Kevin Smith aims for a few blushes and smiles directing Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks in the smutty comedy Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Halloween horror reaches out for one last seasonal scare with the demonic thriller The Haunting of Molly Hartley. And Clint Eastwood directs Angelina Jolie in the missing child saga Changeling. DVD Talk critics Brian Orndorf and Jason Bailey weigh in on the potent drama. Also in theaters: A documentarian hits the road to find out why his best friend was murdered in the searing picture Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father. B-movie horror finds new imagination in the grisly mutant chiller Splinter. And Charlie Kaufman gets weird (of course) in Synecdoche, New York. Be sure to catch reviews of other recent Theatrical Films: RocknRolla, Let the Right One In, Pride and Glory, Saw V, Rachel Getting Married, High School Musical 3: Senior Year, Max Payne, W., Sex Drive, Quarantine, The Duchess, Appaloosa, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, and The Secret Life of Bees. As always, we invite you to share your thoughts on films In Theaters in our Movie Talk Forum.

This week we have a nice mix of new and vintage TV shows that have been reviewed by the staff. Recent TV on DVD reviews include: Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman: The Complete Series Megaset - a memorable and touching series with well-developed characters, strong actors, and good writing; Back to You: Season 1 - Yet another series that Fox cancelled too soon, this show is a handsomely mounted, well-cast sitcom that deserved a chance to find an audience and potentially flourish; and How I Met Your Mother - Season Three - a fun sitcom about a man telling his kids about how he met their mother and all of the crazy fun that occurred since then. Other shows recently reviewed include:  Spin City: The Complete Season 1, Desperate Housewives: The Complete Fourth Season, and Shrek the Halls.  Want more?  Check out all of the TV on DVD reviews in the DVDTalk database.

Newly announced DVDs for this week include The Little Mermaid Trilogy - All three films, The Little Mermaid, The Little Mermaid II: Return To The Sea, and The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning will hit store shelves on 12-16-2008; El Norte: Criterion Collection DVD and Blu-ray - a realistic picture of both the Guatemalan government's oppression of the Quiche Indians and the hard life of illegal immigrants in the United States. 1-20-09; and Cannery Row - The criminally underrated adaptation of two John Steinbeck novels this Nick Nolte/Debra Winger film arrives on DVD on 1-27-09. Keep track of all the upcoming DVDs with the DVDTalk Release List.

This week the DVD Savant has a number of new reviews including: Dr. No [Blu-ray] - MGM's first James Bond Blu-ray sports a terrific Lowry Digital-restored image. Savant digs into the cultural forces that went into the creation of 007, the biggest craze of the 1960s next to the Beatles; Warner Bros. Pictures Gangsters Collection, Vol. 4 - The Shield's fourth foray into guns, gangsters and gun molls rounds up five entertaining titles: The Little Giant, Kid Galahad, The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse, Invisible Stripes and Larceny Inc., plus a new documentary, Public Enemies,The Golden Age of the Gangster Film; and The Films of Budd Boetticher - Sony's five-disc collection of Budd Boetticher's "Ranown" cycle of Randolph Scott westerns is the perfect intersection of critical taste and genre thrills: this is one of the most awaited disc sets of the last three years, containing The Tall T, Decision at Sundown, Buchanan Rides Alone, Ride Lonesome and Comanche Station, with some good commentaries and an excellent bio on the director, A Man Can Do That. Read all this and more in this week's DVD Savant.

We're in the eye of the hurricane. After the recent releases of Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and Indiana Jones, things are pretty calm. They won't stay that way for long though. In a couple of weeks more hot titles are coming out including Wall-E, Hellboy II and The Dark Knight. Even so, there were a few notable releases this week including: This week's top new releases are The Little Rascals: The Complete Collection [review] - The comedy of these films still holds up today, thanks to the universal premise of kids being kids; The Donna Reed Show: The Complete First Season [review] - a nimble amalgamation of professional gloss, smartly written lines, perfect casting, and some surprising twists and turns on the traditional Cold War American sitcom genre; and Journey to the Center of the Earth [review]- likable and upfront about its ridiculousness. Other releases of note include:  Tinker Bell [Blu-ray review], The Final Countdown (Blu-ray) [review], and Mystery Science Theater 3000: 20th Anniversary Edition. Be sure to check out our DVD Talk Review Database for all the latest reviews including an entire section devoted to reviews of DVDs out this week.

POULTRYGEIST: NIGHT OF THE CHICKEN DEAD, Troma's most critically acclaimed film in its 35 year history, will be available on DVD on October 28th! When the American Chicken Bunker, a military themed fast food restaurant, builds its latest chain restaurant on the site of an ancient Native American burial ground, the displaced spirits take revenge on unsuspecting diners and transform them into chicken zombies! Now, it's up to a dimwitted counterboy, his collegiate lesbian ex-girlfriend and a burqa-wearing fry cook to put an end to the foul feathered menace once and for all. Limited to only 15,000 individually numbered DVDs this bonus-packed 3-Disc Collector's Edition includes the feature length making of documentary POULTRY IN MOTION: TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN. Check out the trailer here, read Ian Jane's rave review and then pick up a copy of POULTRYGEIST: NIGHT OF THE CHICKEN!
 

The DVD Talk Review Database continues to grow, and last week was no exception. Here are some of the stand out discs that you might want to check out: A Christmas Story: Ultimate Collector's Edition - an unmitigated Christmas classic,and a wonderfully warm film that that comes beyond recommendation; Six in Paris - six French New Wave directors each create a short film that takes place in a specific neighborhood and the result is one of the better examples of anthology film; and The Rocky Horror Tribute Show - It's an inventive, backwards glancing delight, encompassing American culture through a classic British awareness. Other recent reviews include: Mondays in the Sun - Meridian Collection, Ten Nights of Dreams, and The Green Archer (Serial).  Visit the DVD Talk Review Database for all the latest reviews including an entire section devoted to reviews of DVDs out this week and the ability to browse reviews by studio.

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