Selected home-video releases:
“National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets”
Nicolas Cage takes the current president hostage in his quest to clear an ancestor in the assassination of another.
Cage scored his latest blockbuster hit with this “National Treasure” follow-up, reprising his role as a historian and treasure-hunter who traipses around the world sorting out clues that will help exonerate one of his forebears of conspiracy in the death of Abraham Lincoln.
And of course, along the way, he stumbles on another hidden trove of vast riches, accompanied by his mom and dad (Helen Mirren and Jon Voight), his estranged girlfriend (Diane Kruger) and an adversary (Ed Harris) with his own dark family history.
A two-disc DVD set and the Blu-ray high-definition release pile on the extras.
The Blu-ray release has two extra deleted scenes plus a quiz on the fact and fiction in the movie. Also debuting on Blu-ray is the first “National Treasure.”
The DVD set is $29.99; “National Treasure” and “National Treasure 2” Blu-ray releases, $34.99 each. (Disney)
“George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead”
King of the zombies Romero goes back to his indie-film roots with a “Blair Witch Project” documentary style to his fifth movie about reanimated corpses with a hankering for live human flesh.
This chapter follows a group of film students whose low-budget horror flick turns into an impromptu documentary as their camera chronicles the rise of zombies that feed on the living.
Also out is a 40th anniversary edition of Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead,” the low-budget horror classic that turned zombie tales into their own subgenre.
The “Diary of the Dead” DVD is $24.95; “Night of the Living Dead” DVD, $19.97. (Genius)
TV on DVD
“24: Season One”: Jack Bauer’s first bad day on the job returns in a new seven-disc, 24-episode set packaged in an embossed metal case and featuring a batch of new extras along with bonus materials from an earlier release. Kiefer Sutherland, who stars as Counter Terrorist Unit hotshot Bauer, provides an introduction for the first season. The set also has a documentary segment on the creation of the series; $59.98. (20th Century Fox)
“Cranford”: Adapted from three novels by Elizabeth Gaskell, this miniseries features Judi Dench and Eileen Atkins as spinster sisters in an 1840s British market town, with Michael Gambon and Imelda Staunton. The five-part series arrives in a two-disc set with a making-of segment; $34.98. (BBC)
“Square Pegs: The Complete Series”: Before she was a randy columnist looking for love in Manhattan, “Sex and the City” star Sarah Jessica Parker was an outsider trying to fit in at her high school in this short-lived comedy from the early 1980s. Nineteen episodes come in a three-disc package that includes cast interviews; $29.95. (Sony)
“The Muppet Show: Season Three”: Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear and their menagerie of friends resume their wisecracking in a four-disc set with all 24 episodes; $39.99. (Disney)
“JAG: The Sixth Season”: David James Elliott and Catherine Bell are back on the case as members of the Judge Advocate General Corps, investigating and prosecuting crimes involving the Navy and Marine Corps. A six-disc set has season six’s 24 episodes; $64.99. (Paramount)
Associated Press
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