"Doctor Who: Series Six, Part Two" (BBC) completes the strange and amazing story of River Song (Alex Kingston), whose identity and past is finally revealed at the close of "Series Six, Part One," and brings the Doctor back to the shocking event that opened the season: the death of the Doctor. In the American desert, no less.

 

The series has been, episodic hiccups aside, uniformly good ever since the reboot with Christopher Eccleston in 2005, but it has been especially clever and playfully plotted since Steven Moffat took over as producer and the Doctor was reborn in the form of Matt Smith and his cartoonish presence in Season Five. The second half of the sixth season opens with The Doctor and his companions, Amy and Rory (Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill), colliding with Hitler. It's not quite as epic as the opening episodes, though they have their role to play in this storyline, and it delivers the usual mix of monsters, aliens and time-travel complications.

 

And it gets a little serious too, not something we're used to with Smith's rubbery Doctor, a guy who bounces all over the screen and the scripts with childlike enthusiasm. Because even the Doctor can't outrun his destiny. But that doesn't mean he hasn't got something up his sleeve. Oh yeah, there's a wedding too, and you'll never guess whose.

 

Features the final six episode of the sixth season on DVD and Blu-ray, plus two "Monster Files" featurettes. Note that the complete "Series Six" collection is slated for DVD and Blu-ray in two weeks, with exclusive supplements.

 

For more releases, see Hot Tips and Top Picks: DVDs and Blu-rays for November 8

 

In lieu of a traditional gift guide this season, I'll be spotlighting deluxe editions and special releases as they roll out through the holiday gift season. We begin with...

"Band of Brothers/The Pacific Special Edition Gift Set" (HBO) pairs up the two acclaimed HBO World War II mini-series on DVD and Blu-ray.

After "Saving Private Ryan" in a single mission, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks teamed up to produce a chronicle of the European theater of WWII from a soldier’s eye view on a vast canvas. The resulting ten-hour 2001 mini-series "Band of Brothers" won six Emmy Awards (out of 19 nominations) and is, simply put, one of the most powerful and entrancing portraits of men in war ever put on screen. Shot in same khaki and gray tones and combat staccato flicker of "Ryan," as if viewed through the adrenaline-enhanced fear and hyper-alert eyes of a soldier under fire, it captures the texture of battle, the dynamics of platoon life, the wear of fatigue and experience, and the sudden bursts that break a lull, like a lightning attack or a deadly volley of bombs.

This is not a pretty WWII film: violence and blood is both more and less than you might expect, and the finality of death is disturbing whether it’s enemy or fellow soldier. Damian Lewis is the beating heart of the film as the drawling professional who slowly rises in rank due to his calm sense of the big picture, and Ron Livingston his best friend, fellow officer, and closet alcoholic who hides his liquor in Lewis’ footlocker. Donnie Wahlberg and Neil McDonough are just two of the subordinate character to make vivid impressions, but it’s the sprawling cast and the interplay that builds through the course of the war that gives meaning to the title: bonding under fire is no cliché here, but a simple matter of survival.

 

"The Pacific," the epic portrait of the war on the other side of the world from Europe, was made almost ten years later and shown in 2010. The handsome ten-hour production arrived as a companion piece to that series and a contrast to the warfare that faced American servicemen. Presented with an epic sweep and an intimate focus, it brings the viewer through all aspects of the Pacific theater by telling the stories of the men under fire. But it also has a different feel and tone from "Band of Brothers," partly from the chemistry of this cast but mostly from the markedly different nature of warfare in Pacific. It won eight Emmy Awards (including Outstanding Miniseries).

 

The 13-disc DVD and Blu-ray sets features the same editions previously released in individual sets, with all the documentaries and featurettes and the "Enhanced Viewing" mode on the Blu-ray editions, plus an exclusive bonus disc featuring the documentary "He Has Seen War," in hefty bookleaf case with cardboard sleeves, all packed away in a handsome case with a magnetic clasp.

 

For more releases, see Hot Tips and Top Picks: DVDs and Blu-rays for November 8

 

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2" (Warner) brings the saga to a close with grand spectacle as well as a greater sense of urgency and mortal stakes than "Part 1." While not quite transcendent, it is respectful, engaged and quite satisfying. There's not much extra on the DVD but the Blu-ray is packed with supplements. Note that this arrives on Friday, November 11. Videodrone's review is here.

Foreign films this week include Catherine Breillat's "Sleeping Beauty" (Strand) from France, Erin Riklis' "The Human Resources Manager" (Film Movement), a low-key piece of comic drama and cultural negotiation from Israel, and a Korean remake of John Woo's "A Better Tomorrow (2010)" (Well Go). Those films and more covered on Videodrone here.

 

Swinging bachelor Ryan Reynolds and family man Jason Bateman swap bodies in "The Change-Up" (Universal), a comedy promoted as "from the director of "Wedding Crashers" and the writers of "The Hangover"," so you know what you're getting.

"The idea's old as the hills -- wisdom won by literally walking in someone else's shoes -- and often the gross-out humor in "The Change-Up" seems designed specifically for adolescents," confesses MSN film critic Kat Murphy. "But for the love of Peter Pan, stifle your inner censor and give this half-smart, deliciously transgressive mess of a movie a chance." And if I may, I love the way Ms. Murphy explains how the film "turns toilet training into the perfect metaphor for growing up."

The DVD features commentary by director David Dobkin, the featurettes "Time For a Change" (your basic behind the scenes piece) and "Family Matter" (on infant FX and building a better poop gag), a deleted scene and the obligatory gag reel. The Blu-ray offers an unrated edition of the film (its about five minutes longer) includes the usual BD Live applications and something I have not seen before: uHEAR. If you miss a line of dialogue, you just skip back a few seconds and play the scene again with subtitles. It's not quite perfected -- the subtitles stayed on for quite a few seconds after the sequence in question -- but it's a pretty good start.

 

After twenty years of frustrated efforts by producer John Aglialoro (following decades of false starts and aborted attempts), "Atlas Shrugged: Part 1" (Fox), the first part of a proposed film trilogy based on Ayn Rand's epically overrated and absurdly revered novel, was released as an independent production with low-watt TV cast and a first time director (Paul Johansson) with more passion than talent. It received some of the worst reviews of the year. Allow me to sample a few: "Speechy and preachy and just a teeny-weeny bit naughty" (Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer); "as stilted, didactic and simplistic as Rand's free-market fable" (Mark Jenkins, Washington Post); "crushingly ordinary in every way, which with Rand I wouldn't have thought possible" (Michael Philips, Chicago Tribune); "I suspect only someone very familiar with Rand’s 1957 novel could understand the film at all, and I doubt they will be happy with it" (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times). The film, needless to say, was a flop and it is still an open question whether the rest of the trilogy will even get made. The answer to the question "Who is John Galt?" turned out to be a resounding "Who cares?"

 

The DVD and Blu-ray features commentary by producer/screenwrite​r John Aglialoro, co-producer Harmon Kaslow and co-screenwriter Brian Patrick O'Toole, plus two featurettes and a slide show of stills.

 

Georgian-born director Gela Babluani made a terrific splash with his feature debut "13," a wrenching, stripped down thriller that is all the more effective the less you know going in. For his English-language debut, he remade his own film with a impressive cast but "13 (2010)" (Anchor Bay), despite the involvement of Sam Riley, Ray Winstone, Mickey Rourke, Jason Statham, Michael Shannon, Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson and Alexander Skarsgard, it flopped. Writes Variety film critic Dennis Harvey: "A starry cast and glossier production values simply work against the black-and-white original's strengths in this stillborn thriller about a deadly game of chance." On DVD and Blu-ray.

 

"Life in a Day" (Virgil), a portrait of a single day across the world as seen by citizen filmmakers armed with video cameras and phones who shared their video through YouTube (who co-produced the film with National Geographic), is also scheduled for release today, but I did not receive a copy for review in time for the column.

 

And the rest:

"Alleged" (Image) looks at the infamous Scopes "Monkey Trial" through the eyes of an ambitious young reporter (Nathan West). Fred Dalton Thompson and Brian Dennehy play adversaries William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow and Colm Meaney is newspaperman H. L. Mencken.

 

Zach Gilford, Amber Heard and William Heard star in "The River Why" (Image), a drama of self-discovery and fly-fishing based on the novel by John Jay Osborn Jr.  Keven Zegers, Jason Ritter and Taryn Manning star in the rock and roll rebirth drama "The Perfect Age of Rock 'n' Roll" (eOne), which co-stars Peter Fonda.

Barbara Barrie, Mamie Gummer and Karen Young star in the indie drama "Twelve Thirty" (Virgil). Mena Suvari and C. Thomas Howell star in the revenge thriller "Restitution" (Monterey). More action thrillers arriving direct to DVD: "One in the Gun" (MTI) and "Boy Wonder" (Inception).

 

For lighter fare, there is "Hoax For the Holidays" (MTI), a Canadian family film with Callum Keith Rennie, and "Beethoven's Christmas Adventure" (Universal), a direct-to-DVD cute animal sequel.

 

For more releases, see Hot Tips and Top Picks: DVDs and Blu-rays for November 8

 

"Page Eight" (PBS), David Hare's low-key political thriller, arrives on DVD and Blu-ray just days after its stateside debut on "Masterpiece Contemporary."

 

Hare's first original screenplay in over a decade takes us into John Le Carre territory by way of David Mamet, the world of intelligence agents as civil servants in a jungle of bureaucratic gamesmanship. It's not the spy game here, it's a matter of accountability, but information is power and career MI-5 intelligence analyst Johnny Worricker (Bill Nighy) is handed some pretty combustible intelligence by his boss and best friend (Michael Gambon), a sort of parting gift from a man who knows he's not long for the service.

 

It's not the mystery -- which has something to do with "the special relationship" and the disadvantages on the British side of it -- that matters, it's the characters and the gamesmanship. In place of Le Carre's sprawling networks of alliances and betrayals and long histories of double agent dealing, Hare gives is a miniature, stripped down and scripted with underplayed precision. Bill Nighy, a master of dry wit and the uncanny ability to see every situation with a hint of bemusement, plays Johnny as the very model of "mild mannered," but it is a manner. He's smart, crafty and naturally suspicious, and the combination has cost him a couple of marriages and very nearly his estranged daughter (Felicity Jones).

 

The superb cast also includes Rachel Weisz as his attractive next door neighbor (whose sudden interest in him raises flags of suspicion), Judy Davis as his very competitive colleague and Ralph Fiennes as the Prime Minister, plus Saskia Reeves, Ewen Bremner and Marthe Keller. Quite a lot of stature here and they bring the understated (and somewhat glib) plot to life.

 

David Wiegand at the San Francisco Chronicle describes it as "a kind of spy story, but a lot of the spy stuff is only partially credible. What we do buy into are the film's exquisite characters and their complex interrelationships, on both the personal and professional levels."

 

On DVD and Blu-ray, no supplements.

For more releases, see Hot Tips and Top Picks: DVDs and Blu-rays for November 8

 

Catherine Breillat's "Sleeping Beauty" (Strand) from France is the second in a proposed trilogy of films revisiting the classic fairy tales from a feminine perspective. Combining elements of "The Snow Queen" with "Sleeping Beauty," it opens as an old world fairy tale -- a newborn is cursed by the crone of a midwife and nymphs ease the death sentence by turning it into a deep 100 year sleep -- and then follows the life of the girl and her sexual awakening into the contemporary world. "Breillat reimagines the slumbering heroine as a gender insurrectionist, freeing her from her most retrograde and enduring cultural representation: Disney's passive damsel," writes Melissa Anderson at The Village Voice. "Breillat’s clarity stands out even more when compared with the half-thought-out, post-feminist notions in Julia Leigh's "Sleeping Beauty"." In French with English subtitles.

 

"The Human Resources Manager" (Film Movement), a low-key piece of comic drama and cultural negotiation from director Erin Riklis ("Lemon Tree"), sends the hapless HR manager of a Jerusalem bakery on a road trip to Romania, accompanying the body of a foreign worker killed in a suicide bombing. Kenneth Turan praises the film at The Los Angeles Times: "More than anything, this is an intelligent audience picture, a solid and engrossing piece of old-school filmmaking, both humane and character driven, in which the various protagonists learn something - not too much and not too easily - about the nature of their lives." It won five Israeli Film Academy Awards, including Best Film and Best Director. In Hebrew, Romanian and English with subtitles. Also features a short film from Hungary: "Tell Your Children."

 

"A Better Tomorrow (2010)" (Well Go) is the South Korean remake of John Woo's Hong Kong gangster classic. Woo gets executive producer credit here but unlikely had much to do with the adaptation, which Time Out Hong Kong critic Edmund Lee finds disappointing: "In the hands of director Song Hae-sung, this slick retelling of Woo’s romantic take on codes of honour has captured none of the Sam Peckinpah-esque excess that made the earlier film so damn satisfying." In Korean with English subtitles. Blu-ray+DVD Combo includes a featurette and video interviews with Woo, director Song Hae-Sung and the cast.

Two from the most recent Global Lens Film Initiative series: "Leo's Room" (Global Lens Collection), a Uruguay production set in Montevido, Spain, and "Ocean of an Old Man" (Global Lens Collection) from India, which Village Voice film critic Andrew Schenker cited as the series highlight: "an elliptical, meditative film that uses an accumulation of images and sounds to suggest a sense of loss, desolation, and the possibility of renewal." It includes the featurette "Ocean of an Old Man" and both discs include a film discussion guide.

For more releases, see Hot Tips and Top Picks: DVDs and Blu-rays for November 8

 

After seven movies (and, before that, seven novels that became bestsellers and cultural touchstones), the odyssey of The Boy Who Lived comes to a memorable climax and conclusion in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2" (Warner), which debuts on DVD, Blu-ray and digital download on Friday, November 11.

 

It’s been quite a journey, from the bright, gee-whiz world of excitement and possibility that the young heroes encountered in the "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" (and they are young; it’s hard to remember they were so fresh and wide-eyed and inexperienced in the first film) to the shadow of doom that hangs over "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1." The final book was split into two movies and "Part 1" is the grimmest of the series. "Part 2" brings the saga to a close with grand spectacle, yes, but also a sense of urgency and mortal stakes, in part because its more active (none of that hiding out in the wilds stuff here) and in part because it finally brings all the conflicts to a mighty showdown. It's the necessary pay-off, the dawn after the darkness of Harry and friends at their most despairing.

 

I like the work that director David Yates has done with the "Harry Potter" franchise. He doesn't have a playful way with visuals or a gift for spectacle, but he understands the character and invests in their relationships and their evolution. That's what gives the grand spectacle of the final battle -- the wizardocalypse of the magical world, fought appropriately enough on the grounds of Hogwarts, the wizard school where Harry was prepared to meet his destiny -- its dramatic foundation. Sure it’s big, a special effects epic of dueling spells and grand destruction with practically every surviving member of the sprawling cast lining up on one side or another, but by now they aren't just casualties. We know them and their deaths have a resonance. Sacrifice means something in this series. As does friendship and loyalty and respect.

 

But back to those kids. As we've watched Harry, Hermione and Ron grow up through this series, we've also seen Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson grow up on screen into mature, confident actors. Grint and Watson never establish the necessary chemistry to make their scrappy, screwball attraction work as grown-up romance (perhaps the film's only significant failure in its adaptation) but they are never less than convincing as loyal friends. And Radcliffe holds it all together as the young man who rises to the challenge. Challenge met, I'd say.

 

"It's all grand stuff, what with turncoat dragons, cursed diadems, Harry's mates Ron and Hermione finding love, tense games of guess-the-wand owner, and much, much more, and it moves along briskly and looks great and is all pretty ... well, impressive but pro forma, with the allowance that with this series, pro forma has always been pretty darn good," says MSN film critic Glenn Kenny. "But then it gets better, actually…. In the end, the thing works like, well, magic, to the extent that this reviewer, who is still not entirely sure what a horcrux is, now that he's learned to spell it, got kind of choked up at the film's very sweet and not at all inapt postscript."

 

There's not much extra on the DVD, which is limited to a couple of deleted scenes, but the Blu-ray Combo Pack is packed with supplements. The "Maximum Movie Mode" (Warner's version of the interactive audio-video track) for this disc is hosted by Matthew Long (Neville Longbottom) with guest appearance by other cast members, who step in to freeze the film and take the viewer through key scenes. Sometimes the picture-in-picture featurettes and commentary run parallel to the film, other times the film is paused for a documentary detour, extending the experience by close to 40 minutes. You can also access these featurettes separately via "Focus Points."

 

The other major supplement is "A Conversation with J.K. Rowling and Daniel Radcliffe," which offers the viewers nearly an hour in the company of the author of the books and the star of the movies chatting about the novels, the movies, the characters and the world behind it all in a relaxed setting between two people who know it all very well but come to it from very different perspectives.

 

Also features eight deleted scenes, the featurettes "The Women of Harry Potter" and "The Goblins of Gringotts" and a brief video farewell among the rest of the extras, as well as a bonus DVD and an Ultraviolet Digital Copy, which offers a different kind of digital experience. This one is not downloaded but accessed in the cloud. It requires an Internet connection, but in return it offers access through multiple devices, and allows the viewer to sign off from one device and continue viewing on another where you left off.

 

For more releases, see Hot Tips and Top Picks: DVDs and Blu-rays for November 8

 

While it's become a kind of Hollywood exercise for directors to re-edit and extend films for home video, David Lynch has never succumbed to the temptation. The film that arrives in theaters is, for better or worse, the film that will live on.

 

In terms of "Blue Velvet," it is decidedly for the better. After the frustrations of "Dune," producer Dino De Laurentiis gave Lynch a free hand and creative control over "Blue Velvet" and Lynch released the film as he intended it to be seen.

 

The Blu-ray debut of "Blue Velvet" (MGM) features a newly remastered edition of the film, but it also features a unique peak into the creative process of Lynch with a collection of recently rediscovered deleted scenes: 50 minutes of visions, both lovely and horrible, human and hellish.

See below, after the jump, for an exclusive look at a never-before-seen deleted clip. Warning: for mature audiences only for language

These pieces were pared away in the editing, like a sculptor chiseling away to get to the perfect form, but they are full of visual delights and offbeat humor, narrative sidetrips and character embellishments. Some scenes simply cast a mood of unease or anxiety over the proceedings. Yet all are glimpses into the inspiration and explorations of Lynch as a filmmaker and marvelous addenda to the finished film, a look into roads not taken and details whittled away to reach the narrative focus and tonal balance of the final piece.

While Lynch is never one to revise a finished film, he's clearly proud of the work in these deleted scenes. "It was too much of a good thing," is how he once explained cutting a favorite scene, but he's happy to share those good things with us. He personally supervised the editing of these clips into a 50-minute supplement on the new Blu-ray. (For more on the search for the footage, see Cath Clark's article in The Guardian.)

 

 

With the days shorter and the nights colder, it is now more than ever the season for movies at home. Here's what new this week.

 

New Releases:

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2" (Warner) brings the saga to a close with grand spectacle, yes, but also a greater sense of urgency and mortal stakes than "Part 1," in part because it's more active (none of that hiding out in the wilds stuff here) and in part because it finally brings all the conflicts to a mighty showdown. For anyone who has invested themselves in the movies, it pays off with a satisfying conclusion, because director David Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves honor the story and the characters. There's not much extra on the DVD  but the Blu-ray is packed with supplements. Note that this arrives on Friday, November 11. Videodrone's review is here.

 

Swinging bachelor Ryan Reynolds and family man Jason Bateman swap bodies in "The Change-Up" (Universal), a comedy promoted as "from the director of "Wedding Crashers" and the writers of "The Hangover"," so you know what you're getting.

 

"Atlas Shrugged: Part 1" (Fox), an independently produced adaptation of the first section of Ayn Rand's novel, received some of the worst reviews of the year. "13 (2010)" (Anchor Bay), Gela Babluani's English language remake of his own 2005 European thriller, was not any more successful, despite a cast that includes Ray Winstone, Mickey Rourke and Jason Statham.

 

Foreign films this week include Catherine Breillat's "Sleeping Beauty" (Strand) from France and Erin Riklis' "The Human Resources Manager" (Film Movement), a low-key piece of comic drama and cultural negotiation from Israel. More on Videodrone here.

 

Browse the complete New Release Rack here

 

TV on DVD:

Just days after its stateside debut on "Masterpiece Contemporary" comes "Page Eight" (PBS), David Hare's low-key political thriller with Bill Nighy as a career intelligence analyst for MI-5. David Hare's first original screenplay in over a decade is John Le Carre territory by way of David Mamet, stripped down and scripted with underplayed precision. The superb cast also includes Rachel Weisz, Judy Davis, Felicity Jones, Michael Gambon and Ralph Fiennes as the Prime Minister. Videodrone's review is here.

 

"Doctor Who: Series Six, Part Two" (BBC) completes the strange and amazing story of River Song and brings the Doctor back to the shocking event that opened the season: the death of the Doctor. It's a trip and Videodrone tags along here. Also from across the pond is "Case Histories" (Acorn), the new British mystery series based on the novels by Kate Atkinson and starring Jason Isaacs.

 

"Mr. Magoo: The Television Collection" (Shout! Factory) collects over 30 hours of animated shows and TV specials from 1961-1977 in an 11-disc box set. "Band of Brothers/The Pacific Special Edition Gift Set" (HBO) pairs up the two acclaimed HBO World War II mini-series on DVD and Blu-ray. Videodrone's review is here.

 

Flip through the TV on DVD Channel Guide here

Cool, Classic and Cult:

Humphrey Bogart dons the collar in "The Left Hand of God" (Twilight Time), playing a Catholic priest in a Chinese mission in 1947. If that doesn't strike you as a Bogart role, just wait, it gets there.

 

"Great Directors" (Kino Lorber) presents conversations with ten of the world's great directors (from Bernardo Bertolucci and Catherine Breillat to John Sayles and Agnès Varda), and "Produce Your Own Damn Movie!" (Troma) is the third collection of DIY filmmaking tips from exploitation auteur Lloyd Kaufman and friends (from David Cronenberg to Roger Corman to The Duplass Brothers).

 

All of the Cool, Classic and Cult here

 

Blu-ray Debuts:

"Blue Velvet" (MGM), David Lynch's masterpiece of the rot under the picture-perfect façade of small town idealism, debuts on Blu-ray with a treasure trove of recently discovered deleted scenes. They aren't added to the film, mind you -- Lynch's original version is his director's cut, no compromises made -- but they are included as a supplement and offer more textures and possibilities for fans to explore. Videodrone's review is here and you can see an exclusive deleted clip here.

 

"Fanny and Alexander Box Set" (Criterion) includes both the Oscar-winning theatrical version of Ingmar Bergman's most autobiographical film and the longer mini-series version he created for Swedish television, as well as two documentaries and a 1984 interview with the director.

 

Dustin Hoffman is "Little Big Man" (Paramount) in the satirical western, Marlon Brando stars in the 1962 "Mutiny on the Bounty," Gus Van Sant directs Nicole Kidman to one of her best performances in "To Die For" (Image) and Terry Gilliam directs Jeff Bridges in "The Fisher King" (Image). On the cult front is William Wyler's "The Collector" (Image) with Terence Stamp and the tongue-in-cheek horror comedy "Frankenhooker" (Synapse).

 

Peruse all the new Blu-rays here

 

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