There Will Be Blood (Parmount, $34.99)
Is there really anything left to say about Paul Thomas Anderson’s Oscar-winning epic that hasn’t been repeated ad nauseam? In an exceptionally great year for movies, There Will Be Blood still managed to stand head and shoulders amongst the competition and will still be generating heated arguments—both pro and con—when fellow Best Picture nominees No Country for Old Men and Juno are looked upon as stately museum pieces. Since getting the DVD two weeks ago, I’ve found myself repeatedly popping it on my home computer and just watching scenes at random to appreciate the skill and shoot-the-moon enthusiasm that goes into each moment. By now, I think I’ve seen the film’s final scene—the one that features that immortal line “I drink your milkshake!”—at least 10 times and it gets better and better with each viewing. Unfortunately, this two-disc DVD seems like such a minor effort for such a major film. The first disc offers a sparkling transfer of the film, but no commentary track from the director or even a standard making-of featurette. Disc 2 houses a handful of interesting, but hard to place deleted scenes, as well as a fifteen-minute montage of archival photographs and newsreel clips that inspired Anderson and his production team in creating the world of the film. The most interesting bonus feature isn’t even related to the movie—it’s a half-hour promotional film called The Story of Petroleum that was commissioned by Big Oil in the early ’20s to advertise their industry to the masses. Compared to the extras-laden platters for Boogie Nights and Magnolia, Blood is practically a bare-bones release. Is Anderson getting more reclusive in his old age? Or are there—fingers crossed!—plans for a more substantial release somewhere down the line? Stay tuned…

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (Sony, $29.96)
Audiences may have avoided the latest comedy from the Judd Apatow factory during its theatrical release last December, but that hasn’t stopped Sony from giving the flick the full Apatow DVD treatment. Like the two-disc editions of The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Superbad, Walk Hard arrives on disc with tons of extras that are often funnier than the movie itself. And in this case, that’s not difficult as Walk Hard is the most uneven of all those comedies, despite the Herculean performance by John C. Reilly, who gives his all as the titular singer/songwriter whose life often mirrors more famous folks like Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan. Most of the bonus features are housed on the second disc, leading off with numerous deleted and extended scenes, the requisite blooper reel and two conventional making-of documentaries. But the fun really starts with the made-for-DVD comedy skits, including a very special Christmas Song from Dewey Cox to his family and a fake ad for Cox Sausage. There’s also a 15-minute “biography” of the real Dewey Cox, featuring interviews with such folks as Lyle Lovett, Sheryl Crowe and Ghostface Killah as well as a half-hour episode of a fake TV-show called The Last Word with John Hodgman where The Daily Show contributor interviews an elderly Dewey. The most useful extra though, has to be the full song performances, which lets you watch each of the musical numbers (which, let’s face it, are the funniest things in the movie) in their entirety without having to bother with the rest of the film. Pay particular attention to “Royal Jelly” a dead-on parody of Bob Dylan’s tongue-twisting early-’60s folk tunes.

Lions For Lambs (MGM, $29.98)
With the recent failure of Kimberly Peirce’s Stop-Loss at the box office, Hollywood has all but written off the Iraq War as a subject for feature films. But Peirce shouldn’t be blamed for putting the final nail in the genre’s coffin—she made a film that attempts to engage the subject in an honest, thought-provoking way. Unlike, say, Lions for Lambs, Robert Redford’s painfully awkward film that parrots standard talking points in lieu of creating any actual drama. Written by Matthew Michael Carnahan (who also penned The Kingdom, an action-movie take on the Middle East crisis), Lions offers three separate storylines that are intended to intertwine to create a richer whole. One follows two soldiers (Derek Luke and Michael Pena) who are dispatched on a top-secret mission in the mountains of Afghanistan, another involves the former professor (Redford) of those soldiers and the third is an extended conversation between a journalist (Meryl Streep) and a powerful Republican senator (Tom Cruise). To give Carnahan some credit, he does eventually reveal how these individual stories are linked. The bad news is, when that revelation finally comes, most of the audience will already have tuned out. The DVD’s snooze-inducing extras include a commentary track from Redford and two dull featurettes.

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (Sony, $19.94)
Is Terry Gilliam the unluckiest filmmaker in the world? It’s a fair question—virtually every movie he’s ever made (or, in some cases, not made) has been dogged by behind-the-scenes problems that often dwarf what’s happening onscreen. Most recently, his latest film almost fell apart when his lead actor (a Mr. Heath Ledger) died less than halfway through shooting. But even that tragic incident pales in comparison to the legendary battle surrounding Gilliam’s 1989 fantasy The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. An invaluable 70-minute documentary that’s included on this excellent two-disc DVD tracks the many problems that beset the movie from the moment the project was announced. Gilliam is one of the many members of the cast and crew who appears in the doc speaking openly about what went on during production, a discussion that continues on the director’s commentary track. The ironic thing is, despite all the offstage drama, Gilliam ended up producing one of his best—and most accessible—movies. For young viewers especially, Munchausen is a delight that still holds up despite some dated special effects. So keep fighting the good fight Terry! Never let the bastards get you down.

Also On DVD:
Speaking of kid-friendly entertainment, the British film The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep (Sony, $28.96) is a creature feature the whole family can enjoy. When a young boy finds an egg on the lakeshore by his house, he brings it home and hides it in his room until it hatches and out pops—surprise!—a baby Loch Ness monster. Overgrown kids, meanwhile, may get a kick out of Tilt (C3 Images, $29.95), a detailed documentary about the effort to save that great arcade pastime known as pinball from extinction. The two-disc edition sports seven hours of bonus features including extended interviews and a video tour of one of the few surviving pinball factories—not bad for a doc that only runs 60 minutes. The Sundance award-winning documentary Manda Bala (Send a Bullet) (City Lights Entertainment, $26.98) is a fascinating look at modern-day Brazil, where civilian kidnappings are at an all-time high, while corrupt politicians look the other way. Also—and you probably didn’t know this—the nation’s many frog farms are often fronts for money laundering schemes. I’ll say this for last year’s little-seen P2 (Summit Entertainment, $26.99): it’s the only thriller I know of that takes place entirely in a parking garage. Actually, I’ll say one other thing–this is a nifty genre exercise that’s much more entertaining than the limiting premise would seem to allow.  Director Franck Khalfoun keeps the proceedings taut and tense and the actors (ridiculously hot ex-Alias star Rachel Nichols and American Beauty heartthrob Wes Bentley–remember him?) play off each other well. Finally, before he was Dr. House, Hugh Laurie played a considerably less angry doc on the British comedy series Fortysomething (Acorn, $39.99) out now in a new two-disc set. The only thing weirder than hearing Laurie talk in his native English accent? Seeing him crack a smile.