This Week's DVD Releases

The snow and Thanksgiving are over, but chances are your relatives are still in town. Take a few hours off from awkward conversation/family time with a new DVD release, care of our good friends at Scarecrow Video.

Your mom probably wants to watch Eat Pray Love, starring Julia Roberts as Julia Roberts, undergoing a soul-shaking reawakening via food, spirituality, and yoga, while your douchebag brother-in-law wants to see old men (Sylvester Stallone, Dolph Lundgren, Steve Austin, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger) beating each other up in The Expendables. Your weirdo cousin is interested in Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck's performance art bullshit piece I'm Still Here, and your grandma wants to watch Rob Reiner's kiddie 60s romance Flipped. Of course, the kiddos get to watch the special diamond edition of Beauty and the Beast.

But there's more to choose from than just the big releases. Twisty kidnapping thriller The Disappearance of Alice Creed stars Bond girl Gemma Arterton, and Tyler Perry is back in Madea's Big Happy Family: The Play. Meanwhile, Sam Rockwell is affable as always as a girls' high school basketball coach in The Winning Season.

On the documentary tip, there's nuclear weapon doc Countdown to Zero, and a less apocalyptic look back at the quirky characters who inhabit the infamous Chelsea Hotel in Chelsea on the Rocks. And Lennonyc looks at the post-Beatle New York City life of John Lennon. Speaking of, there's Lennon Naked, a BBC biopic starring Christopher Eccleston as the man himself. BBC is also responsible for Luther, a police procedural series starring Idris Elba (yes, Stringer Bell) as a no-nonsense violent crime detective who plays by his own rules. As to HBO stars in new roles, check out Starz epic Middle Ages miniseries The Pillars of the Earth, with Deadwood's Ian McShane.

Criterion has a big release this week, in the form of America Lost and Found: The BBS Story, seven films from BBS Productions, the company responsible for Five Easy Pieces, The King of Marvin Gardens, A Safe Place, The Last Picture Show, Drive She Said, Easy Rider, and Head (as in the Monkees). McSweeney's released their latest Wholphin, No. 12. And Mike Sorrentino is attempting to cash in on his juiced-up fifteen minutes yet again with the release of The Situation Workout.