DVD Report

''RIDE LONESOME'': Randolph Scott (above with Karen Steele) was director Budd Boetticher's leading man.

New Releases | Tom Russo

A maverick on his own lonesome trail

Starkness. Emptiness. Simplicity as a virtue. These are the attributes that history-minded directors and critics attach to "The Films of Budd Boetticher" (1957-60). It's sort of a backhanded way of complimenting a Hollywood maverick for the uncommon quality and style that he poured into what were ultimately B westerns. But while Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, and other commentators featured in the set's supplements might not gush endlessly, they do direct some admiring tips of the hat toward the body of work Boetticher created with credibly flash-free leading man Randolph Scott. The pair's shared thematic vision and aesthetic establish them straightaway in the collection-opening "The Tall T," an adaptation of an Elmore Leonard story casting Scott as Pat Brennan, a desert rancher coolly trying to thwart a ransom scheme. Making the most of the picture's contained cast and rugged California locations, Boetticher deftly builds the story around beauty shots of Scott as a lone man riding tall against a vast landscape - imagery that turns dark fast when we realize just how isolated he is as things go bad. This approach is revisited throughout the set, which also includes "Decision at Sundown," "Buchanan Rides Alone," "Ride Lonesome," and "Comanche Station" (but not Boetticher and Scott's first collaboration, "Seven Men From Now").

Extras: "Tall T," "Lonesome," and "Comanche" offer historian commentary. The "Tall T" disc also includes the 2005 feature-length documentary "Budd Boetticher: A Man Can Do That," which gives a strong sense of the late director - an outsize personality who broke into Hollywood as a bullfighting technical adviser. The biography goes too light, however, on Boetticher's disastrous later-career experience in Mexico making "Arruza," the sprawling matador project that derailed his work and, for several years, his life. (Sony, $59.95)

"GET SMART" (2008)

Steve Carell and director Peter Segal ("50 First Dates") recast Maxwell Smart less as a comic know-it-all than a guy sweetly, clumsily eager to learn it all, to get off the intelligence-analyst sidelines and into the uranium-policing spy game. This is a wonk who uses the Cone of Silence to smother his workplace cry of joy, poorly, when he's promoted to full-fledged agent. What's even more striking is the effort Segal puts into the action, given the material. This may be a feature remake of a TV comedy, but a skydiving sequence and a phosphorescently lit paintball training session are styled and shot like bona-fide spy-movie moments, and Anne Hathaway's Agent 99 whirls and kicks with "Alias"-par conviction. The movie could be more consistently funny (particularly the overblown finale), but give it credit for relinquishing a bit of paint-by-numbers control for the chaos of the slightly unexpected.

Extras: Alternate takes playable with the movie itself; gag reel; quickie featurette deservedly highlighting the film's nifty Red Square location footage. (Warner, $34.99; single-disc version, $28.98; Blu-ray, $35.99)

"PRIMEVAL": VOLUME ONE (2008)

The producers of the BBC's "Walking With Dinosaurs" natural history documentaries nudge their franchise to the next evolutionary plateau: a narrative drama series about hipster zoologists grappling with temporal rifts that allow prehistoric beasties to break on through to the other side. The concept plays like "CSI: Lost World," and actually goes a bit lighter on hard science than one might like. But for fans of the "Doctor Who" brand of storytelling - i.e. game sci-fi adventure on a capped budget - this is solid entertainment. Not a monstrous diversion, but a decent one.

Extras: Commentary on two episodes by "WWD" creator Tim Haines and crew; a pair of 40-minute behind-the-scenes segments. (BBC Video, $49.98)

"THE GREGORY PECK FILM COLLECTION" (2008)

The previously reissued "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Cape Fear" are the marquee titles in this six-film set, but you'll also appreciate director Edward Dmytryk's "Mirage" (1965), which casts Peck in quasi-"Spellbound" mode as an amnesiac in peril. Likewise for Stanley Donen's romantic thriller "Arabesque" (1966), in which Peck plays a code-cracking prof opposite Sophia Loren.

Extras: Few to none, save on the fully celebrated "Mockingbird." (Universal, $59.98)

Box set DVD | Saul Austerlitz

Hitchcock famous and Hitchcock obscure

The work of Alfred Hitchcock has been packaged and repackaged so many times, in so many different ways, that the latest version - "The Alfred Hitchcock Premiere Collection" - while well-assembled and designed, lacks all semblance of coherence. How, from his 60-odd films as a director, were these eight chosen? What relationship can 1927's "The Lodger" have with the David O. Selznick-produced potboiler "The Paradine Case"? The answers are, respectively, no clue, and nothing other than the director.

With that knowledge firmly in mind, and with an awareness of the hit-and-miss quality of some of these films, there are still some fruitful discoveries to be made. "Notorious" and "Rebecca" are well-loved pleasures for most Hitchcock buffs, but comparatively few will have seen 1936's fine "Sabotage," with Sylvia Sidney as a theater owner concerned that her husband (Oscar Homolka) is an anarchist. Even less will be familiar with 1937's quite wonderful "Young and Innocent," a test run for the far better-known "The Wrong Man." Where the Henry Fonda-starring "Wrong Man" is a tense suspense thriller, weighed down by the horror of unjust accusation, "Young and Innocent" is flighty and insouciant in the manner of "The 39 Steps." Hitchcock peoples the film with superb set-pieces and good-natured humor, and what Claude Chabrol described as "the most beautiful forward tracking shot to be found in the history of film": an unbroken 70 seconds venturing the length of a crowded ballroom, that reveals the murderer.

"Alfred Hitchcock Premiere Collection" is stuffed with enough goodies and nuggets of information to make even familiar films seem fresh. In an audio interview with Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock expresses bewilderment that the crucial blind man's bluff scene in "Young and Innocent," in which Robert tries to escape the grasp of a nosy hostess, was cut from the American version. Radio plays offer alternate versions of the films, sometimes with different actors: Joseph Cotten subs for Gregory Peck on the Lux Soap-sponsored radio version of "Paradine."

Extras: Radio plays of "The Lodger," "Rebecca," "Notorious," "Spellbound," and "The Paradine Case"; audio interviews by Peter Bogdanovich and Truffaut; still galleries; commentary tracks by film historians (MGM, $119.98, already available)

Foreign DVD | Wesley Morris

Red and white, each in flight

Why adults foist Albert Lamorisse's "The Red Balloon" (1956) on children seems obvious enough. Its human protagonist, Pascal, is a wee Parisian grade-schooler, and its non-human protagonist is a levitating bag of air. Whimsy guides all 34 minutes of the film. But like the best works that orbit around children, "The Red Balloon" is also about the world - good, bad, and ugly. Pascal finds the balloon tethered to a white rope tied to a lamppost. They forge a fast friendship whose mutual devotion delights some (there's a lovely montage of people sharing their umbrellas with Balloon) and annoys others (did that woman just swat it while boarding a streetcar?). Balloon is more than alive. It's old and ineffably human.

"The Red Balloon" is on the same disc with Lamorisse's "White Mane" (they were released separately last spring). The latter film is about a wild stallion that refuses to be lassoed. Arrestingly photographed in black and white ("The Red Balloon" is in Technicolor), "White Mane" is "The Red Balloon" with an older boy and unadulterated anger, all of which comes from that eponymous horse.

The ruling response to both movies, whether you're 31 or 13, is awe. But while both have happy endings of a sort - "The Red Balloon" made me cry; "White Mane" stressed me out - they're complicated: Lamorisse is showing us flights from man's cruelty and covetousness. If neither makes sense when you're 9, come back to them in about 10 years.

Extras: Theatrical trailers for each film (Criterion, $19.95)

ALSO THIS WEEK

"WHEN DID YOU LAST SEE YOUR FATHER?" (2008)

Jim Broadbent and Colin Firth skillfully, movingly inhabit writer Blake Morrison's memoir about the complex relationship between a crudely effusive, lust-for-life GP and his introverted, increasingly estranged son.

Extras: Commentary by director Anand Tucker ("Shopgirl"); deleted scenes. (Sony, $28.96)

"TRANSSIBERIAN" (2008)

Director Brad Anderson ("Session 9," "Next Stop Wonderland") boards the mystery-train genre with international travelers Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer for a thriller set on the Beijing-to-Moscow railway. Tense at some junctions, a bit silly at others. (First Look, $28.98; Blu-ray, $34.98)

REISSUES

"ANIMAL HOUSE" (1978)

Toga, toga! Bluto and the boys tear up campus all over again, in snazzy (yet amusingly derelict) Delta House-shaped theme packaging.

Extras: New 30th anniversary retrospective; "Scene It" DVD trivia games. (Universal, $34.98; standard packaging, $19.98; available now)

"WATERWORLD" (1995)

Not only is Costner's Folly back, it's back in both its original theatrical version and - glub! - a 40-minutes-longer extended cut. Your impressions will all be the same, though: the "Mad Max" on Jet Skis concept is a workable one, particularly in today's "Inconvenient Truth"-ful climate, but oh, the many flawed details. Take the punchless tough-guy heroism, the uneven effects, the too-jaunty swashbuckling score, the wet-rat topknot 'do, the gills. . . (Universal, $19.98)

TELEVISION

"HOME MOVIES" 10th ANNIVERSARY MEGASET (1999-2004)

Local animation house Soup2Nuts's squiggly, Peanuts-with-camcorders 'toon gets boxed up with a soundtrack CD, a mini director's clapboard, and - for gym class? - a Coach McGuirk tote bag. (Shout! Factory, $129.99)

"SPIN CITY": THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON (1996-97)

We always liked Michael J. Fox's city hall tenure just for giving him a chance to make natural entrances, and not the Fonz-esque showstoppers you got with Alex P. Keaton. You also have to appreciate the show for giving Barry Bostwick a second act worthy of "Rocky Horror." Just don't look here for all the answers about what went down with Mike Flaherty's original g.f. - Carla Gugino, as you might (or mightn't) recall.

Extras: Interviews and commentaries with Fox, castmates, and producers; Museum of Television & Radio spotlight seminar on Fox and producer Gary David Goldberg. (Shout! Factory, $39.99)

"THE WILD WILD WEST": THE COMPLETE TV SERIES (1965-69)

Pioneering Secret Service agents James West (Robert Conrad) and Artemus Gordon (Ross Martin) patrol the frontier somewhat more outlandishly than, say, Randy Scott in this comprehensive 27-disc collection.

Extras: Episode guide; new-to-DVD TV movie revivals from 1979 and '80. (Paramount, $144.99)

Capsules are written by Tom Russo and titles are in stores Tuesday unless otherwise specified.