DVD releases include 'Spiderwick Chronicles,' '10,000 BC' and 'Definitely, Maybe'

“DEFINITELY, MAYBE”

Enhanced widescreen, 2007, PG-13 for sexual content including some frank dialogue, language and smoking

Best extra: Director Adam Brooks and star Ryan Reynolds full-length commentary, silent at points, but funny.

ROMANTIC COMEDIES aren’t easy to pull off but Brooks (who wrote 1995’s “French Kiss”) has done it again with "Definitely, Maybe," the story of Will (Reynolds), an ad exec whose 10-year-old daughter, Maya, (Abigail Breslin) guilts him into telling her how he met her mother (for whom he is divorcing).

What transpires is a tale about love in the 1990s and three women, who, up until the very end, could each be Maya’s mom.
The enriching albeit short bonus features support the story and its nuances, like Will’s former life before Quaker oats as a Bill Clinton campaigner in 1992 and his foray into behind-the-scenes politics with a consulting firm he runs with a buddy. These bonus features include deleted scenes, a behind-the-scenes look at creating the romance between Reynolds and his three co-stars, Rachel Weisz, Isla Fisher and Elizabeth Banks, and a look at how New York City was recreated from the early ’90s to 2008.

If that’s not enough, check out the commentary - Brooks and Reynolds have a great rapport, and you can see how Reynolds is one of today’s Jimmy Stewart, everyman stars.

— Toni Guagenti

“SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES”

Blu-ray and enhanced widescreen, 2008, PG for scary creature action and violence, peril and some thematic elements

Best extra: Gotta watch ’em all together because they’re interwoven with some introductions by director Mark Waters

DID YOU KNOW THAT three kids wrote the authors of the "Spiderwick Chronicles" a letter detailing their "real" experiences with goblins, sprites and ogres? That’s what Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black used to base their best-selling books on, and, in those tales, the pair knew what they had would eventually translate well into a big-screen flick.

Freddie Highmore ("August Rush," "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory") is a talent, playing the twins Simon and Jared - amazingly turning his English accent into an American one for his roles.
The imagery is quite exceptional in hi-def, especially with numerous scenes filmed in dark surroundings with CGI creatures. No worry, the Dolby TrueHD soundtrack is just as good, with plenty of separation between dialogue and scary sounds, like the Gothic, creaky house the Grace family lives in.

Extras, all in hi-def, are interwoven and build on each other, from the story behind the stories and Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to a profile of the characters and a making-of featurette.
The Blu-ray includes an exclusive pop-up Field Guide trivia track — positioned at the bottom of the screen — with plenty of factoids on the bogarts, sprites, ogres and goblins. At times it will prompt you to hit the enter button, taking you to the complete Field Guide.
A word of warning, this might not be suitable for children younger than 7 - goblins blow up and green goo squirts from them after they’ve been stabbed.

— Toni Guagenti

“IN BRUGES”

Enhanced widescreen, 2007, R, strong violence, pervasive language, drug use

Best extra:  "A Boat Trip Around Bruges," a tour of the storybook medieval city via its canals

IN THE MAKING-OF feature "When in Bruges," playwright Martin McDonagh, the bad boy of the Irish stage, says he got the idea for his film debut when he was on holiday in the medieval city in the northwest of Belgium.
On one hand, he was charmed; on the other, "I was bored out of my head." That split perspective became Ken (Brendan Gleeson) and Ray (Colin Farrell), Irish hit men who've been told to lie low in Bruges after a big job. Their fish-out-of-water story is savagely funny in the blackest way — McDonagh, who wrote and directed, has been likened to Quentin Tarantino — yet you can't help but be touched by them. "In Bruges" scores in the same way as did "Sexy Beast" (2000).

Farrell, who gives his best performance in ages, and Gleeson are perfect — the same feature leaves no doubt that their camaraderie is genuine. Their commitment to their roles is apparent, too. The same goes for the other cast members, especially Ralph Fiennes, who is a scary hoot as the hair-trigger crime boss.

But it's unlikely that they would register like they do without the film's storybook setting. McDonagh says as much in the feature "Strange Bruges." It's the spiritual, otherworldly nature of the city, he says, that makes it the perfect backdrop for a bloody, profane gangster film.
There's no denying his argument after taking "A Boat Trip Around Bruges," easily the best extra on the disc. A mini-travelogue, it puts viewers at canal level as factoids about the city crawl across the screen: It was chartered in 1128. A statue by Michelangelo in one of its storied churches is believed to be the only sculpture by the master to leave Italy in his lifetime. There is no narration, just a solo piano piece as you marvel.
And marvel you will.

— Craig Shapiro

“CHARLIE BARTLETT”

Enhanced widescreen, 2008, R for language, drug content and brief nudity 

Best extra: The selection is thin, but Director Jon Poll's commentary – alongside the movie's two stars – is light, fun, mildly entertaining.
 
CHARLIE IS A RICH KID with a crazy mom, expelled from one private school for selling fake IDs, left to his own devices at his new public school. As heartbreaking as young actor Anton Yelchin was in "Alpha Dog," he's equally chuckleworthy as Charlie.
Not unlinke Ferris Bueller, you'll root for this kid (grinning all the while), even as he's dealing prescription drugs to his classmates and dishing out psychological wisdom from a bathroom stall. You'll also pull for the school's principal – appropriately, a drunk played by Robert Downey Jr. – to lighten up on Charlie. And to let him date his daughter.

Something else you can hope for, but sadly won't get: Some decent bonus material on the DVD. Along with Poll's, there are two other commentary tracks. Is that necessary? A music video by Spiral Beach is pleasant, if not wow-worthy.

And then there's a lamo "Restroom Confessional" bit. It's a couple of minutes of cast and crew griping in a bathroom stall. WHAT?
The disc is worth owning, because the movie is worth watching, but skip the not-so-special features.

— Kyle Tucker

“10,000 BC”

Blu-ray, enhanced widescreen and full-screen, 2008, PG-13 for intense action and violence 

Best extra: “A Wild and Wooly Ride,” a 14-minute short documentary about re-constructing a world 12,000 years ago

ON ITS FACE, the universally panned “10,000 BC” might just sound like an awful movie. And it is, earning just a nine percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the website that aggregates movie reviews. Despite its shaky plot, limp characters and historical inaccuracies, this movie has its merits: it’s the kind of unintentionally funny, SciFi Channel B-movie you enjoy while half-awake on a lazy weekend, and that is a gift. Which is why it’s too bad that the DVD extras don’t take into account the film’s camp value; with apparent straight faces, producers just simply added an alternate ending – as effete as everything else – and some deleted scenes.

More extras could have been a great opportunity to poke fun at itself and exploit its own ridiculousness, and this is kind-of sort-of figured out by the time they produced the Blu-ray version. The hi-def disc includes highlights of the production, which was filmed in New Zealand and info on the CGI technology used to create the herd of mammoths. In Director Roland Emmerich's talk he explains his vision of the project:  “It’s not real history, but an interpretation of history.” Um, yeah. He based the lost civilization mythology on Graham Hancock’s novel, “Fingerprints of the Gods.”

— Malcolm Venable

“BEFORE THE RAIN: CRITERION COLLECTION"

Enhanced widescreen, 1994, unrated but contains brutal violence and nudity

Best extra: Annette Insdorf, best known for her commentaries on Krzysztof Kieslowski's "The Double Life of Veronique" and "Three Colors" trilogy, sits down with director Milcho Manchevski for an insightful conversation.

THREE INTERCONNECTED stories set in Macedonia and London, about the futility of war and personal toll it takes on individuals is a thunderous examination of the never-ending battle between Christians and Muslims.  It was nominated for Best Foreign Film in 1995 by the Academy Awards and has been largely forgotten over the past ten years, which makes its induction into the Criterion Collection all the more relevant.

Though there are a number of special features, the most substantial is the commentary.  Other features include vintage behind-the-scenes footage, a new interview with actor Rade Serbedzija, and a wealth of photographs taken during production and form the director's photography book, a music video he directed, storyboards, production design sketches, and correspondence about the film.

— Josh Boone

“THE CARMEN MIRANDA COLLECTON”

Full-screen, 1943-1946, unrated

Best Extra: “Carmen Miranda: The Girl from Rio” and “Busby Berkeley: A Journey With a Star” both illuminate and educate and add to the depth of this set.
 
BORN IN PORTUGAL to middle-class parents who moved to Brazil when she was still an infant, Carmen Miranda, by merging her talents as a samba singer with a flair for designing hats, came up with an outlandish persona, “the Brazilian Bombshell,” that has left a mark on American culture.

“The Carmen Miranda Collection” is a 20th Century Fox DVD boxed set with five of Miranda’s elaborately staged and sometimes-outlandishly choreographed musicals: “If I’m Lucky” (full-frame, 1946, not rated, B&W) also starring Harry James; “Greenwich Village” (full-frame, 1944, not rated, color) with Don Ameche; “Doll Face” (full-frame, 1946, not rated, B&W) with Perry Como and Dennis O’Keefe; “Something for the Boys” (full-frame, 1944, not rated, color) with Phil Silvers.

The main flick of this collection, “The Gang’s All Here,” (full-frame, 1943, not rated, color), which also features “The King of Swing,” Benny Goodman and his orchestra, is Miranda’s only collaboration with Busby Berkeley, the Broadway choreographer turned Hollywood director. Fox borrowed Berkeley from MGM to make “The Gang’s All Here,” and his resentment for MGM’s conservative reins exploded in several over-the-top production numbers. The classic “Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat” is well worth watching in this tale of two Broadway show headliners romantically linked to the same man.

The commentary by film professor Drew Casper adds some interesting behind-the-scenes material. And the collection is full of extras. The featurette on Busby Berkeley is particularly telling.
This is definitely a collection for your collection!

— Cliff Redding

"THE RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES: SET 3"

Full-screen, 1989, not rated but contains violence and mature subject matter

Best extra:  A brief biography of Ruth Rendell and cast filmographies.

SO HERE'S THE MIX:  A security-conscious career woman, a hard living young office worker, a lonely sales manager, a free-spirited artist, a shared apartment, and one very large, sharp knife. What do you want to bet that someone is going to end up bleeding all over the carpet?

"The Ruth Rendell Mysteries, Set 3" contains five complete stories of varying lengths, from 156-minutes (that one must have been broadcast over several nights), to a couple of 50 minute episodes and, although some of them are who-dunnits, not all of them are mysteries. Sometimes, the viewer gets to watch the characters, like the ones in the episode "You Can't Be Too Careful," go through the story like a train wreck in slow motion. There is no wondering who-dunnit, only what they are going to do, and when. There is a decidedly Hitchcockian flavor to the proceedings, all these charming English folk with secret (and not so secret) homicidal leanings.

For those who don't mind a little violence portrayed, both emotional and physical, and want to give their cerebellums a little exercise, this latest release from Acorn Media should fill the bill nicely.

— Mike Reynolds