"The Good Wife: The Second Season" (Paramount) is probably the best show I'm not watching, at least not until the DVDs come my way. Once I drop in the first, I'm hooked all over again.

 

Season Two opens with Alicia (Julianna Margulies) taking the side of her husband Peter (Chris Noth), fresh out of prison and back in the race for State's Attorney despite a history of cheating on his wife and the season proceeds with the election (run by Alan Cumming) always in the background as Alicia regains her footing as a second-year associate at a Chicago law firm.

 

As a legal show, with a new case and a courtroom drama with Alicia and the senior partners (Josh Charles and Christine Baranski) in a weekly battle of legalities and stratagems, it's a very entertaining series. The individual cases are solid, the roll call of judges cycling through the cases is reminiscent of "The Practice" and the realities of a partnership and the politics of deciding which cases to try (and why) adds a layer to the courtroom drama. But the private life of Alicia and Peter, working through a public affair that was churned through the tabloid media while the spotlight is on them during his run for office, gives the show its backbone. In the second season it earned nine Emmy nominations, including "Outstanding Drama Series" and six acting nods, among them Michael J. Fox for Outstanding Guest Actor in his recurring role as a rival attorney with a degenerative condition. Other memorable guest stars this season include America Ferrara, Mamie Gummer and Tim Guinee as an investigator for the State's Attorney office.

 

23 episodes on six discs plus featurettes (including “A Conversation With The Kings,” an interview with series creators -- and husband and wife team -- Robert and Michelle King, and a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the episode "Real Deal"), deleted scenes and music videos from the campaign (and boy, are they a classy bunch!).

 

 

"Scarface: Limited Edition" (Universal)

 

Brian De Palma's "Scarface," ostensibly a remake of the Howard Hawks gangster classic, moves the iconic rise and fall crime opera from the tommy-gun gangster wars of the prohibition era to the cocaine wars of Florida in the eighties. In the process, De Palma, screenwriter Oliver Stone and star Al Pacino carved out a film that redefined a generation of gangster cinema.

See below for details on the insanely deluxe edition ($1000 retail) and footage from the August 23 cast reunion.

 

Pacino's Tony Montana, a Cuban criminal fresh from Castro's prisons looking for his piece of the pie in Miami, is a predator from the moment he hits the shore and Pacino is pure drive for success: get the money, get the power, and then you get the girl, is his mantra, and he pulls along his loyal immigrant comrade Manny (Steven Bauer) for the ride to the top.

 

Oliver Stone's screenplay keeps the general shape of the original story -- Tony's friendship with Manny, his fierce over protectiveness of his kid sister (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) who isn't a virginal as he imagines and his obsession with the boss's ice-queen mistress (Michelle Pfeiffer), the trophy for the winner -- while rethinking it in terms of the Miami cocaine boom of the early eighties. It's a whole new spin on the immigrant story and the American Dream as an underworld nightmare and a fitting bookend to the two "Godfather" films. The façade of family loyalty, underworld authority and the mob code is trampled in the feral battle to get to the top of the cocaine mountain as Tony robs and murders his way to riches and power, and then numbs himself into a fantasy of invulnerability with his own product.

Meanwhile, De Palma directs it as a blood-drenched thug opera, a mix of the graceful and the garish with Pacino's guttural thug-in-a-suit spitting out dialogue like broken glass in a harsh Cuban accent. He gets to the point, whether he's talking or shooting, and has neither the time not the inclination for niceties.

 

 

Here's an almost forgotten classic. Created by Joseph Wambaugh, "Police Story" was a precursor to the type of stories we got in "Hill Street Blues," even though it featured no continuing stars or storylines. It was one of the last of the continuing anthology series on TV, an original story every week with a career cop or police detective tackling a case, but if the crime stories themselves offer a grittier version of the stories you saw elsewhere on TV, the stories brought home a different perspective on the life of policeman. Show after show is set against a backdrop of dedicated policemen sacrificing marriages and relationships to the job.

 

"Police Story: Season One" (Shout! Factory) was launched with a two-hour TV movie (just over 90 minutes without commercials), a solid piece of TV moviemaking with a superb cast: Vic Morrow as a divorced dad and cowboy cop, Ed Asner as his boss, Chuck Connors as a career criminal named Slow Boy and Diane Baker as a robbery hostage who survives shaken and angry and develops a relationship with a damaged but dedicated police detective. The pilot sets the tone and the style for the series to come, opening with a bittersweet montage of doting father Morrow on a beach trip with his daughter, but in place of music is the constant crackle of a police scanner, the defining soundtrack of this career cop's life.

 

And so the series goes. Divorce, failing relationships, alienation and anger are recurring themes and situations to the stories here which, meeting the censorship bar of American TV of the seventies aside, are almost as tough and gritty as the American cop dramas on the big screen. James Farentino, Tony Lo Bianco, Michael Ansara, Claude Akins, John Saxon, Howard Duff, Don Murray, Martin Balsam, Jan Michael-Vincent, Stuart Whitman, Darren McGavin, Kurt Russell, Cliff Gorman and John Forsythe are a few of the episode stars, and sometimes they even returned for another story, like Vic Morrow in the two-part "Countdown."

 

The final episode of the season is what they call a backdoor pilot for next season's "Police Woman." No, she's not named Pepper, but Angie Dickinson is a female cop who moves up to the all-male vice squad and proves she can think on her feet when she goes undercover to shut down a gambling ring run by Joseph Campanella. Bert Convy is the vice squad commander.

 

The six-disc set (in a standard case with hinged trays) features the pilot episode and all 21 episodes of the debut season, including the double-length "Big John Morrison" (aka "The Hunters") which was presented at the NBC Movie of the Week. Also features a new interview with LAPD Detective Sergeant turned author and series creator Joseph Wambaugh.

 

"X-Men: First Class" (Fox) is both reboot and prequel to the "X-Men" movie franchise. Call it a preboot, with James McAvoy as a flirtatious, precocious Professor X and Michael Fassbender as a dark, vengeful "Magneto" in the groovy atmosphere of the cold war 1960s. Videodrone's review is here.

 

Saoirse Ronan is "Hanna" (Universal), a girl raised to be a survivor and a warrior, the better to take on the agency that "created" her, in the adolescent assassin thriller from the otherwise literarily inclined director Joe Wright. It's a fantasy, to be sure, the pre-puberty "Bourne" flipping between innocence and killer reflex, but nicely constructed piece of action filmmaking and a fierce little genre piece with a muscular cast: Eric Bana as a father from the Spartan school of child rearing, Cate Blanchett as a bloodless American agent with a chewy accent and a hole in her soul and Tom Hollander as a doughy assassin on the cusp of satire. MSN film critic Glenn Kenny wrote that "director Wright continues to command the sort of formidable cinematic apparatus that certain people have been raving about since the Dunkirk scenes in "Atonement," and the cast operates commitedly in the spirit of the proceedings, although some will no doubt complain that Blanchett's been sent in to do Tilda Swinton's job."

Features an alternate ending, director commentary, an "Anatomy of a Scene" featurette on the escape sequence and deleted scenes. The Blu-ray edition features four exclusive featurettes plus the usual BDLive supplements and a bonus digital copy (for a limited time only).

 

Will Ferrell puts aside his buffoon persona for a more everyman role in the tragicomic "Everything Must Go" (Lionsgate), a small but lovely film about a career salesman who loses everything in one day and takes residence on his lawn (where all of his possessions have been dumped by his wife), adapted from a Raymond Carver short story. "Released just as superhero season launches, "Everything Must Go" – and Will Ferrell's perfectly modulated performance -- celebrates being helplessly, haplessly human," wrote MSN film critic Kat Murphy at the beginning of the summer season, who also praises Ferrell's performance: "Reaching for the funny as well as dramatic pathos, Ferrell is acting on a high wire. One misstep could turn this movie silly or irretrievably sour." Features commentary by director Dan Rush and co-star Michael Pena, two featurettes and deleted scenes.

"Tyler Perry's Madea's Big Happy Family" (Lionsgate), the latest feature from the one-man studio, actually debuted on DVD last week but arrived to late for last week's column. "The movie proved to be an exasperating, fitfully enjoyable jumble of Perryana, full of insult humor, a gospel choir and, not to give too much away, plot elements borrowed from "Chinatown," "Precious," "Imitation of Life" and "Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke" - all restitched and Tyler-made," wrote Time film critic Richard Corliss. Available on DVD and Blu-ray, with featurettes and other supplements. Also new from Perry is "Laugh to Keep From Crying (The Play)" (Lionsgate), a theater piece recorded in front a live audience.

 

Foreign Affairs:

Andy Lau and Jackie Cheung star in the Hong Kong gangster drama "Triad Underworld" (Palisades Tartan), also known "Blood Brothers," about a battle for control over the leadership of a Hong Kong crime family. The Malaysian historical spectacle "Clash of Empires" (Image) is set around the clash of armies from Rome, China, and Malaysia in the second century when a Chinese princess is kidnapped.

 

Amos Gitai directs "Carmel" (Kino Lorber), which combines contemporary scenes with a recreation of the Roman siege of Jerusalem in the first century, and from Colombia comes "The Colors of the Mountains" (Film Movement), a drama about trying to survive in a country embroiled in war.

 

Non-fiction:

"Vidal Sassoon: The Movie" (Phase 4) profiles the legendary hairdresser. "Its best quality is that it made me like and admire Sassoon," confesses film critic Roger Ebert, "although if there is anything unlikable and not admirable about him I wouldn’t have discovered it here." The DVD features commentary, deleted scenes and a featurette among its supplements.

"The Arbor" (Strand) looks in on the children left behind by British playwright Andrea Dunbar when she died 1990 as they come to terms with their mother. "Rebirth" (Oscilloscope) is a ten-year remembrance of the September 11, 2001, attacks through the stories of five people whose lives were changed. The two-disc set features commentary, a featurette and the complete video of the time-lapse study of the space that the towers once inhabited.

 

And the rest:

Lucy Hale (of "Pretty Little Liadrs") stars as the proto pop star in "A Cinderella Story: Once Upon a Song" (Warner), the second made-for-cable sequel to the 2004 movie.

 

Jean-Claude Van Damme stars in the direct-to-DVD thriller "Assassination Games" (Sony) and Kevin Zegers and Ray Liotta are in the con artist thriller "The Entitled" (Anchor Bay). The horror film "A Horrible Way to Die" (Anchor Bay) rounds out the week.

 

For more on DVD this week, visit weekly DVD listings in MSN.

 

Pick your favorite comedy on block on TV. Mine is NBC Thursday night. Not the whole night, mind you, but a sizable chunk of the evening, and three of the best are rolling out their 2010-2011 seasons this week.

 

See an MSN exclusive clip from the DVD/Blu-ray release of "The Office: Season Seven" below

 

"The Office: Season Seven" (Universal) presents the farewell tour of Steve Carell as Michael Scott, the blindly insensitive, blithely sexist, utterly ineffectual and yet still somehow lovable (or at the very least modestly likable) manager of Dunder Mufflin. While Carell the actor left for the greener pastures the big screen, Michael Scott, the man who prized authority, the illusion of respect and tired vaudeville gags above salary, leaves the private office and his captive audience of underlings for, well, that's an adventure best left discovered, and it couldn't have happened to a more insecure, well-deserving goofball. Meanwhile, Jim (John Krasinski) and Pam (Jenna Fischer) adjust to parenting life, Andy (Ed Helms) nurses a broken heart and Darryl (Craig Robinson) learns how to play in the office sandbox of gossip and goofing.

 

The final six episodes present the search for Michael's replacement, which begins with a stumbling try-out by a kindred spirit (Will Ferrell) sent by the head office, takes a turn with a disastrous attempted coup by Dwight (Rainn Wilson) and concludes with a round of interviews: who will be the next celebrity "Office" manager? Will Arnett? James Spader? Catherine Tate? Ray Romano? Jim Carrey? All this and the homemade action thriller "Threat Level Midnight" (A Michael Scott Joint) too! Pass the popcorn.

 

24 episodes on five discs in a fold-out digipak, with cast and crew commentary on five episodes, extended cuts of two episodes (including the season finale), the complete (or as complete as you'll ever see) "Threat Level Midnight: The Movie" (starring the talents of the Dunder Mifflin staff), plus deleted scenes, webisodes and bloopers.  Also available in a Blu-ray edition. We've got some of those bloopers below, exclusively on MSN. 

Critics are calling "Parks and Recreation: Season Three" (Universal) the smartest comedy on TV and I can't disagree. It's also one of the funniest, in no small part thanks to the additions of Adam Scott and Rob Lowe this season, who fit right in to the bureaucratic tangle of municipal government (not the mention mock doc/reality show style of its "The Office"). And it is a truly talented ensemble here, led by Amy Poehler (whose Deputy Director may only be slightly smarter and more self-aware than Michael Scott but is infinitely more dedicated and talented) and supported by Rashida Jones, Aziz Ansari, Nick Offerman, Aubrey Plaza and Chris Pratt. 16 episodes on three discs in a three-panel digipak, plus extended versions of three episodes, deleted scenes, a gag reel and a tribute to Li'l Sebastian, a real three-hanky production.

 

But my personal favorite of the night is "Community" and "Community: The Complete Second Season" (Sony) is chock full of highlights: a zombie Halloween, the last temptation of Abed, the greatest blanket fort in the history of the world, a stop-motion Christmas special, Abed's dinner with "Pulp Fiction" and the "A Fistful of Paintballs" epic finale with guest gunman Josh Holloway. Pop pop! Still my vote for the funniest show on TV. 24 episodes on four discs in a box set of two thinpak cases, plus commentary on each and every episode, "Cast Evaluations," animatics for the animation episode and a featurette on the finale, plus deleted scenes and outtakes.

 

MSN exclusive clip of "The Office: Season Seven" bloopers - including a guest appearance by Ricky Gervais - after the jump

 

"Fringe: The Complete Third Season" (Warner) opens with Fringe agent and dimensional traveler Olivia (Anna Torv) imprisoned in the parallel universe that has declared war on our reality while that dimension's warped mirror version of Olivia (call her Fauxlivia) takes her place in our universe. As she searches for pieces of the doomsday machine under the noses of partner Peter (Joshua Jackson) and guilt-ridden, drug-addled genius Walter Bishop (John Noble), our Olivia becomes the subject of experiments conducted by the far more ruthless and vicious Walternate (John Noble, with his wits very much about him).

 

For the balance of the season, the show bounces back and forth between the two realities and the lives on each side (and, in some cases, straddling both sides) while the cast has fun playing opposites in a guerrilla war to decide which reality survives. Beyond the simple entertainment value of playing alternate identities, it's fun to see Olivia loosen up and take a bite of out life. Meanwhile there are the usual fringe science cases, the awkward dance between the professionally distant Olivia and the emotionally fractured Peter and John Noble's stream-of-consciousn​ess flights of fancy during his journey of redemption.

 

While that sounds appropriately epic -- and this season, it really is, and it offers bizarre spectacle to match in the final episodes of the season -- it still is the closest show to inhabiting the "X-Files" zeitgeist of fringe science weirdness, offbeat humor and cosmic conspiracy, while still building the drama on a kind of pulp tragedy and the fatal flaws of its compromised heroes. There are a lot of transgressions to answer for and in many ways they are the very issues that have taken everyone to the brink of annihilation.

 

22 episodes on six discs, with commentary on two episodes and a small collection of featurettes on some of the trippier aspects of the season, from the through-the-looking-​glass identities of the familiar characters to the Doomsday Machine that dominates the final episodes, plus a look at creating the hallucinogenic drug trip to the center of the mind, a la "Fringe," for the episode "Lysergic Acid Diethylamide."

 

The new season begins on September 23.

 

New Releases:

"X-Men: First Class" (Fox) is both reboot and prequel to the "X-Men" movie franchise. Call it a preboot, with James McAvoy as a flirtatious, precocious Professor X and Michael Fassbender as a dark, vengeful "Magneto" in the groovy atmosphere of the cold war 1960s. Videodrone's review is here.

 

Saoirse Ronan is "Hanna" (Universal), a girl raised to be a survivor and a warrior, the better to take on the agency that "created" her, in the adolescent assassin thriller from the otherwise literarily inclined director Joe Wright. Will Ferrell puts aside his buffoon persona for a more everyman role in the tragicomic "Everything Must Go" (Lionsgate), a small but lovely film adapted from a Raymond Carver short story.

 

On the import front comes a couple of Asian action films -- the Hong Kong gangster drama "Triad Underworld" (Palisades Tartan) and Malaysian historical spectacle "Clash of Empires" (Image) -- plus Amos Gitai's "Carmel" (Kino Lorber) from Israel and "The Colors of the Mountains" (Film Movement) from Colombia.

Browse the complete New Release Rack here

 

TV on DVD:

"Fringe: The Complete Third Season" (Warner) shows that the series simply gets better as the story bounces between two dimensions and actors go through the looking glass to play in an alternate reality.  Videodrone crosses over here.

 

You can revisit most of the best from NBC's Thursday night comedy block with releases of "The Office: Season Seven" (Universal), "Parks and Recreation: Season Three" (Universal) and "Community: The Complete Second Season" (Sony), covered on Videodrone here.

 

"The Good Wife: The Second Season" (Paramount) earned nine Emmy nominations, including "Outstanding Drama Series" and six acting nods (reviewed here) and "Police Story: Season One" (Shout! Factory) is the classic TV release of the week (reviewed here).

 

Plus the orphaned "No Ordinary Family: The Complete First Season" (Lionsgate) and "Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior – Season One" (Paramount) and the continuing "Criminal Minds: The Sixth Season" (Paramount) and "Two and a Half Men: The Complete Eighth Season" (Warner), aka "the last hurrah of Charlie Sheen."

Flip through the TV on DVD Channel Guide here

 

Cool, Classic and Cult:

"Genevieve" (VCI) is a beloved 1953 British comedy about a pair of competitive buddies who resort of dirty tricks and practical jokes when they race their classic cars to London. Fredric March is "Christopher Columbus" (VCI) in the 1949 British drama.

 

And, catching with a couple of last week's releases that arrived too late for review, "The Complete Jean Vigo" (Criterion) celebrates the poet laureate of French cinema (reviewed here), and there a new edition of Jean Cocteau's 1949 "Orpheus" (Criterion).

All of the Cool, Classic and Cult here

 

Blu-ray Debuts:

Say hello to my little Blu-ray! "Scarface: Limited Edition" (Universal) delivers the Blu-ray debut of Brian De Palma's urban gangster classic, with Al Pacino as the Cuban thug who shoots his way to the top of the Miami drug trade, in a special edition with a documentary and a limited edition SteelBook case. And for the high rollers, a deluxe edition with a handcrafted humidor (a steal at a mere $1000 retail). Videodrone's review is here.

 

You can make it a De Palma double feature with "Dressed to Kill" (MGM), his signature thriller and one of his best films ever. Videodrone's review is here. Sam Peckinpah's "Straw Dogs" (MGM), one of Sam Peckinpah's most uncompromising portraits of the human animal under pressure, arrives in advance of the new remake, and "United 93" (Universal) is here for the anniversary of 9/11. All this and "Blood Simple" (Fox), the feature debut of the Coen Bros., too.

Peruse all the new Blu-rays here

The complete calendar of releases this week is after the jump:

 

 

"X-Men: First Class" (Fox)

 

Note: The DVD and Blu-ray editions are due for release on Friday, September 9.

 

How did screens, both large and small, become so swamped with superheroes? One major reason is the success of the "X-Men" films. Where Spider-Man and Batman were familiar popular culture icons, The X-Men were huge comic book franchises (with multiple titles and spin-offs, not to mention animated shows and merchandising) but far less known to the average moviegoer. The first two features changed all that and proved that a major film franchise could be built on a strong superhero story without universal characters recognition.

 

Now reboot is the chant all over the Hollywood and in some ways you could say that "X-Men: First Class" is a series reboot, but it turns to a prequel to introduce new, younger models of the series elders Charles "Professor X" Xavier (James McAvoy as a flirtatious, precocious incarnation of Patrick Stewart's more professorial figure) and Erik "Magneto" Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender, bringing a dark anger to the part created by Ian McKellan). Call it a pre-boot.

 

Though it opens in World War II, the story proper unfolds in the early sixties. Future enemies Charles and Erik are initially friends and colleagues, bonded by a dedication to protect others of their kind as they build the first incarnation of the mutant superteam to take on a Nazi war criminal turned supervillain (Kevin Bacon as the arrogant Sebastian Shaw) with a plot to take the world. Bwa-ha-ha-ha! Okay, it's not really that cheesy and its sixties setting and sleek retro-designs gives it the zing of an early Bond film. I'd like to say that the casting of "Mad Men"'s January Jones as the icy Emma Frost adds to the atmosphere but she does little more than model fetish gear and strike dramatic poses with all the humor and engagement of a mannequin.