DVD Report

PARIS, JE T'AIME: One of the segments in this movie anthology, ''Tour Eiffel,'' stars a famous Paris landmark.

Love notes to the city on the Seine

We know Paris as the City of Lights. Or as the City of Love. In the sprawling anthology "Paris, Je T'Aime" (2007), it's all about l'amour, as landmarks and even a more general sense of physical atmosphere are almost completely incidental to the various glimpses of disparate hearts connecting. In "Parc Monceau," those famed lights aren't even bright enough to fully illuminate the face of Nick Nolte, whose enigmatic May-December relationship with Ludivine Sagnier ("Swimming Pool") gets a slow reveal from director Alfonso Cuarón ("Children of Men"). The Coen Brothers title their wry segment after the city's verdant garden spot, the Tuileries, but all the action takes place in a Metro station by the same name. Steve Buscemi stars, silently, as a jittery tourist who makes ill-advised eye contact with the wrong pair of hot-blooded lovers. The film boasts many more familiar names, on both sides of the camera: Willem Dafoe, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Elijah Wood, Gus Van Sant, and even director Alexander Payne doubling as a Père-Lachaise-haunting Oscar Wilde for colleague Wes Craven. Naturally, there are also quite a number of European talents you'll know, or should - Juliette Binoche, Gerard Depardieu, Spanish director Isabel Coixet ("The Secret Life of Words"). If you're like us, and look for resolution in your storytelling, you'll be partial to the Americans' contributions - and look ahead to "New York, I Love You," due next year.

Extras: The two-DVD set expands on last year's streamlined single-disc release by offering individual production featurettes on all 18 vignettes. Director Tom Tykwer and team particularly deserve the attention. Their fast-forwarding tale of the relationship between Natalie Portman and visually impaired Melchior Beslon not only excitingly recalls Tykwer's "Run Lola Run," but packs a feature's worth of drama into mere minutes. (First Look, $19.98; available now)

HANCOCK (2008)

Despite all the hype surrounding Will Smith's turn as superhero, you might have caught on that "Hancock" isn't the wacky romp that the trailers sold, but rather an intermittently dark take on a life of forced selflessness, and of alienation. As the film opens, Smith is drowning in booze, apathy, and public scorn - and he's pretty fascinating. So is PR guru Jason Bateman's plan to boost this antihero's image by having him own up to his mistakes and allow authorities to lock him up. All in all, a nice genre riff. But director Peter Berg ("The Kingdom") gets off track by taking the movie's second half in a very different direction, suddenly bent on capturing, rather than tempering, comic book outlandishness.

Extras: Extended cut of the film; routine collection of featurettes. (Sony, $34.95; single-disc version, $28.96; Blu-ray, $39.95)

GONZO: THE LIFE AND WORK OF DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON (2008)

Documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney ("Taxi to the Dark Side") inevitably channels a little of the late, counter-culturally embedded journalist's storytelling style for this well done biopic. Standard interviews are mingled with jagged visual tangents of Thompson indulging his ultimately tragic passion for guns, or showing the bruising effects of a falling out with his star-making writing subject, the Hell's Angels. There's of course plenty on "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," as well as voice-over narration from Thompson's work by Johnny Depp, who starred in the screen adaptation.

Extras: Commentary by Gibney; audio excerpts from Thompson's "Gonzo Tapes"; extended interviews. (Magnolia, $26.98)

CHARMED: THE COMPLETE SERIES (1998-2006)

If the new "90210" has you looking back, longingly, on Shannen Doherty's glamour-pussing of days gone by, you'll likely dig this obsessively designed, limited edition set, packaged in a hefty replica of the Halliwell sisters' magical Book of Shadows. Irksomely for a WB show, music has been changed for this release, but it's not quite enough to break the spell of features like the series' unaired pilot. Season six of the original "90210" also arrives on disc, minus Brenda, but with Brandon unwittingly OK'ing a porn shoot at his house and mulling job prospects with, yes, the Globe. (Paramount; "Charmed," $317.99, available now; "90210," $59.98)

Humpty Dumpty on the Berlin Wall

When we speak of a movie being in black and white, what we really mean is that it's in varying shades of gray. If ever a movie was unthinkable in color, it's "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold." Based on John le Carre's third novel, the 1965 film arrives as a two-disc Criterion release. It may not be at the usual cinematic level we associate with Criterion, but it's a very solid piece of work - and a fascinating Cold War document.

Richard Burton is a senior British intelligence operative based in Berlin. He's the rather sodden fulcrum in a scheme to undermine the head of East Germany's espionage apparatus (Peter van Eyck) hatched by his British counterpart (Cyril Cusack). Implicated in the plot, wittingly or not, are a demure British communist party member (Claire Bloom) and the East German No. 2 (Oskar Werner). The mood is grim - emotional grays to go with the visual ones - and so relentlessly underplayed that the two major plot twists in the final minutes seem not so much shocking as inevitable.

In a 1967 BBC interview with critic Kenneth Tynan that's on the second disc, Burton mentions his dislike of physical contact from fellow actors while on stage or screen. That sense of subdued revulsion, whether intentionally or not, unmistakably comes through in his performance. Looking swollen and surly, Burton is a classic burnt-out case, a Graham Greene emotional implosion waiting to happen. "What the hell do you think spies are," Burton rails at Bloom, "moral philosophers measuring every word against God or Karl Marx? They're not. They're just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me."

So much of Burton's impact as an actor had to do with his thrilling vocal power. He keeps it leashed here, thus giving all the stronger sense of a man who's outlived his usefulness even to himself. In fact, the single biggest problem with the film is the inexplicability of why Bloom (who's heart-stoppingly pretty) would ever be attracted to him. That, and the cognitive dissonance that occurs when Bernard Lee, M from the Bond films, shows up slicing meat behind a deli counter. A 007 movie this most definitely is not.

Extras: Documentary on le Carre, le Carre interview, commentary from cinematographer Oswald Morris, audio interview with director Martin Ritt, trailer (Criterion, $39.95)

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge

The governing logic behind "Monty Python's Flying Circus" was, of course, illogic. The show's modus operandi wasn't to go from point A (for argument shop, let's say) to point B (blancmange, perhaps). Instead, it would go from point S (Spanish Inquisition, as in nobody expects the . . .) to point L (how about lumberjack?). This made tying together each episode's many bits, naughty and otherwise, something of a bother. One method was Terry Gilliam's animation. The other was a recurrent verbal segue, uttered deadpan by various cast members (though John Cleese did it most authoritatively), "And now for something completely different."

So one way to think of "The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus Collector's Edition" is as something completely complete. There are 21 discs in all. Thirty-six hours of Python episodes, the series' entire output, are on 14 of them. The remaining discs offer two live Python performances, one from 1972, the other from 1998; mini-documentaries in which each Python picks his favorite sketches; two documentaries about the troupe; additional Gilliam animation; and deleted scenes.

The real treasure is an original episode the Pythons made as a one-off for German television. It's a bit unusual to see a performance of "The Merchant of Venice" performed by cows, though that's almost tame by Python standards. But the cows speak their lines in German - and so do the Pythons!

Thanks to the success of "Spamalot," there are numerous Python neophytes out there. This set is surely way too much for them. But for veteran Python addicts - those who know their Doug from their Dinsdale - this is the stuff of wild Gumbyan dreams. (A&E, $159.95, already available)

ALSO THIS WEEK

FRED CLAUS (2007)

Vince Vaughn works through his sibling rivalry issues with his jolly old elf of a brother (Paul Giamatti). Speaking of "Elf," this isn't all that, but at least Kevin Spacey, Rachel Weisz, and Kathy Bates are along for the sleigh ride.

Extras: Commentary by director David Dobkin ("Wedding Crashers"). (Warner, $28.98; Blu-ray, $35.99)

MEET DAVE (2008)

Playing an alien spacecraft that walks like a man, Eddie Murphy doesn't reach the all-access comedy highs of "Shrek" - but mercifully, he doesn't hit the lows of "Pluto Nash," either.

Extras: Gag reel. (Fox, $29.98; Blu-ray, $39.99)

SPACE CHIMPS (2008)

As far as quality animation with an absurdly on-the-nose title goes, this is no "Kung Fu Panda." But if you're looking for something to keep the kids busy while you're stuffing the turkey. . .

Extras: Casting session footage. (Fox, $29.98; Blu-ray, $39.99)

ORTHODOX STANCE (2008)

Ladeez and gentlemen, in this corner: Dmitriy Salita, a young Russian Jewish pro boxer who gets into the ring despite the inherent tensions between his sport and his faith. Intriguing documentary fare.

Extras: Director commentary and interview; update segment. (IndiePix, $24.95)

REISSUES

SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950)

Billy Wilder's classic readies for one more close-up with a two-disc re-release complete with new featurettes. "Roman Holiday" (1953) and "Sabrina" (1954) get similar treatment. (Paramount, $24.99 each; available now)

HOLIDAY INN (1942)

You don't even need to have stayed there last night to be expertly aware: When it comes to getting into the holiday spirit, nothing beats Crosby and Astaire in the musical that showcased Irving Berlin's "White Christmas."

Extras: New colorized version; film historian commentary; Berlin soundtrack CD. (Universal, $26.98; available now)

SOUNDER (1972)

Writer William H. Armstrong's family perennial about a Depression-era sharecropper's son (Kevin Hooks) and his dog gets a re-release. With Cicely Tyson and Paul Winfield. (Koch Vision, $14.98)

TELEVISION

LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE: THE COMPLETE TELEVISION SERIES (1974-84)

With 60 discs packed into the covered-wagon-shaped box, you really do get everything, from the Ingalls family's arrival in Walnut Grove to Albert's final-season dope problem. (In the 1870s? OK, so maybe Michael Landon was straining for relevance toward the end.)

Extras: Interviews with Melissa Gilbert and castmates; commentaries by Alison "Nellie" Arngrim. (Lionsgate, $279.98; available now)

SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS: SEASON 5, VOLUME 2 (2008)

If SpongeBob getting amnesia or Squidward getting buff feel like jump-the-shark developments, trust us, they're not - and they live under the sea anyway, so it's all good.

Extras: Karaoke videos. (Paramount, $26.99; available now)

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