`PSYCHO'

Janet Leigh spends half of Touch of Evil trapped in a desolate motel run by a highly eccentric man, something that had to have influenced Alfred Hitchcock's decision to cast the actress in his shocker Psycho. The movie -- the director's most commercial and arguably influential work -- is one of three Hitchcock classics, along with Rear Window and Vertigo, that have been re-released in two-disc Legacy Series special editions (Universal, $27 each) packaged in beautiful cases designed to look like books.

Each film has been digitally remastered and given a new assortment of extras to go along with the previously released retrospective documentaries, all of which are included here. The making of Psycho remains an endlessly fascinating story, with Hitchcock, riding a career-high after the success of North By Northwest, doing an about-face and opting to shoot a low-budget, no-frills quickie designed to accomplish one thing only: Scare the hell out of the audience.

The making and release of Psycho is well-covered in various extras, from Hitchcock biographer Stephen Rebello's informative audio commentary to several documentaries, including the 90-minute comprehensive featurette The Making of Psycho; the 30-minute retrospective In the Master's Shadow: Hitchcock's Legacy, in which contemporary filmmakers such as Guillermo Del Toro discuss the master's influence; and a 10-minute vintage newsreel focusing on Hitchcock's much-publicized marketing tactic to bar moviegoers from entering the theater after Psycho had begun, which resulted in long lines outside theaters and great curiosity.

In hopes of preserving the film's huge twist, Hitchcock even declined to screen Psycho in advance for critics, forcing them to see it with a paying audience on opening day. That helps explain why the movie originally received such tepid reviews -- most of which had been recanted by year's end.

`L.A. CONFIDENTIAL'

The only movie made in the past two decades about Los Angeles that can stand alongside Chinatown, L.A. Confidential gets better with every passing year, and the film looks smashing on the just-released Special Edition Blu-ray (Warner Home Video, $29; also on DVD, $21). All of the film's major players, from Oscar-winner Kim Basinger to actors Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce, show up for a group commentary track and nearly two hours' worth of retrospective featurettes, discussing the unusual nature of the project (a film noir with three protagonists instead of one, two of them played by Australians portraying American cops) and director Curtis Hanson's tireless perseverance in getting it made. As a fascinating extra, the disc includes a failed pilot for an L.A. Confidential TV series, starring Kiefer Sutherland as the character played by Spacey in the film, that never aired on television.

`30 ROCK'

If it was your misfortune to witness the first episode of 30 Rock's second season, you can be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss was about. The episode featured a shockingly unamusing Jerry Seinfeld and did not bode well for the critically acclaimed NBC sitcom.

But dig a little further into 30 Rock Season 2 (Universal, $39.98), and you'll see why the show cleaned up at the 2008 Emmys, winning awards for writing, best comedy, best lead actress (creator Tina Fey) and best lead actor (Alec Baldwin, who proves to be one of the most gifted comedians currently on TV).

The DVD set contains only 15 episodes of the strike-shortened series, and happily 14 are sharper and wittier than the Seinfeld debacle. Best is Rosemary's Baby, in which Carrie Fisher shows up as a fiery, radical writer from the '60s and network boss Jack Donaghy (Baldwin) helps rebellious star Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) overcome his daddy issues by channeling Fred Sanford and using words like ''chifforobe'' in what is one of the funniest, most cheerfully racially insensitive scenes this side of Family Guy.

The set includes audio commentaries featuring Fey, other cast members and guest stars Will Arnett, Fred Armisen and Tim Conway, who won an Emmy for his appearance. There are also deleted scenes, An Evening with 30 Rock with the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and a benefit live performance of an episode at the UCB Theater in New York. If nothing else, the set will entertain you until Fey's next Sarah Palin sighting on SNL.

-- CONNIE OGLE

cogle@MiamiHerald.com

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