Steel City (Peace Arch Entertainment, $26.99)
You gotta give America Ferrera credit—she may be a major TV-star thanks to Ugly Betty, but she hasn’t forgotten her roots in the independent film community. In addition to appearing in the recent art-house hit La Misma Luna, the Real Women Have Curves star also has roles in the thriller Towards Darkness (due on DVD shortly) and the small-scale drama Steel City, which premiered to critical acclaim at Sundance in 2006 and is turning up on DVD today.

Ferrera has a small, but significant role as Amy, a waitress at a greasy-spoon diner in a rundown Rust Belt town. Amy’s sort-of boyfriend is PJ (Tom Guiry), whose estranged father (John Heard) is currently behind bars after causing a fatal traffic accident. PJ still visits his dad every week and is doing his best to keep from backsliding into a life of booze and unemployment, but the temptation to abandon the straight and narrow path constantly weighs on his mind. Not much happens in Steel City to be honest, but writer/director Brian Jun’s objective depiction of small-town, working-class America is welcome, particularly in a season when so many movies take place in a more fantastical universe. The single-disc DVD comes with one of Jun’s short films, two commentary tracks (one from the crew and a second from the cast) and a few deleted scenes.

The Hottie & The Nottie (Liberation Entertainment, $24.95)
Casting Paris Hilton in your independent movie is a double-edged sword. On the on hand, you’re able to fool financiers into funding the picture because they mistakenly believe Paris is an actual movie star people would pay money to see in a film. At the same time though, you’re forever going to be known as that “Paris Hilton movie” and therefore ridiculed by every respectable journalist and critic out there. Then again, The Hottie & The Nottie would probably have been ridiculed whether Hilton was part of the movie or not. Although the film endeavors to teach impressionable viewers that looks shouldn’t matter when it comes to true love, the way the story plays out, looks definitely do matter. The basic plot revolves around a mouth-breathing loser named Nate (Joel David Moore), who decides to move to L.A. to hunt down the love of his life, Cristabelle, a blonde-haired goddess he met in the first grade and hasn’t been able to forget. While Cristabelle has grown up to look a lot like Paris Hilton, her grade-school girlfriend June (Christine Lakin) still resembles a furry troll creature. Ever the kind-hearted saint, Cristabelle has vowed never to have a boyfriend until June finds someone to love, which means that Nate has to find some poor sap willing to date this hideous being before he can win his true love’s heart. Complications arise when a studly dentist gives June a major makeover, transforming this nottie into a hottie, which causes Nate to wonder whether Cristabelle or June is the right girl for him. You can probably guess which girl he picks in the end and it ain’t the one who films amateur porn in her spare time. Indifferently directed and shakily acted (although Larkin is a good sport), The Hottie & The Nottie is the very definition of not hot. Extras on the DVD include a commentary track with the filmmakers, another with the cast (minus Hilton), and a short video of Hilton giving her male co-star a makeover Paris-style

Teeth (Dimension Extreme, $24.95)
A creepy premise is wasted by uneven execution in Teeth, the only low-budget horror film I know that involves the myth of vagina dentata. What is vagina dentata, I hear you ask? Well, it’s the idea that women have razor-sharp teeth…down there. The vagina in question in Teeth belongs to Dawn (Jess Weixler), a strict virgin who believes strongly in waiting until marriage to do the horizontal mambo. But when she’s almost raped by a boy she believes to be her friend, her vajayjay leaps to her defense, biting into his member like a juicy hot dog. And he’s just the first victim in a series of penis-related injuries Dawn finds herself involved with, some on purpose and some not. Had Sam Raimi made this movie back in his Evil Dead days, the result probably would have been a wild and crazy freak-out of a movie. Unfortunately, writer/director Michael Lichtenstein is no Sam Raimi. The film’s tone careens wildly all over the place and its never as scary—or as funny—as it should be. I do give Lichtenstein credit for not stinting on the penis gore; it may make it tough for guys to watch, but at least he doesn’t chicken out and cut away at the last minute. Teeth‘s novelty value makes it worth a rental, but overall it ranks as a major missed opportunity.

Also on DVD
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. traces the ancestry of another group of prominent African-American celebrities in African American Lives 2 (Paramount, $24.99), the follow-up to his acclaimed 2006 PBS series. The new batch of famous faces to get a crash course in their personal histories includes actor Morgan Freeman, comedian Chris Rock, poet Maya Angelou and radio personality Tom Joyner. Maybe the third installment of African American Lives will feature one of the three leads in the faith-themed comedy First Sunday (Sony, $28.95), which stars Ice Cube and Tracy Morgan as a pair of down-on-their-luck ex-cons, who plan to solve their money troubles (and keep Cube’s baby mama from taking his son to Atlanta) by robbing the neighborhood church. Unfortunately, the supposedly foolproof smash-and-grab operation turns into a hostage situation. Cube and Morgan score several laughs, but the real star of the show is comedian Katt Williams, who plays the flamboyant choral leader. Expect to see plenty of his antics in the deleted scenes and outtakes reel that are included amongst the bonus features. Widely ignored when it debuted on Fox in 2002, the cult puppet TV series Greg the Bunny found a second life years later on the Independent Film Channel, where the show was reconceived as a series of spoofs of well-known movies. Those spoofs—which include Sockville (a parody of Lars von Trier’s Dogville) and Blue Velveteen (which spoofs David Lynch’s Blue Velvet) are collected on Shout! Factory’s new disc The Passion of Greg the Bunny (Shout! Factory, $19.99), along with a host of extras, from deleted scenes and webisodes, to a reunion special packed with cameos from such folks as Seth “Robot Chicken” Green, Jon “Iron Man” Favreau and Sarah “I’m Fucking Matt Damon” Silverman. This week, the good folks at Shout! are also putting out Red Sox Memories (Shout! Factory, $19.99) a highlights reel culled from the lengthy history of one of the best—and most divisive—teams in baseball right now. Speaking of highlights reels, it’s safe to say Eva Longoria Parker and Paul Rudd won’t be trumpeting their involvement in the listless romantic comedy Over Her Dead Body (New Line, $27.98). The Desperate Housewives star plays a Bridezilla who is killed by a falling ice statue on her wedding day, only to return to Earth as a ghost to help protect her former fiancé (Rudd) from the advances of an amorous fake-psychic (Lake Bell). I’m usually of the opinion that Rudd can elevate any movie he appears in, but the poor guy literally looks as if he’s in pain everytime he shows up onscreen here. At least he can take comfort in knowing that absolutely nobody showed up to see Over Her Dead Body—the movie grossed an embarrassing $7 million during its ultra-brief theatrical run. Also joining the ranks of the dearly departed is the USA Network’s sci-fi series The 4400, which abruptly came to an end following its fourth year, even though the finale seemed to promise plenty of story ahead. The network isn’t talking about why they chose to shut the show down, but you can be the ill-timed writers strike probably had something to do with it. Until plans for a wrap-up TV are announced, fans can console themselves with The 4400: The Final Season (Paramount, $42.99), which collects the last batch of episodes along with featurettes and commentary tracks. Another late, great TV-series Mystery Science Theater 3000 (or, MST3K) to its fans returns to DVD with the release of Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie (Rogue, $19.98), which found the eternally sarcastic crew of the Satellite of Love ridiculing the 1955 sci-fi campfest This Island Earth. Fans of camp cinema are probably also fans of the movies of Baltimore rebel John Waters, whose 1995 suburban satire Serial Mom (Focus, $19.98) arrives in a special edition DVD that includes new featurettes and a newly recorded commentary track with Waters and his dishy star Kathleen Turner. Finally, two little-seen indie films arrive on DVD this week: Delirious (The Weinstein Company, $19.95) casts Steve Buscemi as a pushy paparazzi who takes a newbie (Michael Pitt) under his wing, while I Really Hate My Job (Magnolia, $26.98) takes place on a single night in a greasy-spoon London café where five female employees (including Neve Campbell and Shirley Henderson) wrestle with various personal and professional concerns.