PICK OF THE WEEK:
Ratatouille
(Disney)
Pixar’s Ratatouille boasted perfect seasoning, balancing adult flavors with kid-friendly ones; if it wasn’t their biggest hit, it was still among their best. The studio pairs its release this week with two others, the Blu-ray arrival of Cars and the standard/Blu-ray release of a welcome new anthology, the Pixar Short Films Collection.
Election
(Tartan)
No Broderick/Witherspoon taunting here; this is the grim Johnny To gangster flick from 2005 that led to the fantastic sequel, Triad Election. (If the titles aren’t confusing enough, note that the DVD for the sequel was released Stateside before the first film hit stores.)
Help!
(Capitol-EMI)
Madcap Brit filmmaker Richard Lester’s beloved Beatles film finally arrives on disc, long after his A Hard Day’s Night. Next up, if the DVD gods smile, should be How I Won the War.
Manufacturing Dissent
(Anchor Bay)
Some of my friends disagree, but I thought Sicko (Weinstein Co.), though often entertaining, was one of Michael Moore’s least effective pieces of agit-prop; there was so much more he could have done with this topic.
Love him or hate him, you can peek behind the curtain in Manufacturing Dissent (Anchor Bay), the first (to my knowledge) Moore-debunking doc that comes from a lefty POV rather than a rabid, knee-jerk, right-wing one.
Flight of the Conchords: The Complete First Season (Anchor Bay): Kiwi weirdo and Eagle vs. Shark star Jemaine Clement rocks out in this recent buzzed-about HBO series. •
