No one can definitely say 1959's North By Northwest is Alfred Hitchcock's best movie -- how to choose? -- but from first frame to last, it may well be his most entertaining. The first of Hitchcock's pictures to appear on the Blu-ray format (Warner Home Video, $35), the film has been given a $1 million restoration, and to say it looks utterly fantastic on high-definition -- one of the most astounding Blu-ray transfers to date -- is probably an understatement.
When it came to making movies quickly and cheaply, it was hard to beat Roger Corman, who once joked that he could make a film about the Roman Empire with two extras and a sagebrush. He directed 1960's The Little Shop of Horrors in two days.
A fiendishly clever twist on the ''evil child'' genre of horror films, Orphan (Warner Home Entertainment, $29 DVD, $34 Blu-ray) was unceremoniously dumped into theaters this summer with little promotion. But the movie, produced by Joel Silver's Dark Castle Entertainment, which specializes in modest little B-pictures (House on Haunted Hill, Ghost Ship), deserved better.
Ten years in the making, Trey Parker and Matt Stone have finally made good on their promise to record a commentary track for South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut. The only catch is that the track is exclusive to the new Blu-ray release of the film (Paramount Home Entertainment, $30), and the movie's crude animation doesn't benefit much from the format's higher resolution.
You never forget your first time watching Takashi Miike's Audition: For some people, it is the first and last Miike picture they ever see. The wildly prolific Miike's best-known (and arguably most disciplined) work, the movie scandalized film festival audiences when it was shown around the world in 1999, and the terrific new two-disc Audition: Collector's Edition (Shout Factory, $25 DVD, $30 Blu-ray) celebrates the movie's 10th anniversary with a truckload of enlightening extras.
One of the small experimental films (like Bubble and Full Frontal) director Steven Soderbergh often makes in between larger, big-budget projects, The Girlfriend Experience (Magnolia Home Entertainment, $27 DVD, $35 Blu-ray) was shot on the Red One digital camera filmmakers have been raving about and looks absolutely sensational on Blu-ray.
The Wizard of Oz in high definition: That's a horse of a different color!
On a new feature-length retrospective documentary titled Beware the Moon found on An American Werewolf in London: Full Moon Edition (Universal, $20 DVD, $27 Blu-ray), director Paul Davis revisits several locations seen in the 1981 horror-comedy classic, including the infamous Slaughtered Lamb tavern, since remodeled into a Denny's-like eatery called The Black Swan. There is no pentagram on the wall or gory placard hanging above the entrance. There isn't even a dartboard. Damn gentrification!
Although 1991's Homicide (The Criterion Collection, $40) was only David Mamet's third outing as a writer-director, the film remains his best and most satisfying. The staccato, unnatural Mamet-speak is accounted for, but the dialogue is less jarring and artificial than in his other pictures. There are a couple of late-inning plot twists, but, unlike the rest of Mamet's films, this story does not hinge on such trickery.
There's a good chance State of Play (Universal Home Entertainment, $30 DVD, $40 Blu-ray) will be the last big-budget Hollywood movie about an investigative newspaper reporter. If so, the genre will go out on a decent note.
How does a witty, fiendishly clever movie starring Julia Roberts and Clive Owen as a pair of corporate spies playing head games on each other fail at the box office?
In case the movie isn't enough entertainment for you, the affable commentary track accompanying I Love You, Man (Paramount Home Entertainment, $30 DVD, $40 Blu-ray) also practically qualifies as a bromedy. Director John Hamburg and his stars Paul Rudd and Jason Segel engage in a laid-back, friendly talk that doesn't exactly reveal much about the making of the film, but I Love You, Man isn't the kind of movie that requires a lot of explanation.
Has the acting in American movies ever been better? In the fact-based drama The Soloist (Paramount Home Entertainment, $30 DVD, $40 Blu-ray), Robert Downey Jr. plays Steve Lopez, a Los Angeles Times columnist who discovers former musical prodigy Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx) homeless in the street. Downey and Foxx are outstanding in their roles, bringing a compelling energy to the film, so the movie never once feels like the good-for-you, manipulative drama it appears to be.
``Like dancing a tango'' is how director Roman Polanski describes his collaboration with actress Catherine Deneuve on the commentary track of the outstanding Repulsion DVD and Blu-ray (Criterion Collection, $40 each). Originally recorded in 1994 for the film's laser disc release but unavailable in any format since then, the track, which also features Deneuve (recorded separately), is a film buff's dream, corralling the press-shy icons for detailed reminiscing on the making of the movie.
It's Green Lantern's turn to take the cosmic spotlight.
Green Lantern: First Flight is set for release Tuesday by Warner Home Video on DVD, Blu-ray and OnDemand. It's the latest in a series of DC Universe animated features.
Watchmen (Director's Cut) (2008): Zack Snyder's long-awaited adaptation of the groundbreaking graphic novel excises much of the striking peripheral material that made the genre-smashing comic by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon so deeply layered and compelling. But it still follows the plot, almost panel by panel. Snyder (300, Dawn of the Dead) uses a spectacular series of opening credits to set the stage. We witness the evolution of the superheroes, from the Minutemen circa World War II to the more modern...
Don't Touch the White Woman: In this satirical comedy from 1974, Marco Ferreri transplants the Battle of Little Big Horn to the site of a demolished Parisian mall and presents his take on the classic American western by sympathizing with the Indians instead of the cowboys. Starring Catherine Denueve, Marcello Mastroianni, Michel Piccoli and Ugo Tognazzi. In French with English subtitles. Koch Lorber, $19.98.
Speaking on a commentary track for his film Knowing (Summit Entertainment, $27 DVD, $35 Blu-ray), director Alex Proyas (Dark City; I, Robot) says his favorite commentary track is one featuring a conversation between Martin Scorsese and the late Michael Powell. (The DVD, which he never names, is Criterion Collection's Black Narcissus.)
![<em>Do the Right Thing</em> [Blu-ray] (1989)](http://media.miamiherald.com/smedia/2009/06/29/08/248-5516201.bigthumb.prod_affiliate.56.JPG)
Like people at a class reunion everyone actually wants to attend, the cast and crew members Spike Lee interviews on the half-hour ''20 Years Later'' feature included in the Do the Right Thing 20th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray (Universal, $30; DVD, $20) seem really proud of the film and happy to reminisce about their work.
These are some of this week's releases: Waltz with Bashir: Based on actual events, this groundbreaking animated film won a Golden Globe and was up for an Oscar as best foreign-language film in 2008. Filmmaker Ari Folman, an Israeli veteran of the first Lebanon War, encounters an old friend suffering from nightmares of the conflict. Wondering why his own memories are full of gaps, he reconnects with old friends and confronts the horrors of war. Director: Ari Folman. 2008, R, 87 minutes, Sony. DVD...
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