Kate & Allie: Season One

Available May 2, from Universal Studios Home Entertainment (Pre-order today)

Drop in on two of America’s favorite mothers. Emmy Award winners Susan Saint James (McMillan and Wife) and Jane Curtin (3rd Rock from the Sun) star as two newly divorced women who share one crowded New York City apartment with their three children. Kate & Allie: Season One includes every episode from the runaway success season plus a hilarious collection of debut sparked an instant sensation with its humorous and heartwarming take on the practical problems faced by divorced women with children.

SYNOPSIS
When Allie Lowell (Jane Curtin) divorces her successful but unfaithful doctor husband, she and her two children move to New York City to live with high school pal and fellow divorcee Kate McArdle (Susan Saint James) and her daughter. Comically mismatched in style and temperament, impulsive Kate, practical Allie and the kids nevertheless forge a unique family unit as they adjust to independence in a changed world.

BONUS FEATURES
* The Great ‘80s TV Flashback -- 30-minute look back at television’s greatest decade, the eighties, and a special preview episode from Season Two
* Conversation with Susan Saint James and director Bill Persky
* Bonus Episode: Kate & Allie: Season Two - Back to School
* Gag reel

BASICS
Price: $29.98
Street Date: May 2, 2006
Video: 1.33:1 Full Frame
Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono (English)
Run Time: 142 min
Not Rated

Judge Brendan Babish had the opportunity to cover 11 films presented during the 15th Annual Philadelphia Film Festival.

Click on each link for his full review.

The King
"It is an intense movie, punctuated with moments of incredibly dark comedy."
Festival Jury Prize: Best American Independent
Director: James Marsh
Grade: A

Lucky Number Slevin
"Creative and engaging, but falls apart under close scrutiny."
Director: Paul McGuigan
Grade: A-

Brothers of the Head
"May be too eccentric to be for all tastes, but anyone who is intrigued by the idea of Siamese twins singing punk rock probably won’t be disappointed."
Director: Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe
Grade: B+

Hamlet of Women
"If it ever is released on DVD I highly recommend adding it to your Netflix queue."
Director: Mohamed Chouikh
Grade: B+

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man
"Part interview, part biography and part concert film."
Director: Lian Lunson
Grade: B+

This Film Is Not Yet Rated
"A rare documentary that sheds light on a previously esoteric subject and manages to be wildly entertaining at the same time."
Director: Kirby Dick
Grade: B+

Cave of the Yellow Dog
"Nothing more than a 90 minute profile of a nondescript, nomadic Mongolian family, with a cute dog thrown in."
Director: Byambasuren Davaa
Grade: B

The Sun
"A fine portrait of a landmark historical event, but lacks enough dramatic thrust to captivate."
Director: Aleksandr Sokurov
Grade: C+

Pound
"With long stretches of abstract dialogue and little action, the film ultimately plays like a second rate Samuel Beckett play."
Director: Robert Downey, Sr.
Grade: C

The Glorious Life of Sachiko Hanai
"If a group of 14 year old boys watched this movie during a sleepover I wouldn't be surprised if they thought if was the best film ever made."
Director: Mitsuru Meike
Grade: C

Wah-Wah
"Plays like a Cliff Notes-style montage of dysfunction."
Director: Richard E. Grant
Drade: D+

RED DWARF: SERIES VIII

Blasting onto DVD May 2, from BBC Video

The out-of-this-world antics of the most inept band of space travelers to ever roam the universe return for one last hurrah this spring, as BBC Video releases Red Dwarf: Series VIII. The cult sci-fi sitcom returns for its final season of outrageous adventures in an extras-packed 3-disc DVD set. Boasting over four hours of bonus features. Premiering in 1988 on the BBC and running for eight seasons, Red Dwarf follows the misadventures of Lister, Rimmer, Cat and Kryten, a group that would be hard pressed to operate a tricycle, much less a space ship. In Series VIII, the nanobots have populated the ship with its original crew. This is especially good news for Rimmer, who is now a lot less dead, but is extremely bad news for everyone else. Locked up on Red Dwarf’s prison deck, the crew joins the Canaries – a battle hardened convict army and not, as they first thought, the prison choir. Price: $44.98

BONUS FEATURES
* Cast Commentary
* "The Tank" Original Documentary
* Deleted Scenes
* Smeg Ups
* "Comedy Connections" Red Dwarf Special
* "Super Models" Featurette
* Storyboard Sequences
* Children In Need Sketch
* PBS Sketches and Idents
* "Fight" Featurette
* Trailers
* Raw FX Footage
* Isolated Music Cues
* "Dave Hollins" Radio Sketch
* Photo Gallery
* 16-page Collector’s Booklet
* Back In The Red – Extended
* Plus Easter Eggs

LITTLE BRITAIN: THE COMPLETE SECOND SERIES

Coming to DVD May 23, from BBC Video

Lose your good behavior and refined etiquette in the mighty tide of the Atlantic Ocean and welcome back the colorful cast of outrageous characters from the land of Little Britain, as BBC Video releases Little Britain: The Complete Second Series. Created by Matt Lucas and David Walliams, Little Britain has evolved from being a cult favorite to a mainstream smash hit. The second season sees the return of many beloved and unforgettable characters from season 1, including Vicky Pollard, Emily Howard, Dafydd Thomas, Sebastian Love, Marjorie Dawes and Lou and Andy. However, this season they are joined by a host of new characters every bit as hilarious including “Bubbles” De Vere, Carol “Computer Says No” Beer, Judy, Maggie and Harvey “Bitty” Pincher, who has an unusually strong attachment to his mother. Little Britain features a well-rounded roster of high-profile British guest stars including Anthony Stewart Head (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Geraldine James, Ruth Madoc, the voice of Tom Baker (Doctor Who), and original music by David Arnold. Price: $29.98

BONUS FEATURES
* 2005 Comic Relief Sketches with special guests Elton John, George Michael, Robbie Williams and Simon Callow plus Outtakes
* Episode Commentaries
* Documentary
* Deleted Scenes
* Little Britain at the NFT
* Friday Night with Jonathan Ross Interview
* Richard and Judy as Lou and Andy

MICHAEL PALIN: SAHARA, Coming to DVD April 18 from BBC Video

Join Award-winning explorer and former Monty Python star, Michael Palin, as he embarks on an exciting and educational expedition across the Sahara in the BBC Video release of Michael Palin: Sahara. This extraordinary documentary won the BAFTA award for best photography. Journey along with Michael as he faces extreme temperatures, endless sand dunes and crocodile infested rivers. In the course of this amazing expedition he discovers a wide variety of cultures and a long record of civilization, trade, commerce and conquest stretching from the ancient Egyptians to the oil-rich Islamic republics of today. Michael Palin: Sahara will be available on a jam-packed 2-disc set, complete with behind-the-scenes footage and an exclusive interview with Michael Palin. Price: $34.98

BUCCANEERS, Coming to DVD April 18, from BBC Video

The story of four beautiful young aristocrats who journey from America to England seeking love and adventure comes alive as BBC Video releases The Buccaneers. Digitally remastered and released in its unedited form for the first-time ever, this sweeping literary drama based on Edith Wharton’s final, yet unfinished, novel features over five hours of stunningly beautiful costumes, scenery and romantic passion. Originally broadcast on PBS’ Masterpiece Theater, The Buccaneers received resounding media acclaim. Featuring a star-studded ensemble cast including Mira Sorvino (Mighty Aphrodite), Carla Gugino (Sin City), Alison Elliott (Birth), Rya Kihlstedt (Home Alone 3), and Cheri Lunghi (Ransom), the program was filmed in the mansions and stately homes of Rhode Island and Britain, including Castle Howard. Price: $14.98

BOSTON LEGAL
Robert Wagner (Hart to Hart) will guest-star in the two-hour May 16 season finale of ABC's Boston Legal. The veteran actor will play Ashley Goldman, senior partner in the Los Angeles-based office of Crane, Poole & Schmidt.

MEDIUM
Can't tell next month is sweeps, can you? Molly Ringwald will make a rare television appearence on the May 1 episode of NBC's Medium.

MY BOYS
Jordana Spiro (JAG) will headline the TBS series My Boys, as a sportswriter who's unlucky in love.

THE BIG BANG THEORY (Pilot)
Johnny Galecki (Roseanne) joins Jim Parsons as a pair of theoretical physicists overwhelmed by the same woman in the CBS comedy pilot The Big Bang Theory.

FLIRT (Pilot)
Bree Turner (Bring It On Again) and Tamala Jones will co-star opposite Wayne Brady (Whose Line Is It Anyway) in the CW comedy pilot Flirt.

THE TODAY SHOW
Matt Lauer has finalized a $13 million contract extension that will keep him on The Today Show until 2011.

BEAN II
Rowan Atkinson, with Teddy in tow, begins shooting Bean II next month. Someone must have forgotten to mention the first film adaptation of the riotously funny BBC series was a complete disaster.

UNTITLED WOODY ALLEN PROJECT
David Krumholtz (Numb3rs) will co-star alonside Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain) in Woody Allen's next film -- this one set in Paris. New York must be getting expensive.

THE EDUCATION OF CHARLIE BANKS
Bad boy rocker Fred Durst will make his directorial debut on the indie film The Education of Charlie Banks, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Jason Ritter (Joan of Arcadia).

Source: Reuters and TV Guide

June Pointer (Age 52)
June Pointer, the youngest member of the vocal group The Pointer Sisters, died of cancer on Wednesday, with her family by her side. She is survived by three sisters -- Ruth, Anita, and Bonnie -- and two brothers -- Aaron and Fritz. The sisters, who received their vocal training at their father's church in West Oakland, CA, began as a quartet in the 1970s and become a trio when their sister Bonnie left to pursue a solo career in the '80s.

Shin Sang-ok (Age 80)
South Korean film director, Shin Sang-ok, whose own life had more twists than most Hollywood thrillers, died Tuesday, after a long bout with liver problems. South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun sent his condolences to the family and awarded posthumously a national cultural medal. Shin learned his craft in Japan and rose to fame in South Korea after World War Two helping build up the country's fledgling film industry. His production company, Shin Films, turned out hundreds of movies in the 1960s but dropped off considerably in the '70s under a repressive government regime. In a bizarre turn of events, while filming in Hong Kong in 1978, Shin and his wife were abducted in separate incidents. After a failed escape, he spent the next four years in a North Korean prison camp. Current North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, who was then a rising power in the communist state, has long been suspected of being the mastermind behind the abductions. Shin reported having an audience with Kim -- a film buff who reportedly has thousands of movies -- who wanted him to find new ways to enliven the North Korean film industry, using his wife Choi as a leading lady. Shin and Choi escaped captivity during a 1986 trip to Vienna in 1986 and spent a several years in the United States. The couple returned to South Korea in 2000.

Rajkumar (Age 77)
An icon of south Indian cinema and star of more than 200 films, Rajkumar, died Wednesday. The revered actor, who gained nationwide fame when he was kidnapped by notorious forest bandit Veerappan, died at his home in Bangalore from an apparent heart attack. His death sparked a wave of violence, effectively closed down much of the city, with major businesses downing shutters out of respect but also in fear of violent mobs that swept through the city as news of the actor's passing spread.

Source: Reuters

NEVER HAPPENED
Universal has picked up Never Happened, from the writing team of Mark Gibson and Phil Halprin (The Wild). The project is being described as a contemporary high-concept relationship comedy in the vein of It's a Wonderful Life. Raja Gosnell (Scooby-Doo) will direct.

HOW TO LOSE IT ALL
Paramount Pictures has hired Keith Merryman and David A. Newman to write a sequel to the Kate Hudson romantic comedy How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.

Source: Reuters

GREENBACKS
Will Smith will produce and star in Fox's Greenbacks, based on a pitch by Doug Cook and David Weisberg. The Morocco-set action thriller revolves around an American ex-pat who stumbles across a plot to destabilize the world's economy by mass-producing perfect counterfeit currency.

WELFARE QUEEN
Queen Latifah will produce and star in Focus Features' Welfare Queen, the fact-based story of a woman who scammed the welfare system out of a fortune.

28TH AMENDMENT
Kevin Macdonald (One Day in September) will direct Warner Bros.' political thriller 28th Amendment. Richard Donner will produce. The story revolves around a young U.S. president who discovers a secret cabal runs the government and wants him dead.

WICKED CITY
Mark Dippe (Spawn) will write, direct, and produce the live-action adaptation of Hideyuki Kikuchi's manga Wicked City. The story focuses on beasts from a parallel dimension and a secret resistance organization trying to prevent the apocalypse. The series was previously adapted as anime Yoju toshi by Yoshiaki Kawajiri. Johnny Hartmann is co-writing the script.

THE SHOOTER
Kate Mara (24) will co-star with Mark Wahlberg in Paramount's The Shooter. She'll play love interest to Wahlberg, a master sniper lured out of a reclusive existence to prevent an assassination. Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) is directing. Filming begins this summer.

TO EACH HIS OWN
Model/Rapper/Actor Tyrese Gibson will write, star, and produce Screen Gems' To Each His Own. The urban drama revolves around two friends in conflict.

SPACE CHIMPS
Vanguard Animation (Valiant) is prepping Fox's Space Chimps for a 2008 release. The family comedy centers on the descendants of the first chimps sent into space.

Source: Variety

ABC FAMILY GOES BROADBAND
ABCFamily.com will relaunch this summer as a robust media site that includes a broadband channel (dubbed WATCH), a digital networking (think MySpace), an interactive gaming area, and downloadable shortform content. Watch will offer streaming of full-length episodes of its original series, as well as user uploaded videos. "ABC Family's target audience hits the sweet spot of the digital lifestyle," said Albert Cheng, VP Digital Media. "With the incredibly high percentage of young adults using broadband, it makes perfect sense to evolve the definition of ABC Family beyond the television set and into a new hybrid channel not only with rich video content, but also with social networking capabilities."

THIS IS AL-JEZEERA
Al-Jazeera, the English-language version of the Arab broadcast network, is poised to sign a deal for U.S. distribution. Managing director, Nigel Parsons, told reporters the network would be available to 3 million households by June, in time for the World Cup tournament in Germany.

THIS IS YOUR BIG BROTHER
CBS is planning an all-star edition of Big Brother, with a twist. Viewers will help cast the show from a pool of 20 former players. Executive producer, Allison Grodner, said that 12 or 14 players will ultimately move into the house, depending on how the public votes. However, producers retain the right to cast some players who aren't audience favorites. There's no word on a premiere date yet, but insiders speculate it will be Thursday, July 6.

COMEDY CENTRAL LOOKING FOR THE MOTHERLOAD
Comedy Central is looking to beef up its online broadband channel MotherLoad by encouraging amateurs to send in 1-5 minute "test pilots." Live-action, animation, sketch, or hidden-camera -- any format is acceptable. The only prerequisite: It shouldn't suck. The comedy network is parnerting with sibling iFilm.com to create an online competition for these amusing shorts. People can send submissions from May 22 - Aug 24. Network staffers will choose three "test pilots" a week from all of the submissions, streaming them onto the Comedycentral.com Web site. Online users will cast their votes, and the highest-rated submission each week becomes a semifinalist. Comedy Central executives and online users will jointly select the overall winner, who comes away with a deal to produce a series for MotherLoad. Lou Wallach, senior VP of original programming and development, said, "I think we'll get a lot of good stuff. There may be a two-minute series out there that could work just as well as a 22-minute series."

TNT EXPLODES WITH ORIGINAL CONTENT
TNT and Ridley Scott are collaborating on The Company, a six-part miniseries based on Robert Littell's bestselling Cold War epic, for Summer 2007. Company joins the growing lineup of TNT originals, which includes the second season of The Closer, and new EMT drama series Saved (June); Stephen King's eight-part event Nightmares & Dreamscapes (July); and the sequel to original movie The Librarian (Fall). Other TNT projects in development include Robert Redford's Generations, which goes back and forth in time to follow the story of three generations of a family who have all lived in the same house; The Norms, which revolves around a dysfunctional family in the South; Middletown, which centers on a high school principal and his wife as they raise both their students and their two children, one of whom is autistic; An untitled project, from David Hollander (The Guardian), about a recently separated couple who each work in the business of heart transplant surgery: She's a counselor, he's a surgeon; An untitled project, from Richard Levine and Lyn Greene (Nip/Tuck), about a top sports doctor who works with the disabled at a New Jersey rehab clinic; and an untitled project, from William M. Finkerstein and Bill Clark (NYPD Blue), about a neighborhood cop, based on Clark's experiences as an NYPD detective.

Source: Variety

THE BOONDOCKS: COMPLETE FIRST SEASON – UNCUT AND UNCENSORED

Coming to DVD June 13, from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (Pre-order today!)

One of the most-watched cable programs among young adults, the show’s November 6, 2005 debut ranked as the best series premiere in the history of Cartoon Networks’ hugely popular animation showcase for adults, Adult Swim. Praised as “a jolt of shock therapy” by Alessandra Stanley of The New York Times, The Boondocks consistently ranks among the top programs on basic cable each week and was recently nominated for an NAACP Image Award as “Outstanding Comedy Series.” Featuring the voice talents of Regina King (Ray), John Witherspoon (Friday After Next), Cedric Yarbrough (Reno 911), Gary Anthony Williams (Malcolm in the Middle), Gabby Soleil (Johnson Family Vacation), and Jill Talley (The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie). Based on Aaron McGruder's award-winning and politically-charged comic strip distributed in 350 newspapers nationwide, the three-disc DVD includes all 15 episodes as well as extensive bonus features.

SYNOPSIS
When Robert “Granddad” Freeman becomes legal guardian to his two grandsons, he moves from the tough south side of Chicago to the upscale neighborhood of Woodcrest (aka “The Boondocks”) so he can enjoy his golden years in safety and comfort. But with Huey, a ten-year-old leftist revolutionary, and his eight-year-old misfit brother, Riley, suburbia is about to be shaken up. Race relations, tabloid media, hip-hop culture, Santa Claus – nothing and no one is safe from these boyz 'n tha ‘hood.

BONUS FEATURES
* Commentaries on Select Episodes with Creator Aaron McGruder
* Audio and Video Crew Commentaries
* Audio Only Crew Commentaries
* Printable Storyboards
* Unaired TV Promos
* Animatic Compilation
* Behind-the-Scenes Featurette
* Deleted Scenes

BASICS
Price: $49.95
Street Date: June 13, 2006
Video: 1.78:1 Anamorphic Widescreen
Audio: Dolby 2.0 Stereo (English)
Subtitles: French
Run Time: 318 minutes
Not Rated