All hail Criterion: Demko's DVD shelf

The big news if, like me, you happen to live in Macon, is that Wes Anderson's "Darjeeling Limited" is coming to The Grand (formerly known as the AmStar) this weekend. I've been back to the site three times already to check it, but it seems a slow movie weekend means the answer to "how far will I have to drive to watch the new Wes Anderson movie?" is, well, about 10 miles. Huzzah to that.

For the rest of the world, thanks to Criterion (who are at work on a special edition of Anderson's "Bottle Rocket"), it's a banner week on DVD with two genuine classics getting grand treatment.

First up comes "A Bout de Souffle," or as Criterion has chosen to call it by its English title, "Breathless," or as I like to call it each time I finish watching it, "quite possibly the coolest movie ever made."

An exaggeration? I don't think so. If you've never seen Jean Paul Belmondo riffing on Bogie and pitching woo at the very funny Jean Seberg, watch this immediately. There was also an American version of this starring Richard Gere, but i couldn't possibly give you an opinion on that since I could never bring myself to watch it.

For the new Criterion edition of Jean Luc Godard's original Frenchy flick, the extras include: Archival interviews with Godard, Belmondo, Seberg and co-star Jean-Pierre Melville; new video interviews with director of photography Raoul Coutard, assistant director Pierre Rissient and filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker; New video essays: filmmaker and critic Mark Rappaport's "Jean Seberg" and critic Jonathan Rosenbaum's "Breathless as Film Criticism"; "Chambre 12, Hotel de Suede," an 80-minute French documentary about the making of "A Bout de Souffle," with members of the cast and crew; "Charlotte et son Jules," a 1959 short film by Godard, starring Belmondo; and a booklet featuring writings from Godard, film historian Dudley Andrew, Francois Truffaut's original film treatment and Godard's scenario. With all that included, I just can't recommend this one highly enough.

In making "Days of Heaven," American director Terrence Malick clearly took note of the French New Wave to make some ripples of his own. His increasing abhorrence of anything resembling a structured plot has, for me at least, made his recent movies like "The New World" almost unwatchable, but with this '70s flick he was clearly on top of his game.

As visually stunning as it is all-around entertaining, "Days of Heaven" stars Gere as a Chicago steel worker who accidentally kills his supervisor and flees to the Texas panhandle with his girlfriend (Brooke Adams) and little sister (Linda Manz) to work harvesting wheat in the fields of a stoic farmer (Sam Shepard). What they find there develops into a love triangle and much more.

For the Criterion edition you won't get a commentary from the very camera-shy Mr. Malick, so instead there's one from art director Jack Fisk, editor Billy Weber, costume designer Patricia Norris and casting director Dianne Crittenden, who all apparently provide insight into just how hard it was to work for the demanding Malick.

There's also an audio interview with Gere that plays over footage from the film, in which he also vents some frustrations with Malick. Rounding out the set are interviews with Shepard and with camera operators John Bailey and Haskell Wexler. If you have a few shekels lying around, you can pick up these two genuine classics for $53 from Amazon, which sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

"Fido" - a zombie movie I somehow managed to miss

I've seen the poster for "Fido" several times now, but it never hit me that that was the very funny Billy Connolly all zombied out in the picture. If that's not enough to make this at least worth a rental, well, you and I clearly just have different tastes in movies. As far as I can tell, this is basically a boy-and-his-dog movie in which the dog just happens to be a zombie. I'm there already.

Two great TV series come to an end

I'm about to watch Kristen Bell's "Heroes" debut on the DVR (as soon as I can wrap this up, in fact), and seeing her again will be nice, but not as nice as the oft-rumored but ultimately failed revival of "Veronica Mars" would have been. The series had already lost its way a bit in the third and final season, out on DVD today, as it substituted mini-cases for a single, season-long puzzle to solve. Even in its lesser form, however, it was funnier and smarter than just about anything else on TV, and well worth buying on DVD. If you spring for it, you'll even get "Pitching Season 4": An in-depth interview with creator Rob Thomas discussing the new direction for the series he tried to pitch to network executives that picks up years later, with Veronica as a rookie FBI agent.

"The Sopranos - Season 6, Part 2" famously wrapped up the mob series with an up-in-the-air ending that infuriated many fans but just worked for me. I've never been one that demands closure, and from what I hear the ending of the new Coen bros. flick "No Country for Old Men" will put this further to the test, assuming I ever get to see it. Along with the final nine episodes, you get the promising featurette "Making Cleaver": A behind-the-scenes look at Christopher's horror film, and "The Music of The Sopranos," in which creator David Chase, cast, and crew discuss the songs from the show.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I am indeed going to cut this short and go watch "Heroes" now. Peace out.