MCN DVD Reviews: November 25, 2008

*The Wrap Up ...*

Fred Claus A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!	Watching the so-so seasonal comedy Fred Claus, I tried to think of an actor - living or dead -- who shared the same comedic chops as Vince Vaughn. It took a while, but one name finally popped into my mind: Ken Maynard, whose singular contribution to American pop culture was the famously obsequious Eddie Haskell, of Leave It to Beaver. Vaughn plays characters whose surface charm often masks a chronic need to cause mischief and mayhem. Here, he plays the older brother of Santa Nick Claus (Paul Giamatti), who's his polar opposite. Growing up in a rural paradise, Fred was forced to compete with his precociously saintly sibling for their mother's approval. Nick didn't push the issue, but Fred always was second-best in the eyes of their mother. Flash forward and Fred is working as a repo man in Chicago - well utilized as a location - while Nick has created a toy-producing empire at the North Pole. Needing some quick dough, Fred reluctantly agrees to make a rare trip north to help out at the factory. Once there, Fred not only encouraged the elves to question their working conditions, but he also clashed with Santa over the definitions of naughty and nice. It's only when the brothers find a common enemy in the bean counter (Kevin Spacey), sent in by Santa's corporate board to oversee production, that they come together to save the family business. Fred Claus is a gingerbread and candy-cane confection, but, as these things go, it's made well and the actors aren't just going through the motions. The first-rate cast also includes Miranda Richardson, Rachel Weisz, John Michael Higgins, Kathy Bates, Elizabeth Bates and Ludacris. The bonus features are limited to deleted scenes and commentary by director David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers). Any family considering Christmas traditions that don't require flying reindeer and re-gifted fruitcakes needs look no further than A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All! The Comedy Central's other unimpeachable political voice - who bears an uncanny resemblance to J.R. Bob Dobbs, standard bearer of the Church of the SubGenius - invites over-imbibing revelers to share the holiday with Toby Keith, Elvis Costello, John Legend, Feist, Willie Nelson and Jon Stewart. It's a hoot. The extras include a video Yule log of burning books and a video Advent calendar. -- Gary Dretzka

Meet Dave	Eddie Murphy's terrific performance in Dreamgirls encouraged longtime fans, who had written off the once-edgy comic as a victim of his own success, to give him another chance. Sadly, their optimism was short-lived. As long as Murphy could get away with re-voicing Donkey every six months, or so, it didn't matter what half-baked material his agent thought was appropriate for his great talent. Maybe, if the critically savaged Norbit hadn't grossed close to $100 million, Murphy would have made another run at an Oscar nomination. Meet Dave may not have made any money, but it wasn't a complete disaster. In it, he plays a sort of human spacecraft - a.k.a., Dave Ming Chang -- ferrying tiny aliens to an excursion on Earth. His passengers lead him on a merry chase through New York and L.A., allowing Murphy to be as goofy as he wants … and audiences expect. The ubiquitous Elizabeth Banks plays a potential love interest. -- Gary Dretzka

Wall-E Star Wars: The Clone Wars	Oscar forecasters put Wall-E at or near the top of a bunch of Best Picture candidates almost no one - including critics and studio executives - has seen. Invariably, when an animated feature reaches such lofty heights of prognostication, its backers know to temper their hopes with the reality of the academy's chronic reluctance to back up buzz with votes. The same applies, of course, to comedies and other genre fare. The safer bet is that voters will relegate WALL-E to the category designated specifically for animated features, and everyone will lie about not including it among their Best Picture choices. Equal parts rom-com, sci-fi parable and tear-jerker - with nods to Charlie Chaplin, George Lucas and Stanley Kubrick, among many other filmmakers -- Pixar's instant classic imagined a future in which piles of compacted garbage compete with ancient skyscrapers for space along the urban skyline. Meanwhile, what's left of humanity is left to wander the cosmos in a luxury spacecraft specially built to accommodate tragically obese Americans. WALL-E (voiced by Ben Burtt) is a small Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class robot that someone forgot to turn off when humans exited Earth. One day, a robotic probe is sent from the space station Axiom to scour the urban landscape for a safe place to reintroduce the species. When EVE comes lens-to-lens with WALL-E, it's love at first scan. After EVE is ordered back to the mother ship - along with a plant that's sprouted among the debris in WALL-E's junk shop - he concocts a way to become a stowaway. The three-disc DVD and Blu-ray editions come loaded with commentary, deleted scenes, the Pixar short Presto, several making-of featurettes, a DisneyFile digital copy and The Pixar Story. The Blu-ray version also includes the short BURN-E, a Geek Track, video games and 3-D fly-through tours of various locations. And, yes, all family members will find something to love in Wall-E. The feature-length cartoon, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, exists in a galaxy far, far away from Wall-E, creatively and intellectually. Long-awaited in some quarters, Clone Wars essentially served as a preview for the animated series, Clone Wars, on the Cartoon Network. Each harkens back to events described previously in Episode II: Attack of the Clones, with return visits by such beloved characters as Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and Count Dooku. Here, a scrappy girl warrior, Ahsoka Tano, joins Anakin on a mission to rescue Jabba the Hutt's kidnapped spawn. There's action aplenty, but it falls way short of anything one might expect from the venerable Star Wars brand. While geeks may find hidden virtues, the target market remains pre-teen boys who still play with action figures. -- Gary Dretzka

Hellboy II: The Golden Army 3-Disc Special Edition	Not being a big fan of movies adapted from comic books, I rarely expect much from them besides wall-to-wall mayhem, an irrelevant storyline, unremarkable dialogue, an excruciatingly loud soundtrack and protagonists who matter as much to me as Nancy and Sluggo. I couldn't give a good crap about the ultimate fates of the characters in Hellboy II: The Golden Army - superheroes Red, Liz and Abe are all that stands between mankind and an ancient army of killer robots - but writer-director Guillermo del Toro's snappy dialogue, wondrous sets and light-hearted approach to the material made it easy for me to buy into the foolishness. Ron Perlman's comfort with the character is palpable, and spunky Selma Blair is delightful as Hellboy's incendiary girlfriend. Hellboy fans will be thrilled to learn they won't have to wait for the edition that comes loaded with extras. The three-disc set includes much commentary, deleted scenes, a prologue, a digital script, a Puppet Theatre for the opening sequences of the film, concept art, a half-dozen making-of docs, a visit to the Troll Market set and feature-length Hellboy: in Service of the Demon. -- Gary Dretzka

Tropic Thunder Unrated Director's Cut	So much attention was paid to the blackface affected by Robert Downey Jr. and the jokes at the expense of a retard in Tropic Thunder, almost no one paid attention to the context in which they occurred. Once that happened, all debate was buried under laughter. It's called satire and Ben Stiller's been around Hollywood long enough to know whereof he speaks, writes and directs. Casting such prominent stars as Dustin Hoffman, Sean Penn, Robin Williams, Juliette Lewis and Tom Hanks in roles that exploit our sympathies toward damaged human beings - and win award nominations, in the process - represents Oscar-baiting at its most cynical. So, too, is playing against type, which is what Downey's Kirk Lazurus does to get into character as a black soldier in Vietnam. In Tropical Thunder, the fictional studio bankrolling a Rambo-like thriller demanded that a big-name star play the soldier, and, to add a taste of reality, the Aussie actor underwent skin- pigment augmentation and refused to break away from his stereotypical portrayal. It's meant to be absurd, of course. Still, white actors often are called upon to play Othello, and, on SNL, Barak Obama was mimicked by a white actor in brown-face. Here, Steve Coogan plays a hack director so determined to draw strong performances from his faux platoon that he choppers them into the bush and orders the soldiers (Brandon T. Jackson, Jay Baruchel , Jack Black) to fight their way back to their trailers. Before he can explain the ruse to his actors, though, he steps on a real land mine - set by native drug smugglers - and is blown to smithereens. Not knowing any better, the actors go along with the gag, assuming their every move is being filmed and the guys in the Viet Cong outfits also are shooting blanks. Their rescue from captivity is hilarious. Adding to the fun are peripheral performances by Tom Cruise, Matthew McConaughey and Nick Nolte. The Unrated Director's Cut edition adds about 13 minutes of new material to Tropic Thunder, although, as usual, I'd be hard-pressed to say what it is. The set also contains several featurettes, deleted and extended scenes, an alternate ending, and video rehearsals. -- Gary Dretzka

The Wild Wild West: The Complete Series Get Smart Get Smart: The Complete Series Gift Set	The less one can recall of the original Get Smart, the greater that person is likely to enjoy last summer's reimagining, which starred the estimable Steve Carell. The original TV series, created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, was as much a part of its time as James Bond, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., I Spy, Mission: Impossible, The Avengers and, in its focus on spies and counter-terrorism, The Wild Wild West. After the heat from the Cuban Missile Crisis dissipated, people on this side of the Iron Curtain were ready for some cathartic laughter and invincible spies. Today, of course, Al Qaeda and the Taliban aren't nearly as easy to mock as the Russians and East Germans of yesteryear, and Maxwell Smart couldn't be any more incompetent than the CIA agents who gave President Bush an excuse to go to war in Iraq. Neither does the threat of KAOS trigger many alarms in people born after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. So most of the weight falls on the shoulders of Carell and Anne Hathaway, who is beautiful but not nearly as sexy as the original Agent 99, Barbara Feldon. While Carell looks the part, his delivery isn't nearly as snappy as that of Don Adams. It's fard to imagine anyone under 50 taking notice, though. For Get Smart to have worked in 2008, Brooks and Henry would have had to write the script and create some new, even more politically incorrect foes of democracy. Still, as they used to say about Elvis Presley, 50 million Steve Carell fans can't be wrong. Get Smart made lots of money, and a sequel already is on the drawing board. But, don't take my word on the superiority of the original series. All of the evidence necessary to make my case can be found on Get Smart: The Complete Series Gift Set. The set has been digitally restored, re-mastered and re-packaged in a 25-disc collection, suitable for holiday gift gifting. Ditto, The Wild Wild West: The Complete Series which contains 27 discs - yes, these are big boxes - and two previously unreleased post-series movies. Agents James West and Artemus Gordon, who took orders directly from President Ulysses S. Grant, traveled the west in a tricked-out private train car. Their arsenal included gadgets the Mission:Impossible team would envy, while their recurring arch-enemies were as dastardly as any faced by 007. -- Gary Dretzka



Encounters at the End of the World Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson Operation Valkyrie: The Stauffenberg Plot to Kill Hitler Pair Alex Gibney's intriguing biodoc, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, with a reading of Corey Seymour's exhaustive oral biography, Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson, and it's possible to understand the forces that conspired to drive the larger-than-life reporter/fabulist to fame and suicide. Likewise, an accurate depiction of his mannerisms, ticks and eccentricities can be found in Bill Murray and Johnny Depp's performances in Where the Buffalo Roam and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Anyone who truly cares to understand what he brought to the smorgasbord of life in the late 1960s and most of the '70s, however, first must tackle his journalism and understand the context in which it was written. (The same caveat applies to fellow pop-cultural icons Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski, whose self-destructive behavior was best experienced from afar.) Thompson emerged from the pack of young magazine and newspaper writers, whose work collectively was characterized by Tom Wolfe as the New Journalism. These writers purposefully blurred the lines that separated fiction and non-fiction, literature and reporting. Thompson stood virtually alone by committing the greatest of all journalistic sins: participating in the events he was assigned to cover. These included the Kentucky Derby, the mythologizing of the Hell's Angels, dirt bike races in the desert, a lawmen's convention and, most famously, the presidential campaigns of 1972 and 1976. Not only did he insert his own opinions into the texts, but he also disclosed how his judgments may have been altered by the ingestion of specific drugs and alcohol. Fully bared, Thompson gave himself permission to rip the clothes off the emperors of American politics, as well. His outrageous opinions, lampooning of the candidates and unvarnished analysis struck a chord with Rolling Stone readers, many of whom had been tear-gassed and bludgeoned in the streets of Chicago and on college campuses. Thompson's street cred was cemented by his attacks on Democratic hacks, as well as Republican warmongers, and a vernacular that rang true to dopers and dissidents, alike. The title of Gibney's documentary, Gonzo, derives from the label attached to this sort of reportage. As characters go, Thompson was one in a million. Gibney cobbled archival video footage together with the reminiscences of neighbors, colleagues (Tom Wolfe, Jann Wenner), politicians (George McGovern, Jimmy Carter), ex-wives and girlfriends, his son and such odd bedfellows as Patrick Buchanan. While all have great warts-and-all stories to share, they also remind us of what might have been, if only Thompson had been able to keep his edgy correspondence sharp enough to cut through the bullshit of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and both President Bushes. Instead, he allowed himself to become a caricature of Garry Trudeau's Uncle Duke, with booze, drugs and guns. (Seymour's book goes into much greater detail on the serious back problems and chronic, which, more than anything else, drove him to commit suicide.) The DVD adds several extended interviews, examples his collaborations with Ralph Steadman and a look at his fetishistic gun collection. In Encounters at the End of the World, the wonderfully curious Werner Herzog travels to McMurdo Research Station, Antarctica, to meet the odd assortment of niche scientists, engineers, heavy-equipment handlers and misfits who call the most desolate outpost on the planet home. We're told Herzog was given unprecedented access not only to laboratories, storage facilities and the living quarters for the 1,000 men and women there, but also to far more remote research stations on the frozen continent. As Herzog quickly discovers, McMurdo not so much resembles the Antarctica of nature documentaries and penguin musicals as it does the ore pits on the Mesabi Iron Range. He's especially disturbed by the easy access to spa facilities, workout rooms, an ATM machine and other trappings of distant suburbia. Once Herzog left McMurdo, though, his thoughts turned to something far more complex. In the translucent waters below the frozen ice, in crystalline ice caves, on the ridge above an active volcano and among the seals, micro-organisms and a lone demented penguin, the director senses both than the origins of life and the stirrings of man's extinction. Herzog pairs the amazing cinematography Peter Zeitlinger and Henry Kaiser - above and below the ice -- with the otherworldly language of seals and similarly eerie music provided by Kaiser and David Lindley. The bonus features in the two-disc set adds more underwater footage and music; interviews; a South Pole Exorcism, Jonathan Demme's interview with Herzog and a hidden Easter egg parody of Grizzly Man, in which weddell seals stand in for bears. My only regret is that it doesn't yet come in Blu-ray. While the world waits breathlessly for the long-delayed release of Bryan Singer and Tom Cruise's historical drama, Valkyrie, the documentary Operation Valkyrie: The Staufenberg Plot to Kill Hitler will have to suffice. It contains archival footage, interviews with historians and the last surviving member of the conspiracy, CGI re-creations, a visit to the Stauffenberg Estate, footage from the Volksgericht trials and, yes, Eva Braun's home movies. -- Gary Dretzka

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 Hannah Montana: The Complete First Season Hannah Montana/High School Musical: DVD Game Walt Disney Treasures: The Mickey Mouse Club Presents Annette Popeye the Sailor: 1941-1943, Vol. 3 Any guy who voluntarily agreed to accompany his girlfriend to a showing of either incarnation of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants should never again be forced to prove his love to her. The same applies to any Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus concert, High School Musical event and the Sex and the City movie. Happily, most women understand that any male presence would ruin the experience for them, and choose to share it with friends, instead. (Likewise, no woman should be required to sit through a Three Stooges marathon or mixed-martial-arts fight.) That said, however, the target audience for TSOTTP2 probably walked away from the multiplex completely satisfied. Here, Tibby, Carmen, Bridget and Lena are two years older - if not wiser - and the jeans seem to be held together by patches. Each of the young women has recently experienced some sort of loss and is in desperate need of sisterhood. The girls wind up on the Greek island of Santorini, where the local boys all look like Chippendale dancers title garment has disappeared. Sanaa Hamri's movie, which combines elements from several of Ann Brashares' early titles, is easy on the eyes, and, somehow, it felt much shorter than its 117-minute length. Disney Channel's Hannah Montana! has finally found its way onto DVD, just as the 15-year-old actor who plays both performer Hannah Montana and school girl Miley Stewart has moved from bobby sox and blue jeans, to stripper outfits and underwear models six years her senior. Enjoy her innocence while it lasts, folks, because Miley's about to turn into Britney Spears. In addition to the first season's episodes, the four-disc set arrives with a visit to Miley's hometown, accompanied by Corbin Bleu, Ashley Tisdale and Cody Linley. Also newly released is an interactive DVD game, with a trivia contest, dance lessons, charades, a word-association activity and a bunch of songs. Disney has also concocted an interactive game to complement its High School Musical series and movie. Boomer parents will surely recall how, more than a half-century ago, a pretty young Mouseketeer named Annette Funicello became a role model for millions of American girls and an inadvertent sex symbol for countless teenage boys and dirty old men. She would later emerge as a recording star and professional beach bunny. Dollar for dollar, pound for pound, Annette was every bit the sensation as Miley, Lindsay and Britney, even under the protective eyes of Walt Disney. She no sooner would have allowed herself to be photographed minus her panties than she would tarnish Sleeping Beauty Castle with graffiti. (Indeed, years later, Disney insisted she not be required to wear a bikini in her beach-blanket pictures.) The latest addition to the Walt Disney Treasures collection showcases a daily show within a show, starring Annette, that ran during The Mickey Mouse Club in the 1957-58 season. Packaged in a collector's tin, as are all installment in the series, it's a wonderfully nostalgic gift idea. Other new Treasures: Dr. Syn: The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, a historically based mini-series that debuted, in 1963, on Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, and starred Patrick McGoohan as a country vicar who stood up to British tax collectors in the guise of a scarecrow. Disney may have been a conservative, but the heroes of such mini-series - Zorro, Francis Marion, Davy Crockett, Elfego Baca - didn't always play by the rules. Walt Disney Treasures: The Chronological Donald, Vol. 4, represents Mr. Duck's contributions to the studio library between 1951 and 1961. These cartoons include CinemaScope titles, presented in their original widescreen format, and the Oscar-nominated shorts, Rugged Bear and No Hunting. There's also a retrospective of Donald's career in comic books. In other cartoon news, Popeye the Sailor: 1941-1943, Vol. 3 recalls Popeye's service in the U.S. Navy, as it took on the warships of Axis powers in World War II. The shorts, produced at the Max Fleischer and Famous studios, feature Olive, Blutto, Poopdeck Pappy, Swee'pea and the nephews. Sadly, though, Wimpy was a no-show in this period. Political correctness not yet having reared its head, several of the war-themed cartoons depicted the Japanese, especially, in ways that now are considered offensive and stereotypical … and they were. Arriving in the wake of Pearl Harbor, though, the Japs were our enemy and, as such, were considered fair game for demonization, just like the goons and Bluto (who also appeared in the guise of Sinbad the Sailor and Abu Hassin). They were created strictly to knock the enemy down a few pegs. As cartoons became a fixture on television, four of these titles were pulled from circulation. As a wee tot parked in front of the TV, however, I do recall having seen a couple of the more insulting ones. Somehow, it didn't stop me from developing a taste for Kurosawa and sushi. -- Gary Dretzka

Studio One Anthology M Squad: The Complete Series The Universe: The Complete Season 1 George Gently: Series 1 The Commander: Set 1 The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show Critics and historians occasionally waste their time and that of their readers debating whether the television shows of one decade are better or worse than those produced during the so-called Golden Age of the 1950s. Comparisons are difficult to make, if only because technology back then didn't allow for creative camerawork and actors were pretty much limited to stages with one- or two-room sets. Then, too, there's the matter of incomplete archives from which to draw specimens, and the grainy texture of the images. The anthology series, Studio One, is considered to be among the very best examples of Golden Age dramas, and its appearance on DVD is especially welcome. Besides 17 restored dramas, with commercials intact, the six-DVD Anthology adds archival material gathered by the Paley Center for Media and the Archive of America Television, as well as a 52-page book with contributions by Gore Vidal and historian Larry James Gianakos. The '50s also gave us some terrific crime shows, many of which starred actors known for their work on film and were shot on location in places other than southern California. M Squad starred legendary hard-ass Lee Marvin as plain-clothes Chicago cop, Lt. Frank Ballinger. The department's elite M Squad was established to solve murders and combat organized crime and official corruption. First broadcast nearly a decade before cops were required to read suspects their rights, according to the Miranda ruling, Ballinger was allowed to get away with intimidation tactics that wouldn't be out of place at Abu Ghraib prison. The noir-ish series was shot on the streets of Chicago, at least until Mayor Richard J. Daley learned that one of the episodes dealt with police corruption and ordered the lot of them back to L.A. Among the guest stars were Angie Dickinson, Charles Bronson, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley and Burt Reynolds. The jazzy score is almost worth the price of admission, alone. Season One of the wonderful History Channel series, The Universe, has arrived in Blu-ray, and it's about time. Even as we're learning of more previously unknown planets, newborn stars and potentially lethal asteroids, the 13-episode show attempted to frame Earth and its environmental challenges within the context of a greater frontier. The computer graphics and digital photography really come alive in hi-def. In George Gently, Martin Shaw played an incorruptible, uncompromising London cop, who, one day in the 1960s, finds himself stationed in England's North Country. Once there, Gently forms an unlikely alliance with John Bacchus, a young sergeant who is his polar opposite. Lynda La Plante, the writer responsible for Prime Suspect, gave us another strong investigator in Clare Blake. As New Scotland Yard's highest-ranking woman officer, the commander of the Serious Crime Group is not only required to contend with vicious criminals, but also fellow cops. The DVD package adds an interview with star Amanda Burton and a character retrospective with La Plante. Anyone with a passing interest in Hollywood gossip knows Kate Hudson is the daughter of Goldie Hawn. How she acquired the surname, Hudson, is less known, though. Bill Hudson, the long-ago husband of Goldie, was one-third of a brother act that enjoyed some popularity in the mid-1970s. (Their polyester clothes and silly hairdos wouldn't have been tolerated in any other decade.) The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show was a variety show that CBS imported from Toronto and stuck on its prime-time schedule as a summer replacement show. Fast-paced and colorful in a groovy, psychedelic sort of way, Razzle Dazzle was moved to the network's Saturday-morning kiddie ghetto, which is where it found a more logical home. The best-known character probably was Rod Hull's nasty emu puppet. Among the other new TV-to-DVD sets are Chuck: The Complete First Season: Blu-ray, Star Trek: The Original Series: Season 3 Remastered, Hawaii Five-O: The Fifth Season, Scrubs: The Complete Seventh Season, 7th Heaven: The Seventh Season, The Complete Monty Pythons Flying Circus: Collector's Edition Megaset (I can't keep them straight, either), Firefly: The Complete Series, I Dream of Jeannie: The Complete Series (in a whimsically pink box) and The Odd Couple: The Final Season. -- Gary Dretzka

Sukiyaki Western Django When it comes to gratuitous violence and depictions of taboo sexual notions, few filmmakers can compete with Takashi Miike. His latest, Sukiyaki Western Django, is a completely over-the-top remake of Sergio Corbucci's 1966 Spaghetti Western, Django. At its core, Miike's actioner is a samurai/gangster picture in cowboy drag … very cheesy cowboy drag. Two rival clans descend on a Nevada town in the Old West, searching for a hidden treasure. Standing between the families is a mysterious gunman (Hideaki Ito), who has reasons of his own for not taking sides. As Miike escorts the viewer to both the treasure and the secret behind the lone ranger's mission, the body count piles up higher than the pagoda-like structures that somehow have come to be built in the town. Anyone who thought movies like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West desecrated the genre, really ought to stay as far away from Sukiyaki Western Django as possible. More liberal-minded viewers might still be put off by the combination of sword and six-gun play, but it grows on you. Quentin Tarantino makes an appearance as a drifter named Ringo, probably for no other reason than to give the movie street cred here. Fans of Miike and Tarantino wouldn't be disappointed. Others can't say they weren't warned. -- Gary Dretzka

T.V. Sets: Holiday Treats Noelle The Flight Before Christmas Black Christmas Popular television series have historically milked Christmas - and, increasingly, other commercialized religious and secular holidays - for story ideas that bring out the humanity in their key characters. Not surprisingly, most avoid any mention of Jesus, choosing, instead, to focus on gifting, charity, homecomings and snowmen. (Even mistletoe gets more airtime than the Christ child.) Paramount has packaged eight Christmas-themed sitcom episodes - from I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners, to Frasier and Wings - in the DVD stocking-stuffer, T.V. Sets: Holiday Treats. The Dove-approved Noelle takes an untypical tack in its discussion of charity, understanding and faith. Set in wintery Cape Cod, Noelle describes how a Church-based efficiency expert can miss the mark on Christianity just as widely as any mall-rat, shopping-channel huckster or Internet entrepreneur who exploits Christmas for profits. Multi-hyphenate filmmaker David Wall inserts a budget-conscious priest into the quaint village, with its recognizable citizenry of saints and sinners, just before the holiday. In his attempt to save the parish, the hard-drinking local cleric suggests staging a real-life nativity scene, comprised of residents with foibles of their own. At first glance, The Flight Before Christmas looks no different than a dozen other animated features that have followed in the long wake of the Burl Ives-voiced Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Jimmy Durante-voiced Frosty the Snowman. The characters look appropriately loveable and Emma Roberts' name will be recognizable to members of the target audience. Here, a young reindeer seeks to follow in the flying hoofprints of his famous father - in the stable of Santa Claus -- and finds able assistance in a friendly weasel and flying squirrel. That said, it should be noted that civilian critics on the Internet caution that much of the movie is taken up by scenes of ferocious wolves attacking the cute animals and threatening Santa's village, a situation not exactly in keeping with the spirit of a G rating. Also, in keeping with seasonal good vibes, the original 1974 version of Black Christmas has just been sent out in Blu-ray. In it, slasher pioneer Bob Clark required a small group of sorority sisters to remain on campus during Christmas break, apparently for the express purpose of having them killed. (The fiend got double points if they were promiscuous, one supposes.) The film also was among the first to employ mysterious phone calls in the service of terror. -- Gary Dretzka