Last Week in DVD

Shemp Cocktail: Yes, Shemp Cocktail! A tribute to Shemp Howard from Passport Video, which puts out a lot of low-budget hodgepodges devoted to classic stars. Shemp has quite a following in the hardcore film community, to say nothing of the hardcore Stooge company, so many appreciate this collection of solo Shemp material and new interviews with family members. What they surely don't appreciate is Passport deleting some of the shorts it originally announced and tacking on those same old public domain 3 Stooges shorts that have made their way onto so many discs, I could have sworn I saw "Disorder in the Court" listed on a Ray Charles CD I was playing the other day.

Atonement: Love. Anguish. Loss. Pain. These are just some of the emotions felt by…the filmmakers after this one got relatively low traction on Oscar night.

Enchantment: Amy Adams plays a Disney princess come to life, and she seems like a great choice. Not only does she seem to carry herself with class off camera, but she's been playing a lot of intelligent, sweet, appealing characters in her other films lately. OK, folks, what's she hiding? Someone get some dirt on here, stat.

I Am Legend: I just wrote about this one right here.

The Ice Storm Criterion Collection: I didn't quite "get" this one at the time, but Criterion says it's brilliant, so, fans, here you go. Maybe it's because I never had the pleasure of experiencing a "key party" in the seventies…though I was conceived and born in the seventies. Hey, you don't suppose…

Revolver: Latest crime pic from Mr. Madonna.

Bull Durham: "Cashing in on the beginning of another baseball season" Edition: Well, it’s another release for this one Did they get it right this time? Are they done revisiting this? Are the Pirates gonna win the World Series? (Hey, maybe)

DC The New Frontier: Hopefully better than "Superman: Doomsday," which was a disappointing feature in some ways and not near the standards of the "Justice League" animated series but still entertaining. That one, though, did have one of the best special features ever on any comic-book-related DVD, a documentary look at the "Death of Superman" storyline on which the movie was based. Darwyn Cooke's "New Frontier" series was an outstanding work, a re-imagining of the Silver Age DC Universe in the Cold War era, and if you know what "Silver Age" means, this one could be for you. Hopefully the DVD does the extras up as well as "Superman: Doomsday" did. More importantly, though, hopefully the actual feature does the comic up right.