Hit Flockhart comedy gets anthologized

Before there was Boston Legal, there was Ally McB, making her way in the world today, turning the world on with her smile—give her any rule, she'll break it—in a Beantown law firm. You'll mostly recall the dancing baby and Calista Flockhart's wild pratfalls, but there was plenty of heart in the heavily stylized series, too. All five seasons of David E. Kelley's unique series are anthologized here.

Forgotten rock band keeps living the dream

It's never explicitly stated what gives with the titular exclamation point, but you can probably chalk it up to Steve "Lips" Kudlow's unyielding enthusiasm in the face of everything that could possibly go awry for a heavy metal band. Anvil were primed for success in the '80s, playing with the likes of Scorpions and Bon Jovi; well after everyone stopped caring, they kept the dream alive, and their story is both heartbreaking and inspiring.

Krasinski and Rudolph take wild road trip

Sam Mendes sure likes twisting the knife in suburbia, underscoring the emptiness of keeping up with the Joneses in American Beauty and Revolutionary Road. Away We Go covers similar ground, as expecting young couple John Krasinski (The Office) and Maya Rudolph (SNL) roam across North America in a seemingly futile effort to find the ideal homestead, largely aghast at their options. Jeff Daniels and Maggie Gyllenhaal co-star.

Canadian vampire series returns

Along with Vancouver, Toronto has been masquerading as various American cities for so long on the small and silver screen that it clearly deserves its own show. This Lifetime network vampire cop drama (yes, you read all of that right) does the Queen City proud, as Henry VIII's 480-year-old bloodsucking bastard falls for a vision-impaired ex-homicide cop. Complicating things, the latter is still attracted to her ex-lover, a current member of the force.

Forensic drama stars Deschanel and Boreanaz

From her alluring turn in 500 Days of Summer to her engagement with Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard, Zooey Deschanel is officially ubiquitous. But older sis Emily isn't exactly the Johnny Drama to her Vincent Chase. Now four seasons in, Bones is a gripping police procedural (focusing on forensic anthropology), in which ED's title character deconstructs crimes with the help of FBI stud David Boreanaz (ex-Buffy).

Sam Raimi throws the fanboys a bone with Drag Me to Hell

In the 17 years since Sam Raimi last cast Bruce Campbell to fend off the undead (via 1992's Army of Darkness), his horror-directing peers have not only earned deserved critical praise, but become box-office draws. Peter Jackson, whose 1992 splatter-fest Dead-Alive remains a schlock-horror treat, rode his Lord of the Rings to an astonishing $1 billion in U.S. box office alone and a Best Directing Oscar. Guillermo del Toro earned his own directing Oscar nomination for 2006's art-house hit Pan's Labyrinth while becoming a successful mainstream director, helming the Hellboy franchise. Raimi did pretty well himself, too—those three Spider-Man movies didn't fare so poorly at the box house themselves.

So, it's with a sense of glee and suspicion that any fan of Raimi's early work might greet Drag Me to Hell, billed as the director's return to his horror roots. It's a nominal return in attitude and sensibility, of course—Evil Dead made Campbell a B-movie star, but the rest of the cast wasn't exactly filled with the recognizably fresh, young A-list faces of Drag Me to Hell stars Justin Long and Alison Lohman. And Raimi can certainly command a better budget for his roving cameras and horror hijinks now. But can he once again deliver his peculiar mix of horror pomp and pop camp?

Yes and no. Drag Me to Hell offers a sly setup—slimmed-up and upwardly mobile bank loan representative Christine (Lohman) wants to impress her boss, so she declines to extend an old gypsy woman's (Lorna Raver) home loan. The woman, in turn, puts a hex on Christine, causing her nose to gush blood and inciting hallucinations at inopportune moments—such as when dining with her fiancé's parents—not to mention liters of grossness stream out of her mouth. A quick visit to a medium lets Christine know that she's been cursed, and if she doesn't do something about it, well, just remember the movie's title.

With a PG-13 rating, Drag Me to Hell doesn't even approach Raimi's gore-happy salad days, and the comedy that he sprinkles into his script is just as often movie history insider jokes or slapstick puns as knowing horror winks. The movie is undeniable proof that working mainstream has considerably honed Raimi's action-sequence plotting, though. He crams a wealth of torment on Christine inside of 99 minutes, and the grand finale is a virtuosic symphony of editing and plotting. But this tightness means it lacks the loose playfulness that made those early movies such low-budget thrills, and—given its $30 million budget—could just as easily be taken as Raimi showing off between Spider-Man installments and that World of Warcraft adaptation.

Third installment in animated delight

In this third installment in the Ice Age series, wooly mammoths Manny and Ellie (respectively Ray Romano and Queen Latifah, an odd couple in pretty much any context) are about to have their first kid when jealous sloth John Leguizamo steals a T-Rex's eggs. Moral of ensuing story: do not steal a T-Rex's eggs. Imaginative enough to captivate the little ones and witty enough for Mom and Dad, Dawn is clearly the apex of the series.

Ferrell and McBride remake cult TV hit

Will Ferrell and Danny McBride are a dream team on HBO, making Kenny Powers 2009's undisputed antihero of the year via the gut-busting East Bound and Down. But in a big-budget update of a ludicrous '70s kiddie TV show? Flop city. Yet, the few who actually shelled out for the Land of the Lost were surely pleased at its deft satire of the trippy cult classic, with innuendo intended for more adult sensibilities.

Patty Arquette psychic drama continues

Patricia Arquette can see dead people in the past and future in this drama, but you don't need her singular talents to determine that the show's in a ratings freefall. Yet, it's damn good, so CBS may have made a prescient move picking it up from NBC for the sixth season. They'll have a hell of a cliffhanger to deal with, as Arquette's protagonist is currently in a brain tumor/stroke-induced coma.

Latest bunch of plastic surgery melodrama

In a society dangerously obsessed with all things cosmetic, Nip/Tuck knows how to get under our skin (har har). Just peep those season six ads at your local bus stop, with that babe's bare back stitched up like a football. There are eight episodes in the tail end of season five, opening with Sean confined to a wheelchair after his assault, and climaxing into cancer-stricken Christian's plans for cryogenic freezing.

Applied mathematics drama keeps on trucking

We all sat through many an algebra/geometry/calculus/trig class in high school wondering when, if ever, what we were learning would have any practical application in the real world. Husband-wife creativeteam Nicolas Falacci and Cheryl Heuton weren't exactly doodling in the margins—they parlayed their knowledge (and imagination) into this series, where applied mathematicians are crucial to the crime-solving process. David Krumholtz is the professor who lends a hand to his Fed bro.

John Hughes classic returns for the holidays

If you don't know what NSFW joke is being referenced above, you haven't seen PT&A yet, and, really, what's wrong with you? John Hughes passes on and you haven't had a marathon of Ferris, Sixteen Candles, Breakfast Club and this Steve Martin/John Candy laugh riot? Of course, the "pillows" scene is one of two all-time classics, the other being Martin's epic rant to a car rental counter lady. Thanksgiving isn't the same without this one.

Early Robert Pattinson thriller

Yeah, so far, Robert Pattinson's non-Twilight filmography is not exactly mind-blowing. But, to be fair, Airman was first aired on the BBC in 2006, and is only getting a stateside DVD release for one reason (and it's not Julian Sands' astonishing work in the lead). Whatever—our man is still gothily delectable in this tale of an RAF pilot stuck in one of those FEARnet-style hospitals full of creepiness.

MTV bad girls and boys get badder

The Hills gets crap for being "scripted" reality TV, but would you really prefer to watch the unfiltered ids of Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt? Also, the show continues to reinforce an invaluable life lesson—if your best friend is dating/engaged to an idiot, save yourself a lot of grief and stop hanging out with them immediately. Important note: dudes interested in ogling Kristin Cavallari will have to wait until S5 part two.

MTV bad girls and boys get badder

The subtitle to novelist Doug Coupland's Generation X was Tales for an Accelerated Culture, and boy was he spot-on with that one. Originally hailed as a groundbreaking venue for gay and transgender issues upon its premiere, The L Word was dismissed as lipstick lesbian eye candy by the end of its run. Judge for yourself with this final collection, a scant eight episodes focusing on the peculiar demise of Jenny Schecter.

The first three seasons of The Mighty Boosh don't have to get lost in translation

To Americans, British television programs can sometimes feel like they're being broadcast in a foreign language. Not because of the accents, but because some things just don't culturally translate. Comedies can be especially finicky. The political satire of sectarian divide in Give My Head Peace is hard to follow without some knowledge of its Northern Ireland setting, and punchlines from Blackadder or Monty Python's Flying Circus can often fail to compute. Nothing, however, is as bizarre as the half-hour sitcom cooked up by comedians Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding that goes by the name The Mighty Boosh.

The television series—20 episodes in total spread over three seasons—started as a stage show that became a radio program before debuting on the BBC in 2004. It ostensibly follows friends Howard (Barratt), an aspiring artist (musician, novelist, actor; any art will do), and the mercurial Vince (Fielding), the self-proclaimed "King of the Mods," whose character backstory includes growing up an orphan raised in the jungle by effete glam-rocker Bryan Ferry. Over the show's three seasons, they work as zookeepers, try to make a living as a band and work/live in a bric-a-brac shop called the Nabootique. If those settings sound fairly conventional, rest assured, they most definitely are not.

For one, zookeepers Howard and Vince work at the Zooniverse, a surreal, dysfunctional place where the manager doesn't know anything about its animals and a panda mating problem is tackled by Howard and Vince trying to make the male bear jealous. When Howard and Vince focus on their band—Kraftwerk Orange—they move into a flat they share with Bollo, a gorilla from the Zooniverse. As for the Nabootique, it's the odds-and-ends store owned by their friend Naboo—a nearly 500-year-old shaman with magical powers and a predilection for eating hardcore hallucinogens.

The entire show feels like a run-on sentence of an increasingly intense drug experience. Visual puns abound. The dialogue often sounds like a nonstop series of wordplays. And there is very little sense of a plot at all—more a series of subplots and tangents and divergences that curlicue around the recurring characters and Howard and Vince's never-ending misadventures. The two are basically an outlandish odd couple. Howard considers himself an upstanding, even-keeled man, but he's prone to drifting into a "jazz trance" anytime he hears a righteous bit of fusion. Vince is a long-haired, reedy creature who dresses like his closet is full of Mick Jagger's '70s tour cast-offs, talks like the summer of love never ended and loves to rock out to the Human League. Together, they inhabit a TV world that doesn't make a lick of sense, but is hilarious from start to finish.

Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds are seeing wed in The Proposal

Browsing over Sandra Bullock's post-Speed filmography, there is an obvious common denominator—happy endings. That would be because her bread and butter is romantic comedies, sure, but perhaps also because she's so irrepressibly adorable (even at 45) that directors can't bear to see her suffer. Interestingly, she plays against type in The Proposal—always a risk since her inherent likability is such a box-office draw. Bullock's no-BS publishing exec is doing just fine in the Big Apple until INS comes sniffing around; soon enough, she needs underling Ryan Reynolds to fake a relationship—and ultimately marriage—to avoid deportation to Canada. These two can't stand each other, although anybody who's watched more than three movies in their lifetime can deduce that those icy hearts just may melt by the final reel. No matter—the journey's fun enough, and Reynolds is finally coming into his own as a leading man.

Michael Bay polarizes America again with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

It's interesting that there have been so many complaints about Michael Bay's Transformers deviating too drastically from the popular '80s comic book/animated TV show. "Energon" and the "Matrix of Leadership" were just as big of plot points in Revenge of the Fallen as they were 20+ years ago. The only problem is following exactly how the hell they fit into the story as you're bombarded with an endless, deafening series of explosions. In this two-and-a-half-hour sequel, everyboy Sam (Shia LaBeouf) just wants a normal college life, but the Autobot/Decepticon conflict is far from over. A splinter of the last film's pivotal AllSpark imprints a series of indecipherable symbols on his brain, and once again both factions are after him in a wild global pursuit. Love it or hate it, Michael Bay's dizzying opus is something to behold, an epileptic seizure of hard R standbys cleverly distilled into a PG-13 summer popcorn box.

Effective new horror anthology

Everyone knows that holiday-themed films are generally denied DVD release until said holiday rolls around again a year later. So you can forgive us for forgetting just what the hell Trick 'r Treat is. And yet, there's a noteworthy cast: ubiquitous character actor Brian Cox, Oscar-hungry tween queen Dakota Fanning and Iron Man hotness Leslie Bibb! Mirroring Creepshow's tried-tand-true anthology format, TRT may be a solid scarefest after all.

Woody Allen returns to familiar—and fertile—ground with Whatever Works

Don't be great at something unless you can handle the ensuing expectations. Or, if you can't handle them, at least be prolific—something will wind up sticking. After a series of numbing disappointments in the 10-year period surrounding the turn of the century (Melinda and Melinda… yikes), Woody Allen reinvigorated himself in the latter part of the oughts by relocating to London. Now, back in his native New York, he's finally cast the perfect Woody stand-in—Curb Your Enthusiasm/Seinfeld crank Larry David. This light comedy—written in the '70s, which would explain the frequent asides to the audience—pits David against… god-fearing southern stereotypes? David's perpetually dissatisfied, vaguely suicidal chess teacher finds bumpkin runaway Evan Rachel Wood at his doorstep, and reluctantly takes her in. Of course, her family is none too pleased, but the key story is David and Wood's bizarre, unlikely attraction, an Allen staple executed with tact and thoughtfulness.

Wim Wenders classic hits Criterion

If City of Angels didn't do it for you, try Wim Wenders' extraordinary 1987 real deal. Bruno Ganz's seraph lords over Berlin, occupying himself with the complications of the cityscape below, but considering trading immortality for the love of a woman. Wenders and the iconic Peter Falk contribute commentary tracks, and this lovingly crafted package includes deleted scenes, outtakes and an interview with director of photography Henri Alekan.

Jack Black and Michael Cera laugh it up at the dawn of man

Few directors have a more accomplished comedy pedigree than Harold Ramis. From Caddyshack to Groundhog Day and Analyze This, Egon's been bringing us the funny for nearly 30 years. Year One is no exception, odd-coupling Jack Black and Michael Cera as, respectively, a primitive hunter and gatherer who embark on an excellent adventure that spirals into a bogus journey. David Cross and Paul Rudd are among the top-notch cameos.