Even though it earned four Oscar nominations and tons of media attention, Oliver Stone's Nixon never drew a sizable audience, probably because people weren't willing to sit through a three-hour movie about a president they loathed.

The box office prospects should be better for W, Stone's film about President George W. Bush's rise to the White House due this fall if only for its timeliness. But Nixon's paltry $14 million take hasn't kept distributor Walt Disney from releasing and re-releasing the film onto DVD in several incarnations.

The latest, dubbed Nixon: Election Year Edition ($30 DVD, $35 Blu-ray) is a two-disc set that features Stone's extended, 3 ½-hour cut of the film, accompanied by two commentary tracks from the director. That may sound like an awful lot of Nixon to sit through. But the amazing cast Stone rounded up -- this is a great actors' movie -- makes the film completely engrossing, even if you're too young to remember much about Richard M. Nixon's embattled presidency.

On one of the commentary tracks, Stone talks a lot about his casting choices, beginning with the controversial decision of using Anthony Hopkins as Nixon. The director says he cared more about having his actors capture the essence of the real-life people they were portraying instead of how much they looked like them. Hopkins, for example, never really resembles Nixon, despite some prosthetic makeup and contact lenses. But he nails the president's sweaty, clammy persona and awkward physicality.

A surprisingly sympathetic take on a much-maligned figure, Nixon can seem a bit overwhelming initially in terms of the material Stone throws at us. But the director never loses sight of the man at the center of his tale, and the movie rewards viewers who get past its daunting first 45 minutes with a portrait of a secretive man who never bested his own insecurities -- even after he became the most powerful figure on Earth.

The film, which mixes film stocks and cinematography a la JFK, looks fantastic on its Blu-ray debut. Both versions include a second disc filled with supplements, including Stone's hour-long interview with Charlie Rose, who bravely tells the director he liked but didn't love the film, and a new documentary, Beyond Nixon, directed by Stone's son Sean, in which historians and political figures comment on the president and the movie, both positively and negatively.

`THE WIRE'

Like a gift to fans of HBO's acclaimed series, the four-disc set of The Wire: The Complete Fifth Season (HBO, $60) includes a 30-minute series retrospective, The Wire Odyssey, in which practically every member of the show's cast from its five-year run pops up to talk about their favorite scene or character (Omar wins, with Bubbles a close second). They also reveal which character they initially auditioned for -- many of them landed a part different from their first choice -- which allows you to imagine an alternate universe version of the show in your head, with Method Man playing Marlo instead of Cheese, for example.

Seeing the actors talking out of character reminds you how, along with everything else, The Wire was a superbly acted show (it's startling, for example, to hear Dominic West, aka McNulty, cracking on Wire creator David Simon in his native British accent). It's a sign of the tremendous affection the program has earned from its fans that watching the featurette makes you feel like you're catching up with old friends.

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