MCN DVD Reviews: February 4, 2008

*The Wrap Up ...*

The Invasion	Jack Finney's classic science-fiction novel The Body Snatchers - and the possibility of living next door to a pod person -- has proven durable enough to have produced four very decent film adaptations, including the new-to-DVD Invasion. While Oliver Hirschbiegel's adaptation won't be as fondly remembered as previous efforts by Don Siegel (1956), Philip Kaufman (1978) and Abel Ferrara (1994), it probably has the best back story. After going to the trouble of importing Oliver Hirschbiegel (Das Experiment, Downfall) and allowing German director to present his cut of Invasion, the studio decided to relieve him of command. It brought in Andy and Larry Wachowski (The Matrix) for a rewrite and James McTeigue (V for Vendetta) to direct new material. Who knows what team was most responsible for the final product? Meanwhile, Nicole Kidman suffered the indignity of being involved in two separate on-location automobile accidents … nothing serious, though. Production also was curtailed after co-star Daniel Craig was anointed the new 007 and he needed to be officially introduced to world media. Back to the movie: this time around, a space shuttle comes crashing back to Earth, carrying with it the spores that will turn our nation's capital and nearby Baltimore into a resort for affectless pod people. By filling the background with the noises and televised images of the war in Iraq, the various writers and directors apparently wanted to be making some point about the Bush administration. Again, I don't have the foggiest idea of what it might be … unless, Jeb Bush has enlisted the help of space aliens to assure yet another Bush offspring (celebrity fellator, Billy, maybe) a room in the White House. Perhaps, the original concept was too cerebral for the folks at Warner Bros., because the version that was released last August more closely resembles an endless car chase. The fast-paced search for a vaccine is interrupted only by depictions of projectile vomiting by victims transmitting the disease to other humans. (Finish that supersize bag of popcorn early, kiddies.) That said, however, the action sequences are well done, and the tension is palpable throughout. The best of the bonus features expands upon the connection between this Invasion and its predecessors. -- Gary Dretzka

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters	My dilemma: loved the title, still can't make up my mind about the movie. Ostensibly, King of Kong is a modern-day parable about the perils associated with fame and celebrity, no matter how trivial the pursuit. For more than 20 years, the name Billy Mitchell has been synonymous with title of the arcade video game Donkey Kong … among a small circle of friends and fellow gamers, anyway. Some folks take the pursuit of video-game perfection way more seriously than other people. Because of the game's legendary status, fans of Donkey Kong are rabid in their devotion to the game and its legends (similar cults embrace other games, as well). Absurdly cocky, Mitchell has managed to rest on his laurels ever since posting a record score in the '80s. In the ensuing years, arcade games have become so technically advanced, and family un-friendly, that it's amazing anyone plays it, anymore. Then, from out of the blue, comes news of a player in Seattle who claimed to have smashed Mitchell's record on a machine he kept in his garage. The King of Kong chronicles the struggle of upstart Steve Wiebe to be recognized for his efforts by the handful of geeks - er, Mitchell loyalists -- who kept statistics on such things. It isn't pretty. The craziest single incident documented in Seth Gordon's film occurs on a video recorded by Wiebe as he was on his way to another landmark score. We clearly hear Wiebe's toddler son begging his pre-occupied father to help him clean up after taking a messy poop. No ordinary game nerd, Wiebe was a high school science teacher, and presumably knew better. By not immediately coming to his son's aid, Wiebe turned from folk hero to just another doofus. Therein, lies my problem with the documentary, which otherwise is funny, observant and exhaustively produced. Lots of extras are available for insatiable gamers. -- Gary Dretzka

The Hunting Party	Richard Shepherd's Bosnia-set thriller, The Hunting Party, documents one way in which war makes men confuse foolishness with bravery. Stuck cooling their heels in post-war Sarajevo, a trio of journalists choses to relieve their boredom by attempting to track down a war criminal who has alluded capture by UN soldiers. By any measure, it is a fool-hardy venture. Only a few years before, these same correspondents had convinced the world that all Serbs were monsters, but, typical of the arrogance that feeds mercenary journalists, they expected to be treated as VIPs in Republika Srpska. The men also assumed the local yokels - who still consider The Fox (Ljubomir Kerekes) to be a hero and patriot -- would take the time to parse the difference between besotted bounty hunters and CIA assassins. Richard Gere was the perfect choice to play the dashing, ego-centric Simon, a foreign correspondent who had lost his network showcase after publicly embarrassing the chief anchor. Appearing out of the blue in Sarajevo one day, Simon somehow convinces his former cameraman, Duck (Terrence Howard), and the snot-nosed son of a network executive (Jesse Eisenberg) to join him on his snipe hunt. What happens next ought to have played out either as a quirky caper (as did Three Kings) or a darkly comic indictment of UN, NATO and CIA hypocrisy (like, No Man's Land). Instead, The Hunting Party makes the fatal mistake of not trusting its source material: a truly bizarre article in Esquire by one of the participants in just such a misadventure. Sadly, the filmmakers decided to cook up the kind of finale they thought would satisfy undiscerning audiences and studio execs, but, in fact, diminished everything that's preceded it. Nonetheless, The Hunting Party manages to keep viewers guessing as to the fate of reporters and is never less than watchable, especially for the material shot in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. (The article upon which the film is based can be found at www.esquire.com/features/ESQ1000-EQ12224_57.F. It's worth the effort.) -- Gary Dretzka

Bordertown Trade	The brutal rapes and murders of hundreds of young women in Juarez and Chihuahua have been occurring with alarming frequency since 1993, coinciding with the NAFTA free-trade agreements and subsequent growth of maquiladoras. The lure of clean work at comparatively decent wages attracted tens of thousands of women to Mexican border towns, which, even in the best of times, are rife with violence and poverty. So far away from home, the women became easy targets for predators. It took a while for investigators to connect the dots, and agree the crimes were linked to like-minded perpetrators. Even then, however, police and government officials hid their heads in the sand, while investigators from humanitarian agencies and journalists did their work for them. As directed by Gregory Nava and starring Jennifer Lopez - who had collaborated on Selena -- Bordertown attempted to relate the story of one the more fortunate victims in a semi-fictional non-documentary format. A noble effort, to be sure, but the film was swamped by a disastrous screening at the 2006 Cannes film/hype festival. Lopez' star power simply overwhelmed Nava's modestly budgeted indie drama, adding a patina of implausible Hollywood melodrama that clashed with the film's very compelling message. Ultimately, distributors deemed Bordertown to be too much of a bummer to warrant domestic distribution, and, like Minnie Driver's similar turn in The Virgin of Juarez, was reduced to straight-to-DVD ignominy. Instead of letting the story tell itself, and giving Antonio Banderas the same latitude as Jake Gyllenhaal enjoyed in Zodiac, the makers of Bordertown miscalculated the appeal of their biggest commercial weapon. If Lopez couldn't sell El Cantante - which offered great music, at least - there was no way she could convince her fans to flock to a movie about femicide. Blessedly, the featurettes included in the DVD package are good enough reason to sample Bordertown. Apart from some interesting making-of material - and obligatory genuflections at the shrine of La Lopez - considerable time is allotted to people who have been working with survivors and international watchdog agencies to solve the crimes. God knows, the Mexican authorities haven't done much of anything, besides harassing reporters and jailing and torturing unlikely suspects. Watch the extras first, and Bordertown will look a whole lot better. Trade was a much better movie about a similarly powerful subject - the sordid business of buying and selling sex slaves - but it, too, suffered from too much schmaltz. Employing a faux-documentary format not dissimilar to Traffic, German director Marco Kreuzpaintner described the journey endured by a group of kidnapped women, girls and boys as they're transported from Mexico City, across the border to America, and ultimately to New Jersey, where one survivor's virginity will be auctioned off on the Internet. Conveniently, the brother of a 13-year-old kidnap victim joins forces with a Texas lawman (Kevin Kline) investigating the sex trade and they arrive in the nick of time. Kreuzpaintner delivers scenes of cruelty so devastating they border on the voyeuristic, as well as on-the-road material that looks great but only adds length to the narrative. Too much time and energy is wasted attempting to humanize characters in whose futures our emotions are already invested. Trade was based on The Girls Next Door, a 2004 story in the New York Times Magazine, by Peter Landesman. It is available on the Internet. -- Gary Dretzka

Ira & Abby Time and Tide/ Fall Into Me	Jennifer Westfeldt is familiar both for her work on the ABC sitcom, Notes From the Underbelly and the surprise indie hit, Kissing Jessica Stein, for which she served as writer, producer and neurotic half of a marginally lesbian couple. In her deceptively light urban comedy, Ira & Abby, Westfeldt plays a woman whose cure for almost any ill is to immediately get laid and married, in no particular order. The prescription rarely works, but that's who Abby Willoughby is. Within hours of meeting mopey doctoral candidate Ira Black (Chris Messing), Abby's convinced him of their compatibility as lovers, friends and potential spouses. The son of a long-unhappily-married pair of psychoanalysts, Ira is a neurotic mess with a massive writer's block. Abby's folks are outgoing ex-hippies, who consider Abby's quirks and eccentricities to be amusing. Ira and Abby do tie the knot, thereby ensuring nothing but trouble will follow for them. More interesting, perhaps, is what happens to their respective parents and the flotilla of shrinks who are enlisted to maintain sanity among the various characters. Westfeldt effectively channels Woody Allen, while demonstrating the limitations of traditional marriages and arguments that the ties that bind heteros are stronger than those between homosexual couples. Prominent among a sterling supporting cast are Robert Klein, Judith Light, Fred Willard, Frances Conroy, Jason Alexander and Donna Murphy. A gathering of psychiatrists, all advocating competing theories and treatments, is nimbly orchestrated by director Robert Cary. Not all indies about love and longing are created equally, however. In Time and Tide, Michael Carvaines makes extensive use of flashbacks and flash-forwards to document the how one Los Angeles architect comes to grips with his checkered dating history and potential for a committed relationship. In Tim VandeSteegabout's Fall Into Me, a 30ish school-bus driver finds temporary relief from heartbreak in the presence of a woman who mistakenly believes he's suffering from a rare kidney disease. His sudden happiness dissuades him from tempting fate, by revealing the truth. Not smart. Unlike Westfeldt's work, these movies suffer from having protagonists who are neither sympathetic nor compelling. -- Gary Dretzka

Scenes of a Sexual Nature	Although the cast might have been recognizable to the same folks who turn to BBC America and Masterpiece Theater for entertainment, Scenes of a Sexual Nature arrives only with the marketability of its misleading title. Freshman director Ed Blum allows the sex to play out mostly in the heads of seven couples whose paths cross one sunny afternoon on Hampstead Heath, overlooking London. Each couple's story plays out independently from those of the others, yet something in the air unites the lovers. Aschlin Ditta's intelligent and patient script wastes little time dwelling on the outward appearances of the film's diverse cast of characters. Ditta was instructed to create a story that played out outside, with no props, stunts or big set builds. He settled on Hampstead Heath for its reputation as a place where lovers meet. Among the actors on display are Eileen Atkins, Benjamin Whitrow, Andrew Lincoln, Holly Aird, Eglantine Rembauville-Nicolle, Sophie Okenedo, Adrian Lester, Catherine Tate, Ewan McGregor, Douglas Hodge, Hugh Bonneville, Polly Walker and Mark Strong. -- Gary Dretzka



Forget About It Set in a typically sunny retirement community, Forget About It describes what can happen when the feds decide someone else's neighborhood than their own would the perfect place to re-locate someone in the Witness Protection Program. Former wiseguy Peter Nitti's new neighbors greet him with the same amount of hospitality and suspicion reserved for anyone who might move next door and pay cash for an expensive new SUV. The subsequent appearances of an FBI agent and mob hitmen - and discovery of a suitcase loaded with cash -- leads the gung-ho geezers of Sunrise Village to mobilize against the interlopers. Among them are characters played by Burt Reynolds, Raquel Welch, Robert Loggia, Charles Durning, Phyllis Diller and Tim Thomerson, all of whom have seen better days but are still able to raise a smile. As directed by former stuntman B.J. Bronco Davis, and written by his Ukrainian wife, Julia, Forget About It certainly won't make anyone forget the stars' better work. And, yet, against all odds, my low expectations were exceeded, thanks to some lively acting and palpable camaraderie. Young audiences won't find much to savor here, but the grandparents might get a few laughs out of it. -- Gary Dretzka

Who's Your Caddy? As the audience for cross-over hip-hop comedies grows -- presumably, anyway - it's likely we'll see all sorts of unlikely niche adaptations of movies previously targeted at young white males. Who's Your Caddy? is immediately reminiscent of the Caddyshack franchise, but it also echoes several decades worth of there goes the neighborhood comedies. Here, a rap mogul from Atlanta is thwarted from his desire to join a traditional Southern country club, at least until it behooves the members to take advantage of his wealth and property adjacent to the links. You can guess the rest. Who's Your Caddy? stars Antwan "Big Boi Andre" Patton, as the upwardly mobile C-Note; Tamala Jones; Faizon Love; Sherri Shepherd; Finesse Mitchell; and Garrett Morris, as a flashy reverend. Just as in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Jeffrey Jones' character is made the butt of the best and most denigrating gags. -- Gary Dretzka

Rocket Science Jeffrey Blitz' delightfully bittersweet high-school dramedy is just the sort of film that kills at Sundance, but barely makes a dent at the domestic box-office. It's highly personal, keenly observant and subversively funny. It also gave the snowbound media another writer-director, and several cute actors, over whom to drool. Rocket Science was about a boy who struggled to overcome his stuttering by joining the debate team … not exactly magnets for mainstream success. Neither was the school a holding pen for wanna-be felons and aspiring porn stars. The bullies here used words as weapons, not weapons as weapons, and, as Roger Ebert pointed out, its prissy R-rating guaranteed that most of the film's potential audience was eliminated from seeing it. Reece Thompson plays 15-year-old Hal Hefner, a bright and friendly kid whose mouth stops working at the most inappropriate times. Complicating his life even more is the recent divorce of his parents and almost constant hazing by his hoodlum brother. Hal is encouraged to join the debate team by a cocky classmate, Ginny, who has mastered the rhetorical technique of spreading. It is to debate what a beer bong is to getting drunk. Just as Hal is about to find his own voice - and libido - Ginny transfers to another school and joins the debate team, there. The inevitable verbal smackdown plays out in a way almost impossible to predict, but it's consistent with the quirky events and oddball characters that precede it. Blitz, whose first film was the Oscar-nominated Spellbound, knows his way around kids and contests. According to an interview in the bonus package, his own stuttering problem prompted him to find other ways of communicating and telling stories. -- Gary Dretzka

Lee Miller: Through the Mirror Lost and Found: The Harry Langdon Collection Our Hitler Heimat, Vol. 3: A Chronicle of Endings and Beginnings How many times have we read about a supermodel who has picked up a camera, typewriter or SAG card and excelled in a discipline that didn't require the plucking of eyebrows. Cheryl Tiegs, Lauren Hutton, Kelly Ireland, Tyra Banks and the horrifying Janice Dickinson all have found success beyond the catwalk, and avoided the ignominy of paying for arugula and designer water with food stamps. I don't know if any of these beautiful women were inspired by the career of Lee Miller, a blood-blooded Vogue model who became a muse to Man Ray, post-surrealist photographer, war correspondent, artist and mother. Sylvain Roumette's documentary portrait, Lee Miller: Through the Mirror, offers terrific insight into a woman who refused to be bound by limitations imposed on her by society, male-dominated institutions and, yes, her beauty. Miller's story is told mostly through photographs - especially those taken in the immediate aftermath of Germany's surrender in World War II - but fascinating anecdotes are provided by Time-Life photographer David Scherman and her son, Anthony Penrose. Little known, too, is the fact that Miller became the first model to pose for a feminine-hygiene product, if only because her friend Edward Steichen sold a portrait of her to Kotex, in 1928, without asking her permission. The joy of watching the silent films of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel & Hardy and Harold Lloyd hasn't diminished one giggle over the last 80 years. Sadly, film historians are far more familiar with the work of their equally talented contemporary, Harry Langdon, than are most comedy buffs. Facets' terrific Lost and Found: The Harry Langdon Collection should go a long way toward correcting that slight. Langdon was a veteran vaudevillian when he was discovered, in 1923, by Mack Sennett. Even though he was 40, Langdon's wide-eyed innocent characters could easily pass for 20. They often seemed bewildered by the events taking place around them, and required much serendipitous slapstick to pull them out of holes. Their klutz-like mannerisms also allowed the studio to get away with more than the usual amount of sexual innuendo and naughty behavior. The four-disc set offers restored versions of rarely seen treasures, as well as material familiar from watching kiddie shows in the '60s. Each film is accompanied by an original musical score, and much discussion by historians and scholars. Released in 1977, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's Hitler, a Film from Germany attempted to make sense of Nazism and the country's willingness to sell its soul to Satan's Teutonic surrogate, Adolph Hitler. Intended to be shown in four parts, on television, the artistic investigation unspooled as a series of 22 tableaux set on a soundstage, employing puppets, props, rear-screen projection and a Wagnerian soundtrack. Its willingness to look beyond the obvious influences - defeat in World War I, a raw deal at Versailles, economic turmoil, anti-intellectualism - to a time when history was been written by composers of operas and poets. Needless to say, the film ruffled more than a few feathers. Its American release was overseen by Francis Coppola's Zoetrope Studios, which re-named the film, Our Hitler. Also from Germany comes the third volume of the Heimat saga, A Chronicle of Endings and Beginnings. At 680 minutes, it takes the story of the Simon Family into the modern era, by having lovers Hermann and Clarissa reunite on the evening of the fall of the Berlin Wall. As citizens of the divided nation re-acquaint themselves with each other, and compare official versions of their history, the couple retreats to the Rhine Valley. Here, the various remaining Simons pore through a century's worth of memories, hopes and dreams. -- Gary Dretzka

This Sporting Life: Criterion Collection Miss Julie: Criterion Collection 4 by Agnès Varda: Criterion Collection There was a time, not so long ago, when athletes didn't emerge fully formed from the womb with agents, multimillion-dollar contracts and Nike emblems embossed on their butts. Like On the Waterfront before it, This Sporting Life documents a period that no longer exists. Today, gifted athletes are able to control their destinies, and profit from their achievements in ways unimaginable by the contenders of yesteryear. Then, if an athlete suffered a career-ending injury, he was more likely to be given a one-way ticket to Palookaville than a soft gig at ESPN. In Lindsay Anderson's remarkable debut film, Richard Harris plays a rough-hewn Yorkshire miner who scrapes and bullies his way to a position on the local rugby squad. Even as his star rose, Frank never strayed far from his working-class roots. Beyond being able to finally afford a swell car, he still went home at night to a room in a drab row house leased by the widow of another miner. Athletes were held in great esteem by local residents, but no one bothered them for autographs or patches of their clothing. Franks hopes to make the leap from Poverty Row to middle-class life, and take his shell-shocked landlady (Rachel Roberts) and her two children with him. Margaret's almost inexplicable reluctance to put her husband's death and their no-frills lifestyle behind her finally drives Frank to the edge of whisky-fueled madness. His pain is further heightened by the loss of several teeth to a competitor's strategically thrown elbow. This Sporting Life marked the debut of director Lindsay Anderson, and immediately was hailed as one of the best of Britain's kitchen sink dramas. Anderson would go on to make If …, O Lucky Man! and Britannia Hospital. Watch This Sporting Life alongside On the Waterfront, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, Raging Bull and Somebody Up There Likes Me and you'll find a commonality in background, determination and passion. The Criterion Collection package also includes interviews with Anderson's collaborators and friends; two of his early documentaries; commentary by scholar Paul Ryan and David Storey, who adapted This Sporting Life from his own novel; and Anderson's final, autobiographical film, Is That All There Is? Having to read and be tested on dusty works of theater, such as August Strindberg's Miss Julie, is a prospect too dreadful to bear for many college freshmen. That prejudice might change if professors spiced up their syllabi with one-sheet hyperbole like, Scandalous, Sexy and Banned from release in America! Instead of relying on CliffsNotes, students might rush instead to films like the Criterion Collection edition of Miss Julie. Although Swedish filmmaker Alf Sjöberg adapted the 1888 play more than a half-century ago, his Miss Julie delivers a greater sexual punch than most of today's PG-13 movies. (And, yes, it was censored upon its first release in the United States.) The sparks that fly between a nobleman's daughter (dishy Anita Bjork) and her hunky footman (Ulf Palme) are palpable, even considering the period dress and moral trappings of great wealth. By opening up the play to take advantage of the lush countryside at midsummer's eve also adds greatly to our enjoyment. One needn't stretch too far to find a similarity between Sjöberg's Miss Julie and early films by Ingmar Bergman. The generous supplementary materials - on film and in print -- add plenty of background to both the play and film, saving beleaguered students time and effort that could be better utilized drinking and playing video games. Also new from Criterion Collection is 4 by Agnès Varda, which is comprised of newly restored digital transfers of La Pointe Courte, Cléo from 5 to 7, Le Bonheur and Vagabond. A writer and director of films even French audiences dismiss as arthouse fare, Varda's subjective documentary style has been informed by her early training as a photographer. The package also contains early shorts, new and old interviews with Varda, commentary, making-of material, essays and discussions with actors and scholars. -- Gary Dretzka

Ladron Que Roba A Ladron 7 Dias Amores Perros, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Duck Season and Battle for Heaven are Mexican films that have enjoyed critical, and some commercial success in arthouses north of the Rio Grande. Joe Menendez and JoJo Henrickson's charming little heist comedy, Ladron Que Roba A Ladron (A Thief Who Robs a Thief), resembles those fine pictures only in that its characters speak Spanish. Its roots might lie in Mexico, but this clearly is a Hollywood-made product targeted to audiences who will instantly recognize the stars from their favorite telenovelas. Two con artists devise an elaborate scheme to steal a small fortune in ill-gotten gains from a crooked infomercial magnate, who preys on viewers of the poorest viewers of Telemundo and Univision. Like Danny Ocean's crew, the thieves in Ladron have been recruited for their individual skills. The one thing they all have in common is their immigrant status in the United States, which seemingly makes them invisible not only to the gringo mainstream, but also to the Latino elite. The scheme is absurdly intricate, and requires a great suspension of disbelief to enjoy, but it's no worse than the one that informed Ocean's Twelve. To their credit, the filmmakers take full advantage of the greater L.A. backlot, moving nimbly between downtown, the barrio and Santa Monica Mountains, where the invisible people work and do business. The primary appeal here is the cast of attractive actors, who have toiled in the telenovela vineyards and served as background characters in English-language genre fare. Fans of the telenovela Café con aroma de mujer will enjoy watching Ana Serradilla and Fernanda Castillo -- both of whom played Daniela -- in the romantic comedy Corazon Marchito. In it, a man and woman realize they're both approaching middle-age at the same breakneck speed, and neither their intelligence nor their good looks has resulted in a satisfactory relationship. As is typical with best friends of the opposite gender, they're looking for love in all the wrong places. Bright and sexy, Corazon Marchito feels more European than what we've come to expect from romantic Mexican comedies. 7 Dias is a caper movie aimed at hip, young Spanish-speaking audiences. Here, soaper Eduardo Arroyuelo plays a budding concert impresario who desperately wants to bring U2 to Mexico. To qualify for consideration, he must come up with a down payment of $500,000, which, of course, he doesn't possess. Instead, he audaciously cons a gangster out of the money, hoping he can make up the difference within the next seven days. It's fun, edgy and deserves to find an audience that isn't intimidated by subtitles. -- Gary Dretzka

Damages: The Complete First Season The Jeff Corwin Experience: Season 1 Banacek: The Second Season The Catherine Cookson Anthology Pioneers of Television/The Jewish Americans After successfully completing an emotionally charged story arc on The Shield, Glenn Close returned to FX last fall in another powder-keg of a series, Damages. (She might want to consider a career on the big screen, someday.) In it, Close plays Patty Hewes, exactly the kind of high-powered New York litigator who might have served as the inspiration for several hundred nasty lawyer jokes. Hewes recruits an ambitious protégée, Ellen Parsons, who is only one or two courtroom victories away from turning into her boss, and assigns her to a case that will ultimately lead to murder and a prison cell. We know this from a series of flashbacks in Episode One, none of which makes any sense until halfway through the freshman season. Close is terrific, as is Rose Byrne, Zeljko Ivanek and Ted Danson, as the unscrupulous target of a multimillion-dollar lawsuit. There are more serpentine twists in Damages than in the average large intestine. Don't miss it. Considering the circumstances surrounding the untimely death of Steve Irwin - being skewered by a stingray's barb - it's fair to question the limits to which professional animal harassers should be allowed to go to boost ratings. Animal Planet's season-one package of The Jeff Corwin Experience follows the playful host in his global tours to find exotic animals and explain their idiosyncrasies to viewers, many of whose experiences with wild life are limited to watching squirrels climb trees. I wonder what Marlin Perkins would have to say about the many shows that followed in the wake of Zoo Parade and Wild Kingdom. Lest we forget, Animal Planet also has just released Puppy Bowl III into DVD. Hope the little critters are well compensated for their efforts. In the early '70s, NBC found great success in its rotating series of detective shows, all starring popular actors - Richard Widmark, Rock Hudson, James Farentino, Peter Falk, Richard Boone, Dennis Weaver -- who no longer were being considered for roles as leading men. George Peppard, who, 10 years earlier, had starred opposite Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's, made the leap into television on Banacek. In it, Peppard played an exquisitely dressed and charming insurance investigator, who might easily have been mistaken for James Bond. He would find even greater success a dozen years later as leader of The A-Team. The Season Two box contains the pilot episode missing from the first package. Historical romances written by Dame Catherine Cookson have served as fodder for many excellent British TV mini-series. KochVision has collected seven of the best in the 1,259-minute The Catherine Cookson Anthology. Among the treats is watching an about-to-explode Catherine Zeta-Jones in the 1994 series, The Cinder Path. Among the TV-to-DVD packages adding new seasons to previous collections: Barney Miller: The Complete Second Season; Hawaii Five-O: The Third Season; The Odd Couple: The Third Season; The Girls Next Door: Season Three, in which Hef struggles to keep up with his harem of batty blonds; The Simple Life: The Complete Fifth Season, in Paris and Nicole go to camp to corrupt even more young minds and torment parents; Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Complete Sixth Season, in which Larry David gains an African-American family and sheds a wife (the final episode is a pip); Make Room for Daddy: Season 6, with one of the media's most beloved families and, like Ricky Ricardo, a dad who works in a nightclub; and ER: The Complete Eighth Season. TV-to-DVD imports also are entering multiple season runs: Created by Lars von Trier, The Kingdom: Series Two is a crazy supernatural thriller set inside a haunted Danish hospital; Blue Murder: Set 2, Chancer: Series 2 and Melissa, all terrific crime thrillers from Britain and Acorn. Two fine PBS documentary series have quickly made the transition from TV to DVD. The very entertaining and informative four-parter, Pioneers of Television, documents the evolution of sitcoms, late-night gabfests, game and variety shows. In addition to archival clips, the series features interviews with TV veterans and their descendents. David Grubin's six-hour The Jewish Americans chronicles 350 years of Jewish-American life. One focus is on the historical challenges faced by Jews who sought to assimilate into the American mainstream, while maintaining their ethnic and religious identities.