the filmmaker’s preferred version as well as making-of featurettes and a five-minute animated prequel to the movie.  Also getting an unnecessary 2-disc release is the Thailand-set action movie Bangkok Dangerous (Lionsgate, $29.95), featuring Nicolas Cage in a career-worst performance.  Extras include an alternate ending, a featurette devoted to the current state of Hong Kong and Thai cinema and a digital copy of the movie for your iPod.  Finally, there’s Disaster Movie (Lionsgate, $29.95), the latest—and hopefully last?—entry in the awful spoof franchise founded by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer.  This one features such D-list  performers as Carmen Electra and Kim Kardashian in lame send-ups of summer blockbusters like Iron Man and Sex and the City.  Please, please, please let the film’s anemic $15 million gross keep Friedberg and Seltzer from making Meet the Spartans Again.

Elsewhere, Dimension’s horror-themed direct-to-DVD label Dimension Extreme unleashes Eden Lake ($19.98), a Straw Dogs-style revenge movie where a nursery school teacher has to take on a gang of young punks who have beat up her wimpy hubby.  The documentary New York Noir: The History of Black New York (Little Dizzy Video, $14.99) takes on an expansive subject—the role African Americans played in transforming New York City into one of the world’s cultural capitols—and tries to condense it into a 45-minute history lesson.  As a primer, the film is mostly successful (although the low budget shines through fairly often) but it could have used at least an other half-hour to really do the topic justice.  On the other hand, don’t go looking for too much historical accuracy in Showtime’s bodice-ripping series The Tudors: The Complete Second Season (Paramount, $42.99), which follows the conquests and sexploits of serial groom Henry VIII (played by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers).  The week’s best TV-on-DVD release is Frisky Dingo: Season Two (Cartoon Network, $19.97).  Still one of Adult Swim’s funniest and most innovative cartoons, the show’s sophomore year found not-so-super hero Xander Crews (a.k.a. Awesome X) running against his sworn nemesis Killface to occupy the highest office in the land—no, not the Fortress of Solitude, the Oval Office in the White House.  Now that the good guys have triumphed in the real-world election, it makes rooting for the villain much more fun.

Steven Soderbergh’s four-hour Che Guevara flick is a must-see, Keanu Reeve’s remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still is a must-flee.

Che
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Starring Benicio Del Toro, Demián Bichir, Rodrigo Santoro, Catalina Sandino Moreno
****

There are a lot of other things you could be doing in the 262 minutes it takes to watch both parts of Che, Steven Soderbergh’s intimate epic about controversial revolutionary, Ernesto “Che” Guevara.  For example, you could prepare and serve a full-course French dinner, make a dent in Ayn Rand’s 1000-plus page Objectivist manifesto Atlas Shrugged, or hike a portion of the Appalachian Trail while rocking out to the entire output of Sly & the Family Stone.  But please don’t let Che‘s butt-numbing runtime scare you away.  It’s a remarkable movie and a career landmark for both Soderbergh and his star Benicio Del Toro, who completely disappears into a larger-than-life role that would defeat most actors.

Actually, the movie’s title is something of a misnomer as Che is less about the man than the movements he led.  Part 1 presents a detailed account of the Cuban Revolution, during which Guevara evolved from a simple medic/soldier to Fidel Castro’s top commandante.  The second part then jumps ahead roughly ten years ahead to chronicle his disastrous Bolivia campaign.  In both halves, Soderbergh forgoes the usual biopic exposition and drops the audience into the middle of the action, trusting us to keep up.  He has also cleverly designed the two parts as mirror images of each other, with the lessons Guevara learned during his rise in Cuba later contributing to his fall in Bolivia.

Viewers hoping for a more critical look at Guevara’s legacy may be disappointed by Che and, to be fair, they have a point.  By telescoping the narrative to deal with only these two events, the movie sidesteps having to deal with his divisive actions in post-revolution Cuba.  At the same time, Soderbergh and Del Toro are careful to not blindly heroicize Guevara, instead presenting him as an individual whose single-minded devotion to his cause is both his greatest strength and his greatest failing.  Che is also a terrific combat film, filled with harrowing sequences that capture the organized chaos of guerilla warfare.  So yes—this movie does demand four hours of your life.  But you’ll leave the theater richer for it.

Verdict: See It

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The Day the Earth Stood Still
Directed by Scott Derrickson
Starring Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Jaden Smith
**

Released in 1951 in the early years of the nuclear age, Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still is a B-movie that was elevated to A-list status thanks to its timely social message and then-awesome special effects.  The story of a pacifist alien who pays mankind a visit to convince us not to destroy ourselves, Day is more talky than the kinds of sci-fi blockbusters we’re used to seeing at the multiplexes these days, but its low-key nature is a big part of its charm.  Appropriately, the best parts of Scott Derrickson’s big-budget remake are the quieter scenes where the human characters have to wrestle with how to react to discovering they aren’t alone in the universe.

The first 30 minutes of the new Day the Earth Stood Still are surprisingly gripping, particularly considering that it’s from the same director that made the laughable horror movie/courtroom drama The Exorcism of Emily Rose and the same screenwriter that penned the forgettable Robert Redford prison movie, The Last Castle. Jennifer Connelly plays the movie’s heroine Helen Benson, a brilliant astrobiologist who, while cooking dinner on a seemingly ordinary evening, is suddenly taken into custody by a phalanx of federal agents and escorted to a top-secret meeting of scientists and government officials.  It seems that some kind of unidentified flying object is about to slam into Central Park, completely obliterating Manhattan and much of the surrounding area.  Missiles are being dispatched to intercept the UFO and Helen and her fellow eggheads are put on a chopper to NYC to plan for the aftermath.

Once in the air though, they see that the flying object isn’t a meteor or a giant ship filled with ray-gun toting space squids.  Instead, it’s a giant ball of energy, which touches down gently in the park without displacing a single tree or blade of grass.  Out of this crackling globe steps a vaguely human figure…who is promptly shot by a trigger-happy soldier.  Rushed to a nearby medical facility, the alien recovers and acquires the face and voice of Keanu Reeves.  Keanu…excuse me, Klaatu then informs his captors—including trigger happy Defense Secretary Regina Jackson (played by Kathy Bates, clearly channeling Dick Cheney)—that he’s come to Earth to strongly encourage us to respect the environment…or else.  That’s right: the first alien we meet is literally a little green man.

It makes sense that the filmmakers swapped nuclear weapons out for the environment, which is certainly more a hot-button topic amongst this generation.  And if the movie actually had something to say about our impact on the planet, it may have reached out to an audience that has previously resisted such cinematic calls to action as An Inconvenient Truth and Wall*E.  Ultimately though, Day is just using the environmental angle as a way to achieve its real objective: blowing lots of shit up.  Once Helen helps Klaatu escape from the government, the movie turns into an extended chase sequence with random scenes of bloodless violence tossed into the mix.  It also accomplishes the difficult feat of making the characters dumber as the story continues; don’t be surprised to find yourself rooting for Klaatu to off Helen and her annoying stepson Jacob (played by Will Smith’s kid Jaden) along with the rest of mankind.  The movie’s emphasis on brawn over brain might not be so off-putting if the action sequences provided Iron Man-level whiz bang wow, but all of the big set-pieces are marred by confusing choreography and low-grade digital effects.  Unlike a lot of sci-fi fans, I wasn’t horrified by the announcement that The Day the Earth Stood Still was being remade as the original certainly has some dated qualities to it.  But I am horrified that so much money and talent was wasted on a movie that has so much contempt for its audience, it doesn’t even bother to give us an ending that makes sense.

Verdict: Skip It

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Also in Theaters

Wendy and Lucy
Directed by Kelly Reichardt
Starring Michelle Williams
***1/2
Writer/director Kelly Reichardt made a big splash with the critically acclaimed film Old Joy a few years back, but his latest effort is a much stronger movie, with an emotional resonance that its predecessor lacked.  Michelle Williams plays Wendy a young drifter passing through Oregon with her dog Lucy by her side.  Stopping in a small town to pick up supplies, Wendy unwisely decides to shoplift food from the local supermarket, while Lucy waits outside.  She’s caught in the act and thrown in the slammer for the afternoon.  When she’s finally released and heads back to the scene of the crime to recover her dog, Lucy is nowhere to be found.  With her dwindling finances, Wendy can’t afford to stick around until Lucy is found, but she also knows that she can’t leave her only friend in the world behind.  Clocking in at a brief 80 minutes, Wendy and Lucy is the cinematic equivalent of a great short story.  Reichardt never overwhelms the viewer with exposition, keeping the narrative lean and focused.  And Williams continues to prove why she’s the only ex-Dawson’s Creek cast member who actually has a shot at winning an Oscar one day.
Verdict: See It

Nothing Like the Holidays
Directed by Alfredo De Villa
Starring Alfred Molina, Elizabeth Peña, Vanessa Ferlito, John Leguizamo
**
If you like your holiday movies served with heaping spoonfuls of melodrama, it’s possible that you won’t experience heartburn while watching this overbaked, underseasoned Christmas story.  (Enough food metaphors for ya?)  Set in Chicago’s Puerto Rican-heavy Humboldt Park ‘hood, the movie pays a visit to the squabbling Rodriguez clan, who have gathered together to share good meals, good cheer and lots of painful family secrets, from infidelity to serious illness.  The cast, which includes Freddy Rodriguez, Vanessa Ferlito and Elizabeth Peña, does their best, but the script is strictly dinner theater material.
Verdict: Skip It

Milk star Diego Luna opens up about his role in Gus Van Sant’s acclaimed biopic, kissing his childhood pal on camera and being a first-time daddy.

GIANT: How much did you know about the real Harvey Milk before signing on to the movie?
Diego Luna: I knew a little bit because I was in San Francisco three years ago visiting a friend and I walked through the Castro area, where Harvey.  As soon as I agreed to do the movie, I started reading about him and what a character he was.  I’m so happy this film is being made and people are going to hear his story.  Because it is such a recent story, so we shouldn’t forget about it.  We should be learning how to share and co-exist in the same place and respect ourselves, but we seem to be going the other way.

GIANT: What kind of research did you do to learn more about your role as Harvey’s lover, Jack Lira?
Luna: Well, I decided not to talk to his family, but I did talk to many of Harvey’s friends and people who go to meet him in San Francisco.  I wanted to be as respectful as possible.  He was a guy that needed a lot of attention and Harvey was there to give him that.  He kind of hated the political scene that Harvey was part of, though.  It became a very weird relationship because it was obvious it wasn’t going to go far.  I think Jack is a guy who initially brought a lot of joy into Harvey’s life, but then it went in the exact opposite direction.

GIANT: There’s a real intimacy to Milk that you don’t often see in mainstream Hollywood films about gay couples.  How were you able to create such a relaxed, romantic vibe on set?
Luna: It was because he had a fantastic star and an amazing director and a great crew around us.  Sean is a very generous performer in that he is always really focused on creating real moments between actors.  It’s a pleasure to work with someone like that and it makes [the romance] real easy.  The most important part is the amount of risk Gus was willing to take with this film.  He was so relaxed throughout.  When you have to jump into cold water, it can be kind of scary, but if you look in the pool and you see your director waiting for you, you jump and become part of it.

GIANT: You previously locked lips with a guy–specifically your childhood pal Gael Gracia Bernal–in 2001′s Y Tu Mama Tambien.  What do you remember about that experience?
Luna: That scene was a little difficult because he was a really close friend.  We definitely got wasted afterwards.  But since then, I’ve realized that kissing a man is not the hardest part.  It’s what happens before and after.  I got a lot of terrible jokes after Y Tu Mama Tambien and it still makes me laugh how much attention that kiss provoked.  It’s totally not important to me.

GIANT: Milk is your most high-profile role in 2008, but earlier this year you appeared as a Michael Jackson impersonator in Harmony Korine’s underrated flick Mister Lonely.
Luna: That was painful process.  The first part was amazing and it was crazy enough to enjoy every single moment.  But I did start to fall into the loneliness of the character when we were shooting in Scotland in the middle of nowhere.  The World Cup was happening at the same time and I was so far away.  I remember just having to get out of a depression.  It’s twisted because that guy doesn’t want to be himself, but imagine a guy who doesn’t want to be himself and chooses to be Michael Jackson!  That makes it very difficult to know how to love and believe in him.  You have to find the logic to a character like that.

GIANT: What’s next for you?
Luna: The only thing I can really talk about is, Rudo y Cursi, which will be out soon in Mexico and hopefully in the States later on.  It’s with Gael again and this is the first time we’ve acted together in seven years.  It’s a story about two brothers.  It’s very different from Y Tu Mama Tambien, but it talks about some of the same things.  I’m also writing a script for a film I’m planning to direct.  It’s a story about a boy in a little town in Mexico.  I can’t say much because I believe if the film isn’t done, you shouldn’t talk about it.  Otherwise you’re one of those guys who talk a lot and do nothing.

GIANT: Before we let you go, congrats to you and your wife [Camila Sodi, left] on your new son, Geronimo.  How does fatherhood feel?
Luna: It is the best!  No sleep, but it’s the best time ever.  It’s such a nice feeling that it’s not about you anymore.  There’s something more important in this world than you.  Being in love is giving your life to someone in a way but there is something special when you realize you don’t matter that much to yourself.  Also, that there’s a type of love you didn’t know existed that is more powerful than anything.  I picked his name because it has a little bit of everything.  First it’s a name I love, it sounds beautiful to me.  There are a lot of other connotations and one is the Native American chieftain.  He’s going to think everyone’s talking to him whenever I take him to the playground, but at least he’ll be known by everyone.

Pick up the December/January issue of GIANT to read more about Diego Luna.  And check out Milk in theaters now and Mister Lonely on DVD.  Trailers below.

This week, Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy play deadly assassins in Wanted; David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson re-open the X-Files in I Want to Believe; and the next chapter in The Chronicles of Narnia arrives on DVD.

Wanted
Universal
Single Disc: $29.98
Two Disc: $34.98
Blu-ray: $39.98

Plot: When the father he never knew is murdered in cold blood, a wimpy office drone named Wesley (James McAvoy) is drafted into an elite league of assassins and trained to hunt down his father’s killer. Along the way, he flirts with gorgeous colleague Fox (Angelina Jolie) and makes an enemy of the league’s leader, Sloan (Morgan Freeman).

Opinion: As you can probably tell, Wanted‘s plot is derivative nonsense, swiping elements from a long list of other movies (Star Wars and The Matrix just to name a few) and working them into a screenplay that must have read like gibberish on the page. Fortunately for everyone involved, the task of bringing this script to the screen was handed to Russian filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov, whose previous credits include the visually dazzling (if borderline incoherent) fantasy/horror hybrids Nightwatch and Daywatch. Never one to hold the camera still when he could send it hurtling after bullets and falling train cars, Bekmambetov brings a kinetic energy to the picture that helps you forget—or at least ignore—its severely underdeveloped story. Naturally, these kind of visual pyrotechnics wear out their welcome and eventually I found myself wishing that I could pat Timur on the shoulder and tell him to just chill out already.

Extras: A number of very technical featurettes, which focus primarily on the film’s special effects and action sequences. The best of the bonus features covers the differences between the comic book and the movie, with commentary from Wanted creator Mark Millar.

Verdict: Rent It

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The X-Files: I Want to Believe
Fox
Single Disc: $29.99
Three Disc: $34.98

Plot: When an FBI agent goes missing and her severed arm turns up in the snowy wilderness, the Bureau calls in the one man who knows his way around freaky shit: Fox Mulder (David Duchovny). Joining him in this latest X-File is his longtime partner—and now lover—Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), who is dealing with her own crisis of faith as she attempts to save the life of a little boy at the hospital where she’s currently employed.

Opinion: It took X-Files creator Chris Carter ten years to mount another big screen version of his cult TV series and this is the best he could come up with?  Seriously, I Want to Believe feels like the final nail in the coffin for a franchise that stopped mattering somewhere around the turn of the 21st century.  According to Carter, he and his co-writer Frank Spotnitz dreamed up the storyline for this film some years ago while the show was still on the air and, indeed, the script does feel like late-period X-Files: ponderous and slow, without any of the imagination or wit that made the first few seasons such fun to watch.  The biggest problem with the film’s central mystery is that it doesn’t remotely seem like an X-File; would the FBI really drag Mulder out of hiding to solve what’s essentially a kidnapping case?  Don’t bother looking for clues to that vast alien conspiracy that was a staple of the series; there are no close encounters of the third kind here.  In fact, all supernatural elements have been drained away and what we’re left with is a glum procedural about a mystery that’s not particularly…well, mysterious.  The only question about the show’s convoluted mythology that I Want to Believe ends up addressing is: “Are Mulder and Scully doing the nasty?”  And the answer is…yes, frequently.  That’s right, Fox and Dana are an honest-to-God couple now, a development that will probably thrill some fans, while pissing others off to no end.  At least this movie’s enormous box-office belly flop means that we’ll be spared from seeing Mulder and Scully ever becoming–ugh–parents.

Extras: Disc One offers a commentary track from Carter and Spotnitz that works great as a cure for insomnia, not so much as an entertaining extra. There are also three inconsequential deleted scenes, a listless 10-minute gag reel, an Xzibit music video and two featurettes. The mother lode is housed on disc two—a 90-minute making-of documentary that the show’s fans will watch religiously.

Verdict: Rent It (X-Files fans only); Skip It (everyone else)

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The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Disney
Single Disc: $29.99
Three Disc: $39.99
Blu-ray Two Disc: $35.99
Blu-ray Three Disc: $40.99

Plot: One year after their first trip to the magical land of Narnia, the Pevensie children find themselves back in that otherworldly realm, fighting alongside the heir to the throne, Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes), to rescue Narnia from the clutches of his treacherous uncle.

Opinion: The problems with Prince Caspian begin with the actor who was tapped to take up the title character’s sword and leather jerkin. Onscreen, Barnes is a cold fish—all matinee idol looks, but no gravitas or authority. he shift in focus to Caspian means that the Pevensie kids have less to do. The loss of Tilda Swinton’s White Witch is also deeply felt; it’s telling that the best scene in the movie features that character briefly returning to bedevil our heroes once more. Perhaps the biggest difference between the first film and this one is the tone; where The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe was a traditional family-friendly adventure, Caspian more closely resembles a war movie and even though it received a PG-rating, it may be too intense for really young viewers. I’ve got to admit that I even got a little uncomfortable watching these teenagers repeatedly charge into battle to kill hundreds of adult soldiers. It’s bloodless killing of course, but that doesn’t necessarily make it any more appropriate for the under-5 set. On the plus side, the production values and the special effects are top notch, the action sequences are solid (but not exceptional), and the theme of growing up and leaving “home” is sure to resonate with older kids. In that respect, it’s an entirely serviceable sequel. But if you go in expecting the same magic found in Wardrobe, you’re bound to be disappointed.

Extras: All the usual making-of featurettes, a blooper reel and deleted scenes, plus a digital copy for your desktop.

Verdict: Rent It

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Also on DVD

Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly attempted to recapture some of that Talladega Nights magic in Step Brothers (Sony, $28.96), which fell just short of crossing the magic $100 million mark when it hit theaters in July. That’s disappointing by Ferrell standards, but at least Step Brothers performed better than the family-friendly laffers Space Chimps (Fox, $29.99) and Meet Dave (Fox, $29.99), which were completely ignored during their theatrical run. The former is a decent animated flick about—you guessed it!—chimps in space while the latter is the latest belly flop for the once unstoppable King of Comedy, Eddie Murphy.

If you’re still looking for a stocking stuffer for the film buff in your life, it would be tough to go wrong with Casablanca: Ultimate Collector’s Edition (Warner Bros., $64.98), another extras-laden box set from the good folks at Warner Brothers, who are flooding the market with great gift ideas this holiday season. Packaged in this Moroccan-style box is a two-disc edition of the 1943 Humphrey Bogart classic, a branded passport holder, a luggage tag, a photo book, replicas of various props from the film and a collection of archival documents about the film’s production. If black-and-white romances aren’t your speed, Warner is also coming out with the Austin Powers Collection: Shagadelic Edition Loaded with Extra Mojo (Warner Bros., $74.98), which marks the swinging spy’s first excursion into Blu-ray. Relive those pre-Love Guru days when Mike Meyers was actually funny.

Finally, in TV news, Metalocalypse: Season Two (Cartoon Network, $29.98) offers all 19 episodes from the cult animated show’s sophomore year in a two-disc set with plenty of geek-friendly bonus features. Meanwhile, Universal continues to preserve the long history of late-night staple Saturday Night Live for future generations with Saturday Night Live: The Complete Fourth Season (Universal, $69.98), which transports viewers back in time to 1978, when Jimmy Carter was in the White House, Star Wars mania was in full swing and The Blues Brothers made their not-ready-for-primetime debut.

Mr. Fourth of July becomes Mr. Thanksgiving as Will Smith’s latest blockbuster Hancock soars onto DVD just in time for Turkey Day.

Hancock
Sony
Single Disc: $28.96
Two-Disc Edition: $34.95
Blu-ray: $39.95

This past summer, the trailers for the Will Smith superhero blockbuster Hancock seemed to play on a continuous loop in theaters, on television and online.  Over and over again, we saw the title character— a perpetually pissed-off superhero dressed to the nines in the very best homeless chic—mouth off to innocent civilians, toss a little kid miles into the air and hurl a beached whale back into the ocean, knocking over a sailboat in the process. This stuff is supposed to be funny for two reasons: 1) Hancock is basically Superman with a wicked hangover and 2) He’s played by Smith a.k.a. The Nicest Guy in Hollywood. That’s right, after years of playing virtuous heroes, the Fresh Prince is trying to dirty his onscreen image a bit. As these kinds of career reinventions go, Smith’s transformation in Hancock isn’t quite as extreme as, say, Denzel Washington in Training Day or Michael Chiklis in The Shield, but you gotta give the guy credit for working so hard at being bad.

It’s just a shame that the movie lets him down. Directed by Peter Berg and penned by Vy Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan, Hancock has some terrific ideas at its core—it just can’t realize them onscreen. The project’s troubled production history, which was exhaustively chronicled in a New York Times piece earlier this year, no doubt has a lot to do with this. Originally conceived by Ngo as a super-dark superhero drama entitled Tonight He Comes, the film was set to be directed by Michael Mann, who eventually opted out and the script passed through the hands of several filmmakers until it ended up with Berg.  Script changes were still being made during shooting and in the editing room and early test screening reports indicated that the film was much longer than the 92-minute version that arrived in theaters in July.  I’m fairly certain that some of the excised material would have gone a long way towards clearing up some crucial questions I have about the characters, the world they inhabit and the film’s big plot twist.

Ah yes, the plot twist. Betcha you didn’t think you’d be getting one of those in this movie. Kudos to the Sony marketing team for keeping this secret so well hidden even as they drown the airwaves in Hancock ads. I’m not about to spoil things either, but I will say that the twist is a very interesting development that sends Hancock into unexpected territory for a comic-book movie.  But Hancock’s biggest sin is that it doesn’t take full advantage of the possibilities allowed by this plot development. One can only imagine what a skilled comic-book writer like Alan Moore or Brian Michael Bendis would have taken the story (actually, we don’t have to imagine anything—both of those writers already did variations on it in Miracleman and Powers respectively); Hancock’s masterminds just allow it to lie there onscreen. Their negligence robs the movie of any emotional impact and Smith’s performance of any internal consistency. Although the star does his best to keep up with the film’s constantly shifting tone, he can’t fill in the narrative gaps created in the editing room. Hancock is an almost good movie, but when it comes to being a superhero, “almost” isn’t good enough.

Extras: An on-set visual diary offers seven featurettes that profile various aspects of the film’s production, from the special effects to the costumes.  Also included is a digital copy of the film you can download to your desktop…provided you have a PC and not a Mac of course.  Apparently, Hancock has a mad-on for Steve Jobs.

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Also on DVD

Two days after it aired on TV, A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All (Comedy Central, $19.99)– Stephen Colbert’s uneven hour-long spoof of vintage television Christmas specials–arrives on DVD with several bonus features, including a 20-minute video of books burning on a yule log (not funny), a 25-day Advent Calendar with additional gags of Colbert (kind of funny), three alternate endings (funny) and a bonus music video (mostly funny).  Also making a quick trip to DVD is the TV-movie 24: Redemption (Fox, $26.98) which finds super-agent Jack Bauer hiding out in Africa, trying to avoid being drawn into yet another day-long attempt to thwart a terrorist plot.  Naturally, he can only stay one step ahead of trouble for so long before it catches up with him.  As a standalone movie, 24: Redemption is a solid action vehicle, but it’s even more enticing as a set-up for where the show’s next season will take the long-suffering Bauer.  A sneak preview of Season 7 included on the bonus features hint at some major plot twists and surprising reunions with familiar faces…including a few who supposedly died.  Finally, just in time for his latest film, Frost/Nixon, actor-turned-director Ron Howard gets a moment in the spotlight with an eight-disc box set, Ron Howard Spotlight Collection (Universal, $39.98).  Four of Howard’s nineteen features are included here, 1991′s Backdraft, 1995′s Apollo 13, 2001′s A Beautiful Mind (which won Best Picture and Howard his first Best Director statue) and 2005′s Cinderella Man.  All of the films come with numerous extras, including featurettes and commentary tracks.

This week, learn (part of) the story behind the Wu-Tang Clan, meet an adorable trash compacting robot named Wall*E and laugh at Robert Downey Jr., Ben Stiller and the rest of the goofballs in Tropic Thunder.

Wu: The Story of the Wu-Tang Clan
Paramount
$22.99

The story of Wu-Tang Clan—a Staten Island-based group of rappers who blasted out of obscurity in the early ’90s to become one of the biggest pop-culture sensations of that decade—is fodder for a potentially great flick.  Sadly, this BET-backed documentary feels more like an overlong episode of VH1′s Behind the Music series.  Directed by Gerald Barclay, who knew the Wu-Tang guys before they hit it big and actually directed their first music video “Protect Your Neck,” Wu only skims the surface of the Clan’s fascinating (and occasionally troubled) history.

The doc is at its best in the first half-hour, when Barclay digs deep into the archives and digs up early footage of RZA, Method Man and the other core members laying down tracks for what would become the group’s seminal debut album: Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).  Once the group takes off though, Wu starts to fall apart.  Aside from a few references to internal tensions, Barclay mostly dances around the touchy subject of infighting within the Clan and keeps his focus on their extraordinary success at turning themselves into a franchise, complete with a clothing line and video games.  Part of the problem with this section of the film is that Barclay seems to have limited access to the present-day Clan.  RZA and Raekwon seem to be the only two founding members who agreed to be interviewed, which means the director mainly speaks to a lot of satellite guys about events they don’t necessarily have first-hand knowledge of.  His footage well also starts to run dry; despite repeated claims about how good Wu-Tang was live, the only significant concert footage we get is outtakes from a relatively listless performance in Hawaii.  Then in its final twenty minutes, Wu basically morphs into a tribute film to Ol’ Dirty Bastard, all but ignoring the Clan’s post-ODB career.  The doc also suffers from Barclay’s relentless self-promotion; at times, it almost feels like he’s using his association with Wu-Tang as resume fodder for his own career.  Ultimately, Wu only provides us with a few chapters in a much longer and far more interesting novel.

Extras: Barclay continues to hype himself in one of the disc’s five extended interviews, talking at length about his history with the group’s various members.  Also contributing additional thoughts are RZA, Raekwon and ODB’s widow, Icelene.  Best bonus feature?  The full version of “Protect Ya Neck,” the video that started it all.

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Wall*E
Disney
$39.99

I don’t know how they run things over at Pixar, but part of me thinks that this group of animation geniuses decides what film they’re going to make next by coming up with a list of seemingly impossible ideas and then assigning them to whatever foolhardy filmmaker volunteers.  How else do you explain a company producing movies about talking cars, a rat that cooks or, in the case of its new feature-length cartoon Wall*E, the last functional robot on a deserted Earth some 700 years in the future?  Director Andrew Stanton further ups the ante by keeping avoiding conventional dialogue for much of the film.  Instead these machines communicate to each other (and us) through digital squawks and programmed gestures. What’s marvelous about the movie—and one of the many things that makes it unlike any other film, animated or otherwise, in recent memory—is that we understand everything they’re saying and feeling without all the excess verbiage that pervades so many contemporary big-budget studio productions.  One of the movie’s subtle jokes is that these machines actually have more personality than their flesh and blood “masters” who, over the centuries, have devolved into fat, television-addicted blobs.  While the film’s social message comes through loud and clear, it never detracts from the heart of the picture, the unlikely romance between the title character and his robo-girlfriend EVE, who is the movie’s real star. She’s strong, smart and endlessly capable—it’s no wonder that Wall*E falls immediately under her spell. When you see these lovebirds dancing in the vacuum of space, your heart twirls and soars right along with them.

Extras: Stanton talks about the film’s long journey to the big screening in a fascinating commentary track that runs alongside the feature.  Also included on the first disc are two short cartoons, one of which stars a new robot named Burn*E.  Disc 2 houses the feature-length documentary The Pixar Story, the complete, official history of the best animation studio currently operating in Hollywood, as well as a number of making-of featurettes and interactive games for kiddie viewers.

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Tropic Thunder
Parmount
$39.99

You can’t talk about Tropic Thunder without talking about Robert Downey Jr. and that’s not just because he’s the funniest thing in this big, broad spoof of war movies. The newly minted box-office superhero plays Kirk Lazarus, an acclaimed Aussie method actor with piercing blue eyes and five Oscars on his shelf.  For his latest role, Lazarus has been cast in a big-budget Vietnam War flick opposite action superstar Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller, who also serves as Thunder’s director and co-writer), obese comedian Jeff “Fats” Portnoy (Jack Black) and rapper-turned-actor Alpha Chino (Brandon T. Jackson).  But here’s the twist that will really have everyone buzzing: Lazarus, who is white, is playing an African-American character.  As if that’s not enough, he’s undergone a radical pigmentation procedure to have his skin darkened.  So, in essence, Downey Jr. is doing his role in blackface.  And he’s not the only actor who takes a walk on the provocative side in Thunder. There’s also Simple Jack, a mentally challenged farm boy played by Stiller’s Speedman character in another film-within-the-film.  Seen out of context, I can understand why these characters would put off some viewers, but the reason the film works is because all of the actors are willing to go big and broad in their performances, even when they risk looking foolish or, worse, like a bunch of ignorant assholes.  In its best moments, the movie generates the same kind of delirious laughter that greeted Blazing Saddles, another film that used outrageous comedy to explode conventional definitions of “good taste.”  I don’t mean to put Thunder in the same category as Mel Brooks’ comic masterpiece because it can’t sustain itself for its nearly two-hour running time.  Still, the movie deserves to be seen solely for Downey Jr.’s brilliant one-man show, which, in a perfect world, would be recognized by Oscar voters come January.

Extras: Disc 1 comes with two commentary tracks, one featuring the filmmaking team (including Stiller, co-writer Justin Theroux and cinematographer John Toll) and the other with the above-the-title trio of Stiller, Black and Downey Jr.  Guess which one is funnier?  Over on Disc 2, you’ll find a number of behind-the-scenes featurettes, which cover the film’s special effects, production design and script.  It’s a little disconcerting to hear all these folks talk so seriously about their comedy though, which is why the disc’s highlight has to be Rain of Madness, a fake making-of documentary filmed by a fictional German documentary filmmaker (played by Theroux) that documents the behind-the-scenes troubles of the film-within-the-film.  This doc runs a half-hour and is followed by an additional 20 minutes worth of deleted scenes.  Additional deleted and extended scenes (from the actual film) are also included, along with a not particularly funny alternate ending.  Rounding out the set is a skit from this year’s MTV Movie Awards, video rehearsals and unedited takes that give you the chance to see how much improvisation went on during filming.

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Also on DVD

Arguably the most influential comedy group of the second half of the 20th century, Monty Python exploded conventional notions of what you could and couldn’t do on television through their revolutionary late-’60s series Monty Python’s Flying Circus.  In the process, they birthed a whole generation of absurdist comedians who have done their best to live up to the examples set by John Cleese, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam.  Still frequently seen in syndication, Flying Circus has been well represented on DVD by A&E, which has put out several box sets to date, including the comprehensive 16-Ton Megaset collection released in 2005.  So if you already own the latter release, is Monty Python’s Flying Circus: Collector’s Edition (A&E, $159.95) worth the upgrade?  Ported over from the Megaset are all five seasons of Flying Circus, two concert films (Live at the Hollywood Bowl and Live in Apsen), an episode originally taped for German television, a glossary and several featurettes.  Not included on that earlier version—but previously available separately—are six “Personal Best” clip reels that highlight the best work of the six individual Pythons.  New stuff includes two previously unseen documentaries, Before the Flying Circus and Monty Python Conquers America, both of which are filled with rare archival footage and priceless memories from surviving Pythons Cleese, Idle, Palin, Jones and Gilliam.  These docs make this collector’s set a no-brainer for Python addicts and neophytes, but more casual fans shouldn’t feel obligated to trade in their earlier editions…although it is handy to have all this stuff in one place.

I’ve been down on Harmony Korine ever he tried to pass himself off as the voice of ’90s youth in Kids (the less said about Gummo and Julien Donkey Boy the better) but I have to admit that I dug his third directorial effort, Mister Lonely (IFC, $24.95).  Set on a commune populated by celebrity impersonators, the film follows a faux-Michael Jackson (brilliantly played by Diego Luna) as he comes between Marilyn Monroe (Samantha Morton, also excellent) and her husband, Charlie Chaplin (Denis Lavant).  Every now and then, German filmmaker (and Korine’s mentor) Werner Herzog turns up as a priest who discovers a team of skydiving nuns that literally defy gravity.  The DVD comes with deleted scenes and a making-of featurette that doesn’t even attempt to explain what this odd, but enjoyable flick is about.  From the title, it’s not too difficult to figure out the story of The Zombie Diaries (Dimension Extreme, $19.97), a Cloverfield-style Brit flick in which the walking dead take over London.  Where’s Shaun of the Dead when you need him?

In TV news, Star Trek: The Complete Third Season (Paramount, $99.99) boldly goes onto DVD, with all 24 remastered episodes from the final season of the original Trek series, plus a bunch of bonus goodies, including commentary tracks, featurettes and deleted scenes.  Sci-fi fans should also make plans to pick up Dr. Who: The Complete Fourth Series (BBC, $99.98), a six-disc set of the British show’s stellar four year and the last full season starring current Doctor, David Tennant, who’ll be handing over the keys to the TARDIS before the series returns full-time in 2010.  Finally, history buffs will have a field day with two new A&E releases, Secrets of the Civil War (A&E, $34.95)—a collection of little known facts about the bloodiest conflict in America’s history—and Surviving History (A&E, $34.95), a competitive reality show in which craftsmen have to re-build old inventions using period materials.  Take that Survivor!

James Bond is back for 22nd mission.  But does Quantum of Solace pack a license to thrill or a license to bore?

Quantum of Solace
Directed by Marc Forster
Starring Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Judi Dench
**1/2

There’s one sequence in the new James Bond adventure Quantum of Solace that ranks amongst the very best moments in the franchise’s four-decade history.  In it, our favorite “00″ secret agent (played, once again, by Daniel Craig in his sophomore outing in Bond’s impeccably-tailored suits) has followed his latest target Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric)-an environmentalist, business tycoon and, of course, member of a top-secret organization bent on world domination-to a lavish opera house in Austria to attend a performance of the Verdi classic Tosca.  Slipping unnoticed into the crowd, Bond spots Greene picking up a specially marked gift bag and uses his stealth (as well as his fists) to secure one of these bags for himself.  Inside, he finds an earpiece, which he pops into his ear as he makes his way into the catwalks that hover above the audience.

Adjusting the frequency, he finds himself listening in on a meeting between Greene and his partners-in-global-conspiracy as they discuss their latest plot-overthrowing the government of Bolivia and handing the country over to a puppet dictator they can exploit for their purposes.  But this meeting isn’t being conducted in some opera box or secret room; instead, all of the conspirators are sitting comfortably in the audience, watching the opera while planning the conquest of a sovereign nation.  It’s a terrific, suspenseful scene that confirms what Bond has been told about this organization early on in the film from one of its members: “We have people everywhere.”

The reason this sequence clicks is that it’s really the only part of the movie where Quantum‘s director Marc Forster is able to successfully integrate his own style and interests with the rigid James Bond formula.  And make no mistake, the 007 movies are all about formula.  The producers have been able to churn out 22 of these things because audiences come back again and again expecting to see certain things: great action, hot girls, cool gadgets and witty quips.

Granted, Quantum‘s predecessor, Casino Royale, did away with some of the traditional elements, but director Martin Campbell otherwise provided a nearly flawless execution of the Bond formula, just as he did a decade ago with Goldeneye, the movie that got the series back on his feet after the ’80s dog days of late-period Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton.  Forster, on the other hand, seems largely uninterested in sticking to the producers’ carefully designed playbook.  He goes through the motions like a professional, but it’s hard to escape the feeling that he has another kind of movie in mind than the one he was hired to make.

Best known for small-scale dramas like Finding Neverland and Monster’s Ball, Forster has never made an action movie before and it shows in Quantum‘s near-incomprehensible chase sequences, gun battles and fistfights.  One of the great joys of Casino Royale was the way Campbell and his crew designed each of the film’s big set-pieces with an eye towards practical stunts that required a bare minimum of CGI-assists.  Think back to that awesome parkour chase through a construction site, the airport scene and that final shoot-out in Venice; all of the action was choreographed and edited with tight precision.  Now look at the opening car chase in Quantum, which is shot and cut like an over-caffeinated outtake from The Bourne Ultimatum.  Or check out an aerial dogfight between Bond and the bad guys that’s filled with so much CGI, it could have been made by Pixar.

I don’t doubt that Forster tried his best to master the language of action filmmaking, but he’s been thrown headfirst into a franchise that demands a skill set he just doesn’t possess yet.  There’s a reason why many of the best Bond pictures have been made by directors with extensive backgrounds in second-unit and stunt work rather than dramatic features.  They come in with the innate knowledge of how to satisfy the prime directive of any 007 adventure, namely dreaming up creative, memorable (and sometimes improbable) action sequences that leave audiences breathless.

Forster’s talents lie in an entirely different arena and it’s worth noting that, dramatically, Quantum of Solace is quite good.  The director is genuinely interested in Bond as an individual and he gives Craig the opportunity to play a range of emotions his predecessors could only dream about.  Picking up almost immediately after Casino Royale ended, Quantum shows as a bitter, furious, vengeful Bond who is more than happy to use his professional resources as means to settle personal scores against the men that killed his one true love, Vesper Lynd, who perished in Royale‘s final moments.

But 007 isn’t the only one who desires bloody revenge; Forster introduces a Bond Girl who finally has more on her mind than bedding England’s best-looking secret agent.  Her name is Camille (played by Ukrainian stunner Olga Kurylenko) and she’s the daughter of a high-ranking Bolivian official and his Russian wife (hence the accent) who were murdered many years ago by the general that Greene plans to put in power.  Save for a brief kiss in the film’s closing moments, Bond and Camille display little carnal interest in each other, which gives their relationship a completely different dynamic than what we’re used to seeing in a 007 movie.  (Because the Bond formula dictates that the spy has to do the nasty at least once in every movie, he does get it on with a fellow MI6 agent tasked with dispatching him back to headquarters.  But this character is a complete waste of screen time-her only function in the movie is to spread her legs for Bond and then meet an untimely end.)

Ultimately, all of Quantum‘s strengths and weaknesses stem from a common source-Forster wanted to make one movie, while the producers wanted another movie that was different…but not too different from every other Bond adventure.  Given that impasse, the only way the film could have been a rousing success is if they had given Forster free reign to do whatever he wanted with Bond or just brought back Martin Campbell for a second go-around.  Because what we’ve ended up with is a movie divided against itself; as a James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace disappoints, but as a drama about an angry, angst-ridden spy, it’s pretty solid.  The one thing that unites these two very different films is Daniel Craig, who has officially become-and I’m being absolutely serious here-the best Bond ever.  He’s not as effortlessly suave as Connery, nor as affable as Moore, nor as charming as Brosnan, but he accomplishes something even more difficult: he makes this superhuman…well, human.

Verdict: Rent It

Everyone’s favorite big red demon spawn punches his way onto DVD a second time this week, alongside a kung-fu panda, two family-friendly Christmas stories and a blood-soaked Japanese western.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Universal
$34.98

Guillermo Del Toro is the new Jim Henson. I’m sure that comparison has been made before, but Hellboy II: The Golden Army signs, seals and delivers the deal. This enormously entertaining follow-up to Del Toro’s 2004 cult hit (based on the comic book by Mike Mignola, who has been closely involved in the making of both films) is bigger, brawnier and bursting with more beautiful visuals than the original film.

One of the drawbacks to the first Hellboy was that Hellboy wasn’t the movie’s central character.  Instead, the audience watched the story unfold through the eyes of a human, John Myers (Rupert Evans), a new member of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD for short), who unexpectedly finds himself fighting alongside a big red devil dude, his half-fish pal Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) and his on-again/off-again girlfriend, firestarter extraordinaire Liz Sherman (Selma Blair). Del Toro has since said that Myers was created as a compromise to the studio and, for the sequel, the character has been dispatched with entirely (banished to Antarctica, according to Liz) making Hellboy the star of the show, as he should be.

As with Del Toro’s previous excursions into big-budget filmmaking, including the first Hellboy and Blade 2, the story is the weakest part of Hellboy II. (It seems that the writer/director spins his best yarns in smaller movies like The Devil’s Backbone and the exceptional Pan’s Labyrinth.)  But Hellboy himself remains a fantastic character—a blue-collar superhero who never lets his angst get in the way of cracking wise and boozing it up. Perlman plays the part to the hilt too—casting him was the smartest decision Del Toro made in bringing Mignola’s comic to the big screen.

Extras: Like fellow geek icon Robert Rodriguez, Del Toro views DVDs as a film school for the masses.  That’s why he makes sure to pack all of his discs with tons of bonus features.  This 3-disc edition of Hellboy II, for example, offers a staggering two-and-a-half hour making-of documentary that covers every single aspect of the film’s journey to the screen…except for what the cast ate for lunch each day.  Del Toro also contributes a feature-length audio commentary track, as well as an additional commentary over a batch of deleted scenes.  Additional extras include animatic-to-screen comparisons and F/X-oriented featurettes.

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Kung Fu Panda
Paramount
$29.99

As an animation fan, I’ve got an extensive DVD library of cartoons, from Disney standards to Japanese anime.  Notably absent from my shelf though, are any animated flicks from DreamWorks Animation.  To date, I haven’t been a fan of the company’s output; don’t care Shark Tale, Madagascar or any of the Shrek flicks.  Over the Hedge was decent, but not memorable and while I give them credit for releasing the awesome Wallace & Gromit movie stateside, that’s not really a product of their cartoon factory.  But I think I’m going to break my no-DreamWorks rule with their summer hit Kung Fu Panda, a fast, fun martial arts movie that will probably hook more young viewers on the genre than this spring’s kiddie-oriented kung fu fest The Forbidden Kingdom.  Not only is Panda far more entertaining than that other movie, it also boasts superior action sequences, which is a pretty big deal considering that martial arts legends Jet Li and Jackie Chan are the stars of Kingdom.  My big problem with most DreamWorks cartoons is that they rely too heavily on the Shrek model of tossing off a long string of lame pop-culture jokes amidst lots of dull slapstick and juvenile humor.  And while Kung Fu Panda contains a few too many gags about the title character’s weight and body oder, the movie is closer to a Pixar film in terms of its wit…if not exactly its emotional complexity.  Truth is, Pixar productions such Wall*E and The Incredibles have raised the bar so high for animated films in general that even a romp like this ultimately ends up feeling a bit unsatisfying, at least for older viewers like myself.  But kids seem to love Kung Fu Panda and if it ends up eventually leading them to live-action martial arts classics like Drunken Master and Enter the Dragon than I’m happy to see it become DreamWorks’ new animated franchise.

Extras: Lots of kid-oriented featurettes and activities, including an instructional guide on how to use chopsticks and a helpful primer on how ordinary folks can help keep wild pandas safe.  Not included on the DVD, but available as part of a special two pack purchase for $34.98 is Secrets of the Furious Five, a half-hour sequel to the main feature.  That disc comes with DVD games for kids and a featurette about the Chinese Zodiac.

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This Christmas

Sony
$28.96

The Perfect Holiday
Sony
$27.96

Once upon a time, Hollywood only made cheesy Christmas movies about middle and upper-class white families, but in the 21st century, the holidays are starting to look a lot more colorful.

Take these two 2007 Christmas stories, which are told the from the perspective of middle and upper-class black families.  (As is often the around Christmastime, the poor get kinda shafted in holiday flicks.)  A surprise box-office hit when it opened last November, This Christmas drafts famous faces like Regina King, Chris Brown and Sharon Leal to play members of a big family gathering together for yet another Christmas reunion filled with laughs, tears and gossip. 

The Perfect Gift, meanwhile, is a standard opposites attract romantic comedy about a pair of seemingly mismatched lovers (Gabrielle Union and Morris Chestnut) told as a kind of fairy tale by a kindly narrator (Queen Latifah) and her inexplicably mean assistant (Terrence Howard, clearly stoned out of his mind).

Of the two, This Christmas is easily the better movie, although it often feels more like a pilot for a TV-series than a feature film.  But it’s also much less sickly sweet than Holiday, which strands a pair of charming lead actors in a charmless story.  Both movies have already made an impact on Hollywood though; this December brings Nothing Like the Holidays, which tells almost the exact same story as This Christmas, but features a Puerto Rican family instead.  So when can we expect to see an Asian-American Christmas flick?

Extras: This Christmas comes with deleted and extended scenes, a making-of featurette and Chris Brown’s music video, while The Perfect Holiday offers six video production diaries and a sleep-inducing commentary track from one of the movie’s producers.

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Sukiyaki Western Django
First Look
$28.98

As anyone who has seen the ultraviolent Audition or Dead or Alive trilogy knows, Japanese director Takashi Miikie is one screwed-up dude.  A genius in his way, to be sure, but really, really, really screwed-up.  So it’s saying something that his latest flick—an old-fashioned Western, complete with horses and quick-draw showdowns, set in 19th century Japan—may be the most normal movie he’s ever made.  Like so many golden-age Hollywood Westerns, Sukiyaki Western Django begins with a stranger entering a small frontier town, where he tangles with a bevy of bad guys and even befriends a small child.  Unlike those old oaters though, some of the villains wield samurai swords rather than six-shooters and their fashion sense owes more to anime than John Wayne.  A master of bloody, beautifully choreographed action sequences, Miikie stages some excellent battles here, which help make up for the convoluted story.  Still, the film is far more accessible than much of Miike’s previous films, making it a good jumping-on point for movie buffs looking to learn more about the guy Quentin Tarantino is always raving about.  Just be warned that his other stuff gets real weird, real quick.

Extras: An hour-long making-of documentary that originally aired on Japanese television, about 10-minutes worth of deleted scenes, a sizzle reel of clips from the movie and two trailers.

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Also on DVD

Meet the holiday gift list mother lode.  Tipping the scales at a whopping 10 lbs. The Sopranos: The Complete Series (HBO, $399.98) offers all 86 episodes of HBO’s dear departed mafia series spread out over 28 discs, along with two more discs of bonus features (including two extended conversations between The Sopranos’ cast and crew over—what else?—a hearty Italian meal) and another three discs containing tunes from the show’s memorable soundtrack.  There are also deleted and lost scenes, a collection of famous Sopranos spoofs and a 16-page episode guide and the whole cannoli comes in a gorgeous black linen box.

There’s no way any other of the week’s new box sets can measure up to The Sopranos, but the folks at Warner Brothers still did a great job with JFK: Ultimate Collector’s Edition (Warner Bros., $39.98), a new release of Oliver Stone’s 1991 conspiracy thriller about John F. Kennedy’s assassination.  In addition to a director’s cut of the film—that includes a commentary track from Stone as well as a 90-minute documentary about the film and the controversy that still surrounds it—this four-disc set also comes with a bonus documentary about the Kennedy family before and after JFK, a book of movie stills and production information and reproductions of actual letters sent and received by Kennedy while in office.  17 years after its release, JFK remains a career-defining film for Stone and is particularly interesting to revisit in the wake of his latest presidential picture W., which isn’t half as good as this one is.

Elsewhere, Paramount launches The Centennial Collection today, a new line of from-the-vault classics.  The first titles to hit stores are Billy Wilder’s immortal Hollywood satire Sunset Boulevard (Paramount, $24.99) and two timeless Audrey Hepburn vehicles Roman Holiday and Sabrina (Paramount, $24.99 each).  Each movie comes in a two-disc set with all new bonus features, ranging from vintage trailers to retrospective documentaries.  Meanwhile, Lionsgate continues their ongoing Director’s Series label with two rarely seen pictures from legendary Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini (Lionsgate, $29.98).  No extras on this release, but having more of Rossellini’s work available on DVD is a bonus in and of itself.

Jumping forward in time, the week’s new releases include the acclaimed European drama Mister Foe (Magnolia, $26.98), which stars Jamie Bell as a teenage voyeur; Beer for My Horses (Lionsgate, $27.98), a direct-to-DVD good ol’ boy Southern comedy for country music star Toby Keith; and Gamer (SKD USA, $24.98), a video-game themed French comedy from 2001 about a young would-be criminal and gamer.  Finally, I have to give a shout-out to one of my favorite films from last year, Benson Lee’s around-the-world breakdancing documentary Planet B-Boy (Arts Alliance, $19.95).  Filled with amazing dancers who have genuinely emotional life stories, the film shows how the language of breakdancing can translate across borders.

One week until 007 people! In the meantime, this weekend brings two new comedies–one kinda sucks, but the other kinda doesn’t.

Soul Men
Directed by Malcolm D. Lee
Starring Bernie Mac, Samuel L. Jackson, Sharon Leal and Isaac Hayes
**
You know, it sucks that Bernie Mac is dead, but it sucks even harder that Soul Men is the poor guy’s last film. Well, okay, it’s not technically his final picture as he does have a supporting part in the Disney comedy Old Dogs, due out in ’09. In that movie though, he’s basically playing backup for stars Robin Williams and John Travolta. Soul Men, on the other hand, casts him front and center opposite Samuel L. Jackson, as Floyd Henderson, one-half of an R&B singing group that broke up decades ago. After getting their start as backup men for soul singer Marcus Hooks (John Legend), Floyd and his pal Louis Hinds (Jackson) formed their own act after Hooks went solo.

But infighting quickly tore them apart and they abandoned music to pursue other careers—Floyd as the owner of a car wash chain and Louis as a part-time mechanic. When it’s announced that Marcus has kicked the bucket, the pair are asked to dust off their costumes perform at a memorial concert organized by VH1. So Floyd and Louis pile into a convertible and set off on a cross-country road trip that gives them plenty of opportunities to dredge up old arguments and discover new secrets about each other.

Jackson and Mac were good friends in real life, so it’s understandable that they believed their chemistry would carry over to the screen. I’m sorry to say that’s not the case. Instead of playing off each other, the two actors play against each other—they take such delight in trading insults and abuse, it’s tough to know whether to laugh or call in a relationship counselor. Part of the problem is that the script doesn’t give them anything particularly funny to do beyond their incessant squabbling.

Screenwriters Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone assemble their patchwork narrative from a number of other, far more memorable road trip flicks and director Malcolm D. Lee shows little of the comic timing he demonstrated in underrated movies like Undercover Brother and Roll Bounce. Worst of all, for a movie about soul music, Soul Men has a tin ear when it comes to its soundtrack. When Mac and Jackson finally take the stage to sing, they belt out the most uninspired R&B numbers this side of All-4-One. It’s criminal that the music is this bland, particularly when the filmmakers tapped soul legend Isaac Hayes (who also died shortly after shooting his role) to appear as himself in a few scenes, as if giving his seal of approval to the proceedings. If you really want to see Jackson and Mac at their funniest, skip Soul Men and program a DVD double bill of The Original Kings of Comedy and Jackie Brown.

Verdict: Skip It

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Role Models
Directed by David Wain
Starring Paul Rudd, Seann William Scott, Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Bobb’e J. Thompson
***1/2

Based on the awful ad campaign Universal has mounted for Role Models, I wouldn’t blame you if you thought David Wain’s third directorial effort—and first mainstream flick—looked about as appealing as root canal surgery. But I’m here to tell you that, unlike Soul Men, this is a fuckin’ funny movie that finally gives Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott the breakout star turns they’ve been looking for their whole careers. A word of caution, though: don’t go in expecting a subversive satire like Wain’s brilliant debut Wet Hot American Summer. Role Models is pitched right down the middle, with a story that we’ve seen countless times before.

Scott and Rudd play two self-absorbed assholes who land in a spot of legal trouble and are sentenced to serve as mentors to a pair of oddball teens as part of a big-brother program. Wheeler (Scott) is assigned to Ronnie (Bobb’e J. Thompson), a pint-sized version of Raw-era Eddie Murphy, while Danny (Rudd) gets Augie (Christopher Mintz-Plasse or, as he’ll be known until the end of his days, McLovin), a socially awkward geek who escapes the real world by participating in a Dungeons & Dragons-style role-playing game. Would it surprise you to learn that the kids start off hating their court-appointed big brothers and vice versa but then find some common ground and become friends? If so, then you probably need to watch more movies.

Based on this thumbnail recap of the movie, it’s tempting to brand Wain as yet another hipster sell-out, who abandons his eccentric comic stylings the minute Hollywood backs up its money truck. But don’t be so quick to write him off; even though the film follows a very familiar formula, Wain and his co-writers Rudd, Ken Marino and Timothy Dowling put their own distinct stamp on the material. While none of the gags in Role Models are as delightfully weird as the humor on display in Wet Hot American Summer, The Ten (or the short-lived Comedy Central series Stella, which Wain wrote and acted in alongside Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter), there’s a cleverness to the dialogue here that’s immediately recognizable for fans of those earlier projects. Many of the film’s biggest laughs come from lines that are delivered in such an off-the-cuff manner, they don’t immediately register as hilarious. And then there’s the movie’s awesome, if a little overlong, climax-a loving homage to (and dead-on spoof of) the epic fantasy battles in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, played out in a public park with an army of teenage dorks and equally dorky adults dressed up in homemade costumes, fighting each other with foam swords.   You may have seen movies like Role Models before, but chances are you haven’t seen a big action setpiece quite like this one.

Verdict: See It

Arriving on disc this Election Day is a new Futurama adventure, a Civil Rights-themed ESPN hoops documentary, Kevin Costner’s daffy blockbuster WaterWorld and above-average indie thriller Transsiberian.

Futurama: Bender’s Game
Fox
$29.99
I hate to say it, but I’m starting to feel like Futurama should have remained one of those beloved shows that never received a second chance at life.  Like everyone else, I was thrilled when Fox announced they would be reviving the franchise for four direct-to-DVD movies.  So far though, the films just haven’t lived up to the series that birthed them.  The first two entries—Bender’s Big Score and The Beast With a Billion Backs—had moments of absolute comic brilliance, but ran out of gas halfway through their 90-minute runtimes.  Sadly, the third film Bender’s Game never even gets out of first gear.  Maybe it’s the fact that the bulk of the movie is an extended Lord of the Rings/Dungeons & Dragons parody that wouldn’t feel so outdated if it was actually…you know, funny.  The plot finds the crew of Planet Express trying to solve the planet’s energy crisis by destroying tyrannical corporate overlord Mom’s hold on the dark-matter market.  Meanwhile, Bender becomes a D&D addict and somehow gets everyone transported to a fantasy world where he can live out his role-playing dreams in three-dimensions.  A few funny gags aside, Bender’s Game feels like an idea the writers pulled out of the reject pile in the hopes that they’d be able to crack it during production.  To put it simply, they didn’t.

Extras: Even if the movie disappoints, Bender’s Game comes with all the great DVD features we’ve grown to expect from the Futurama guys.  There’s a commentary track from Matt Groening, David X. Cohen and the rest of the writing crew; a batch of deleted scenes and outtakes; a featurette about the influence of Dungeons & Dragons on the show and the movie and a trailer for the fourth and final direct-to-DVD film The Wild Green Yonder due out in 2009.

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Black Magic
ESPN
$19.95

Between the Michael Vick case, baseball’s steroid scandal and that NBA referee with the serious gambling problem, it’s been a long while since any positive news emerged from the wide world of sports.  Once upon a time though, athletes were often heralds of great change.  Think of Jackie Robinson taking the field alongside the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers or Billie Jean King defeating Bobby Riggs in straight sets in 1973.  The ESPN documentary Black Magic introduces viewers to another set of sports stars whose actions on-court helped shake things up off-court. Spanning five decades from the 1940s to the 1990s, the four-hour film offers an in-depth look at the role basketball programs at Historically Black Colleges and Universities played in the evolving Civil Rights movement.  Through interviews with many of the surviving players and coaches from that era as well as lots of rare archival footage, director Dan Klores finds a fresh angle on a period in history that’s already been chronicled extensively elsewhere.  In its best moments, Black Magic is an effective reminder that our nation’s social progress can be measured by the kinds of sports figures we root for.

Extras: Spread over two discs, the bonus features include extended interviews with many of the film’s subjects, red carpet footage from the film’s premiere at the Apollo Theater and special vignettes.

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WaterWorld: Extended Edition
Universal
$19.98

How many summer blockbusters can you name that open with the A-list hero peeing into a cup and then using some kind of futuristic strainer to transform it into pure H20 for his drinking pleasure?  None, and that’s why WaterWorld remains such a strange, unlikely production more than a decade after it swept into theaters on a wave of bad publicity and nightmarish behind-the-scenes stories.  Set in the very distant future, long after the polar ice caps have melted and covered the entire world in water (hence the title), the movie follows the exploits of The Mariner (Kevin Costner), a part-man/part-fish hybrid who pilots an awesome tricked-out ship.  I won’t mince words here: on a storytelling level, WaterWorld is laughably bad and borderline nonsensical.  That said, there’s something incredibly compelling about its apocalyptic vision of the future.  It helps that director Kevin Reynolds filmed so much of the movie on the open water, which was a budgetary and logistical nightmare for the crew but gives the movie a realism that you don’t often get in these blue-screen dominated days.  In fact, WaterWorld is mostly devoid of computer-generated effect.  The Mariner’s ship is entirely practical and most of the major action sequences are performed by real stuntmen.  Available on DVD for the first time, this two-disc set includes the original theatrical cut and an extended version that boasts an extra 40 minutes, making the film just shy of three hours long.  Most of the new material involves more loony rants from chief villain Dennis Hopper and a longer version of the movie’s silly finale.

Extras: Absolutely none, which is a real shame.  I can understand Costner and Reynolds not wanting to revisit this episode in their careers, but surely someone from the movie could have gone on record talking about the lengthy shoot and the myriad production problems the movie faced.  Even a ten-minute retrospective featurette would have been nice.  Give us something to justify the $20 price tag!

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Transsiberian
First Look
$28.98

Alfred Hitchcock would probably have gotten a kick out of this Strangers on a Train-style thriller, which follows a pair of American tourists (played by Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer) traveling from Beijing to Moscow via locomotive.  In the course of their week long journey, the two befriend secretive nomads Carlos (Eduardo Noriega) and Abby (Kate Mara), who may be carrying more than just souvenirs in their luggage.  (I’m talking about drugs, people!)  Also in the mix is Ben Kingsley as a Russian narcotics officer hiding his own dark secret.  Unlike a lot of recent thrillers, Transsiberian is genuinely surprising and suspenseful much of the time.  Director and co-writer Brad Anderson does a good job crafting the narrative so that you’re never quite sure what’s going to happen next.  The performances are strong across the board as well, with Noriega and Mortimer in particular doing some of their best work.  Transsiberian does careen off the rails in its final half-hour, when the story takes a turn that pushes it into generic action movie territory.  But up until that point, this is a solid thriller that’s well worth a rental.

Extras: Nada.

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Also On DVD

Sure The Dark Knight was a darn good Batman movie, but as far as I and many other Bat-freaks are concerned, the definitive portrayal of the Caped Crusader outside of the comic books remains Bruce Timm’s brilliant Batman animated series, which ran from 1992 to 1995 on Fox and then from 1997 to 1998 on the Kids WB! line-up.  Previously available in four individual box sets, the good folks at Warner Brothers have packaged the whole enchilada into one big box.  Batman: The Complete Animated Series (Warner Bros., $107.92) houses all 109 episodes from the show’s lengthy run, as well as the special features from the previous editions and an all-new retrospective documentary.  In other complete series news, Fraggle Rock: The Complete Series ($139.98) is a Gen-Xers dream—a box set of the awesome puppet show that every ’80s kid grew up watching religiously.  This 20-disc extravaganza boasts two-hours worth of behind-the-scenes featurettes and a nifty poster.  Buy it for your kids or the kid that still lives inside you.

Other TV on DVD releases this week include the British sci-fi serial Primeval: Volume One (BBC, $49.98), about a group of science geeks who pursue strange beasts transported to our time from the past and the future, and Reaper: Season One (Lionsgate, $39.98) which follows a retail wage slave who is becomes a reluctant demon hunter after learning his parents sold his soul to Satan when he was born.  And what better way to celebrate the Election Night than taking a break from obsessively monitoring poll results and wandering down memory lane with Comedy Central Salutes George W. Bush (Comedy Central, $14.98), a collection of the best Bush-bashing moments from such Comedy Central shows as That’s My Bush, South Park and Lil’ Bush.  Don’t let the door hit ya on your way out Dubya!

You can tell the holidays are almost here, because studios are already unleashing a wave of gift-list ready box sets.  Those damn dirty apes finally go Blu in the Planet of the Apes: 40-Year Evolution Blu-ray Collection (Fox, $159.98), a set of all five Apes flicks (sans the awful Tim Burton remake) re-mastered in beautiful Blu-ray with lots and lots of bonus goodies.  On a more serious note, classic movie lovers will be thrilled with The Gregory Peck Film Collection (Universal, $59.98), a seven disc set sporting such beloved titles as To Kill a Mockingbird and Cape Fear.

Finally, saving the best for last, the perennial holiday favorite A Christmas Story returns to disc via A Christmas Story: Ultimate Collector’s Edition (Warner Bros., $39.98).  Let’s start with the packaging, a collectable tin box that houses an apron, various Christmas-themed cookie cutter shapes and an illustrated book of recipes for such treats as Black-and-White Cookies and Old-Fashioned Meat Loaf.  Also mixed into this cookbook are bios of the film’s stars and production stills.  Oh and there’s also a two-disc DVD included in this elaborate confection as well.  The first disc contains a commentary featuring the film’s now-grown child star Peter Billingsley, while Disc 2 holds two featurettes, a making-of documentary and a trivia game.  Clearly, the studio ain’t lying when they called this the “Ultimate” edition.

This week, take a trip to the grindhouse without leaving your living room with Zombie Strippers and Hell Ride; learn about the time Bob Dylan discovered Jesus in the doc Bob Dylan’s Jesus Years; and celebrate 20 years of snark with Mystery Science Theater 3000: 20th Anniversary Edition.

Zombie Strippers
Sony
$24.96

Hell Ride
The Weinstein Company
$19.97

In an alternate universe, where the Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino double-feature Grindhouse was a big hit instead of a major belly-flop, Zombie Strippers and Hell Ride probably would have served as the line-up for Grindhouse 2.  Like Planet Terror and Death Proof, these movies are 21st century glosses on famous ’70s exploitation genres, namely the zombie flick and the biker picture.  Also like their predecessors, both films are mixed bags, offering some inspired moments amidst uneven screenplays
and awkward performances.

Zombie Strippers will probably find the bigger audience on DVD, if only because it stars ex-porn star Jenna Jameson as one of the titular pole dancers…which means she still gets to show off all her naughty bits for the camera, but doesn’t have to put any of them to use.  Would you really be surprised if I said that Jameson is a terrible actress?  Well, she is.  The good thing is that writer/director Jay Lee must have recognized that, because he makes her the first victim of his zombie rampage.  Clever guy that he is, Lee finds a way to keep Jameson around (and in a state of undress) following her demise so that her fans don’t switch off the DVD at the 30-minute mark.  The conceit of Zombie Strippers is that Jameson and her fellow strippers actually become better at their jobs after they’re transformed into flesh-eating monsters.  Their wild gyrations make the horny male patrons so hot and bothered, they willingly become zombie food.  It’s a funny idea that zombie movie godfather George Romero probably would have appreciated.  Unfortunately, Lee can’t come up with a good story to hang his premise on.  After getting off to a decent start, the movie settles into a rut that it never shakes itself out of.  While you could chalk this up to the perils of working on a low budget, that argument falls apart when you remember that Romero faced many of the same financial challenges on his zombie pictures and look how well those turned out.  No, the real reason Zombie Strippers fails is because Lee never got beyond the “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” stage of his screenplay.

Story is also the big thing missing from Hell Ride, the largely nonsensical tale of a biker gang that roars around on massive hogs fighting each other and rival bands of motorcycle enthusiasts.  Writer/director Larry Bishop also serves as the film’s star and it’s hilarious—not too mention really sad—to see this middle-aged son of Hollywood royalty (his dad is comedian Joey Bishop) act out his fantasies on someone else’s (in this case producer Quentin Tarantino’s) dime.  Bishop plays Pistolero, the grizzled leader of a pack that also includes Michael Madsen and Eric Balfour.  Pistolero is on a seemingly never-ending mission to find the killers of his girlfriend Cherokee Kissum, killed decades ago by another biker gang.  Now his quest finally seems to be nearing its end…provided he’s able to avoid death at the hands of the Six Six Six’s, led by former footballer Vinnie Jones.  Trust me, that makes the film sound much more comprehensible than it actually is.  But then plot really isn’t Bishop’s main focus; he’s more interested in getting his hands on as many nubile twenty-year-old biker gals as he possibly can.  The movie’s highlight (or, if you prefer, its nadir) is an impromptu threesome that finds three gals literally begging the craggy-faced Bishop to satisfy their needs.  Uh huh, sure Larry…you bet.  Hell Ride does offer some fun moments—particularly whenever crazy Dennis Hopper shows up to chew some scenery—but for my mental well-being, I kinda wish Bishop had never been given the opportunity to put his fantasy life onscreen.

Extras: Zombie Strippers arrives on DVD with a commentary track featuring Jameson and the film’s producer and director, as well as roughly 45 minutes of deleted and extended scenes and two making-of featurettes.  Hell Ride also sports a director yak track and five behind-the-scenes docs, profiling the movie’s many motorbikes and hot babes.

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Inside Bob Dylan’s Jesus Years: Busy Being Born…Again!
MVD
$14.95

Most movies about Bob Dylan (both documentaries and I’m Not There-style experimental adventures) tend to focus on the folk singer-to-rock-icon transformation he underwent in the early ’60s, stopping with his near-fatal brush with death in a 1966 motorcycle accident.  And while that period in his life is endlessly fascinating, the 30-year period that followed is also worthy of exploration.  Case in point: Dylan’s sudden conversion to Christianity in 1978, which stunned his fans and flummoxed music critics.  The singer/songwriter recorded three gospel albums during his roughly three-year Christian phase, beginning with 1978′s Slow Train Coming and concluding with 1981′s Shot of Love.  In addition, he went on an around-the-world tour where he was often confronted by jeering audiences—some of whom were the same listeners that cheered him when he made the controversial move from folk to rock.

It’s an extraordinary chapter in Dylan’s storied career and it deserves a better film than Bob Dylan’s Jesus Years, a meandering, mediocre documentary from filmmaker Joel Gilbert.  Blocked from speaking with Dylan himself—or from using any of his actual music—Gilbert instead draws the bulk of his material from his former pastor, music producer Jerry Wexler (who oversaw his gospel records) and an assortment of backup singers and musicians who played with him during that time.  This still could have yielded an informative movie…if the director had any idea what to ask his subjects.  But Gilbert proves a washout as an interviewer, often reading his questions directly off index cards while on-camera and never asking any follow-ups.  His library of B-roll footage is also embarrassingly limited—he re-uses the same five minutes of one live show over and over again because he simply doesn’t have anything else to cut away to.  I guess Gilbert deserves some credit for at least opening the door to this period of Dylan’s life—now another filmmaker needs to come along and do it better.

Extras: A fifteen-minute look at Dylan’s 1978 World Tour and a short featurette about an all-star performance he gave for imprisoned boxer Ruben “Hurricane” Carter in 1976.

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Mystery Science Theater 3000: 20th Anniversary Edition
Shout! Factory
$59.98

What’s more fun that talking back to the screen during bad movies?  Nothing!  And that’s exactly why Mystery Science Theater 3000 remains one of the greatest TV series ever broadcast.  During its decade-long run—first on a public-access station in Minneapolis then on Comedy Central and finally on the Sci Fi Channel—the crew of the intrepid crew of the Satellite Of Love ridiculed dozens and dozens of Z-grade movies from the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.  In fact, if the show were still on the air, it’s likely that Zombie Strippers and Hell Ride would be lampooned in the not-too-distant future.  Although the interstitial skits mixed into the episodes were never particularly great, the actual talking-back-to-the-screen part was always comedy gold.  At one point, the popularity of the show actually led to an MST3K feature film…but the result wasn’t quite as great as fans hoped.  Since the show went off the air in 1999, DVD sets have been coming out fairly regularly, but this 20th anniversary edition offers four titles that haven’t made their way to disc yet, including First Spaceship on Venus, Laserblast, Werewolf and Future War.  And if you need further convincing that this set is worth the $60 price tag, just take a gander at the bonus features below…

Extras: The highlight of this 20th anniversary release has to be the three-part, 90-minute documentary that explores the complete history of MST3K, from its humble public-access origins to its final years on cable.  Packed with revealing interviews and vintage behind-the-scenes footage, it’s almost as entertaining as an actual episode.  Also included is the MST3K Reunion Panel from this summer’s Comic Con, lobby cards and a small figurine of the show’s signature cranky critic, Crow T. Robot.

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Also on DVD

You’d think that the presence of Guy Pearce and Oscar winner Catherine Zeta-Jones would be enough to get a movie a sizeable theatrical release, but that wasn’t the case with Death Defying Acts (Genius Products, $19.97), which passed through a few art-houses last summer, but never crossed over into multiplexes.  Pearce stars as legendary illusionist Harry Houdini, who finds himself falling for a beautiful psychic played by the still ravishing Zeta-Jones.  But are the psychic’s feelings genuine or is she attempting to trick one of the 20th centuries leading tricksters?  Red (Magnolia, $26.98) is another film that only played a few theaters on its way to DVD, despite a powerhouse lead performance by reliable character actor Brian Cox, best known stateside for his role in the second X-Men movie.  Cox plays an aging small-town good ol’ boy, who goes all Death Wish on a trio of young morons after they make the mistake of killing his beloved pooch.  Although the movie gets more than a little improbable in the final act, Cox is great throughout—Hollywood, cast him in more stuff please!

Bypassing theaters completely is Tinker Bell (Disney, $29.99), a direct-to-DVD CGI cartoon feature starring Peter Pan’s faithful fairy sidekick.  Perhaps a better title would have been Tinker Bell Begins as the movie takes place in the days before Tink met Pete, when she was just another resident of Pixie Hollow.  The vocal cast includes Mae Whitman as Tinkerbell, along with Raven-Symoné, America Ferrera, Lucy Liu and Anjelica Huston and the DVD includes such kid-friendly bonus features as DVD-Rom games and a music video by Disney Channel singer Serena Gomez.  Look for more Tinker Bell adventures to follow next year.

In documentary news, Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens (Warner Bros., $19.98) provides a comprehensive look at the life of the famed photographer, best known for her shots of celebrities like John Lennon and a pregnant Demi Moore.  Wonder if Miley Cyrus agreed to talk about her controversial photo shoot as well?  Meanwhile, The Vampire Princess (Infinity, $14.98) traces the roots of the Dracula legend not to Romanian tyrant Vlad the Impaler but a Czech princess named Eleonore von Schwarzenberg, who was supposedly Bram Stoker’s primary influence in penning his now-classic novel.

Turning to TV, fans of the cancelled sci-fi series The 4400 will never get the closure they deserve—USA axed the show before the writers had a chance to tie up all the loose ends—but at least all four seasons, plus the miniseries that started it all can be found in one place with The 4400: The Complete Series (CBS, $99.98).  This hefty box set also includes commentary tracks, deleted scenes and new featurettes, which hopefully spill the details on where the series would have gone if it had been allowed to continue.  Finally, Sony continues to re-issue complete runs of classic TV shows in handy box sets.  The studio’s newest batch of titles include ’70s staples Good Times: The Complete Series and
Sanford and Son: The Complete Series, as well as the brilliant ’90s sitcom NewsRadio: The Complete Series ($59.95 each).  All of the extras released on previous editions are intact here—the main benefit of these all-in-one sets is being able to save on shelf space, which is a pretty good bonus feature if you ask me.

Did the dingoes eat Angelina Jolie’s baby? Find out in Clint Eastwood’s period mystery Changeling.

Changeling
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Starring Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Jeffrey Donovan, Jason Butler Harner
***

Has the LAPD ever been depicted positively in a movie? I only ask because it seems like Hollywood takes pleasure in regularly treating Los Angeles’ finest as a motley crew of liars, screw-ups and psychos. Even when the cops are the ostensible heroes of the picture—think Lethal Weapon or Bad Boys—they always manage to rack up hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage in the process of collaring the bad guys. Apparently, the LAPD has always been the bane of the city’s existence because police corruption plays a role in almost every period movie made about Los Angeles, from Chinatown to L.A. Confidential.

Clint Eastwood’s latest directorial effort—his 28th if you can believe that—Changeling, continues that trend. Set in the late 1920s, the film recounts the incredible true story of Christine Collins (played here by Angelina Jolie, in a performance that seems like a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination), a single mother who returned home from work one afternoon to discover her young son Walter missing from the small bungalow they shared. Naturally she turns to the police, but from the beginning they prove to be singularly unhelpful in locating her child. Months pass without any progress in the case until news arrives that boy fitting Walter’s description has been located in the Midwest. He’s immediately put on a train bound for Los Angeles and his mother counts the hours, minutes and seconds until her son is back in her arms. With reporters in tow, the beleaguered police force—already the subject of harsh press criticism for their rampant corruption—escort Christine to the train station for a joyous and publicity-friendly reunion. There’s only one problem: the boy that steps off the train isn’t Walter Collins.

That’s the irresistible hook that sets up the rest of Eastwood’s ambitious two-hour plus drama. Despite Christine’s repeated claims that the police have returned the wrong child, the department turns a deaf ear to her protests, even going as far as to lock her away in a mental institution until she comes around to their way of thinking. The only person who believes her is Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich), a crusading priest and activist who has made it his mission to bring the LAPD’s many misdeeds to light. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Christine or her new benefactor, a horrific crime scene is discovered on a remote farm to the north of the city. It appears that the property’s owner, a recluse named Gordon Northcott (Jason Butler Harner), has been kidnapping and killing little boys, burying their remains in a mass grave. Could Walter have been one of his victims? And if he was, would Christine be happier believing that he was still out there somewhere, waiting to be found?

Changeling was written by geek icon J. Michael Straczynski, who created the cult sci-fi series Babylon 5 and has penned such comics as Rising Stars and The Amazing Spider-Man. This is his first feature film script to make it to the big screen, not to mention the only one that doesn’t involve aliens or super-powered heroes in colorful spandex. But the same elements that distinguish his work in those arenas are apparent here as well, most notably his sure hand at constructing a sprawling narrative that covers a lot of ground with few wasted moments. As each new turn in this mystery is revealed, the film always seems on the verge of spiraling out of control, but Straczynski deftly keeps the various balls in the air.

He’s helped in that department by the films director and star, who also have little patience for distractions. One of the least showy filmmakers in Hollywood, Eastwood’s preference for clean, uncluttered frames is an appropriate counterpoint to the busy plot. As for Jolie, she repeatedly cuts to the emotional heart of every scene. No doubt drawing on her own experiences as a mother, she convincingly shows us how Christine’s desperation leaves her susceptible to the cops’ suggestions that she’s the one who has made a mistake, but then gives her the ferocity necessary to take her case all the way to the city council.

If I had to rank Changeling against the films Eastwood’s recent output, I’d put it ahead of Mystic River and Flags of Our Fathers, but behind Letters of Iwo Jima and Million Dollar Baby. Even though the movie keeps us involved throughout its lengthy runtime, it would have benefited from some judicious trimming in the final act, which contains more endings than the last Lord of the Rings flick. Straczynski’s normally reliable ear for dialogue also fails him at times, resulting in some laughably clunky line readings. Nevertheless, Changeling succeeds as both a compelling mystery and a period piece that still feels relevant today. Just don’t expect it to be a favorite amongst the LAPD.

Verdict: See It

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Also Opening in Limited Release

Fear(s) of the Dark
***1/2
This freaky anthology of French horror cartoons is about as far away from Disney as you can get. Six different artists and illustrators contributed short animated films to the project and it goes without saying that some are better than others. The standouts include the Kafkaesque tale of a sexually repressed entomologist who begins dating a woman with a dark (and possibly bug-related) secret and a spooky story about a nocturnal creature terrorizing a small village. Less effective is an anime-style hallucination involving a young girl and a mad scientist and the random bits of abstract animation that act as unnecessary chapter breaks. Still, the final cartoon alone—a brilliant haunted house adventure told with virtually no dialogue—makes Fear(s) of the Dark a must-see for any horror fan.
Verdict: See It

Let the Right One In
***
And after those horror fans are done with Fear(s) of the Dark they should make a beeline for Let the Right One In, an inventive, if uneven, spin on the vampire genre, which is suddenly back in vogue following HBO’s True Blood and the upcoming Twilight. Set in Sweden, the film follows the strange friendship that develops between a picked-upon boy and his next-door neighbor—a withdrawn girl with a serious blood addiction. While the two young actors deliver strong star turns, many of the supporting performances (particularly the bullies who constantly torment our hero) are downright amateurish, to the point where they threaten to completely derail the film’s low-key realism. But director Tomas Alfredson saves the day with a terrific ending that contains the best decapitation I’ve seen since Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof.
Verdict: See It

Ben X
***
Bullying also plays a major role in Ben X, a Belgian film about a teenager with Asperger’s Syndrome (a form of autism) who escapes from his ordinary life through one of those massively mutliplayer online fantasy games.  In the virtual world, he’s a heroic swordsman, quick with a blade and smooth with the ladies…particularly a lady named Scarlite, who is his frequent companion on his various quests.  In reality though, Ben is ignored or actively despised by most of his peers, who take great pleasure in his repeated humiliations at the hands of three schoolyard punks.  It’s only a matter of time until the poor kid hurts himself or someone else and flash-forwards that are peppered throughout the movie suggest we’re in store for a major tragedy.  But Ben X never quite goes where you expect it to; writer/director Nic Balthazar has several surprises up his sleeve, although he outsmarts himself in the end with a climactic scene that doesn’t really make logical sense.  Still, full credit to him for working MMOG footage into the movie in such a creative, seamless manner.   It’s fair to say that more than a few hardcore gamers will see elements of their personality reflected in the title character.
Verdict: See It

Before you see the new James Bond flick, check out 007′s previous adventures; Beastie Boy-turned-director Adam Yauch captures great b-ball action in Gunnin’ for that #1 Spot; Ed Norton gets  in touch with his inner green monster The Incredible Hulk; and the landmark indie film Kiss of the Spider Woman finally gets a DVD release.

Bond on DVD

Daniel Craig renews his license to kill in the 22nd James Bond feature Quantum of Solace, which blasts its way into theaters on November 14.  But if you need your 007 fix before then, the good folks at MGM, Fox and Sony’s DVD divisions have got you covered.  Completists, of course, will want to make a beeline for The James Bond Ultimate Collector’s Set (MGM, $290).  This 42-disc behemoth packages remastered versions of all 21 of the super-spy’s previous adventures—plus hours and hours of bonus features ranging from commentary tracks and vintage featurettes to retrospective documentaries and trailers—in one ginormous box.

But one DVD you won’t find there is Casino Royale: Collector’s Edition (MGM, $20).  Not to be confused with the 2006 film that introduced Craig to the franchise, this 1967 curiosity was intended as a spoof of the Bond pictures, but wound up becoming one of the most expensive and disastrous productions in movie history.  Surviving cast and crewmembers dish about the many on-set battles in an entertaining 40-minute making-of documentary, which is the main bonus feature on the single-disc release. (MIA from this version, sadly, is the hour-long live TV adaptation of Casino Royale that aired on American TV in the late ’50s that was included on the first DVD edition of the ’67 Royale.)

The Craig version of Casino Royale also scores an extras-laden Collector’s Edition (Sony, $30) this month; available in both standard and Blu-ray versions, the 3-disc set comes with deleted and extended scenes and eight documentaries, the best of which focus on Bond’s enigmatic creator Ian Fleming and the long road Casino Royale traveled to a faithful screen adaptation.

Speaking of Blu-ray, MGM and Fox are reissuing six classic Bond flicks in the next-gen format as single editions ($35 each) or in two 3-pack collections ($90 each).  Among the titles in this first-wave rollout are Live and Let Die, From Russia With Love, Die Another Day and the one that started it all, Dr. No. There’s no doubt about it—whether in theaters or at home, James Bond is as big today as he was when hen first hit screens over 40 years ago.

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Gunnin’ for that #1 Spot
Oscillscope
$29.99

Beastie Boy Adam Yauch proves he’s got game with this lively basketball documentary about the 2006 Elite 24 Hoops Classic, which brought together America’s top 24 high-school players for one memorable game at Harlem’s legendary Rucker Park.  The first half of the movie profiles eight of the future Kobe’s and LeBron’s that make up this squad, including then Lake Oswego High School star Kevin Love (now playing center with the Minnesota Timberwolves) and St. Mary’s High School-turned-Portland Trail Blazers guard Jerryd Bayless, as they show off their on-court skills in practice while pondering their NBA futures.

Although this section of the film gets a little repetitive, when the game finally begins, Gunnin’ takes off like a bullet, fueled by a great soundtrack and SportsCenter-ready hoops action.  Making great use of such cinematic tricks as slow-mo, instant replays and how’d-they-get-that? camera angles, Yauch manages to pull even basketball novices into the game.  A surprise flop in theaters this past summer (chalk that up to the perils of being released by a still-young distribution company, which couldn’t get the movie on enough screens to make much of a box-office dent), the film should do strong business on DVD, where young b-ballers can check it out in between marathon NBA Live tourneys.

Extras: The two-disc edition comes with a commentary track from Yauch, plus extended gameplay, deleted scenes and video diaries recorded by the players during their time in the Big Apple.  There’s also hilarious footage of the director playing two-on-two opposite one his much younger subjects.  As if that’s not enough, Gunnin’ boasts all-green packaging that’s completely recyclable.  So do something good for the planet and pick up this DVD.

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The Incredible Hulk
Universal
$34.98

Much as I enjoyed Ang Lee’s interpretation of Marvel Comics’ resident big green giant in his much-maligned 2003 blockbuster, I can’t really blame Universal for wanting to do a hard reset for the follow-up film.  After all, with its ultra-dark, ultra-weird father/son melodrama, the first Hulk wasn’t exactly the kind of franchise-starter the studio was obviously hoping for.  Rather than take a risk on another wild card like Lee, Universal entrusted Hulk 2.0 to the solidly mainstream sensibilities of Louis Leterrier, director of lively action flicks like Transporter 2 and Unleashed.  Ed Norton was subsequently brought in to replace Eric Bana and Tim Roth landed the role of the Abomination, an orange version of the Hulk who has all of his strength and speed, but none of his navel-gazing guilt.  The result is more or less what Universal was looking for: a more conventional–but far less interesting–summer movie to placate the masses left confused and angry by Lee’s movie.  The irony is that the movie wound up besting its predecessor by only a measly $2 million at the box office (the 2003 film grossed $132 million, this one banked $124), suggesting that moviegoers just aren’t that into the Hulk no matter who is behind the camera.

Extras: Prior to the film’s release in June, rumors flew that the studio insisted that Leterrier and Norton’s pare their preferred nearly three-hour cut down to a more multiplex-friendly two hours.  (Norton allegedly balked at doing any press to support the film following the studio’s decision, although he wound up walking the red carpet anyway.)  While this DVD doesn’t house an extended cut–expect to see that turn up on disc in a year or so depending on how well this version sells–it does contain about 40 minutes worth of deleted scenes that contain a major subplot dropped from the theatrical cut.  I’m not sure that the excised material redeems the movie, but it does smooth out some of the plot’s rougher edges.  Despite my overall negative feelings about this verision of the Hulk, I’d be willing to check out the longer version to see if editing room tinkering was the reason it fell so flat for me the first time around.  Also included here are several making-of featurettes, a commentary track from Leterrier and Roth and a digital copy of the film for your iPod.  Not included in the set, but a pretty good bonus feature too (provided you’ve got the cash to spare) is The Incredible Hulk: The Complete Series (Universal, $149.98), a box set containing all five seasons of the old Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno show.

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Kiss of the Spider Woman
City Lights
$34.98

Growing up, I remember seeing the VHS box (gee…remember those?) for Kiss of the Spider Woman on the shelf at my local video store and wondering whether it was some kind of Spider-Man spin-off.  I never rented it to find out for certain, but now that I’ve finally seen the film on its new two-disc DVD, I can confirm that it has absolutely nothing to do with our favorite friendly neighborhood wall-crawler.  Instead, this 1985 film, which was the first independently-financed feature to receive an Oscar nod for Best Picture, follows the relationship of two prisoners sharing a tiny cell in a Latin American jail.  Valentin (the late Raul Julia in his breakthrough performance) is a journalist locked up for his involvement with a rebel political group, while Luis (William Hurt, who won an Oscar for this role) is a gay man arrested for attempting to bed a minor.  Initially wary of each other, Valentin and Luis eventually start to share their life stories and develop a genuine friendship.  Then halfway through the film, we learn something about one of them that completely changes our understanding of the story and transforms the film from a chamber-room drama to a low-key political thriller.  A landmark film at the time of its release for its honest, emotional portrayal of a gay character, Kiss of the Spider Woman holds up quite nicely today.  Hurt’s performance is a little too theatrical at times, but Julia is fantastic and Leonard Schrader’s script is filled with rich monologues that give both actors the chance to strut their stuff.  Oh and in case you’re still curious about the identity of the titular Spider Woman, she’s a character in an old movie that Luis re-enacts for Valentin.  Another childhood mystery solved!

Extras: In lieu of a commentary track, the first disc offers a subtitled trivia track that accompanies the feature.  Disc 2 houses a feature-length retrospective documentary about the film’s production featuring new interviews with the cast and crew, as well as shorter featurettes that explore the stage musical and the changes the story went during its journey from the page to the screen.

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Also on DVD

Released in an otherwise superhero-heavy summer, the low-budget horror movie The Strangers (Universal, $29.98) still managed to scare up more than $50 million at the box office.  Credit its success to its creepy-as-hell trailer, which freaked me out each time I saw it.  The movie itself has some genuinely scary moments, but runs out of steam after the first half-hour.  The DVD comes with both a theatrical and unrated cut as well as deleted scenes and a making-of featurette.  Once on the fast track to stardom, Paul Walker is now headlining direct-to-DVD fare like The Lazarus Project (Sony, $24.96), in which the once and future Fast and the Furious star (the fourth installment in that franchise comes out next summer, re-teaming Walker and Vin Diesel) plays a devoted husband and father who gets locked up after foolishly joining his criminal brother for a failed robbery.  Sentenced to die, Walker instead finds himself entering a parallel universe where he leads an entirely different life as a janitor in an asylum.  So which reality is the “real” reality?  If you actually make it to the end of the movie, let me know.

Just in time for Kevin Smith’s latest film, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, here comes Sold Out: A Threevning with Kevin Smith (Genius Products, $19.98) the third entry in an ongoing DVD-only franchise that collects several of Smith’s infamous post-screening Q&A’s at colleges and special film events around the country.  It’s not uncommon for these sessions to last all night as Smith brings out numerous special guests and mouths off about everyone from Tim Burton to his boy Ben Affleck. If you’ve been a little disappointed by Eric Cartman’s antics in South Park‘s current season, you can revisit several classic Cartman-themed episodes in the new anthology The Cult of Cartman: Revelations (Comedy Central, $26.98). Among the installments included on this two-disc set are the brilliant Scott Tenorman Must Die and Cartoon Wars Parts 1 and 2 as well as the not so brilliant Up the Down Steroid. Finally, Lionsgate continues their special Meridian Collection with the 2002 Spanish drama Mondays in the Sun (Lionsgate, $29.98) starring Javier Bardem as the leader of a small group of unemployed shipyard workers who drown their sorrows day in and day out in a local bar.  Bardem and director Fernando Leon de Aranoa contibute a commentary track and deleted scenes and a making-of featurette round out the disc.

Josh Brolin and Oliver Stone lampoon the Decider in Chief in W.; Mark Wahlberg is a major pain in Max Payne; and Queen Latifah teaches Dakota Fanning about life, love and honey in The Secret Life of Bees.

W.
Directed by Oliver Stone
Starring Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Banks, James Cromwell, Richard Dreyfuss, Thandie Newton.
**1/2

There’s no way to sugarcoat this: Oliver Stone’s pre-Election Day biopic of current White House resident George W. Bush is a mess.  But here’s the good news—W. is actually a fascinating mess that offers tantalizing glimpses of the movie it might have been.  The film also benefits from a live-wire star turn from Josh Brolin, who captures George W. Bush’s voice and mannerisms so perfectly, I honestly thought I was
watching the real deal at times.

The central problem with W. is that Stone and his screenwriter Stanley Weiser are making two different films at the same time.  One is a straightforward biopic about the screw-up son of a prominent politician, who repeatedly fails upwards until he ends up in the highest office in the land.  The other is an absurdist comedy that depicts how this black sheep and his crack squad of cronies led the country they publicly claim to love into an ugly war on foreign soil.  Guess which one is more entertaining?  (Hint: it’s the one that doesn’t play like Johnny Cash Walks the Line to the White House.)

I have to admit that it’s fun at first to see Dubya’s wayward years as a frat boy, failed oil tycoon and all-around drunken slob dramatized onscreen.  But it quickly becomes clear that Stone’s only psychological insight into this period in his life is that Bush suffered from major daddy issues.  Again and again, we watch Junior seethe while Poppa Bush (played by James Cromwell) lavish affection on his other children, reserving only modest praise for his eldest.  While this may in fact be the “Rosebud” that explains Bush’s personality, it doesn’t change the fact that Stone and Weiser rely on it too heavily as a dramatic crutch to prop up the directionless narrative.

W. is on firmer ground when it moves the action to the White House’s war room during the days leading up to America’s invasion of Iraq.  Instead of going for a tense inside-the-Oval-Office recreation a la 13 Days, Stone makes the brilliant decision to mine this territory for laughs by incorporating now-famous catchphrases (“Axis of Evil,” “I’m the decider” and so forth) into the cabinet’s private conversations and using hindsight to poke fun at just how wrongheaded their initial predictions were.  Is it a bit like shooting fish in a barrel?  Sure, but given the administration’s continued arrogance about their mistakes and missteps in the run-up to the war, it’s hard to feel guilty for seeing their incompetence played as broad comedy.  The White House sequences are so funny and timely, it’s a shame that Stone didn’t make them the focal point of the movie.  Is it possible that the once-notorious firebrand behind Natural Born Killers and The Doors is softening in his middle age?

Even if the overall film is deeply uneven, Brolin’s terrific performance is reason enough to check out W. He’s able to pull off the tricky task of depicting Bush’s numerous foibles while also humanizing the guy so that he doesn’t come across as a walking parody.  Brolin is backed by a strong supporting cast that includes Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney, Toby Jones as Karl Rove, Jeffrey Wright as Colin Powell and, best of all, Thandie Newton whose impersonation of Condoleezza Rice is almost as good as Brolin’s Bush or Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin.  (Funnily enough, Brolin is on deck to host Saturday Night Live this weekend.  Here’s hoping the writers over at Studio 8H were smart enough to rope in Newton and Fey for surprise in-character cameos.)  It’s just a shame that Stone isn’t working on the same level as his cast.  If he were, W. may have achieved the greatness that continues to elude the real-life W.

Verdict: See It

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Max Payne
Directed by John Moore
Starring Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Beau Bridges, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges.
*

“Enough of this shit,” a random dude with a gun shouts somewhere the middle of Max Payne, a big-screen version of the popular PC action game.  All I can say is: right on random dude!  Even by the low standards set by such awful video game based movies as Doom, Silent Hill and Street Fighter, Max Payne is a turd of epic proportions.

The film casts Mark Wahlberg as the title character, a New York City cop still haunted by the violent deaths of his wife and infant child.  And that’s pretty much the only part of the film’s nonsensical plot that I understand well enough to recap.  The bulk of the picture consists of a pissed-off Payne wandering around the snow covered streets of Toronto (doubling for Manhattan) in pursuit of various bad guys as well as a deadly drug that gives its users enhanced strength and bizarre hallucinations of otherworldly demons.  He sometimes fights in two-player mode alongside former That ’70s Show star Mila Kunis, playing a Russian mob queen out to avenge her recently murdered sister.

Obviously, the story is never the main attraction in a movie like Max Payne, but the movie also fails as a mindless action flick.  Simply put, the director John Moore has no conception of how to choreograph and shoot the movie’s big set-pieces, instead relying on tired Matrix-esque slow-motion shots and lots of random bursts of gunfire to do the heavy lifting for him.  Don’t look to the movie’s star to save the day either.  As bad as Wahlberg was in The Happening earlier this year, he’s even worse here, forcing his mouth into a perpetual scowl and squinting constantly in a desperate effort to come across like a badass.  Or maybe he’s just pissed off that he let his entourage talk him into appearing in this dud.  Even Vincent Chase was smart enough to turn down Matterhorn.  What’s Wahlberg’s excuse?

Verdict: Skip It

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The Secret Life of Bees
Directed by Gina-Prince Bythewood
Starring Dakota Fanning, Queen Latifah, Jennifer Hudson, Sophie Okonedo, Alicia Keys.
**

I never read Sue Monk Kidd’s best-selling novel The Secret Life of Bees, so I can’t vouch for how faithful writer/director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s big-screen adaptation is.  But I can say that if the book is as sickly sweet as the movie version, I’m not going to be adding it to my Amazon shopping cart anytime soon.  Former child actress turned awkward 14-year-old Dakota Fanning stars as Lily, a young girl living with her cruel father (Paul Bettany) in the rural South in the early 1960s.  Ever since her mother’s death many years ago, Lily has struggled to find someone to replace the woman she never got the chance to know.  The person she turns to for comfort most often is her maid Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson).  But when Rosaleen is beaten for daring to register to vote, Lily decides it’s time to get the hell out of Dodge.  The duo hit the road and eventually find their way to a Pepto-Bismol colored house inhabited by the honey-making Boatwright sisters.  The eldest August (Queen Latifah) runs the family business and spends much of her time amongst the many beehives in the backyard.  Middle child June (Alicia Keys) teaches music, but her main profession seems to be turning down marriage proposals from her long-suffering boyfriend Neil (Nate Parker).  Meanwhile, the youngest Boatwright, May (Sophie Okonedo) continues to mourn the long-ago loss of her twin sister by running outside to build a miniature version of Jerusalem’s famed wailing wall.

Look, there’s little doubt in my mind that everyone involved in The Secret Life of Bees set out to make an uplifting, inoffensive three-hankie weepie in the tradition of The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and Steel Magnolias.  But I wonder if any of them realize that, at the end of the day, this is yet another movie where a white character is emotionally and spiritually healed thanks to the timely intervention of a Magical Negro (or, in this case, three Magical Negros).  I assumed that outdated stereotype had been put to rest after the awful Will Smith/Matt Damon snoozefest The Legend of Baggar Vance, but The Secret Life of Bees unfortunately pulls it out of mothballs one more time.  The cast does the best they can with the material they’ve been given (except for Keys, who seems to think she’s still acting in Smokin’ Aces), but they’re fighting an uphill battle against a narrative with no real dramatic tension and a director who can’t figure out how to make the story relevant to contemporary audiences.  The movie just lies there onscreen, drowning in its own sticky syrup.

Verdict: Skip It

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Also Opening in Limited Release

What Just Happened
Directed by Barry Levinson
Starring Robert De Niro, Robin Wright Penn, Sean Penn, Catherine Keener, Kristen Stewart.
**1/2

The majority of moviegoers have shown a profound disinterest in forking over good money to watch Hollywood poke fun at itself.  Still, there is a segment of the viewing public (myself included) that shows up for any inside-baseball skewering of the film industry, whether it’s good stuff like Entourage or The Player or crap like Burn Hollywood Burn.  Those same folks will probably feel obligated to check out What Just Happened, a moderately funny, but largely forgettable adaptation of movie producer Art Linson’s bestselling tell-all about his years in La-La Land.  Robert De Niro plays Linson’s fictional stand-in Ben, a big-time money man currently overseeing two troubled productions.  The first is an existential action film starring Sean Penn (who plays himself) that’s being directed by a bad boy European filmmaker and the other is a big-budget blockbuster starring Bruce Willis (also playing himself) who shows up for work overweight and sporting a ridiculous beard.  As if that’s not enough, Ben is also trying to mend fences with his second ex-wife (Robin Wright Penn) as well as his rebellious teenage daughter from his first marriage (Kristin Stewart).  Shooting the action with a shaky handheld camera, director Barry Levinson tries to give the movie a sense of urgency, but can’t hide the fact that he’s re-treading ground that has already been covered in other, much funnier Hollywood satires.  Interestingly though, What Just Happened does feature De Niro’s most engaging star turn in quite some time.  I had written the guy off after the one-two punch of Stardust and Righteous Kill, but this film proves he’s still capable of more than perfunctory, phoned-in performances.  Maybe next time his effort will be in service of a better movie. Verdict: Rent It

Good Dick
Directed by Marianna Palka
Starring Marianna Palka, Jason Ritter, Martin Starr.
*1/2

All of the most annoying elements of independent cinema are on full display in Good Dick, a painfully awkward attempt at…well, I’m not sure what exactly.  Writer/director/actress Marianna Palka seems to think she’s making an offbeat comedy in the vein of Harold and Maude, but doesn’t even come close to hitting the mark.  As in that ’70s classic, Good Dick depicts an unlikely romance between two eccentric oddballs, a socially awkward video store clerk  (Jason Ritter) and a reclusive shut-in (Palka) with a serious porn addiction.  Even though she spurns his advances at first, Ritter refuses to take the hint and bullies his way into her life.  Instead of calling the cops and getting his ass tossed in jail, Palka inexplicably strikes up a friendship with Ritter that may or may not flower into something like love.  Hilarity and emotional healing is supposed to ensue, but the movie only gets more unbelievable as it goes along, climaxing in an out-of-left-field revelation about Palka’s childhood that completely upends the film’s serio-comic tone.  After a half-hour spent in the company of these annoying, unlikable characters, I almost wished that Max Payne would show up and put them out of their misery. Verdict: Skip It

On the eve of the premiere of his new Comedy Central series Chocolate News (Wednesdays at 10:30pm) funnyman David Alan Grier speaks to GIANT about giving the mainstream media a black eye.

His Inspiration for Chocolate News
“The conceit is that we tackle every topic that the mainstream press is afraid to bring you.  It’s very Bill O’Reilly…if he were black and much cooler.”

Where He Gets His News
“The first thing I do every morning is read the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.  All you have to do is read real news-it’s more absurd than our show.”

How to Make Obama Funny
“I love Barack Obama, I’m going to vote for him.  But there are times when, as a black man, I wish he were a little more black.”

If Obama Wins the Election…
“If he’s in office, he’s like any other president and you say whatever the fuck you want about him.  It is on and poppin’-you’re President of the United States and you have to be able to take it.”

What Won’t He Do
“Jokes about my mother!  That would be terrible because she would kill me.  [Laughs] I’m not going out to offend you, but a part of me thinks that if I do comedy and no one’s offended than maybe I’m not doing my job.  I want to make you talk about the show-that’s my goal.”

Sneak Sketch Preview
“We just wrote a sketch where the federal N-Word Commission has finally come up with a settlement in terms of the use of the N word.  It brokers a deal to allow white people to use this word in addition to a certain number of epithets black people are allowed to use.”

Three years have passed since Dave Chappelle abandoned his brilliant series Chappelle’s Show at the height of its popularity.  Although viewers still feel his absence from the airwaves, the comedian’s former employer Comedy Central has particularly suffered, struggling to fill the void left by one of its brightest stars.

In order to bring some quality sketch comedy back to its prime-time line-up, the network has enlisted the services of David Alan Grier, a founding member of the groundbreaking Fox sketch series In Living Color.  Grier’s brainchild is Chocolate News, a Daily Show-style parody of TV news magazines such as 20/20 and Dateline.  He plays the pompous host as well as many of the characters that pop up in the ridiculous “investigative reports” that pepper the program.  An early version of the show’s first episode contained skits about childhood steroid abuse, a pair of so-called “biracial conjoined fraternal twins” and a blinged-out gangsta rapper named Fat Man, who records a series of booty-shaking PSAs directed at the nation’s youth.

If this all sounds a little lame, that’s because it kind of is.  Chappelle’s Show had its fair share of disappointing sketches, but the writers always tried to push the envelope of what you could do and say on television, just like In Living Color did back in the day.  In what we’ve seen of Chocolate News so far, all of the targets are safe and obvious and for ever gag that connects (Fat Man’s rap about the No Child Left Behind bill is pretty damn funny), at least two or three land with a thud.  Grier’s a smart guy, so it’s too soon to write off his show completely, but he needs to take some risks if he’s going to turn Chocolate News into must-see TV.

This week, Indiana Jones returns for the fourth–and final?–time; Mena Suvari gets in a bad car accident in Stuck; a new Alfred Hitchcock box set will dazzle movie buffs; and Terrence Malick’s The New World gets an extra thirty minutes.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Paramount
$39.99 Standard/Blu-ray

Even though it grossed over $300 million at the box office (making it the third highest grossing movie of ’08, behind The Dark Knight and Iron Man), it’s gotten hard to find anyone who is actually willing to admit that they liked the fourth Indiana Jones movie.  Hell, the dudes over at South Park just offered up their own scathing critique on a recent episode, depicting franchise masterminds Steven Spielberg and George Lucas raping their leading man over and over again.

Now I ask you: does Kingdom of the Crystal Skull deserve that kind of hatred?  No, of course not.  No movie does…well, except maybe Jumper.  And Life is Beautiful.  And maybe Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla.  But Crystal Skull really isn’t that bad.  Sure, its not Raiders of the Lost Ark, but let’s be completely honest here—neither are Temple of Doom or Last Crusade.  The truth of the matter is that the series grew increasingly fantastical as it went along and Crystal Skull carries the fantasy one step further.  Director Steven Spielberg makes that clear right up front when he has Indy survive a nuclear blast by ducking into a lead-lined refrigerator that’s blown dozens of miles at an insanely high speed.  The archeologist’s adventure only gets more unlikely from there, climaxing in a controversial close encounter with the third kind.  But the cartoonish action and those pesky aliens (excuse me, “interdimensional beings”) weren’t the elements that hurt KOTCS for me; I was more disappointed by the movie’s flabby pacing and lack of emotional stakes for its hero.  Still, I’d be lying if I said that it wasn’t a thrill to see Harrison Ford crack that whip one more time.  As I said in my original review back in May, this wasn’t a movie that needed to be made, but it has been made and it doesn’t suck.  And at the end of the day, that’s the only thing that matters.

Extras: Disc 1 offers two pre-production documentaries, which explore the long road the fourth Indiana Jones movie took toward reaching the big screen.  (Learn that Shia LaBeouf’s character was originally a girl and that one of the early titles was Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men.  Learn also that Spielberg blames Lucas for a lot of the film’s more hotly debated elements, most notably the aliens.  Gee, defensive much Steve?)  The second disc, meanwhile, sports a 90-minute look at the film’s production, giving us a behind-the-scenes look at everything from the opening sequence at Area 51 to the joyous wedding scene that closes the picture.  Additional featurettes examine the post-production process, the visual effects and the tie-in video game Lego Indiana Jones.

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Stuck
Image
$27.98 Standard/$35.98 Blu-ray

Here’s a doozy of a movie idea for ya: Mena Suvari plays a nursing home worker on the verge of getting a big promotion.  Driving home under the influence following a late-night celebration, she hits a homeless guy (Stephen Rea) who goes through her windshield and gets stuck there, with jagged pieces of glass puncturing various body parts.  Rather than drive the poor guy to the nearest hospital, Suvari heads straight home and hides the car in her garage, hoping he’ll just die already.  But he doesn’t and she’s forced to resort to drastic measures to keep her crime from being discovered.

Sounds too good to be true, right?  Well, believe it or not, Stuck is supposedly based on a true story, although the details have obviously been changed to protect the innocent and raise the dramatic stakes.  Director Stuart Gordon is an expert at finding dark comedy in horrific situations (see his 1985 cult classic Re-Animator for proof) and the surprising thing about Stuck is how funny it is, particularly given the suffering that Rea is forced to endure throughout the movie.  It should be said that this is not a film for the squeamish; Gordon lovingly lingers on Rea’s wounds and the picture ends in a brutal orgy of violence.  At the same time, it has more on its mind than just grossing the audience out.  At heart, the movie is really about the way modern society discourages looking out for others in need.  Even before he winds up in Suvari’s windshield, Rea is repeatedly humiliated and treated like dirt by the people around him.  I don’t want to oversell Stuck, because at the end of the day it is a very small movie.  But it also has more to say than a lot of movies with twice the budget.

Extras: The standard version only comes with a trailer, but the Blu-ray release houses a commentary track with the director and stars, as well as three featurettes.

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Alfred Hitchcock Premiere Collection
MGM
$119.98

There are already at ton of Alfred Hitchcock box sets on the market, including Universal’s The Masterpiece Collection (which sports Psycho, Rear Window and Rope among others), Warner’s The Signature Collection (which houses Strangers on a Train and North by Northwest) and Lionsgate’s Alfred Hitchcock Box Set (boasting some of the director’s earliest films, including the silent movies The Ring and Manxman.  But MGM’s new Alfred Hitchcock Premiere Collection may have them all beat, at least from a packaging standpoint.  This beautifully designed set places its eight discs inside a spiral notebook that features vintage poster art, trivia and production information and select blurbs from period reviews.

The movies themselves cover a fascinating period in Hitchcock’s history, spanning his transition from one of Britain’s up-and-coming young filmmakers to the next big Hollywood A-lister.  Kicking off with 1927′s The Lodger, a clever take on the Jack the Ripper story, the Premiere Collection also offers 1936′s spy thriller Sabotage, 1944′s war movie Lifeboat and 1945′s psychological thriller Spellbound.  The set’s crown jewel though is 1940′s Rebecca, Hitchcock’s first big American success and one of his very best films.  (Trivia alert: it’s also the only Hitchcock flick that won the Academy Awards’ top prize, Best Picture.)  If you’re in the market for a holiday gift for that classic film buff in your life, look no further.

Extras: MGM makes certain that the Premiere Collection lives up to its name with an impressive library of bonus features.  Each film sports an audio commentary from prominent film historians, as well as excerpts from old audio interviews with the Master of Suspense and two of his biggest fans, filmmakers Peter Bogdanovich and Francois Truffaut.  Some of the discs also offer retrospective featurettes and vintage radio plays based on the movie.

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The New World: Extended Cut
Warner Bros
$19.97

Without doing side-by-side comparisons, it’s difficult to pick out what material in this extended cut of Terrence Malick’s gorgeous birth-of-America epic is new and what already appeared in the movie’s theatrical version back in 2005.  That’s because Malick doesn’t stage scenes in the classic sense of the word; instead, the famously reclusive writer/director captures small moments in time and assembles them into a structure that’s part narrative, part visual poetry.  That said, I did notice a few bits and pieces that I couldn’t recall from the other cut, most of which boiled down to a line or two of dialogue or a few more shots of swaying trees and babbling brooks during the film’s many nature montages.

The most noticeable difference between the two versions is that The Extended Cut (which runs almost a half-hour longer than the theatrical cut) breaks the movie up into chapters, with titles like “The Stranger” and “The Return of the Floating Islands.”  I’m not a big fan of this change to be honest, not just because its unnecessary (the movie is perfectly easy to follow without chapter breaks), but also because it goes against the free-flowing spirit of so much of Malick’s work.  Still, in either version, The New World is a spectacular film and my personal favorite of the director’s relatively small output.  His take on the Pocahontas story mingles myth and history in bold, memorable ways and Q’orianka Kilcher’s performance as the Native American princess remains one of the most impressive screen debuts I’ve ever seen.  Rather than replace my theatrical version with this extended cut, I’m happy to make room for both on my shelf.

Extras: Zero, zip, nada—another reason to hang onto the DVD of the theatrical cut, which included a 10-part making of documentary.

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Also on DVD

Lionsgate continues to corner the DVD market on horror with another one of their patented anthology series.  Like “8 Films to Die For” or “6 Films to Keep You Awake”  Ghost House Underground (Lionsgate, $159.98) offers eight low-budget frightfests that can be purchased separately at $20 a pop or in a box set for $160.  Titles include the prom-themed Dance of the Dead, the bank heist chiller Trackman and Last House in the Woods, which resembles a modern-day version of the ’70s grindhouse hit I Spit on Your Grave.  Each disc comes with a handful of extras, which range from commentary tracks to featurettes to additional short films.

A month after The Godfather films made the jump to Blu-ray, another groundbreaking trilogy is given a Blu makeover.  The Ultimate Matrix Collection Blu-ray (Warner Bros, $129.95) offers all of the content previously released in the standard edition Ultimate Matrix Collection box, but upgrades it to the next-gen digital format.  In addition to all three films, the set comes with the animated tie-in The Animatrix and a whopping 35 hours of bonus goodies, from a feature-length documentary exploring the philosophical roots of The Matrix to trailers and early conceptual artwork.  All in all, it’s a treasure trove of great stuff for Matrix fans…and there are still many of us out there, despite the prevailing popular opinion about the woefully underrated sequels Reloaded and Revolutions.

Between Iron Man, Tropic Thunder and the upcoming The Soloist, 2008 may be the best year in Robert Downey Jr.’s entire career.  Still, it’s worth remembering that the actor delivered a number of celebrated performances before donning Iron Man’s armor, most notably in Richard Attenborough’s 1992 biopic Chaplin: 15th Anniversary Edition (Lionsgate, $19.98).  Downey received his first (and so far only) Oscar nomination for playing the pioneering comedy legend and seemed poised to take his career to a whole new level…until substance abuse problems landed him in rehab and then jail.  Now htat he’s back on top, here’s hoping he doesn’t make the same mistakes the second time around.

Indie label Film Movement—a great source for under the radar independent and foreign flicks—releases the acclaimed Argentinean teen drama XXY (Film Movement, $19.98), about a sexually adventurous 15-year-old girl who sparks a relationship with a visiting older boy, much to the displeasure of her folks.  A galaxy of ’70s superstars headlines Peter Hyams’ sci-fi dramaCapricorn One out today in a Special Edition (Lionsgate, $19.98) to mark its thirtieth anniversary.  In addition to James Brolin, Sam Waterston and Elliot Gould, the film—which finds NASA staging a Mars mission in an empty air force base so that they don’t have to admit their rocket couldn’t clear Earth’s atmosphere—also stars Telly “Kojak” Savalas and a pre-bloody glove O.J. Simpson.  Staying in the realm of ’70s sci-fi for a moment, Quark: The Complete Series (Sony, $19.94) collects all eight episodes of this short-lived space-based sitcom, which spoofed popular movies like Star Wars and Star Trek.  Finally, the second season of CBS’s popular comedy Rules of Engagement (Sony, $29.95), starring David Spade and Patrick Warburton, hits shelves and includes bloopers and minisodes among its bonus feature.

Rob Brown plays Ernie Davis in the football biopic The Express; Leo and Russell race around the Middle East in Body of Lies; Guy Ritchie hopes for a career comeback with RocknRolla; and Humboldt County provides a modest buzz.

The Express
***

Even though the story of Syracuse running back—and the first African American Heisman Trophy winner—Ernie Davis has never been told on the big screen before, it’s hard to watch the new biopic The

Express without feeling a certain sense of déjà vu. Just take a look at the plot elements for a second. A ’60s-era black athlete encountering prejudice in a white-dominated sport? Wasn’t that movie called Glory Road? A gruff coach whose views on life and the game are changed forever thanks to one great player? Sounds a lot like Hoosiers. A football legend-in-the-making whose career is tragically cut short by cancer? Oh man, that Brian’s Song gets me every time!

Of course, it’s not The Express‘ fault that we’ve seen aspects of its story told in other movies. After all, it’s not like the filmmakers could completely change the details of Davis’ life in the name of making the film version more “original.” Besides, a clichéd sports movie can still be a good sports movie if its got the right combination of strong performances, a compelling personal story and tense game play. And in the case of The Express, its got all three. As Davis, Finding Forrester‘s Rob Brown cuts a charismatic figure on and off the football field, while Dennis Quaid lends his usual authority to the role of Syracuse’s famous coach, Ben Schwartzwalder. (The other notable performance comes from Darrin DeWitt Henson as Syracuse veteran Jim Brown; although he doesn’t really resemble the football legend, Henson does capture the sheer force of Brown’s personality.) Their relationship forms the heart of The Express, lending the movie an emotional weight that guides it through some of its rougher patches, most notably a subplot involving a lame romance between Davis and Sarah Ward (Nicole Beharie), which may or may not be an invention on behalf of the screenwriters.

Football is a notoriously difficult sport to capture realistically on film. That’s why the best pigskin flicks—including Peter Berg’s Friday Night Lights and Oliver Stone’s underrated Any Given Sunday—elevate it to something resembling gladiatorial combat. Director Gary Fleder takes a more traditional approach to The Express‘ game sequences, relying on lots of fast cutting and tight close-ups of the scoreboard to generate excitement. This approach doesn’t always work, but it does here, mainly because the film already has us rooting for Davis to triumph in the face of all the doubters, including those on his own team. And that’s the final piece of the puzzle that puts The Express above run-of-the-mill sports movies like The Longshots and Invincible. Davis’ real-life story is too important, too inspiring to not capture our attention. Despite its flaws, at least The Express does its best to honor this groundbreaking player’s memory.

Verdict: See It

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Body of Lies
**

It’s official: the Ridley Scott who created such signature visions as Blade Runner and Alien is dead and has been replaced by a pod person that churns out slick-looking, but wholly generic big-budget time-wasters like American Gangster and A Good Year. Pod-Scott’s latest film is Body of Lies, a war on terror-themed thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe as CIA agents with vastly different approaches to their jobs. While young gun DiCaprio prefers to work on the ground in hot zones, veteran operative Crowe monitors the action—and makes executive decisions—from the comfort of his home in suburban Virginia. For his latest assignment, DiCaprio sets up an elaborate sting operation to capture notorious Middle Eastern terrorist Osama Bin Laden…uh, I mean Al-Saleem, only to find his plan repeatedly thwarted by Crowe’s bull-headed meddling. Body of Lies was written by The Departed scribe William Monahan and he works overtime to bring the same macho flair to this script that made Scorsese fanboys flip for that overrated picture. Too bad he didn’t put an equal amount of effort into streamlining the movie’s clunky narrative, which starts out as merely boring before taking a hard left turn into convoluted territory. Meanwhile, behind the camera, Pod-Scott blows lots of shit up to try and mask the fact that he and the stars have no real idea what’s going on. There’s been a lot of chatter recently about how moviegoers are reluctant to plunk down their hard-earned money to watch movies that deal with terrorism and the Iraq War. Films like Body of Lies help prove them right.

Verdict: Skip It

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RocknRolla
*1/2

If you think Body of Lies just barely makes sense, try wrapping your head around the nonsensical story at the center of Guy Ritchie’s latest London-based crime picture. Here’s what little I was able to piece together after a single viewing of this loud, obnoxious retread of Ritchie’s earlier movies, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. Okay, so there’s this London crime lord (Tom Wilkinson) eager to do a deal with some shady Eastern European types. But he needs some capital in order to convince them he’s on the up and up. Enter a pair of low-rent gangsters (300‘s Gerard Butler and The Wire‘s Idris Elba, talking in his native accent for once) who are deep in debt t the big boss and end up stealing the cash from the aforementioned Europeans with the help of a hot-to-trot accountant (Thandie Newton). The crooks then pass this cash onto Wilkinson, who has already pissed off his prospective business partners by losing a valuable painting they loaned him. This priceless artwork was stolen by his own good-for-nothing son (Toby Kebbell), who moonlights as a rock star under the guidance of a pair of American producers/promoters (Jeremy Piven and Chris “Ludacris” Bridges). Did you get all that? No? That’s okay, Ritchie doesn’t really care that much about the plot anyway. His main interest is trying to reignite his stalled career by cribbing shamelessly from Tarantino, Danny Boyle and many other far more talented filmmakers. RocknRolla does have one inspired chase sequence, in which Butler flees a pair of unstoppable Eastern European strongmen, but its surrounded by a lot of flash and noise that turns the film into an endurance test rather than a piece of escapist entertainment.

Verdict: Skip It

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Humboldt County
**1/2

A mellow counterpart to over-the-top stoner comedies like Pineapple Express and the Harold & Kumar movies, Humboldt County follows the marijuana-laced misadventures of overworked med student Peter (Jeremy Strong). After failing an important exam, Peter allows himself to be lured into an impromptu road trip by wild child singer Bogart (Fairuza Balk) from Los Angeles to her home in the wilds of Humboldt County. There, he meets her sort-of family, a pair of pot-growing hippies (Brad Dourif and Frances Conroy) who have a tendency to adopt all the lost souls that find their way to their remote ranch. Another one of their “kids” is Max (Chris Messina), Bogart’s sometimes-boyfriend. Naturally, Peter doesn’t know what to make of this situation at first, but after a few tokes on some primo-weed, he settles back into his best summer vacation ever…at least until the Feds show up and spoil the buzz. While Humboldt County has a nice low-key charm (expect it to play well on DVD) it’s ultimately too laid back. The movie’s neither funny enough nor filled with enough dramatic tension to keep us invested in Peter’s halting journey of self-discovery. Mostly it is content to shuffle amiably along, providing a few chuckles here and there without really challenging itself or the audience.

Verdict: Rent It

For his big-screen debut, Rob Brown starred opposite Sean Connery in 2000’s Finding Forrester.  Eight years, several supporting parts and one bachelor’s degree in psychology later, the 24-year-old Brooklyn actor enjoys another star turn in The Express, an inspirational biopic about ’60s-era football star Ernie Davis.  A Syracuse University running back and the first black player to win the Heisman Trophy, Davis passed away from leukemia before he could his first pro game.  Brown, it seems, is playing for keeps.

1. Brown is eager to spread the word about Davis’ achievements.
“Everyone knows who Jim Brown is, but I’m willing to bet there are still people in the NFL who don’t know about Ernie Davis.”

2. He worked hard to dig beneath the surface of the role.
“I wanted to get at what drove [Davis]. You’re not that good at something if you don’t have some kind of fire inside of you.”

3. The costume department helped Brown get into an early ’60s mindset.
“When you put on those clothes, you automatically walk around with better posture.”

4. Brown spent a day at Davis’ alma mater.
“People were moved to tears speaking about Ernie and most of them probably didn’t have direct contact with him. That’s how special he was.”

5. Playing Davis’ coach, Dennis Quaid was Brown’s mentor.
“I would pull him aside and or he’d find me and we’d talk.  He’s a walking well of knowledge.”

6. Brown takes time to pick his projects.
“It’s a combination of me being picky and pursuing my degree. Somehow I’ve been rewarded for my stubbornness.”

7. He received a “stay in school” lecture from James Bond.
“During Finding Forrester, Sean Connery told me, ‘Get your degree.’ And I said ‘OK!’”

8. Brown settled on being a psych major through trial and error.
“I wanted to be an engineer.  Then I tried computer science, then econ.  But psychology gives me the patience to deal with the loonies in Hollywood.”

9. He doesn’t rule out even higher education.
“Grad school is in the back of my mind. After all, I’ve been able to juggle work and school before.”

10. For his next role, Brown is ready to take a walk on the dark side.
“I think it would be cool to play the villain in a summer blockbuster. It’s fresh on my mind because of The Dark Knight.”

This week, we watch Adam Sandler kick bad-guy butt as an Israeli super-soldier, scoff as Mark Wahlberg gets freaked out by a mysterious happening and try to keep up with Kimora Lee and the Kardashians.

You Don’t Mess With the Zohan
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
$34.95

I’ve never been much of an Adam Sandler fan, but I have to admit that the dude has made a handful of solid movies over the course of his big-screen career. (For the record, my personal favorite is Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love, but that’s not your typical Adam Sandler comedy—which is exactly why it’s so good.) While films Little Nicky, Big Daddy and I Know Pronounce You Chuck & Larry are close to unwatchable, I had a good time with The Wedding Singer, 50 First Dates, parts of Click and now You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, a silly, stupid and surprisingly entertaining spoof of Middle Eastern politics.

Sandler plays Zohan, a seemingly indestructible Israeli soldier who longs to leave warfare behind to pursue his true passion: cutting hair. He gets his chance when he squares off against his archenemy The Phantom (John Turturro, in his most over the top performance since The Big Lebowski) and uses their encounter to fake his death. Escaping to Manhattan, the disco-dancing, hummus-eating ladies man gets a job as a hair sweeper in a salon operated by a cute Palestinian woman (Emmanuelle Chriqui).

Most of the movie’s best gags involve the secret double life of New York’s Middle Eastern community, who are all former members of the Israeli army or radical Palestinian groups. Thus, those “everything must go” electronic stores actually house cleverly hidden stockpiles of weapons and cab drivers have the direct number to Hezbollah’s 1-800 hotline. All of this would be horribly offensive if the film’s tone wasn’t so darned goofy. Plus, Sandler and his co-writers (who include Triumph the Insult Comic Dog creator Robert Smigel and current comedy king Judd Apatow) are equal opportunity offenders, sending up all sides in this conflict with equal gusto.

Zohan‘s major flaw is its length. Instead of bringing things to a close at the 90-minute mark, the movie rambles on for another half-hour and those last thirty minutes are primarily filler, particularly an egregious cameo by Mariah Carey, who was much funnier in Glitter. Overall though, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan cracked me up throughout. And that’s not something I usually say about an Adam Sandler flick.

Extras: A cast and crew commentary track (plus a solo track featuring director Dennis Dugan), a bunch of deleted and extended scenes and a plethora of featurettes, including one devoted to the film’s many famous cameos. Disc 2 houses a digital copy of the film, plus five additional behind-the-scenes docs.

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The Happening
Fox
$29.99

My esteemed colleague Shahendra Ohneswere has already torn a new hole in M. Night Shyamalan’s latest so-called thriller (check out his take here), so I won’t bother shoveling too much more dirt on the movie’s rotting corpse. But it’s worth repeating that The Happening easily ranks as one of 2008′s worst flicks and would have been a career-killer for the once-hot writer/director had he not signed on to helm a live action version of the anime series Avatar: The Last Airbender right before this stink bomb arrived in theaters. Part of me still wonders whether Shyamalan purposely set out to make an awful movie, just so that it can play alongside Plan 9 from Outer Space and Flesh Gordon at bad-movie festivals for the rest of time, thereby earning back all the money it lost during its initial theatrical run. How else to explain the laughably bad dialogue, poor camera compositions, flabby pacing and grade-school level performances? As for the film’s “surprise” ending, the only surprise is that The Happening was deemed worthy of a theatrical release.

Extras: The lack of a feature-length commentary track suggests that even Shyamalan can’t bear to watch the movie again. But the director can be heard chatting over several deleted scenes though and pops up in the disc’s five featurettes as well as the gag reel. Wait a second…you mean the film itself wasn’t the gag reel?

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Keeping Up with the Kardashians: Season One
Lionsgate
$19.98

Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane: Season One
Lionsgate
$19.98

Ahhh reality television! It’s a wonderful, magical place where even the lamest D-list celebrity can taste stardom again…at least for a little while. It also has the ability to create new stars out of folks the average viewer doesn’t even realize they should care about.

Take socialite Kim Kardashian for instance. After making headlines a few years back for starring in a sex tape opposite Ray J, Kim parlayed her sudden notoriety into a few magazine covers, which was apparently enough for the E! Entertainment channel to come calling with a reality show for her and her family. The result of this unholy alliance is Keeping up with the Kardashians, where the Kardashian clan deals with life’s challenges (like Kim’s decision to pose for Playboy) in the most mature way: by freaking out and yelling at each other. A lot. All in all, spending time with the Kardashians is about as much fun as having a cookout with your least favorite relatives…which is to say, not very.

Of course, if you’re already a boldface name—like, say, Kimora Lee Simmons, former model and ex-wife of Russell Simmons—you don’t really need reality TV to up your profile. Instead, you’re using it as a way to extend your brand, which in Simmons’ case happens Baby Phat, the clothing line she created in the ’90s. Her series Life in the Fab Lane follows her attempts to balance her professional life as the face of Baby Phat and her personal life as the mother of two adorable tykes. This sounds like more than enough drama for one person to handle, but the minds behind the show mistakenly try and up the stakes by inflating minor problems (such as Kimora’s attempts to land a cover story for The Source) into major crises. Unfortunately, most of these situations seem contrived and phony. Then again, that’s an apt description for most of the reality shows on TV right now.

Extras: Both DVDs offer an E!-produced behind-the-scenes special with deleted scenes and never-before-seen footage. Keeping Up also features commentary from the Kardashians over several episodes. Don’t expect any revealing insights though; most of their comments are restricted to their hairstyles, weight and fashion sense.

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Touch of Evil: 50th Anniversary Edition
Universal
$26.98

By 1958, seventeen years after he burst onto the scene with Citizen Kane, Orson Welles’ career in Hollywood was effectively over. But before he was exiled for good, Charlton Heston (who was then one of the biggest stars in the world) somehow convinced Universal Studios to let the notoriously difficult Welles have one last turn in the director’s chair for this south-of-the-border thriller. Largely ignored at the time of its release–thanks primarily to the studio’s interference with the director’s vision in the editing room–Touch of Evil is now deservedly recognized as Welles’ last great work and unique spin on the traditional film noir genre. If the movie has a flaw its that the whitebread Heston is completely out of his depth playing a Mexican cop. One can only imagine that Welles felt the same way, but since Heston was the one that got him the gig, he wasn’t exactly in the position to complain…

Extras: To mark the film’s fiftieth anniversary, Universal has included three versions of Touch of Evil on this two-disc release: the original theatrical film, a preview version and a restored cut that was produced in 1998 under the supervision of film critic and noted Welles scholar Jonathan Rosenbaum. Each version of the movie comes with its own commentary track and two retrospective documentaries reveal what happened behind the scenes during the movie’s difficult production.

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Also on DVD
Documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney took home the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature at this year’s Academy Awards for Taxi to the Dark Side (Thinkfilm, $27.98), a probing, frightening expose of the impact the war on terror is having on our once proud justice system. The bulk of the film centers around the case of one Afghani taxi driver, who was arrested on suspicion of being a terrorist and thrown in prison, where he was subsequently tortured and killed. That’s where the “taxi” portion of the title comes from; the “dark side” refers not to Star Wars but to Dick Cheney’s infamous 2001 statement about how the Bush administration planned to combat terrorism. Only four months to go until those Dubya and Darth Cheney are sent back to their ranches for good, people! Speaking of Oscars, Gus Van Sant’s upcoming biopic Milk is a shoo-in for several major nominations, but the director released another movie this year that deserves some awards attention. The latest in Van Sant’s loose “alienated young man” trilogy (which includes Elephant and Last Days) Paranoid Park (IFC, $19.95) follows a young skater-boy who inadvertently kills a security guard in the rail yards close by the titular Portland skate park. Beautifully shot by Christopher Doyle and well acted by a cast of non-professionals, Paranoid Park is another example of Van Sant’s extraordinary range as a filmmaker.

With Halloween inching ever closer, you’ve probably noticed that the new releases wall at your local DVD place is starting to overflow with horror titles. This week brings the direct-to-DVD splatterfest Feast II: Sloppy Seconds (The Weinstein Company, $19.97), a sequel to the last (and, probably, best) movie produced by the good folks at Project Greenlight, that late, great HBO series that turned filmmaking into a spectator sport. Eccentric director John Gulager returned to the director’s chair for the second go-around and invited his family members (including daddy Clu) back as well. Don’t get too excited: Halloween: 3-Disc Collector’s Edition (Genius Products, $24.95) isn’t an extras laden edition of John Carpenter’s horror classic. Instead, this is a new release of Rob Zombie’s decent, but very uneven 2007 remake. The main attraction on this three-disc version is a four-and-a-half hour making-of documentary that tells you everything you could possibly want to know about the revamped Halloween. For old-school thrills-and-chills, you can’t go wrong with the three Hitchcock classics that Universal is re-releasing in special two-disc editions this week, Psycho, Vertigo, and Rear Window ($26.98 each). Each title comes with a remastered version of the film and all-new extras, including commentary tracks and documentaries.

Staying in the ’60s for a moment for TV-on-DVD news, the Speed Racer Complete Classic Series Collection (Lionsgate, $49.98) packages all 52 episodes of the seminal anime series about a racecar driver and his crazy family into a nifty Mach 5 replica. A retrospective documentary is also included in the package, along with a look at the new CGI-animated series, Speed Racer: The Next Generation. Robot Chicken: Season Three (Cartoon Network, $29.98) shows that Cartoon Network’s hilarious stop-motion animated series is in no danger of running out of ’80s pop culture relics to spoof anytime soon. Warning: you may find yourself digging through you closet in search of your old G.I. Joes and Star Wars action figures after watching a bunch of episodes back-to-back.

Finally, congrats to Tina Fey and the rest of the 30 Rock gang for triumphing at the Emmys for a second year running. With 30 Rock: Season 2 (Universal, $39.98) out on DVD this week, you can see finally see what you’ve been missing. The show’s sophomore year aired such phenomenal half-hours as “Cooter” (which won Fey an Emmy for Best Writing) and “Rosemary’s Baby” where Alec Baldwin delivers an incredible two-minute routine where he plays Tracy Morgan’s father, mother, stepdad and young Tracy himself. It’s one of the funniest things I’ve seen all year and is undoubtedly the scene that won Baldwin his well-deserved Best Actor Emmy.

For some, silence is golden. It’s certainly working for Rinko Kikuchi, who has so far stolen two high-profile Hollywood movies by barely saying a word. Already a star in her native Japan, the 27-year-old actress won a U.S. fan base when she appeared in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s 2006 drama Babel. Kikuchi stood out, as an emotionally tortured deaf-mute teen desperately seeking intimacy, be it love or simply sex. Her raw, naked (literally) performance earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She didn’t nab the little gold man, she sparkled on the red carpet. “The ceremony seemed to go by in a second,” she says now.” I tired very hard to stay calm throughout it all.”

Kikuchi remains cool, calm and voiceless in her second U.S. film, The Brothers Bloom. In the con artist capper she plays Bang Bang, a gal Friday to the titular sibling grifters, Stephen and Bloom (Mark Ruffalo and Adrien Brody, respectively). If Stephen is the brains and Bloom is the heart, then Bang Bang is the muscle, ready to satisfy the brothers needs, even filling Barbie doll heads with nitroglycerin. “Bang Bang is such an enigmatic character,” Kikuchi says. “She knows more and has secrets than anyone else. That’s why she doesn’t speak.” Of course, the film eventually reveals that Bang Bang does know three crucial English words: “Campari” and “Fuck me.” And really, isn’t that all you need to get by n this life of sin?

Want more Rinko? Then check out the October/November issue of GIANT!

This week, Iron Man soars onto a two-disc DVD; comics legend Alan Moore discusses life, the universe and everything; Bigger Stronger Faster* takes on steroids in sports and Forgetting Sarah Marshall brings the funny.

Iron Man
Paramount
$39.99

The Dark Knight may be this summer’s biggest comic-book success story (not to mention the highest-grossing comics-based movie of all time) but another little flick called Iron Man also racked up impressive grosses when it kicked off 2008′s summer movie season in May.  Despite coming from the same source, the two movies couldn’t be more different.  The Dark Knight is as dark and brooding as its titular hero, while Iron Man just aspires to be a good time.

It mostly succeeds, thanks to Robert Downey Jr.’s witty, wonderful performance in the title role and his alter ego Tony Stark.  Refusing to take himself (or the movie) particularly seriously, the actor actually makes being a superhero look like fun instead of a depressing burden.  That’s why I hope director Jon Favreau avoids working one of the character’s best known storylines into the next film, one in which Stark’s alcoholism forces him to hand over his suit to a temporary replacement.  Do we really want to watch Downey Jr. wrestle with the “demon in the bottle” particularly considering his own history with substance abuse?  Better the filmmakers just concentrate on dispatching Iron Man on globetrotting adventures filled with lots of one-liners and exploisions and leave the dark soul-searching to the dude in the bat suit.

Extras: Favreau surprisingly didn’t contribute a commentary track to the disc, but he and the rest of the cast appear in a multi-part making-of documentary that covers ever aspect of the movie’s production, from casting to shooting to the world premiere.  An additional six-part documentary examines Iron Man’s comic-book history and provides hints at what storylines we might see in future films.  Also included is Downey Jr.’s original screen test for the role, deleted and extended scenes and a featurette devoted to the movie’s impressive special effects.

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The Mindscape of Alan Moore
The Disinformation Company
$29.95
Alan Moore may have penned some of the greatest comic-book stories ever published—Watchmen, V for Vendetta, The Killing Joke and his masterpiece From Hell among them—but he’s also one of the industry’s biggest critics.  The reclusive writer sounds off about the current state of comics, along with dozens of other topics, in this 78-minute documentary/feature-length interview directed by Dez Vylenz.  Surprisingly, Moore has very little to say about his own work, so don’t go into Mindscape expecting to hear in-depth explanations of how seminal graphic novels (a term that Moore ridicules at one point) like Watchmen and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen came to be.  He’s more interested in discussing what comic books represent in our culture and how they all too often fall short of their true potential.

An analog guy in a digital world, Moore is also preoccupied by the huge strides being made in communication technology, developments he sees as pushing the world to a tipping point where humanity is overwhelmed by the  sheer volume of information being transmitted at any given moment.  (Considering that this interview was conducted in 2003, one can only imagine how he feels about such recent innovations as the iPhone.)

As you can tell, Moore is a bit of a crackpot, but he’s a completely engaging crackpot and the sheer force of his personality cuts through a lot of the unnecessary visual clutter Vylenz piles on top of the movie, from psychedelic computer generated backgrounds to silly recreations of scenes from classic Moore books.  (Let’s just say that based on this film’s bargain basement version of Watchmen’s Rorschach, Zack Snyder has nothing to worry about when his big-budget version hits theaters in March.)  I don’t know that anyone outside of die hard comic-book fanboys and fangirls will want to spend over an hour listening to Alan Moore, but if you fall into that camp, you’re probably already on your way to Amazon to order this DVD.

Extras: Two hours of additional interviews with Moore collaborators like Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons and Lost Girls‘ Melinda Gebbie, a making-of featurette, an introduction to Moore’s comic book work and a commentary track.

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Bigger Stronger Faster*
Magnolia
$26.98
Between the ongoing Roger Clemens/Brian McNamee soap opera, Lance Armstrong’s return to cycling and the Beijing Olympics, the subject of steroids in sports has been in the news a lot lately.  Most of the time, we’re encouraged to look down on athletes that use performance enhancing drugs to get ahead, but Christopher Bell’s new documentary Bigger Stronger Faster* asks us to ponder the provocative question: “Are steroids really that bad?”

The first-time director draws from his own life experiences to advance his argument.  Bell and his two brothers Mike and Mark grew up competing in amateur wrestling and weightlifting events and while Chris eventually left that world behind, both of his brothers have continued their careers with the assistance of steroids.  Instead of transforming into bulky monsters prone to bouts of irrational anger—as the “roid rage” stereotype goes—both guys seem like well-adjusted family men.  Furthermore, according to Bell’s statistics, steroid abuse in general results in far fewer emergency medical cases than addictions to substances like alcohol and hard drugs.

But Bigger Stronger Faster isn’t a promotional video for the benefits of steroids.  Bell also highlights the health complications that can result from prolonged use and openly wonders whether athletes that use steroids should be branded as cheaters.  Bigger Stronger Faster* may not be a perfect documentary—Bell could be a more probing interviewer, for starters—but it does leave viewers with plenty to think about.
Extras: 40 minutes of deleted scenes and additional interviews as well as a five-minute featurette that outlines the multi-year process of making this documentary.

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Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Universal
$34.98
Written by and starring Jason Segel, formerly of Freaks and Geeks and currently of How I Met Your Mother, Forgetting Sarah Marshall is another loose and rambling comedy from the Judd Apatow Factory.  Segal plays Peter, a musician who experiences the worst break-up in the history of break-ups at the hands of actress girlfriend Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell a.k.a. Veronica Mars).)  Distraught, the poor guy heads off to a Hawaiian resort to recuperate.  But guess what?  His ex and her new rocker boyfriend (Russell Brand) are also vacationing there and can be spotted canoodling all over the place.

Enter Rachel (Mila Kunis) the gorgeous concierge who starts hanging with Peter, first out of pity and then because she genuinely likes him.  I’m also not entirely certain that the film does right by its female characters, who seem to have no inner lives beyond their relationship to Peter.  The fact that Kunis and Bell are so appealing in their respective roles makes the script’s shortcomings that much more pronounced.

That said, Forgetting Sarah Marshall is frequently very funny and is a great showcase for Segel’s peculiar comic stylings. The movie’s ace in the hole though, may be Brand, who is absolutely hysterical as pompous British musician Aldous Snow. Any other leading man might worry about being upstaged, but Segel seems more than happy to cede the biggest laughs to his co-star.

Extras: Forgetting Sarah Marshall is available in a single disc edition for the price tag conscious, but the meatiest bonus features can be found on the three-disc release that sports at least an hour’s worth of deleted scenes and outtakes, as well as numerous featurettes and a digital copy of the film for your portable media players.

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Also on DVD
There’s one reason I’m curious to check out Pulse 2 (Dimension Extreme, $19.97), a direct-to-DVD sequel to the awful American remake of the creepy J-horror film Pulse and that’s because it features Jamie Bamber in his first non-Battlestar Galactica American production.  Set after the events of the first movie, where the spirit world found its way into our reality via the Internet and cell phones and wreaked ghostly havoc, Pulse 2 opens in a devastated cityscape and follows a devoted dad (Bamber) searching for his missing daughter.  Maybe he should consider making an alliance with the Cylons.

September 16 was ’80s teen movie day here on the DVD Round-Up, so it’s only appropriate that we end the month with a ’90s favorite, Can’t Hardly Wait: 10 Year Reunion Edition (Sony, $19.94).  Released in 1998, this comedy featured a Who’s Who of then-famous teen stars, including Jennifer Love Hewitt, Seth Green, Ethan Embry and Lauren Ambrose.  This special edition reunites some of the cast for a new commentary track and also features a new retrospective documentary.

Two new concert films from ’60s rock icons make their way to disc this week.  Directed by artist/filmmaker Julian Schnabel, Lou Reed’s Berlin (Genius Products, $22.95) is the first time Reed has performed his classic 1973 album Berlin in its entirety in over three decades.  CSNY/Déjà vu (Lionsgate, $14.98), meanwhile, presents select performances from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s recent “Freedom of Speech” tour, which traveled around the country in 2006.  Neil Young himself directed the film under his pseudonym Bernard Shakey.

In TV-news, A&E continues to thrill fans of British television, this week by releasing an anniversary edition of the classic ’80s miniseries The Jewel in the Crown (A&E, $39.95), a stunning adaptation of Paul Scott’s four-book series The Raj Quartet, set in the waning days of British rule in India.  On the lighter side of things, The Best of Mr. Bean, Volume 2 (A&E, $9.95) collects six episodes of Rowan Atkinson’s Chaplin-esque Mr. Bean.  Sure, Atkinson has since torpedoed this character by starring in sub-par fare like Mr. Bean’s Holiday, but the original TV sketches remain hilarious almost two decades later.  Finally, Beauty and the Beast: The Complete Series (Paramount, $90.99) houses all three seasons of the cult ’80s TV sensation, which starred Linda Hamilton as a New York district attorney who falls in love with a human/animal hybrid named Vincent (played by Ron Perlman a.k.a. Hellboy).  Wow…who knew that bestiality was once permitted on TV?  The ’80s really were a wild, weird time.

DVD Review of The Godfather Collection, Mother of Tears, Sex and the City, Deception and more…

The Godfather Collection: The Coppola Restoration (Paramount, $72.99)

Unlike his longtime friend George Lucas—who takes his sweet time releasing his signature Star Wars franchise on every new home entertainment system that comes along—Francis Ford Coppola is only too happy to endlessly repackage The Godfather trilogy in multiple VHS, Laserdisc and now DVD editions. Originally released on DVD in 2001, this new set features digitally remastered versions of The Godfather and The Godfather Part II that return both films to the way they would have been seen in theaters in 1972 and 1974 respectively. It goes without saying, of course, that the series’ red-headed stepchild The Godfather Part III isn’t awarded this treatment, although Coppola did tweak the audio track to make it a 5.1 experience. There’s really no point in me once again extolling the virtues of the first two Godfather flicks; as everyone knows, they are landmark films that just get better and better with age. (If I had to choose between them, Part II gets my vote, although the storytelling is far smoother in the first one.) But I would like to take a moment to mount a modest defense for Part III, a film that’s often dismissed as an unholy mess. That’s kind of unfair though as only half of the movie is an unholy mess. The first 90 minutes or so are actually quite good, as we watch a battle-scarred Michael Corleone mount one last, desperate attempt to legitimize the family “business.” The introduction of a bastard nephew Vincent Mancini (Andy Garcia) adds to the intrigue, particularly when he starts sleeping with Michael’s grown daughter Maria (Sofia Coppola, who really is out of her depth here). But about halfway though the picture, Coppola allows the story to get away from him. The intensity steadily slackens, building to a grand climax at an opera house that’s pedestrian at best. Still, in no way does The Godfather Part III deserve the vitriol that’s consistently heaped upon it—save that for movies like Jack and The Cotton Club, the true nadirs of Coppola’s career. It may be a deeply, deeply flawed film, but it’s also arguably the most personal of the whole trilogy.  Oh and true film buffs with Blu-ray capability must have the Blu-ray version of The Godfather Collection on their shelf.  The next-gen format makes these films look better than ever.

Extras: If you already own the 2001 set, you have most of the extras that are on this new version. Coppola’s original commentary tracks accompany each of the films and the fourth disc contains the same extras that appeared on the earlier release, including a making-of documentary, a Godfather timeline and deleted scenes. But Disc 5 offers roughly 90 minutes of new bonus goodies, most notably a half-hour doc that examines how difficult it was to get The Godfather off the ground. Hardcore fans will find a lot of this info repetitious, but newbies may enjoy hearing how Robert Redford was almost cast as Michael Corleone over Coppola’s strenuous objections. Other new extras are four short featurettes (including one that features various famous folks debating the merits of Godfather vs. Godfather Part II), a behind-the-scenes look at the restoration process and, most bizarrely, footage from the Cloverfield red-carpet premiere featuring that film’s cast and crew talking about how much they love The Godfather. Yeah…I don’t see the relevance either.

Mother of Tears (Dimension Extreme, $19.97)

Once upon a time, Italian director Dario Argento was one of the leading lights of international horror cinema. Movies like Suspiria and Phenomena alternately baffled and delighted fright flick fans with their bizarre plots, wooden acting and, best of all, copious bloodshed. When the ’90s rolled around though, Argento’s star plunged considerably and these days he’s mainly thought of (if he’s thought of at all) as a shadow of his former self. His latest gorefest, Mother of Tears, debuted to hoots and catcalls at last year’s Toronto Film Festival and quietly snuck in and out of American theaters earlier before its DVD release on the horror-centric Dimension Extreme label. Based on the buzz I’d heard out of Toronto, I was expecting to see something really messed up and transgressive, but Mother of Tears is disappointingly straightforward—a silly hybrid of The Exorcist and Harry Potter. When a strange artifact is discovered beneath a church in Rome, it turns out to contain a musty robe that reawakens the Mother of Tears, an evil witch hellbent on bringing about the Second Age of Witches. Only one woman stands in her way—Sarah (Asia Argento, the director’s daughter), the daughter of the lone witch that was able to battle the Mother of Tears to a standstill. It’s hard to tell whether Argento actually expects the audience to take any of this stuff seriously. The movie frequently dances close to the edge of self-parody, only to pull back just in time for a big emotional moment. At least the deaths are appropriately gruesome, most notably an awesomely painful eyeball-gouging scene that almost makes up for the general stupidity of the rest of the movie. Almost, but not quite.

Extras: A half-hour making of documentary and a 20-minute one-on-one interview with Argento.

Sex and the City (Warner Bros., $34.98)

When Michael Patrick King agreed to transfer the beloved HBO series Sex and the City—which he shepherded though its fourth, fifth and final seasons—to the big screen, there were two ways he could have approached the assignment. The first would have been to take the show’s iconic heroines, sex columnist Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), uptight lawyer Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon), naïve homemaker Charlotte York (Kristin Davis) and sexually voracious publicist Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), out of their comfy confines in New York and plop them down in a place where they can experience new challenges and fresh faces. The second would have been to make a feature-length episode of the series only on a grand scale—bigger costumes, bigger locations, bigger squabbles, bigger running time, bigger everything. Ultimately, King chose the latter approach and while that approach pissed off a lot of critics, who spewed vitriol all over the movie for being too long and too indulgent, his choice will probably thrill the show’s sizeable fanbase. Unfortunately, this is King’s first attempt at writing a movie script and it shows. The narrative unfolds in 30-minute chunks and, if you know the series well enough, you can tell exactly where he would have had the end credits roll after each half-hour. Were he a more disciplined filmmaker, he could have easily gotten this 142-minute behemoth down to a more manageable running time. But if his screenplay falls short, the four actresses and New York itself helps keep Sex and the City afloat.

Extras: Befitting the movie’s blockbuster status, this two-disc DVD includes a number of deleted and extended scenes that pushes an already long movie into Lord of the Rings territory, as well as several making-of featurettes and an exhaustive commentary track from King.

Deception (Fox, $27.98)

Proof that even the best actors can’t always overcome awful material, the relentlessly dumb thriller Deception wastes the talents of three, count ‘em three, great stars—Hugh Jackman, Ewan McGregor and Michelle Williams. McGregor plays meek accountant Jonathan McQuarry, who is introduced into the world of anonymous sex clubs via his new best buddy, a slick businessman named Wyatt Bose (Jackman). Although he enjoys the thrill of no-strings-attached booty calls at first, the numbers cruncher starts to desire something a little more permanent. Enter S (Williams), a gorgeous mystery girl who also seems to be looking for love. Just when Jonathan thinks he’s found The One, he quickly learns that there’s more to both S and Wyatt than meets the eye. At this point, the sex club stuff is completely abandoned for a series of C-grade plot twists that most moviegoers will be able to spot coming a mile away. I wish I could say that the three actors do the best they can with this script, but the truth is that none of them seem particularly happy to be here. Only Jackman displays anything that resembles a personality, while McGregor sleepwalks through the movie and Williams looks deeply uncomfortable every time she enters the frame. Here’s hoping that this formidable ensemble gets the chance to collaborate on a much better movie sometime soon.
Extras: A commentary track from first-time director Marcel Langenegger, a making-of featurette, several deleted scenes (including an alternate ending) and a short documentary about the concept of the sex club featuring interviews with several so-called “sex experts.”

Also on DVD
Sports movie fans and screwball comedy devotees had a lot of hope for George Clooney’s period pigskin laffer Leatherheads (Universal, $29.98), which the grey-haired sex symbol co-wrote, directed and starred in. Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t satisfy either crowd; there’s not enough on-field action to make it a decent football flick and it’s not amusing enough to keep our funny bones tickled. While Clooney and co-star John Krasinski seem to be having fun, the film’s biggest killjoy is Renee Zellweger, horribly miscast as a ’20s-era version of Katharine Hepburn. DVD extras include a surprisingly subdued commentary from Clooney, a batch of deleted scenes and several short featurettes. Another sports movie—kind of—is The Foot Fist Way (Parmount, $29.99), a not-as-funny-as-it-thinks-it-is low-budget comedy originally filmed in 2006. Danny McBride (the scene-stealer from this summer’s Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder) stars as an obnoxious Tae Kwan Do instructor with major marital problems and a dojo populated by underachievers. McBride and his director/co-star/buddy Jody Hill contribute a yak track and at least a dozen deleted scenes—as well as a really strange alternate ending—round out the special features. In the world of actual sports, A&E continues their excellent Essential Games line of baseball DVDs with The Essential Games of Yankee Stadium (A&E, $59.95), a set of six classic games that lit up the House that Ruth Built over its multi-decade history. Obviously, it’s a bittersweet time in Yankee-land right now, what with the team failing to make the playoffs for the first time since 1993 and the curtain coming down over the current Yankee Stadium as soon as the season ends. Still, the storied ballpark will live on in fans’ memories as well as DVD sets like this.
Blu-ray owners can look forward to adding Michael Bay’s Transformers (Paramount, $39.99) and the all-star animated comedy Madagascar (Paramount, $39.99) to their shelves this week as both make their high-def debut. The more-than-meets-the-eye antics of Optimus Prime and his cohorts looking particularly good in Blu.

Baseball isn’t the only area where A&E is dominating the DVD market this week. The company is also putting out the two best TV-on-DVD sets, Horatio Hornblower: Collector’s Edition (A&E, $59.95) and Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Definitive Colleciton (A&E, $99.95). The former collects all eight BBC-produced adventures about the heroic Horatio Hornblower (played by Ioan “Mr. Fantastic” Gruffudd), a 19th century swashbuckling sailor who experiences mystery, intrigue and action on the high seas. The latter packages 12 films starring the late mystery writer Agatha Christie’s most famous creation: the meticulous, if overbearing Gallic sleuth Hercule Poirot. Keep both of these sets in mind as the holidays approach for your PBS-addicted relatives. Also out this week is Cashmere Mafia: The Complete Series (Sony, $29.95), the short-lived ABC series that was created and produced by Sex and the City guru Darren Star. As you may or may not remember, there were two competing SATC-type shows that debuted last winter, Cashmere Mafia and NBC’s Lipstick Jungle (which, as it happens, was created by Star’s old partner-in-crime Candace Bushnell a.k.a. The Real Carrie Bradshaw). Neither series attracted much critical love or big-time ratings, but NBC renewed Jungle for a second season, while the members of the Mafia bid farewell after seven episodes. At least ABC was able to console itself with their surprise hit Samantha Who? (ABC, $29.99), which stars the always-appealing Christina Applegate as an amnesiac who learns that losing her memory may have been the best thing that ever happened to her. It’s a comedy, I swear! Speaking of shows that are surprisingly funny, BBC’s new sci-fi hit Torchwood, a spin-off the stellar new Dr. Who series, deftly mixes humor and adventure in each action-packed, alien-filled episode. Torchwood: The Complete Second Season (BBC America, $79.98) hits stands today and copies of the first season box set should also be easy to find online and in stores. In classic TV news, Schoolhouse Rock: Election Collection (Disney, $19.99) is a special political-themed edition of the retro children’s series that taught kids all about the world around them through songs and funny cartoons. (It also inspired one of the funniest Simpsons moments ever, when Bart and Lisa are forced to watch a Schoolhouse Rock-type show after Itchy and Scratchy are taken off the air.) Friday the 13th: The Series ($54.99) is another vintage throwback; this late ’80s syndicated series actually had nothing to do with the famous film franchise beyond the name. Set in a haunted antiques store, the show followed three employees who deal with a variety of cursed artifacts week in and week out. Finally, although it’s not technically a TV series, the thriller Pathology (MGM, $27.98) does star two well-known small-screen faces, Alyssa Milano of Who’s the Boss? and Charmed fame and Milo Ventimiglia, best known for his role on Heroes and for dating his super-hot co-star Hayden Panettiere. Briefly released in theaters earlier this year, Pathology comes to DVD with some featurettes, deleted scenes and a commentary track.