Now showing (or coming soon) on your DVD player — the movie blockbusters you saw on the big screen last summer without the cool supplemental features that have been added to these new DVD editions.
The biggest hit of them all, the action epic “Mission: Impossible — 2” (Paramount Home Entertainment, widescreen, $29.99), arrives in a super-glossy transfer, with audio commentary by director John Woo, two production featurettes, how-they-did-it analyses of 11 stunt scenes, a music video and an MTV parody bit. Unfortunately, there’s not much hard information in the package. Mostly it’s everybody talking about what a great guy and a daring actor producer/star Tom Cruise is. This may be true, but after the third or fourth time, the praise wears thin.
Made on much smaller budgets, but much better movies, are two of Woo’s pre-Hollywood films “The Killer” (1989) and “Hard Boiled” (1992), both made in Hong Kong and starring Chow Yun Fat, which have been boxed in “The John Woo Collection” (Winstar Home Video, $49.98). The picture transfer is not nearly as slick as that of “MI2,” but the audio commentaries by the soft-spoken Woo offer revealing explanations of how he achieved the striking flow of images in his fabulous action sequences.
You can buy a $200 edition, which includes George Clooney’s autograph, but the standard release of another summer hit, “The Perfect Storm” (Warner Home Video, widescreen, $24.98, on sale Tuesday), is good enough. Among the many added features are documentaries showing actual footage of the 1991 storm, with reminiscences by survivors, and a fascinating look at how the vast outdoor storm was shot indoors, on a studio sound stage with a cast of waterlogged, seasick actors. Says Mark Wahlberg, playing one of the fishermen on the film’s embattled ship, “I was hoping he (Clooney) would finish his line before I threw up on him.”
The beautifully photographed “The Patriot” (Columbia TriStar Home Video, widescreen, $27.96) transfers to the small screen very well, and supplies several insights into the making of the film, with special attention to its digitalized visual effects in the big battle scenes. Among other things, you’ll learn how they blew off a soldier’s head with a cannon ball.
For an earlier, Oscar-winning example of Mel Gibson’s heroics, catch the DVD of “Braveheart” (Paramount, widescreen, $29.98). Here, Gibson, who also won the 1995 Oscar for direction, notes that he “burned a few brain cells” in putting the huge action/romance together.
Martin Lawrence and Eddie Murphy both went heavy on the makeup prosthetics in their summer comedies. Lawrence’s “Big Momma’s House” (Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, widescreen, $26.98, on sale Nov. 28) provides a makeup test of the elaborate facial and body heft added to Lawrence for his role as a cop impersonating Big Momma, while Murphy’s “The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps” (Universal Studios Home Video, widescreen, $26.98, on sale Dec. 5) shows two time-lapse sequences in which Murphy is transformed by makeup artists into members of the overweight Klump family.
Also special, and boxed: “The Ultimate Toy Box” (Buena Vista Home Entertaiment, three discs, $69.99) inventively packages both delightful, digitally animated “Toy Story” films and adds a third disc of supplemental features covering every aspect in the making of these imaginative tales.
“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” (Fox, two discs, $29.98) has tons of outtakes, alternate takes, deleted sequences and behind-the-scenes material on the 25-year-old cult movie, plus, best of all, an audio track that leads you through the many opportunities for interacting with the movie.
