We wandered down to the MTV offices in Santa Monica this week and popped in to check out a Harmonix sneak peek of the upcoming Abbey Road album release for The Beatles Rock Band as well as the upcoming Queen 10-song DLC track pack. Check out our hands-on experience with the first of three Beatles albums planned for the Rock Band audience. You can also read the full review of The Beatles Rock Band for the Xbox 360, if you happened to miss it. If you are an first-person shooter fan, take a look at VGT's review of Activision's Wolfenstein on the XBox 360. Flight fans looking for a fresh game may want to check out our review of Ubisoft's Heroes Over Europe before purchasing it. Finally, don't miss our review of the extremely popular Nintendo DS game Scribblenauts, easily one of 2009's best NDS titles.

The name of Alan Zweibel is one you might not recognize right away, but for us comedy geeks, he's one of the legends. He was one of the primary writers for the original, legendary seasons of Saturday Night Live, and he co-created (with the show's star) the groundbreaking series It's Garry Shandling's Show, serving as that show's producer and frequent writer for its entire four-season run on Showtime (with Fox airing re-runs). This month, at long last, the entire series is being released on DVD by Shout Factory, in a handsome, 16-disc set. DVDTalk recently had the chance to chat with the affable Mr. Zweibel. Read what he had to say about the show, its influences, SNL, and the final TV appearance of his good friend and collaborator Gilda Radner in this exclusive DVDTalk interview.

Gerard Butler is looking to mangle Jamie Foxx in the actioner Law Abiding Citizen. Dylan Walsh takes over the murders duties in the horror remake The Stepfather. And director Spike Jonze imagines the world of Maurice Sendak in Where the Wild Things Are. Read reviews from Brian Orndorf, Jason Bailey and Jamie S. Rich. Also in theaters: Kristen Chenoweth is a hooker with a wounded heart in the mystery Into Temptation. The Coen Brothers find A Serious Man. Audrey Tautou becomes a fashion icon in Coco Before Chanel. Chris Rock searches for Good Hair. Blaxploitation hits the funny bone in Black Dynamite. Carey Mulligan experiences An Education. And stories of heartache find a home in New York, I Love You. Be sure to catch reviews of other recent Theatrical Films: Couples Retreat, Ong Bak 2: The Beginning, Zombieland, Whip It, The Invention of Lying, Toy Story & Toy Story 2 (3-D Double Feature), The Damned United, Surrogates, Pandorum, Capitalism: A Love Story, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and It Might Get Loud. As always, we invite you to share your thoughts on films In Theaters in our Movie Talk Forum.

Some great TV shows have made their way onto DVD this week including: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - Season Two [another review, Blu-ray review #1, and Blu-ray review #2] - as these rave reviews attest, this set is one of the better stretches of television in recent memory; The Mentalist: The Complete First Season - an off kilter police procedural that is a joy to watch; and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: The Complete Fourth Season - another thirteen episodes of inspired offensiveness. Other shows recently reviewed include:  An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency: The Complete First Season and Life on Mars: The Complete Series.  Want more?  Check out all of the TV on DVD reviews in the DVDTalk database.

This week DVD Talk introduces its newest monthly column, Talking Out of Frame: Art House Cinema on DVD, sponsored by the good folks at Criterion. Every month, Talking Out of Frame will survey the movies covered here on the site that take filmgoers off the beaten path. The best of foreign, indie, and documentaries, new and old, will be featured. In this debut edition, our writers look at films as diverse as David Mamet's Homicide, Sam Mendes' Away We Go, the new film by Paul Schrader, and Masaki Kobayashi's nearly ten-hour WWII epic, The Human Condition, alongside plenty of others. Plus, links to upcoming discs and notable films currently in theaters. This is the place where adventurous cinephiles interested in Talking Out of Frame can get the scoop on all that's happening in the art house.

This week the DVD Savant has a number of new reviews including: Contact [Blu-ray] - Robert Zemeckis' grandiose sci-fi spectacular transports us to the end of the universe ... and then abandons us without busfare, more or less. Jodie Foster shines and the picture has one heck of an impressive, titanic sci-fi space-warping alien machine-construction thingy; The Last Days of Disco - Whit Stillman's third study of upscale twenty-somethings concentrates on a group of wanna-bees that congregate at a fashionable disco "very early" in the 1980s. This time out we get some very sympathetic characters, like Chloë Sevigny; and Lightning Strikes Twice - King Vidor's giddy, overblown drama beats Douglas Sirk at his own game. Ruth Roman is the lovestruck showgirl intrigued by Richard Todd, who may be a wife murderer looking for a second victim. Mercedes McCambridge devours entire sets whole. A real unknown doozy, as they say. Read all this and more in this week's DVD Savant.

There weren't a lot of high profile titles announced this last week, but I managed to find a few to cover anyway: fans of French cuisine are sure to check out Julie & Julia available on 12/8 on both DVD and Blu-ray; then there's trouble - with a capital "T" that rhymes with "P" and that stands for pool when "Professor" Harold Hill head to River City in the classic musical The Music Man. It gets the Blu-ray treatment on 2/2/2010; and Doctor Who fans like myself are looking forward to 1/5/2010 when Doctor Who: The Keys of Marinus will be released. (Hey, I said it was a slow week...) Keep track of all the upcoming releases with the DVDTalk Release List.

There are some great releases this week to get you in the mood for Halloween. Check out these recent horror film releases: Drag Me to Hell [DVD review, Blu-ray review]- an efficient, exceptional shocker that serves up bucketfuls of jolts; The Stepfather [review] - a creepy film with a dark sense of humor that manages to entertain consistently; and Happy Birthday to Me [review]- elegantly loopy, fearful fun for horror nostalgia buffs and Melissa Sue Anderson freaks. Other releases of note include:  Every Little Step [review], The Proposal [Blu-ray review], and South Park: Bigger Longer Uncut (Blu-ray) [review]. 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.

Some great DVD reviews have been added to the the DVD Talk Review Database recently, so many that it's hard to decide which ones to profile. Here are some of the stand out discs you might want to check out: Chinatown - a prime detective mystery rich with sleek film-making and superb performances; Star Trek: Original Motion Picture Collection - despite their faults, these films comprise a key part of one of popular culture's most beloved franchise; and Esther Williams: Volume 2 - six more films featuring the biggest, and only, star of the "aqua-musical" subgenre including Million Dollar Mermaid and Easy to Love. Other recent reviews include: Audition, some of the most bizarre shorts ever made by a major studio, The Dogville Shorts, and Unwigged and Unplugged Live Concert DVD.  Visit the DVD Talk Review Database for all the latest reviews.

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