Also out this week 300, Pathfinder, Starter for 10, and more

VIEW FILM STILLS: Hot Fuzz
VIEW PHOTOS: Hot Fuzz cast exclusives
READ MORE: Hot Fuzz Director and Star Talk Life on DVD

Glenn Kenny's "The Discophile"
(posted 7/31/2007)

There's not a lot to say about my DVD picks of the week beyond unequivocally recommending them. I already raved about the movie Hot Fuzz earlier in the year — see my review here. The disc itself is just what a fan of the film would want — an expansion of the hilarity. Director Edgar Wright and costar-cowriter Simon Pegg contribute a commentary that's as good-humored as it is informative; a movie-length trivia text (pictured) gives up the mind-boggling array of Fuzz's movie allusions — sendups and/or homages, but more often than not both at once — there are deleted scenes and a less-than-half-a-minute bit in which Pegg and costar Nick Frost enact a Fuzz scene as Michael Caine and Sean Connery (also pictured). Plus more. All very good stuff.

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in a Hot Fuzz outtake. • Buy Hot Fuzz at Amazon • Rent it at Netflix Simon Pegg in Hot Fuzz, with trivia pictured.

Now that Warner Home Video is on its fourth volume of film noir collections, and given that this particular collection lays ten films on five discs, one might believe that a barrel's bottom is close to being scraped. Not hardly. It's true that this box is heavier on the rarities and obscurities than previous volumes, which highlighted acknowledged classics such as Out of the Past and The Asphalt Jungle. But there's not a stinker in this bunch, and more than a few films that should be acknowledged as classics here. Especially noteworthy is the disc featuring two films costarring Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell. The first is Nicholas Ray's directorial debut, 1949's They Live By Night — still a remarkably inventive and intimate film almost 60 years after its creation. The plot is a standard crime/noir setup, wherein a young convict trying to go straight lams it with the girl he loves. But Ray's sensitive, unusual treatment of the story — from the very first frames of the credit sequence — shows, among other things, just why he's revered by indie pioneers such as Jim Jarmusch. The second film of the disc, 1950's Side Street, is directed by noir (and later Western) master Anthony Mann. Here Granger and O'Donnell are young marrieds whose lives become undone when Granger filches what he thinks is a hundred bucks but turns out to be $30,000. Which leads to all kinds of trouble. Among the film's other virtues, it's got some amazing NYC location work.