Ths week's highlights begin in England:

DVDs for Sept. 30 by Boo Allen

This week, we begin in 1956 England:

The Hour (****)

This intelligent and compelling six part mini-series
with a great cast recently played on BBC America and now arrives on
DVD. The drama takes place mainly at the BBC studios in 1956 London,
a tumultuous period in which the country’s global dominance was
challenged by the Suez Canal crisis. Behind-the-scenes, the BBC
staffers aimed to give accurate and truthful reports, while being
consistently obstructed by a reeling government. Romala Garai stars
as Bel, who rises above the era’s gross sexism and becomes a
hard-edged producer of a weekly news program, The Hour. She hires
Hector (Dominic West), a future lover, to anchor the program, while
her best friend and ace reporter Freddie (Whishaw) uncovers illegal
governmental activities.

Not rated, approximately six hours. The discs also offer
a ten minute behind-the-scenes featurette as well as a 20 minute
segment on “Creating the Hour.”

Fox Home Entertainment inaugurates their Fox World
Cinema label with the release of three recent global blockbusters.
The three unrated films look aimed to please action fans, with the
Indian entry, Dum Maaro Dum (***), focusing on a story
of a corrupt Goa cop turning honest to hunt down drug smugglers. With
Bollywood stalwarts Abhishek Bachchan and Bipasha Basu. Angel
of Evil (***1/2) unfolds as an Italian Mesrine,
a violent, fast-moving true story about a charismatic criminal,
Renato Vallanzassca (Kim Rossi Stuart), who commits a string of
heists, is captured, escapes from jail, and then continues to
terrorize the Milan area. Novice Chinese director Wuershan throws the
book at The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman (***1/2),
with his chaotic three part story of a cleaver that passes through
the hands of the three title characters, all bent on revenge of some
sort. In the non-stop spectacle, Wuershan mixes every form of not
only the martial arts and action genres, but also every imaginable
form of film-making.

Dum Maaro Dum: Rated
R, 130 minutes. The DVD includes a comprehensive 48 minute
“behind-the-scenes” featurette.

Angel of Evil: Rated
R, 128 minutes. The DVD includes an eight minute “behind-the-scenes”
featurette and four deleted and extended scenes.

The Butcher, etc.:Rated
PG-13, 92 minutes.

Le Beau Serge (***1/2), Les Cousins (***1/2)

The Criterion Collection has rescued the first two films
from Nouvelle Vague pioneer Claude Chabrol, hand cleaning the
original camera negatives and then giving them a Blu-ray release with
a digital restoration. The 1958 Serge (99
minutes) marks the beginning of the influential New Wave
movement, and Chabrol immediately followed it with Les Cousins
(109 minutes). The films serve as mirrors, as
in Serge, Jean-Claude Brialy plays Francois, who
returns to his (and Chabrol’s) small home village of Sardent. There,
Francois finds his old friend Serge (Gerard Blain) unhappily married
and a constant and belligerent drunk. Francois attempts to reconcile
with his friend as well as ingratiate himself back into his village.
In Cousins, Blain plays Charles, who arrives in Paris
from the provinces to study law and to live with his effete, impudent
snob cousin Paul (Brialy). A beautiful woman (Juliette Mayniel)
threatens to come between them. In the accompanying booklet to
Cousins, Terrence Rafferty describes the film as “the
type of film to which he (Chabrol) always returned, a chilly, ironic,
slow-building story of violent death in respectable bourgeois
settings.”

Serge offers commentary, a 52 minute
documentary on Serge, and a shorter segment from a
French TV program with Chabrol. Both films include a 20 plus page
booklet with essays.

Cousins contains commentary from film
scholar Adrian Martin.

Son of Morning (**)

Weak comedy about Phillip (Joseph Cross), a young man
whose nose bleeds while in church and is instantly worshiped as the
Messiah. Simultaneously, it appears the sun may be burning out,
giving Phillip Apocalyptic credence as well as notoriety. Swarmed by
the media and exalted beyond reason, Philip stays dazed and confused
during the lame jokes and broad familiar media satire. With Heather
Graham,Danny Glover, Jamie-Lynn Sigler.

Not rated, 80 minutes. The DVD includes an eight minute
interview with Graham.

Dumbo–70^thanniversary Edition

The fourth animated film from the Disney studios returns
in this new Blu-ray, remastered version taken from various sources,
including the original 1941 nitrate negative. The cherished, colorful
classic features the baby elephant with the big ears who learns to
fly, but only with the help of his buddy Timothy Q. Mouse. Timeless,
heart-warming family story.

Rated G, 64 minutes. The DVD comes in all the expected
varieties and downloads, with supplements including commentary,
interactive games, deleted scenes, 7.1 Surround Sound, and more.
And, from this week’s TV offerings:
The Middle—second season

Patricia Heaton and Neil Flynn play Frankie and Mike
Heck, an average couple with two kids (Charlie McDermott, Eden Sher)
living in Orson, Indiana. Somehow, every week, they encounter a
series of family-friendly comedic situations.

Not rated, 515 minutes. The three disc set, of 24
episodes, also contains a gag reel and deleted scenes.

Body of Proof—first season

Dana Delaney returned to network TV as Dr. Megan Hunt, a
one-time Philadelphia neurosurgeon who suffers a debilitating auto
accident, only to become a confrontational medical examiner. She then
uses her vast skills to nail the murderers of the victims she
encounters every week. Delaney convincingly conveys her character’s
obsessed nature. With Jeri Ryan, John Carroll Lynch.

Rated TV 14 DLSV, 387 minutes. The two disc set of nine
episodes also includes a blooper reel, a “behind-the-scenes”
featurette with the costume designer, and a discussion with cast and
crew about creating the medical drama.
Castle—third season

In this increasingly popular whodunit detective series,
Nathan Fillion stars as crime novelist Richard Castle. Every week, he
joins New York homicide detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) in
pursuit of the killer of the dead body that shows up at the show’s
start. The cleverly written, intricately plotted series features
abundant humor and surprising insights.

Rated TV 14 DLSV, 1025 minutes. The five discs, of 24
episodes, also include cast and crew commentary, a music video, the
featurette of a writers’ roundtable–”Murder They Wrote,” deleted
scenes, bloopers, and more.
Also on DVD: Hung—second season, Good Neighbors,
Mimic, Trigun: Badlands Rumble, Without Men.