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THE L WORD Season 4 picks up with the women wrestling with issues close to their hearts. As with previous seasons old demons rear their ugly heads and a host of new characters are brought into their fold offering them access to a broader community with diverse issues. THE L WORD stars Jennifer Beals Leisha Hailey Laurel Holloman Mia Kirshner Katherine Moennig Dallas Roberts Daniela Sea Rachel Shelley and Pam Grier. Newest additions to the cast include Cybill Shepherd Marlee Matlin Janina Gavankar and Rose Rollins. Special guest stars are Rosanna Arquette Eric Roberts Bruce Davison Kristanna Loken and Jane Lynch. This season the war in Iraq becomes an integral part of Alice’s (Hailey) life as she struggles to move on after the death of Dana; Helena (Shelley) tries to find financial independence and come to terms with leaving behind a world of privilege; Phyllis Kroll (Shepherd) — who takes the courageous plunge late in life to come out of the closet — risking everything that has defined her life up to now; and Bette (Beals) has to deal with Jodi Lerner (Matlin) a woman who confronts her head-on about her Type-A personality.System Requirements:TRT: 625 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS UPC: 097368515949 Manufacturer No: 851594

DVD:AC-3,Box set,Closed-captioned,Color,Dolby,DVD-Video,Widescreen,NTSC
Company:Showtime Ent. / Paramount(2007-10-23)
List Price:$55.98
Amazon Price:$36.00
Used Price:$35.32
The L Word - The Complete Fourth Season

Old-school stop-motion animation and fast-paced satire are the hallmarks of this eclectic show created by Seth Green and Matt Senreich. Action figures find new life as players in frenetic sketch-comedy vignettes that skewer TV, movies, music and celebrity. It’s television especially formulated for the Attention Deficit Disorder generation.

DVD Features:
Deleted Scenes
Gag Reel
Other

DVD:Animated,Closed-captioned,Color,DVD-Video,Widescreen,NTSC
Company:Turner Home Ent(2007-09-04)
List Price:$29.98
Amazon Price:$22.79
Used Price:$14.99
Robot Chicken - Season Two (Uncensored)

Mike Deerfield returns to the U.S. after his tour of duty in Iraq and abruptly goes missing. His father Hank a spit-and-polish ex-MP from the Vietnam era goes looking for him. What he finds goes to the heart of American combat experiences in the Iraqi conflict. Academy Award?-winning* Crash filmmaker Paul Haggis teams with Oscar?- winning* actors Tommy Lee Jones Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon in a probing powerful fact-based look at fathers and sons?and at a nation and the young soldiers it sends into battle. Jones plays Hank whose quest lays bare a tangled web of cover-up murder mystery and profound revelation about the personal costs of war.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/MILITARY & WAR UPC: 085391176275 Manufacturer No: 117627

Director: Paul Haggis
DVD:AC-3,Closed-captioned,Color,Dolby,Dubbed,DVD-Video,Subtitled,Widescreen,NTSC
Company:Warner Home Video(2008-02-19)
List Price:$27.98
Amazon Price:$15.26
Used Price:$9.45
In the Valley of Elah

After the tight plotting and quirky intensity of Fargo, this casually amusing follow-up from the prolifically inventive Coen (Ethan and Joel) brothers seems like a bit of a lark, and the result was a box-office disappointment. The good news is, The Big Lebowski is every bit a Coen movie, and its lazy plot is part of its laidback charm. After all, how many movies can claim as their hero a pot-bellied, pot-smoking loser named Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) who spends most of his time bowling and getting stoned? And where else could you find a hairnetted Latino bowler named Jesus (John Turturro) who sports dazzling purple footgear, or an erotic artist (Julianne Moore) whose creativity consists of covering her naked body in paint, flying through the air in a leather harness, and splatting herself against a giant canvas? Who else but the Coens would think of showing you a camera view from inside the holes of a bowling ball, or an elaborate Busby Berkely-styled musical dream sequence involving a Viking goddess and giant bowling pins? The plot–which finds Lebowski involved in a kidnapping scheme after he’s mistaken for a rich guy with the same name–is almost beside the point. What counts here is a steady cascade of hilarious dialogue, great work from Coen regulars John Goodman and Steve Buscemi, and the kind of cinematic ingenuity that puts the Coens in a class all their own. Be sure to watch with snacks in hand, because The Big Lebowski might give you a giddy case of the munchies. –Jeff Shannon

Director: Ethan Coen,Joel Coen
DVD:Closed-captioned,Collector’s Edition,Color,Dolby,DVD-Video,Widescreen,NTSC
Company:Universal Studios(2005-10-18)
ISBN:1417034718
List Price:$12.98
Amazon Price:$8.10
Used Price:$7.00
The Big Lebowski (Widescreen Collector’s Edition)

Venture into the dark waters of the Bering Sea with eight crab fishing boats and their crews through the world’s two most difficult and dangerous fishing seasons. Captain Sig Hansen of the Northwestern returns to match his skills against his old rival, Phil Harris of the Cornelia Marie, and a new challenger, rookie captain Blake Painter of the Maverick. With rough waters and fierce weather, the captains and their crews will be pushed to their limits of mental and physical endurance in their search for the elusive red king crab and opilio crab. Experience the extraordinary daring, skill and endurance required for this time-honored trade in these 11 episodes, and enjoy bonus behind-the-scenes footage capturing the difficulty of day-to-day filming on the rugged seas.

DVD:Box set,Color,Dolby,DVD-Video,Widescreen,NTSC
Company:(2008-04-08)
List Price:$29.99
Amazon Price:$16.99
Used Price:$18.03
Deadliest Catch - Season 3

Was George Lucas’s Star Wars Trilogy, the most anticipated DVD release ever, worth the wait? You bet. It’s a must-have for any home theater, looking great, sounding great, and supplemented by generous bonus features.

The Movies

The Star Wars Trilogy had the rare distinction of becoming a cultural phenomenon, a defining event for its generation. On its surface, George Lucas’s story is a rollicking and humorous space fantasy that owes debts to more influences than one can count on two hands, but filmgoers became entranced by its basic struggle of good vs. evil “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away,” its dazzling special effects, and a mythology of Jedi knights, the Force, and droids. Over the course of three films–A New Hope (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Return of the Jedi (1983)–Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), and the roguish Han Solo (Harrison Ford) join the Rebel alliance in a galactic war against the Empire, the menacing Darth Vader (David Prowse, voiced by James Earl Jones), and eventually the all-powerful Emperor (Ian McDiarmid). Empire is generally considered the best of the films and Jedi the most uneven, but all three are vastly superior to the more technologically impressive prequels that followed, Episode I, The Phantom Menace (1999) and Episode II, Attack of the Clones (2002).

How Are the Picture and Sound?

In a word, spectacular. Thanks to a new digital transfer, you’ve never seen C-3PO glow so golden, and Darth Vader’s helmet is as black as the Dark Side. And at the climactic scene of A New Hope, see if the Dolby 5.1 EX sound doesn’t knock you back in your chair. Other audio options are Dolby 2.0 Surround in English, Spanish, and French. (Sorry, DTS fans, but previous Star Wars DVDs didn’t have DTS either.) There have been a few quibbles with the audio on A New Hope, however. A few seconds of Peter Cushing’s dialogue (”Then name the system!”) are distorted, and the music (but not the sound effects) is reversed in the rear channels. For example, in the final scene, the brass is in the front right channel but the back left channel (from the viewer’s perspective), and the strings are in the left front and back right. The result feels like the instruments are crossing through the viewer.

What’s Been Changed?
The rumors are true: Lucas made more changes to the films for their DVD debut. Hayden Christensen (Anakin Skywalker) has been added to a scene in Jedi, Ian McDiarmid (the Emperor) replaces Clive Revill with slightly revised lines in Empire, Temuera Morrison has rerecorded Boba Fett’s minimal dialogue, and some other small details have been altered. Yes, these changes mean that the Star Wars films are no longer the ones you saw 20 years ago, but these brief changes hardly affect the films, and they do make sense in the overall continuity of the two trilogies. It’s not like a digitized Ewan McGregor has replaced Alec Guiness’s scenes, and the infamous changes made for the 1997 special-edition versions were much more intrusive (of course, those are in the DVD versions as well).

How Are the Bonus Features?

Toplining is Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy, a 150-minute documentary incorporating not only the usual making-of nuts and bolts but also the political workings of the movie studios and the difficulties Lucas had getting his vision to the screen (for example, after resigning from the Directors’ Guild, he lost his first choice for director of Jedi: Steven Spielberg). It’s a little adulatory, but it has plenty to interest any fan. The three substantial featurettes are “The Characters of Star Wars” (19 min.), which discusses the development of the characters we all know and love, “The Birth of the Lightsaber” (15 min.), about the creation and evolution of a Jedi’s ultimate weapon, and “The Force Is with Them: The Legacy of Star Wars” (15 min.), in which filmmakers such as Peter Jackson, Ridley Scott, and James Cameron talk about how they and the industry were affected by the films and Lucas’s technological developments in visual effects, sound, and computer animation.

The bonus features are excellent and along the same lines as those created for The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. Each film has a commentary track, recorded by Lucas, Ben Burtt (sound design), Dennis Muren (visual effects), and Carrie Fisher, with Irvin Kershner joining in on the film he directed, The Empire Strikes Back. Recorded separately and skillfully edited together (with supertitles to identify who is speaking), the tracks lack the energy of group commentaries, but they’re enjoyable and informative, with a nice mix of overall vision (Lucas), technical details (Burtt, Muren, Kershner), and actor’s perspective (Fisher). Interestingly, they discuss some of the 1997 changes (Mos Eisley creatures, the new Jabba the Hutt scene) but not those made for the DVDs.

There’s also a sampler of the Xbox game Star Wars: Battlefront, which lets the player reenact classic film scenarios (blast Ewoks in the battle of Endor!); trailers and TV spots from the films’ many releases; and a nine-minute preview of the last film in the series, Episode III, Revenge of the Sith (here identified by an earlier working title, The Return of Darth Vader). Small extra touches include anamorphic widescreen motion menus with dialogue, original poster artwork on the discs, and a whopping 50 chapter stops for each film.

“The Force Is Strong with This One”
The Star Wars Trilogy is an outstanding DVD set that lives up to the anticipation. There will always be resentment that the original versions of the films are not available as well, but George Lucas maintains that these are the versions he always wanted to make. If fans are able to put this debate aside, they can enjoy the adventures of Luke, Leia, and Han for years to come. –David Horiuchi

Director: George Lucas
DVD:Anamorphic,Box set,Color,Dolby,Dubbed,DVD-Video,Subtitled,THX,Widescreen,NTSC
Company:20th Century (2004-09-21)
List Price:$69.98
Amazon Price:$34.00
Used Price:$29.95
Star Wars Trilogy (Widescreen Edition with Bonus Disc)