Selected home-video releases:
“Music and Lyrics” – It’s been a while since Hollywood churned out an old-fashioned romance about a washed-up pop singer and a professional plant tender who make music together.
Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore star in this comedy about unlikely lovers and artistic collaborators. Grant’s a has-been from the big-hair days of the 1980s pop music scene who gets a second chance when a young pop diva asks him to write her a love song. Barrymore’s his dizzy plant lady, who’s not so handy at caring for vegetation but turns out to have a way with lyrics.
The DVD has deleted scenes and a gag reel, plus a behind-the-scenes feature and the full music video of Grant’s make-believe ’80s hit, an amusing send-up of the era’s bad fashion and cheesy production values. $28.98. (Warner Bros.)
“Because I Said So” – In the real world, when your daughter looks like Mandy Moore, mom should never have to play matchmaker. In Hollywood, when your daughter looks like Mandy Moore, of course mom has to step in and find the poor thing a man to keep her from being an old maid.
Diane Keaton stars as a well-meaning but overbearing mother with two newly married daughters (Lauren Graham and Piper Perabo) and a third (Moore) who just seems destined to become a runner-up in love. So mom meddles, secretly orchestrating her daughter’s love life, with two opposite suitors emerging.
The DVD comes with a making-of feature and a segment on the movie’s set and costume design. $29.98. (Universal)
“The Painted Veil” – Naomi Watts and Edward Norton star in this gloomy but gorgeous period drama based on W. Somerset Maugham’s classic novel. Watts plays a spirited society woman in 1920s London who’s on the cusp of spinsterhood but longs to break away from family expectations and stifling British convention. So she marries an earnest doctor (Norton), joining him at his work in Shanghai, where boredom with her passionless marriage leads to a fling with another man (Liev Schreiber) and an eventual trip to purgatory – a cholera-ravaged town in remote China.
The barebones DVD could have used some background from director John Curran and collaborators on the lavish production values and the difficulties of shooting in China. $27.95. (Warner Bros.)
“Catch and Release” – It’s an old story: Girl meets boy, boy dies, girl moves in with boy’s best buddies. Jennifer Garner stars in this strange concoction of weepy melodrama, romance and comedy, playing a woman whose fiance dies on the eve of their wedding, forcing all manner of plot contrivances, starting with the financial troubles that force her to shack up with her man’s pals (Kevin Smith and Sam Jaeger). Meanwhile, secrets emerge about her fiance, including another woman (Juliette Lewis), while Garner falls for another of her guy’s friends (Timothy Olyphant).
Writer-director Susannah Grant provides two commentaries, one with ever-gabby filmmaker Smith, the other with her cinematographer. $28.95; Blu-ray disc, $38.96. (Sony)
“Breaking and Entering” – Writer-director Anthony Minghella reteams with two of his past stars, Jude Law (“Cold Mountain”) and Juliette Binoche (“The English Patient”), who join Robin Wright Penn in a sober tale of infidelity and culture clash in London.
Law’s a landscape architect who has a solid but cold relationship with Wright Penn, their lives intersecting in strange ways with an immigrant mother (Binoche) and her teenage son, who participates in burglaries that set the action in motion.
The DVD includes six deleted scenes with commentary from Minghella, who also provides commentary for the full film. The disc also has a making-of feature. $28.95. (Genius)
TV on DVD
“Cagney &Lacey” – This four-disc set is subtitled “The True Beginning,” as it picks up in the series’ second season, when Sharon Gless joined Tyne Daly in the cop drama, replacing Meg Foster, who had played Cagney in the show’s short initial run. $39.98. (MGM)
“The 4400: The Third Season” – Adventures continue for the people who mysteriously disappeared then mysteriously returned, with no memories of where they went. $42.99. (Paramount)
“The Waltons: The Complete Fifth Season” – Happier times arrive for the dirt-poor Depression-era family as John-Boy (Richard Thomas) begins his publishing career and his oldest sister gets hitched. $39.98. (Warner Bros.)
“That ’70s Show: Season Six” – Topher Grace, Ashton Kutcher and their families and friends keep stumbling their way through the decade of bad fashion. $49.98. (20th Century Fox)
“Everybody Loves Raymond: The Complete Eighth Season” – Ray Romano and his goofy family are back in the sit-com about a sportswriter’s chaotic home life. $44.98. (HBO)
Other new releases
“Deliver Us From Evil” – The Academy Award-nominated documentary presents a gut-wrenching portrait of a defrocked Roman Catholic priest who admitted to sexually abusing dozens of children over the course of decades. Interviews with victims and their families are agonizing, and the film is accompanied by commentary by director Amy Berg and 25 minutes of deleted scenes. DVD, $27.98. (Lionsgate)
“The Secret Life of Words” – Tim Robbins and Sarah Polley star in a stirring drama about a hearing-impaired nurse who travels to a nearly empty oil rig to tend to a worker who’s been burned and blinded in an accident. $29.98. (Universal)
Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant star in “Music and Lyrics.”
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