Movies on DVD

Bednobs and Broomsticks is considered to be a Disney classic and has often been compared to Mary Poppins.

Angela Lansbury stars as Eglatine Price, a witch with sketchy skills who takes care of three children evacuated from London during World War II. She uses her new powers to keep the Nazi invasion stalled.

Like Mary Poppins, Bednobs and Broomsticks includes sequences combining live-action and animation. While those scenes are beautiful, it really hasn’t the charm of Mary Poppins. Kids, however, will love it.

Special Features: Backstage Disney - The Wizards of Special Effects - Hosted by Jennifer Stone from Disney’s Wizards of Waverly Place, A Step In The Direction Reconstruction, Music & More - Music Magic-The Sherman Brothers, David Tomlinson “Portobello Road” recording session, theatrical trailers.

Jason Statham is back as an indestructible hitman on a tear in Crank 2 High Voltage. Same as before, Statham chews the scenery while cashing a Chinese gangster who ripped out his heart and replaced it with a mechanical substitute that needs electric jolting every now and then. Don’t you hate it when that happens? And whatever you do, Do NOT give that man a cup of coffee.

Special Features: Theatrical trailer…anything more would be overkill.

If you haven’t seen The Witches, now is a good time to check it out. The Witches is an adaptation on Roald Dahl’s classic novel about a young boy vacationing near the sea with his grandmother who discovers his hotel is loaded with witches. Naturally witches hate children and these creepy ladies are planning to turn all the children of England into mice.

This was the last film the Muppet creator, Jim Henson, worked on before his death in 1990.

Special Features: None, which is a pity because the special effects were created at Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.

DVD on TV

The Office Season Five is five discs equaling up to10 hours of viewing featuring a mixed bag of employees enduring a documentary film crew, while their boss proves his worth as an HR lawsuit waiting to happen.

Special Features: Deleted scenes, commentaries, Gag reel, 100 Episodes, 100 Moments, Academy Of Television Arts & Sciences Presents The Office, The Office Promos and webisodes.

Fringe:  The Complete First Season is seven discs with a massive 17 hours, eight minutes worth of content. This sort of X-Files series follows a female FBI agent (Anna Torv) who is forced to work with a whack-out, genius scientist (John Noble) and his caregiver son (Joshua Jackson) as they examine unexplained phenomenon.

Special Features: Uncloak the series’ secrets with featurettes on its beginning through choosing the cast, the real science behind the series and the stunning visual effects, Fringe: Deciphering the scene sidebars, Dissected files and unaired scenes plus docupods on select episodes. Completing the extras are Unusual Side Effects: Gag reel, Executive Producer, Roberto Orci’s production diary and, of course, Gene the cow.

Missed Harper’s Island? This DVD is the complete whodunit on four discs lasting nine hours, one minute. Nearly everyone dies in the series so a sequel is pretty much out of the question, but Harper’s Island was a nice change of pace for Spring/Summer viewing.

Special Features: CBS Network on-air promos, commentaries on episodes, Featurettes: Casting Harper’s Island, One by One: The making of Harper’s Island, Guess who? The Grim Reaper, Harper’s globe webisodes, and deleted scenes.

Sit yourself down for 18 hours, 27 minutes of Criminal Minds Season Four, all in a seven-disc set. Criminal Minds makes no excuses for why killers are born. No touchy-feely psycho-babble here, but rather an examination of the mindset of a murder in order to capture and prevent more deaths.

Special Features: Deleted scenes, profiles, a Gag reel and Working the scene: A look Behind the scenes of 11 episodes.