New DVD Spin: The Great Debaters, Sinatra, Indiana Jones, and more

This week's DVD release list is light on recent movies, but it's a fine week for fans (old and new) of vintage favorites.

Among the still-warm titles coming to little shiny discs, this week we get the tepid Diane Lane murder thriller Untraceable out from Sony on DVD and Blu-ray. The film's fans (both of them?) will find the standard-issue roster of extras -- four production featurettes plus an audio commentary from director Gregory Hoblit, producer Hawk Koch, and production designer Paul Eads. The Blu-ray disc adds "Beyond The Cyber-Bureau," a picture-in-picture video commentary with scene-specific trivia and other info related to what's happening on the screen. Film.com's Dave Maass gives us his take on it.

Also out now is The Great Debaters, which Film.com's C. Robert Cargill says is "a solid, heartwarming film ... starring two of our greatest living actors -- Denzel Washington and Forest Whitaker -- as well as a cast of young, talented unknowns, all of whom turn in excellent performances. But as a DVD it really excels." Mr. Cargill also liked the direct-to-video horror-comedy Botched -- "a delightful horror surprise" -- which streets this week as well.

Anchor Bay's DVD of the 2008 heist comedy Mad Money -- starring Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, Katie Holmes, Adam Rothenberg, the amazing Stephen Root, and the past-his-expiration-date Ted Danson -- is now on the shelves. And look! There it is alongside Sony's release of Francis Ford Coppola's Youth Without Youth. On both DVD and Blu-ray, Youth Without Youth's bonus goodies include a commentary track by Coppola, which should bring considerable added interest all by itself.

As far as vintage titles go, the big deal this week is Warner Brothers' expansive collection of Frank Sinatra films. Warner Home Video is commemorating the tenth anniversary of the passing of "The Chairman of the Board" by releasing a total of 22 of his films in five new collections, with 11 titles brand new to DVD. Reprise Records, Turner Classic Movies, MGM Home Entertainment and the United States Postal Service (seriously!) are also joining Warner Home Video for an unprecedented month-long tribute to the man who left a ring-a-ding, way-cool impact on American popular culture. (Also available this week are an all-new CD collection; a television film festival and other specials and a commemorative postage stamp.)

The new DVD collections and their titles (also available individually) are:

• Frank Sinatra: The Golden Years with Sinatra's Oscar-nominated performance in The Man with the Golden Arm, plus Vincente Minnelli's influential cult fave Some Came Running, along with The Tender Trap, None But the Brave, and Marriage on the Rocks;


• Frank Sinatra: The Early Years featuring Double Dynamite, Higher and Higher, and The Kissing Bandit;


• The Rat Pack Ultimate Collector's Edition, in which Frank and his boys get the high-end treatment in movies such as Robin and the Seven Hoods, Ocean's Eleven, 4 For Texas, and the first-ever home video release of MGM's Sergeants 3.

The celebration continues with the newly designed box set The Frank Sinatra & Gene Kelly Collection, which features the Crooner and the Hoofer in On the Town, Take Me Out to the Ballgame and Anchors Aweigh.

Additional titles with new packaging are Never So Few, High Society, Till the Clouds Roll By and The First Deadly Sin.

Also debuting is CBS-TV's Sinatra: The Miniseries in a two-disc DVD edition. Executive produced by Tina Sinatra and starring Phillip Casnoff (in a Golden Globe-nominated performance) with Frank's original tracks, the DVD covers twenty years of Sinatra's life beginning with his Hoboken, New Jersey boyhood through his 1974 return from retirement.

Later this week Film.com will post a special feature on Frank Sinatra: The Golden Years from our newest reviewer, Glenn Erickson (a.k.a. DVD Savant).

Official site: www.sinatradvd.com.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World gets a Blu-ray edition this week. So do the classic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the newly sequelized fantasy The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and, for no damn good reason, Mrs. Doubtfire. (Who's crying out to see Robin Williams' fake boobs burst aflame in high-def?)

TV on DVD this week is highlighted by Saturday Night Live: The Complete Third Season (Universal), The Rat Patrol: The Complete Series (1966-68), Mission: Impossible: The Fourth Season (Paramount), Two and a Half Men: The Complete Third Season (Warner Bros.), and Drawn Together: Season Three (Paramount), and Stargate: Infinity: The Complete Series (Shout! Factory).

Our TV-on-DVD picks of the week, however, both come from Acorn Media, our fave distributor of first-rate British and Canadian TV on DVD. They are The Adams Chronicles -- the Emmy-winning series about early America's most influential first family -- and the crime drama DNA (Complete Series One and Two), about a crack forensics investigations unit. Look for feature write-ups on these here at Film.com this week.

With Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull whip-cracking its way into theaters next week, naturally that means we're also seeing new editions of its three beloved predecessors. Seeing new DVD editions this week are Raiders of the Lost Ark (rather, its post hoc expanded title Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark; at least they didn't stick a colon in the middle), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. You can pick them up individually or bundled together within slimline cases as Paramount's Indiana Jones: The Adventure Collection boxed set.

Each movie comes with new bonus material, including new introductions from Spielberg and Lucas, appreciations by the cast and crew of the new film, storyboard sequences, special-effects featurettes, production galleries, and of course, tie-ins to Crystal Skull. Each DVD also adds a "Demo and Trailer" for this summer's video game, Lego Indiana Jones. While these appear to be the same transfers found on the 2003 boxed set, I can testify that the 2.35:1 (enhanced for 16:9 displays) widescreen image and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio quality on all three of these new editions is flawless.

As for the new extras, they're not offensively lightweight. For starters we get welcome behind-the-scenes footage of the much younger Spielberg and Lucas during production of the three films. That said, if you already own the previous DVD editions you don't need to feel a great urge to upgrade (save that for the inevitable Blu-ray editions that surely, surely will be out by late this fall). For one thing, missing this time is the excellent bonus disc from the 2003 box with its more than three hours of featurettes and promo material. But if you don't already own the original Indy trilogy on home video, and can't wait around for the as-yet-unannounced Blu-ray set, then this set is a no-brainer.

MGM is releasing a stellar selection, all terrific and recommended. Heading the group is the landmark cult Western Man of the West (1958, with Gary Cooper and Lee J. Cobb directed by Western auteur Anthony Mann); following close behind are Navajo Joe (1967, with Burt Reynolds); Carve Her Name with Pride (1958, with Virginia McKenna and Paul Scofield); The One That Got Away (1957, like The Great Escape, a fine WWII prisoner-of-war escape film -- and we're rooting for the German); The Secret Invasion (1964, Roger Corman's terrific WWII commando-raid drama, with Stewart Granger, Ralph Vallone, Mickey Rooney, Henry Silva, William Campbell, and more); and Day of the Outlaw (1959, Andre De Toth's Western "noir" with Robert Ryan and Burl Ives). Next week add The Night They Raided Minsky's to this list. It's weeks like this that really remind us why we love DVDs.

Universal gives us fans of pre-CGI sci-fi a treat with The Classic Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection: Vol 1 & 2, which boxes together The Mole People (1956), Tarantula (1955), The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), The Monolith Monsters (1957), Monsters on Campus (1958), Cult of the Cobra (1955), Dr. Cyclops (1940), The Land Unknown (1957), The Deadly Mantis (1957), and The Leech Woman (1960).

I know I'm far from alone in thinking that the one true classic of the collection, The Incredible Shrinking Man, deserves its own Special Edition release, one worthy of Criterion, in fact. The Classic Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection is the only place to get it (legally) right now, so consider it reason enough to pick up this whole set, with the others provided as cool value-added extras.

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