"In space no one can hear you scream," and in Alien it was the start of a sci-fi horror series. The film is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen and looks to be in excellent shape. The colors and black level (there are a lot of them) are clear and concise without any major imperfections or defects marring the image. Overall, Fox has done a fantastic job at making sure this transfer is the best it will ever look. The soundtrack is presented in a newly created Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround soundtrack in English, as well as Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround in French and English. The new 5.1 mix works well within the confines of the film, utilizing both surround sounds and directional effects. Since the soundtrack is more creepy than bombastic, the directional sounds and background noises are often subtle and very eerie. All aspects of the dialogue, effects, and music are free of any excessive hiss or distortion. Also included on this disc are English and Spanish subtitles. Fox has produced a fine batch of extras for this first-ever DVD edition of Alien, starting with a commentary track with director Ridley Scott. This is a fantastic audio track that features Scott discussing multiple stories about the casting, production, and story. Two isolated music tracks featuring composer Jerry Goldsmith's score should please film music fans, while a bunch of deleted scenes/outtakes allow the viewer to see what ended up on the cutting-room floor. Finally there is an extensive still gallery with well over 450 photos and concepts, as well as cast and crew biographies, production notes, theatrical trailers, TV spots, and an eight-page collectable booklet inside the DVD case.

This excellent DVD release of Clint Eastwood's 1971 directorial debut Play Misty for Me will please newcomers and longtime fans alike. Loaded with DVD extras, the movie's print has been cleaned up and returned to its original aspect ratio with a good anamorphic widescreen transfer. Beautifully filmed on-location by master cinematographer Bruce Surtees, the movie also serves as a love letter to the rugged California coastal town of Carmel. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono audio track is excellent and the scenes set at the Monterey Jazz Festival are given new sonic life on this disc. There are numerous disc extras to select (though some of them are too slight to be worth mentioning), but by far the best is the hour-long look back at the making of the movie. Entitled "Play It Again: A Look Back at Play Misty for Me," it's full of interviews with Eastwood, female lead Jessica Walter (in an excellent, star-making performance), key producers, writers, and others. This documentary makes plain that Play Misty for Me set the stage for Eastwood's career as a talented, individualistic director who refuses to get sucked into Hollywood power games or pointless power trips. After this film, Eastwood continued to use little or no makeup for actors, naturalistic lighting, real locations over sets, rich jazz scores, and tight budgets. Made for well under a million dollars, Play Misty for Me was a big mainstream hit with general audiences that also earned praise from indie film godfather John Cassavetes. The DVD also features a too short featurette on Eastwood and famed action-suspense director Don Siegel. A mentor and collaborator, Siegel was even amusingly cast as a bartender, mainly so Eastwood could get help from him on the first couple of days of shooting (he ended up not needing any). Besides better-than-average production notes and movie stills, the disc also features a montage of potential poster art that ends with the finished product. As a side note, the disc also makes plain that Eastwood considers Fatal Attraction to be an uncredited remake of Play Misty for Me.

After a rather lackluster release in 1999, William Shatner's directorial debut, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier comes to DVD once again, this time in an impressive, two-disc, collectors edition. The first disc features the film presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer that preserves the original theatrical aspect ratio. In addition, the English soundtrack has been rendered in both Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Digital 2.0 with a dubbed French soundtrack available in Dolby Digital 2.0. Bonus features on the first disc include a feature-length audio commentary by Shatner and his daughter Liz Shatner, author of Captain's Log: William Shatner's Personal Account of the Making of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and text commentary by Michael Okuda and Denise Okuda, co-authors of The Star Trek Encyclopedia. The second disc is composed completely of supplemental features, including eleven featurettes, deleted scenes, theatrical trailers, and television spots.