John Sturges' The Magnificent Seven has finally gotten the treatment that it deserves, 41 years after its original release, complete with an accompanying narration, a feature-length documentary about its making, and a bunch of trailers. The movie, now considered one of a handful of classic Westerns -- alongside John Ford's Stagecoach and My Darling Clementine, Fred Zinnemann's High Noon, and Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo -- was dumped on the U.S. market in 1960, closed quickly, became a massive hit overseas, and was re-released here to massive success. United Artists, still oblivious to what they had, sold it to television very quickly, then degraded the original with a series of ever-poorer sequels. It was issued at least three times on laserdisc, the first two in totally unacceptable full-screen and letterboxed editions, then one last time in an improved version from a partly restored source, with an unmixed music track (not on the DVD) and with the first sequel, Return of the Magnificent Seven, appended. This DVD makes that last laserdisc almost irrelevant, except for the presence of the unmixed music on the latter -- but even that has been made somewhat obsolete with the release of the actual soundtrack from the film (there was no soundtrack LP released in 1960). The picture is sharp and the colors rich and solid (though one suspects a full-blown restoration might look even better in that regard), and the contrasts are about all that one could hope for. The audio is a little muted, but pumps up alright and very cleanly; overall this is the best way to see the movie in 40 years. The bonus materials are as big a treat as the presentation of the movie. Eli Wallach, Walter Mirisch, James Coburn, and Robert Relyea (the assistant to director/producer Sturges) are dazzling in their recollections, and glowing in their recollections of Sturges' work, but also in their appreciation of Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai, the source for this movie. It's also interesting to hear the contrast between the recollections of how the project originated here, versus the material on the documentary film that also appears on the disc -- associate producer Louis Morheim rightfully claims credit on the latter for generating the idea, though Yul Brynner also claimed for years that he had conceived of the notion. The discussion is warm, funny, and lively, and the only thing that might have made it better would be if Sturges had lived to record this track; when Sturges recorded his audio track for Criterion's laserdisc edition of The Great Escape in 1992, he expressed the fervent wish that he be asked to do one for The Magnificent Seven. And one wishes that the producers could have gotten Brad Dexter to contribute, and that there were fewer long blank stretches, though the unnarrated portions are interesting and exciting to watch. The documentary makes for good viewing on its own, and would have been worth a ten dollar bonus charge. One key element of the production that has seldom been discussed anywhere are the problems that the film ran into with the Mexican government. It was considered essential, both for verisimilitude and to avoid an impending writers' strike, that The Magnificent Seven be shot in Mexico, but Robert Aldrich's film Vera Cruz, which had been shot there (and was also a UA film), had outraged the government with what it felt was the offensive portrayal of the Mexican population. It took some serious diplomacy on the part of Sturges and the other makers of the movie -- and the presence of a censor from the government on the set to approve virtually every shot and line of dialogue -- to get The Magnificent Seven approved. The menu opens automatically on start-up, the "Special Features" section is easy to access and manipulate, the chapter markers are generous and well chosen, and the disc is accompanied by a souvenir booklet about the production.

John Cherry directs Jim Varney in the comedy Ernest Saves Christmas, which comes to DVD with a widescreen transfer that preserves the original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1. The English soundtrack is rendered in Dolby Digital Surround. There are no subtitles, but the soundtrack is closed-captioned. There are no supplemental materials of any consequence, making it quite difficult to recommend this Disney/Buena Vista release to anyone who is not an Ernest fan. There is little here for the average DVD consumer.

The Outlaw Josey Wales originally appeared on DVD in 1999, in a stripped-down edition from a film-to-video transfer dating from the mid-'90s, without any special features to speak of. In 2001, a new edition appeared without much fanfare as part of Warner Home Video's "Clint Eastwood Collection." The newer release is definitive, built on a sharper, brighter, and more detailed transfer (in the movie's widescreen 2.35-to-1 aspect ratio) of the movie, with much truer color; the older disc had a widescreen transfer with some problems in color tone and fuzziness in the finer details, which are all solved here. The advantages will be immediately apparent to anyone with a monitor bigger than 20 inches, and the bigger the better. Additionally, the disc includes a wealth of information and support materials that will please fans of Eastwood and this picture. The most basic component is the onscreen printed text explaining how the original story -- of which 75 copies had been printed, through a small publisher -- made its way unsolicited to Eastwood, and ultimately into production; and some aspects of the casting are covered, though one wishes that there had been more attention paid to the non-Native American players, fascinating though the latter are onscreen. The visual supplements, in addition to a new introductory monologue by Eastwood talking about the movie, also include the seven-minute featurette "Eastwood in Action," a 1976 promotional film; and "Hell Hath No Fury: The Making of The Outlaw Josey Wales," a much more ambitious 30-minute documentary from 1999, telling of the movie's history and production. It's a little too self-congratulatory in tone at times, but it also answers a lot of questions (as well as repeating some material) from the text panels, and it's great to see the surviving cast members talk appreciatively of their work and that of departed performers such as Chief Dan George; and Eastwood has some fun at the end of the short. The DVD goes to the simple, straightforward menu automatically on start-up, and the menus go to two easy-to-access layers of selection, including the language choices (English, French) and subtitles, and the special features. The 135-minute movie has been broken into 35 well-positioned chapters. The under-twenty-dollars price is also very attractive, especially given the extras that have been added.

David M. Evans family-oriented comedy The Sandlot comes to DVD with pair of transfers. The widescreen anamorphic transfer preserves the original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and is preferable to the standard full-frame transfer. Closed-captioned English soundtracks are rendered in both Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Digital Surround, while a French soundtrack has also been recorded in Dolby Digital Surround. English and Spanish subtitles are accessible. Supplemental materials include a making-of featurette, television promotional spots, and a theatrical trailer. This is a solid release from 20th Century Fox.