A scene from Věra Chytilová's 1966 farce Daisies.

Of all the cinematic New Waves that broke over the world in the 1960s, the one in Czechoslovakia was among the most fascinating and radical, as can be seen in the five feature-length films and five shorts found in Criterion’s Eclipse Series 32: Pearls of The Czech New Wave.

With a wicked sense of humor and a healthy streak of surrealism, a group of  directors in Czechoslovakia —including future Oscar winners Miloš Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) and Ján Kadár (The Shop on Main Street)—began to use film to speak out about the hypocrisy and absurdity of the Communist state.

The four-disc collection kicks off the 1966 omnibus film Pearls of the Deep, which introduced five of the movement’s best-known voices: Věra Chytilová, Jaromil Jireš, Jiří Menzel, Jan Němec, and Evald Schorm. Each of the filmmakers is then represented by a feature-length film.

All the films are presented in Czech with English subtitles and feature monaural sound.

Here’s a breakdown of the films:

Pearls of the Deep (1966)
A manifesto of sorts for the Czech New Wave, this five-part anthology of shorts shows off the breadth of expression offered by the movement’s versatile directors. All based on stories by the legendary writer Bohumil Hrabal, the films range from surreally chilling to caustically observant to casually romantic, but all have a uniquely cutting view of the world.

Daisies (1966)
Perhaps the New Wave’s most anarchic entry, Věra Chytilová’s absurdist farce follows the slapstick misadventures of two brash young women who embark on a series of disorderly, prankish escapades in which nothing is sacred.

A Report on the Party and Guests (1966)
In Jan Němec’s surreal fable, the weekend countryside frolic of an ordinary group of men and women is rudely transformed into a lesson in political hierarchy when a handful of mysterious authority figures show up and begin to control their actions.

Return of the Prodigal Son (1967)
The most outspokenly political of the movement’s filmmakers, Evald Schorm offers a raw psychological drama about a socially alienated engineer unable to adjust to the world around him following a suicide attempt.

Capricious Summer (1968)
Two years after his worldwide hit Closely Watched Trains, Jiří Menzel directed this funny and reflective idyll about three middle-aged bourgeois men whose carefree summer, occupied by little more than fishing, drinking, and eating, is interrupted by the arrival of young traveling circus performers.

The Joke (1969)
Jaromil Jireš’s fragmentary adaptation of Milan Kundera’s novel jumps between the past and present to tell the Kafkaesque tale of Ludvik, a scientist who, in the 1950s, was expelled from the Communist Party when the authorities intercepted a postcard from him to his girlfriend that he’d intended as a political joke.

Buy or Rent Pearls of The Czech New Wave
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After being available on Blu-ray 3D only in a Samsung Blu-ray 3D player or 3D TV bundle, all four Shrek movies can finally be bought by themselves.

The Shrek, Shrek 2, Shrek the Third and Shrek Forever After Blu-ray 3D discs are combo packs with the animated family films on DVD as well.

Franchise spin-off movie Puss in Boots is available on Blu-ray 3D the same day as Blu-ray and DVD.

Based the book by William Stieg, the green ogre’s (Mike Myers, Austin Powers) first film, released by DreamWorks Animation in 2001, won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay.

In the movie, Shrek gets pushed out of his swamp and the only way to get some peace and quiet is to rescue the fiesty Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz, Bad Teacher) with the help of the talkative Donkey (Eddie Murphy, Tower Heist).

In Shrek 2 (2004), the ogre couple must tell Fiona’s parents (John Cleese of Winnie the Pooh and Julie Andrews of Despicable Me) about their love and face off against Prince Charming (Rupert Everett, Wild Target), who has his eyes set on marrying Fiona for her kingdom. And Shrek gets an unlikely ally in Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger).

Shrek the Third (2007) finds Shrek as the heir to the throne, a seat he’d rather not inherit. So he sets off to find the legitimate heir in a distant kingdom, while Prince Charming joins the fairytale villains in plotting a coup to become the next king.

And in the final film, 2010′s Shrek Forever After, the ogre is having a mid-life crisis and gets tricked by Rumpelstiltskin (Walt Dohrn) to erase Shrek out of existence, which leads to a timeline in which Rumpel rules supreme. And, of course, Shrek must fix his mistake.

Buy or Rent Shrek

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Based on the novel by best-selling author John le Carre, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is filled with the cream of the crop of British actors.

Gary Oldman (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) leads as George Smiley, an espionage veteran who comes out of semi-retirement to track down a suspected mole at the top of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, a.k.a. MI6. But this film is an ensemble, also featuring Colin Firth (The King’s Speech), Tom Hardy (Warrior), Ciaran Hinds (The Rite), John Hurt (Alien) and Mark Strong (Green Lantern).

Nominated for three Oscars, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is one of those films that critics like better than audiences. Not that moviegoers didn’t like it, but they gave it a 68% approval, compared to 84% from critics, according to Rotten Tomatoes. Take it from this critic: The movie is good, but slow.

The film does have a lot  going for it, though, and we weren’t surprised that the movie was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay (Bridget O’Connor of Mrs. Ratcliffe’s Revolution and The Debt), Best Actor (Oldman) and Best Original Score (Alberto Iglesias, The Skin I Live In).

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy did gross a tidy $18 million in limited release in theaters.

A digital copy of the film is included in the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack via UltraViolet, making it available for download or streaming from a digital cloud.

The Blu-ray also contains these special features:

• “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: First Look”
• deleted scenes
• interview with author John le Carré
• interviews with actors Gary Oldman, Colin Firth and Tom Hardy, director Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In) and screenwriter Peter Straughan
• commentary by Alfredson and Oldman
• BD-Live features
• Pocket Blu app, which allows the Blu-ray player to interact with smartphones, tablets and more
• and UHear, which allows users to easily skip back a few seconds and turn on subtitles if you missed dialog.

The DVD also carries the actor and filmmaker interviews and the commentary.

John le Carré’s novel was made into a TV mini-series back in 1979, starring Alec Guiness in Oldman’s role.

Check out the 2011 movie’s intriguing trailer:

Buy or Rent Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy
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Steve Austin means business in Recoil.

Retired professional wrestler turned movie action hero Steve Austin (The Expendables) stars as a cop who forms his own brand of vigilante justice in the 2011 action film Recoil.

When honorable police officer Ryan Varrett (Austin), returns home to find his entire family murdered, the one-time good guy cop is forced to go rogue – breaking the laws he once swore to uphold – in his quest for justice. The primary targets for Varrett’s guns, knives and fists are a murderous biker gang, a corrupt local police, and a ruthless crime lord named Drayke (Danny Trejo, Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World).

Directed by Terry Miles (A Night For Dying Tigers) and co-starring sexy Serinda Swan (TV’s Breakout Kings), Recoil premieres on DVD.

Bonus features on the DVD and Blu-ray include the following:

• Behind-the-scenes featurette
• Interviews with cast and crew
• Deleted scenes

Take a look at the bone-crunching, guns-a-blazing trailer:

Buy or Rent Recoil
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Do Hai Yen (l) and Linh-Dan Pham experience a sexual awakening in Adrift.

The 2009 erotic drama Adrift, a portrait of adultery and sexual awakening in contemporary Hanoi, is the second feature film by Vietnamese director Bui Thac Chuyen.

After her wedding, newlywed Duyen’s (Do Hai Yen) excitement begins to fade as she realizes her young husband is not only sexually naïve, but overly occupied by his job and mother. As her marriage goes unconsummated and her emotional isolation grows, Duyen reaches out to her closest girlfriend, Cam (Linh-Dan Pham), who secretly desires her, but pushes her into the arms of a dangerous and provocative suitor (Johnny Tri Nguyen). The resulting sexual awakening and infidelity thrusts Duyen into a precarious and dangerous love triangle.

The winner of the FIPRESCI Prize at the Venice International Film Festival, Adrift (or Choi Voi in its native Vietnamese) was also screened at major film festivals in Toronto, Bangkok, Stockholm, Rotterdam, Melbourne and, in the U.S., Mill Valley and Palm Springs. It was also exhibited at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in January, 2010.

Here’s the trailer for the film, which is presented in Vietnamese with English subtitles:

Buy or Rent Adrift
DVD

Say hello to The Women on the 6th Floor.

Popular and pleasing European actresses Carmen Maura (Law of Desire), Sandrine Kiberlain (Madamoiselle Chambon) and Natalia Verbeke (The Method) serve up some solid “upstairs/downstairs” laughs in the 2010 French-Spanish comedy The Women on the 6^th Floor.

The film is set in Paris, 1960, where the world of bourgeois couple Jean-Louis (Fabrice Luchini, Potiche) and Suzanne (Kiberlain) is turned upside-down when they hire a Spanish maid named María (Verbeke). Through María, Jean-Louis is introduced to a wacky kind of alternative lifestyle on the building’s sixth floor, the servants’ quarters. There, he befriends a group of sassy Spanish maids, refugees of the Franco regime, who teach him there’s more to life than stocks and bonds, and whose influence on the house will ultimately transform everyone’s life.

Directed and co-written by Philippe Le Guay, The Women on the 6^th Floor was received well in theaters around the world and has grossed a reported $600,000 in the U.S. since it was released on a limited theatrical basis in October, 2011.

Check out the cute and colorful trailer:

Buy or Rent The Women on the 6th Floor
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The fifth season of NBC’s comedy-adventure TV show Chuck is, very sadly, the final season.

The nerd-herder-turned-spy, played with such boyish charm by Zachary Levi (Tangled), went out on his own in season 5 — no intersect and no CIA backup. Of course, bad guys are still out to get him. But John Casey (Adam Baldwin, Serenity), Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski, Killer Elite) and Morgan Grimes (Joshua Gomez, TV’s Without a Trace) are still on Chuck’s team.

The Chuck: The Complete Fifth Season DVD and Blu-ray include 13 episodes, in which they take on a missing persons case, try to stop an assassin at a Buy More convention, infiltrate a cult and, of course, say goodbye.

Both the three-DVD and two-Blu-ray sets contain these special features:

• featurette “Chuck: The Final Episode”
• “Sandwiches and Superfans: The Saving of a Show”
• “Chuck: The Beginnings”
• “Chuck: Through the Years”
• “Chuck: The Future”
• two commentaries on the final two episodes by the executive producers and cast members
• Declassified Scenes
• gag reel
• full versions of the Buy More TV commercials with Big Mike and Captain Awesome
• extended version of the series finale episode
• and UltraViolet digital copy that can be downloaded or streamed.

Chuck, we’ll miss you, but we’re glad you can come home.

Buy or Rent Chuck: The Complete Fifth Season
DVD | Blu-ray

Sarah Jessica Parker (l.) and Helen Hunt are proof that Girls Just Want to Have Fun.

The silly but sincere 1985 dance-filled comedy-romance Girls Just Want To Have Fun was a film that helped to launch the careers of its two stars, Sarah Jessica Parker (I Don’t Know How She Does It) and Helen Hunt (Every Day).

Janey (Parker) is a shy good girl, while Lynne (Hunt) is a cool rock chick. When the two unlikely friends scheme to get Janey on television’s biggest after-school dance show, they find themselves catapulted into a wild adventure filled with cute boys, hot dancing, great music, prudish nuns, mean rich kids, parents that just don’t understand, and girls doing what they know best…having fun, of course.

Directed by Alan Metter and co-starring Shannen Doherty (TV’s Beverly Hills 90210),  Jonathan Silverman (Weekend at Bernie’s) and Lee Montgomery (TV’s Highway to Heaven), Girls feels like it’s been on rotation on such cable stations as Lifetime, USA and ABC Family since the channels were first created. Maybe that’s why the film has grown into a cult favorite for moms, their daughters and lots of other fun-loving gals.

The PG-13-rated film was re-issued on DVD by Image in September, 2011.

The Blu-ray debut of Girls does not include any bonus materials, but we dug up a trailer for you to alleviate your grief!:

 

Buy or Rent Girls Just Want to Have Fun
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Based on the children’s book The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, Martin Scorsese’s Hugo won the helmer of Shutter Island his third Best Director Golden Globe Award, after Gangs of New York and The Departed.

Based in 1930s Paris, the family movie follows the story of an orphan, Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield, Nanny McPhee Returns), who lives in the walls of a train station. He gets wrapped up in a mystery after he finds an automaton left for him by his late father (Jude Law, Sherlock Holmes). Hugo gets some help from Chloe Grace Moretz (Let Me In), who also stars alongside Ben Kingsley (Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time), Sacha Baron Cohen (Sweeney Todd), Ray Winstone (London Boulevard), Emily Mortimer (Our Idiot Brother), Christopher Lee (The Lord of the Rings) and Richard Griffiths (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides).

Nominated for 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Hugo wasn’t a huge earner at the box-office, grossing only $56 million, compared to 2004′s Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events at $119 million or even The Muppets $87 million. Hugo‘s budget was reportedly $170 million!

Still, Hugo was highly applauded by critics, earning a whopping 94% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Although many reviewers complained about plodding pacing, they all celebrated the movie’s imagery, especially in 3D.

So, it’s no surprise that the adventure movie, which is rated PG, is available on Blu-ray 3D as well as DVD and Blu-ray. The Blu-ray 3D combo pack includes the 3D movie, high-definition Blu-ray movie and standard-definition DVD movie. The Blu-ray is a Blu-ray/DVD combo.

Both combo packs include these special features:

• making-of featurette “Shoot the Moon”
• “The Cinemagician, Georges Melies”
• “The Mechanical Man at the Heart of Hugo“
• “Big Effects, Small Scale”
• and “Sacha Baron Cohen: Role of a Lifetime.”

The DVD only contains the “Shoot the Moon” featurette.

All three versions include a digital copy of the film, available for download or streaming through UltraViolet.

Buy or Rent Hugo
DVD | Blu-ray/DVD Combo | Blu-ray 3D Combo

Things look bleak for Holly Weston in Spintered.

A group of teenagers exploring a creepy abandoned building discover a terrifying creature on a blood-thirsty rampage in the 2010 British horror-thriller movie Splintered.

The film peeks in on a trouble teen named Sophie (Holly Weston, TV’s Hollyoakes) as she drags her friends deep into a forest in search of a local legend – a half-animal/half-man creature that uses its cunning ability and brutal strength to kill for pleasure. But when the beast leads Sophie and her friend, John (Sol Heras), to an abandoned orphanage, the hunters become the hunted.

Splintered has picked up a bit of a following since 2010, winning six awards at the Screamfest Horror Film Festival, including Best Picture, Best Special Effects and Best Make-Up.

Directed and co-written first-time feature filmmaker Simeon Halligan, the unrated Splintered, which is premiering in the U.S. on DVD, also stars Stephen Martin Walters (TV’s Skins), Sacha Dhawan (TV’s Outsourced) and Jonathan Readwin (Dread).

Bonus materials on the discs include a making-of featurette and deleted scenes.

Check out the mean-looking trailer:

 

Buy or Rent Splintered
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Trish Stratus puts her trademark moves on justice-fleeing fugitives in Bounty Hunters.

Let me start by saying that if I had to be tracked down and nabbed by some fortune-seeking mercenary, I wouldn’t mind if my pursuer was seven-time WWE Women’s Champion Trish Stratus as seen in her action movie debut Bounty Hunters.

Originally entitled Bail Enforcers, the 2011 film finds a group of down-on-their-luck bounty hunters, led by Jules Taylor (Stratus), hitting the jackpot one night when they pick up an informant with $100,000 on his head. But their world is quickly turned upside down when a gangland boss (Joe Rafla) offers them a million dollars in exchange for their bounty. When Jules and her partners refuse, the mob unleashes a trio of assassins to bring the bounty hunters down, and to get their man – dead or alive.

Needless to say, leading lady Trish sends the baddies into the “Stratusphere” with a collection of awesome wrestling moves and one inspired skirmish that finds her getting into a seriously sexy catfight with co-star Andrea James Lui.

I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that Ms. Stratus offers a substantially more sizzling variation on her bounty hunting profession than Katherine Heigl does with the same occupation in One for the Money, which opened theatrically on Jan. 20, 2012 to some of the worst reviews that Heigl has ever received!

Directed by Patrick McBrearty (Psycho Ward), the unrated Bounty Hunters, which premieres in the U.S. on DVD, also stars Boomer Phillips (TV’s The Adrenaline Project) and Frank J. Zupancic (Sweet Karma).

Here’s the trailer:

 

Buy or Rent Bounty Hunters
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On DVD and Blu-ray, comedy movie The Sitter is a Totally Irresponsible Edition, befitting the film’s “Worst. Babysitter. Ever” tag line.

The Sitter stars Jonah Hall (Moneyball) as … you guessed it, the worst babysitter ever. Hill plays Noah, a suburban slacker who’s watching his neighbor’s kids when he gets a booty call from his girlfriend in the city. Of course he heads right over — and takes the kids with him. But Noah’s urban adventure gets out of control when he finds himself on the run from a drug lord.

Ari Graynor (What’s Your Number?) and Sam Rockwell (Cowboys & Aliens) also star in the movie, which was directed by David Gordon Greene (helmer of the pretty disastrous Your Highness) and executive produced by Hill.

Although it was liked better by audiences than critics (the movie was called “hughly dislikable” by the U.K. Observer critic Philip French), R-rated The Sitter didn’t get too much love at the box office, grossing $30 million in wide release in theaters.

So, Fox is pumping up the value of the Totally Irresponsible Blu-ray with a “Totally Irresponsible” unrated version of the movie. Here are the other special features on the disc:

• deleted and extended scenes
  • “Noah Goes Downtown” extended
  • “Noah and Slater Talk About Twins” extended
  • “Getting the Minivan” extended
  • “Karl’s Back Room” extended
  • “Karl Hugs It Out” deleted
  • “Kids On the Curb” deleted
  • “Meeting Karl in Chinatown” extended
  • “Noah Calls Stephanie” deleted
  • “Brooklyn Party Scenes” deleted
  • alternate ending “Carousel Fight”
• a gag reel
• “Totally Irresponsible” outtakes
• “For Your Consideration” with Blythe featurette
• “The Making of The Sitter” featurette
• “Jonah the Producer” featurette
• digital copy.

Buy or Rent The Sitter
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Donnie Yen (Ip Man), Jackie Chan (1911) and Bing Bing Fan (Shaolin) star in the 2004 Chinese epic action-adventure-romance-fantasy-comedy-martial arts mash-up movie Blade of Kings.

Directed by Patrick Leung and Corey Yuen, the film tells the fantastical tale of a humble boy (Jaycee Chan, son of Jackie!) born to rule an empire who must first undertake his journey to claim his throne in the mythical land of Huadu.

Originally released under the name of The Twins Effect II, Blade of Kings is a sequel to 2003’s The Twins Effect, though it has nothing whatsoever to do with its predecessor.

Quite a popular film in Asia when it was released in theaters in 2004, the unrated movie was nominated for four Hong Kong Film Awards, including Best Visual Effects.

Presented in Mandarin with English subtitles and an English-dubbed version, the Blade of Kings is on Blu-ray and DVD with the following features:

• “The Making of Blade of Kings” featurette
• Music video

Here’s the stylish trailer, which is presented with Mandarin subtitles:

Buy or Rent Blade of Kings
DVD | Blu-ray/DVD Combo	DVD | Blu-ray/DVD Combo

Heather Ann Davis vamps for Eric Callero in Breaking Wind.

The 2011 comedy movie� Breaking Wind is the inevitable parody film of the Twilight vampire saga.

Like the Twilight books and film, Breaking Wind revolves around a love triangle of mortals, vampires and werewolves — all of which must be put on hold when the beloved Bella (Heather Ann Davis, TV’s The Lake) finds herself in danger (for a change). This time, a gang of bloodsucking newborns threatens her safety, and the two loves of her life are forced to put their differences aside to save her. Again.

Directed by Craig Moss, who helmed the 2010 spoof The 41-Year-Old Virgin Who Knocked Up Sarah Marshall and Felt Superbad About It, Breaking Wind features a slew of stars who’ve made their bones on TV, including Davis, Eric Callero (TV’s Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles), Frank Pacheco (TV’s Wizards of Waverly Place) and Nic Novicki (TV’s Boardwalk Empire) .

Premiering on DVD in the U.S. as an unrated director’s cut, Breaking Wind includes the following bonus features:

• outtakes
• deleted/extended scenes
• featurette

Check out the movie’s cute trailer:

Buy or Rent Breaking Wind
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Shanley Caswell gets ready to take a bite in Snow White: A Deadly Summer.

The 2012 horror film Snow White: A Deadly Summer is another modern take on the classic fairy tale, and, at first glance, the movie calls to mind the 1997 offering Snow White: A Tale of Terror starring Sigourney Weaver (Paul).

Deadly Summer finds teenager Snow (Shanley Caswell, TV’s The Middle) devastated by her father’s recent marriage to his second wife. She begins to give her new stepmother (The Brady Bunch’s Maureen McCormick) a hard time, prompting her father (Eric Roberts, Sharktopus) to send his daughter off to a summer camp, unaware of its dark past. Snow soon learns that the camp was the site of a murder several years ago and that the suspect fled into the woods, never to be seen again. Not long into her deadly summer, campers begin dying off and Snow feels as though a killer is watching her.

Timed for release the week that the high-profile Snow White adaptation Mirror Mirror, starring Julia Roberts (Eat Pray Love), opens wide in theaters, the PG-13-rated Snow White: A Deadly Summer is a DVD premiere.

The trailer for A Deadly Summer looks sort of silly, but we don’t have to tell you that the story’s a perennial and that it definitely has the ability to raise some eyebrows.

Buy or Rent Snow White: A Deadly Summer
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American independent filmmaker Robert M. Young’s 1977 drama ¡Alambrista! is an uncompromising, groundbreaking-for-its-time film about a tough subject: illegal immigration.

The movie tells the story of farmworker Roberto (Domingo Ambriz), who sneaks across the border from Mexico into California in an effort to make money to send to his family back home. He quickly learns that hard work and dedication are often not enough to survive.

Young’s take on the subject is equal parts intimate character study and carefully crafted road movie, a political work that never loses sight of the complex man at its center.

¡Alambrista!, winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s inaugural Camera d’Or in 1978, is presented in a new high-definition digital restoration in Criterion’s DVD and Blu-ray, with 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition.

The DVD and Blu-ray, which are presented in English and Spanish with English subtitles, contain the following features:

• new audio commentary featuring director Robert M. Young and coproducer Michael Hausman
• new interview with actor Edward James Olmos (Stand and Deliver)
• Children of the Fields, a 1973 short documentary by Young, accompanied by a new interview with the director
• trailer
• booklet featuring an essay by film historian Charles Ramírez-Berg

Buy or Rent ¡Alambrista!
DVD | Blu-ray	DVD | Blu-ray	DVD | Blu-ray

Grab your coconuts! After being available for pre-order on Amazon.com for a long time, the awesome off-the-wall British comedy movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail is finally available on high-definition Blu-ray.

Co-directed by Terry Gilliam (Brazil) and Terry Jones (Monty Python’s Life of Brian and Meaning of Life), the 1974 film features the usual Python troupe, including John Cleese, Michael Palin, Eric Idle and Graham Chapman.

In the 92-minute Holy Grail, King Arthur (Chapman) and his knights go on a low-budget search for, you guessed it, the Holy Grail. Along the way, they encounter lots of silly obstacles, like the Killer Rabbit, The Knights Who Say ‘Ni!’ and the Black Beast of Aaaargh! It’s only a flesh wound!

Thankfully, Sony has remastered the PG-rated film and piled some new special features into the Blu-ray disc:

• Lost Animations, with introduction by Gilliam
• outtakes and extended scenes, with introduction by Jones
• “The Holy Book of Days Second Screen Experience,” letting fans explore each of the 28 days of filming through movie outtakes, diaries, audio recordings, scripts and stills
• digital copy through UltraViolet that can be downloaded or stored for instant streaming.

The Blu-ray also contains extras that are on previous DVD versions:

• commentaries by Gilliam, Jones, Cleese, Idle and Palin
• “Quest for the Holy Grail Locations” with Palin and Jones
• “Lego Knights: The Knights of the Round Table in Lego”
• special Japanese version
• education film “How to Use Your Coconuts”
• BBC Film “Night On Location”
• three sing-along songs
• cast directory photo gallery.

Available the same day is the iPad app “The Holy Book of Days,” which offers the Second Screen experience and lets users control their Blu-ray through their iPad. The app is $4.99 in the App Store, and for a limited time, Sony is offering a $5 mail-in rebate for those who buy both the Blu-ray and app.

Buy or Rent Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Blu-ray | Instant Video		Blu-ray

The documentary film Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged examines the resurging interest in the epic and controversial 1957 novel and its writer, Russian-American philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand.

Directed and produced by acclaimed documentary filmmaker Chris Mortensen (Sworn to Secrecy: Secrets of War) the movie explores how Rand’s book — a philosophical manifesto in the form of an epic novel — and her own philosophy of “Objectivism,” which trumpets rational self-interest over altruism, is perceived by many as a prescient blueprint of what is happening in America today.

Via exclusive footage of Rand and scores of new interviews with critics, writers, Rand biographers and friends, as well as noted executives from the business world, the film argues that Atlas Shrugged ‘s view is being frighteningly mirrored in the world today.

Meanwhile, the 55-year-old book is rising to new heights, with its frequent acknowledgment in the popular media and sales of more than 1.5 million copies in the past five years (with over 500,000 copies in 2009 alone). Throw in that a movie adaptation of Atlas Shrugged was released earlier this year, and there’s no denying the book is enjoying a helluva revival.

Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged had a one-night-only digital premiere on Jan. 17, 2012, in selected theaters in some 50 U.S. cities.

Bonus features on the DVD include a making-of featurette with extended interviews.

Check out the trailer:

Buy or Rent DVD Release: Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged
DVD

Tim Robbins and Diane Lane live their lives on camera in Cinema Verite.

Starring Tim Robbins (Green Lantern), James Gandolfini (Welcome to the Rileys) and Diane Lane (Secretariat), the 2011 HBO Original Film Cinema Verite is a fictionalized account of the production of the 1973 PBS documentary series An American Family.

A revolutionary piece of television programming for it’s time, An American Family catapulted a seemingly ordinary family to notoriety and captivated audiences with their first taste of reality TV.

Believing that the lives of an everyday family would be relatable to Americans in a way that existing TV shows were not, a filmmaker (played by Gandolfini in the movie) sets out to chronicle the life of the Louds, a seemingly “perfect family” in Santa Barbara, Calif. Once filming begins though, the strain in Pat and Bill Loud’s (Lane and Robbins) marriage, the ups and downs of raising five children, as well as the criticism Pat receives for some of her actions come sharply into focus. An American Family ultimately makes the Louds a television sensation while leaving them unprepared for the consequences.

Directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini (American Splendor), the drama film comes to DVD and Blu-ray with a making-of featurette and a filmmakers’ commentary as bonus features.

Check out the official trailer of Cinema Verite:

Buy or Rent Cinema Verite
DVD | Blu-ray

Marcello Mastroianni urges disgruntled textile workers to unite in 1963's The Organizer.

Directed by Mario Monicelli (Big Deal on Madonna Street), the 1963 Italian period film The Organizer stars the great Marcello Mastroianni (Marriage Italian Style).

Set in turn-of-the-20th-century Turin, the movie looks at how an accident in a textile factory incites workers to stage a walkout. But it’s not until they receive unexpected aid from a traveling professor (Mastroianni) that they find a voice, unite and stand up for themselves.

A carefully crafted historical film stunningly shot by master cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno (Senso), The Organizer is filled with a surprising amount of humor and is ultimately an effective ode to the power of the people.

Criterion’s new high-definition digital restoration of the drama movie features an uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition.

The Blu-ray and DVD contain an introduction by director Monicelli from 2006, a trailer and an essay by film critic J. Hoberman.

Buy or Rent The Organizer
DVD | Blu-ray	DVD | Blu-ray	DVD | Blu-ray