New DVD Spin: Ocean's 13, Shrek 3, Amazing Grace, Alexanderplatz

The "Three Times a Sequel" Discs of the Week:

Ocean's Thirteen (Warner)
Steven Soderbergh's third hip-slick casino heist romp delivers another complex caper with an "old Hollywood" feel. Handsome high-rolling rogues George Clooney, Matt Damon and Brad Pitt learn that revenge is a dish best served with a few aces (plus electronic security gee-wizardry) up your well-creased sleeve. All with Al Pacino as the bad guy, Elliott Gould in a coma, and Ellen Barkin, Eddie Izzard, Bernie Mac, Casey Affleck, Scott Caan, Don Cheadle, Carl Reiner and Vincent Cassel on board. The first one is still the best, but this one -- even though its plot details are as preposterous as a Wile E. Coyote scheme -- is better than the second. It's another good-looking spin of a now-familiar wheel, pleasantly backed once again by David Holmes' snappy Rat Pack-evoking score.

Ocean's Thirteen is now available individually or packaged with its two predecessors in an "Ocean's" three-pack set. You can choose from multiple editions: widescreen, full-screen, combo DVD/HD DVD, and Blu-ray. The extras bring us additional scenes, a Jerry Weintraub tour of the casino and a documentary on Las Vegas.

Shrek the Third (Paramount Home Video/Dreamworks)
The jolly green corporate icon is back, this time going all "meta" (rather tiresomely) with King Arthur and his knights. Eddie Murphy plays an ass. Again. Mike Myers and Cameron Diaz return too, of course, dragging Antonio Banderas, Rupert Everett, Justin Timberlake, Julie Andrews, John Cleese and Eric Idle through the plodding and witless plot that will likely try the patience of even the tots hugging their Shrek merchandise.

Extras: cast audio commentary, three additional scenes, "Donkey Dance" with Donkey giving step-by-step instructions, "Shrek's Guide to Parenthood," music videos, four trailers, interactive games, four DVD-ROM features and more. Audio options include Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 Surround, with language options that include (pretty cool) Arabic. Available in widescreen, full-screen and HD DVD editions.

The "Bio Pick" Disc of the Week:

Amazing Grace (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment)
Director Michael Apted's inspiring and still-relevant 2006 film about the campaign against the slave trade in 19th-century Britain, led by social reformer William Wilberforce (Ioan Gruffudd), who was responsible for steering anti-slave trade legislation through the British parliament. The title comes from the hymn "Amazing Grace," and the film also recounts former slave ship captain John Newton (Albert Finney) writing the hymn. With Rufus Sewell, Youssou N'Dour, Romola Garai and Michael Gambon. It's a bit slow-moving, but it's a class act. And it's a reminder of days when politicians actually strove to achieve good, noble and politically dangerous things for people who didn't even vote for them.

DVD extras include commentary from Apted and Gruffudd, "behind the scenes" and "making of" featurettes, and a music video.

The "I [heart] Criterion" Disc of the Week:

Berlin Alexanderplatz (The Criterion Collection)

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's wildly controversial fifteen-hour-plus television mini-series, originally broadcast in 1980 and based on Alfred Doblin's great modernist novel, is the crowning achievement of a prolific director who, at age thirty-four, had already made forty films. Fassbinder's immersive epic, restored in 2006 and now available on DVD in the U.S. for the first time, follows the hulking, childlike ex-convict Franz Biberkopf (Gunter Lamprecht) as he attempts to "become an honest soul" amid the corrosive urban landscape of Weimar-era Germany. With equal parts cynicism and humanity, Fassbinder details a mammoth portrait of a common man struggling to survive in a viciously uncommon time.

Criterion's seven-disc set includes a new high-definition digital transfer from the 2006 restoration by the Fassbinder Foundation and Bavaria Media, supervised and approved by director of photography Xaver Schwarzenberger. It's in German with a new and improved English subtitle translation.

As usual, Criterion loads the basket with first-rate bonus material -- two new documentaries by Fassbinder Foundation president Juliane Lorenz; one featuring interviews with the cast and crew; the other on the restoration (totaling 97 minutes); Hans-Dieter Hartl's 1980 documentary Notes on the Making of "Berlin Alexanderplatz"; Phil Jutzi's 1931 film of the same story from a screenplay co-written by Doblin himself; and a new video interview with Peter Jelavich, author of Berlin Alexanderplatz: Radio, Film, and the Death of Weimar Culture. The DVD case comes with a 72-page booklet containing stills, Fassbinder's impressions of the original novel, an appreciation by filmmaker Tom Tykwer, a Q&A with cinematographer Xaver Schwarzenberger, and more.

Read about more new DVDs.

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Mark Bourne

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