John Lasseter, Stanton, Andrew There was such a magic on the screen in 1995 when the people at Pixar came up with the first fully computer-animated film, Toy Story. Their second feature film, A Bug's Life, may miss the bull's-eye but Pixar's target is so lofty, it's hard to find the film anything less than irresistible.

Brighter and more colorful than the other animated insect movie of 1998 (Antz), A Bug's Life is the sweetly told story of Flik (voiced by David Foley), an ant searching for better ways to be a bug. His colony unfortunately revolves around feeding and fearing the local grasshoppers (lead by Hopper, voiced with gleeful menace by Kevin Spacey). When Flik accidentally destroys the seasonal food supply for the grasshoppers he decides to look for help ("We need bigger bugs!"). The ants, led by Princess Atta (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), are eager to dispose of the troublesome Flik. Yet he finds help--a hearty bunch of bug warriors--and brings them back to the colony. Unfortunately they are just traveling performers afraid of conflict.

As with Toy Story, the ensemble of creatures and voices is remarkable and often inspired. Highlights include wiseacre comedian Denis Leary as an un-ladylike ladybug, Joe Ranft as the German-accented caterpillar, David Hyde Pierce as a stick bug, and Michael McShane as a pair of unintelligible pillbugs. The scene-stealer is Atta's squeaky-voiced sister, baby Dot (Hayden Panettiere), who has a big sweet spot for Flik.

More gentle and kid-friendly than Antz, A Bug Life's still has some good suspense and a wonderful demise of the villain. However, the film--a giant worldwide hit--will be remembered for its most creative touch: "outtakes" over the end credits à la many live-action comedy films. These dozen or so scenes (both "editions" of outtakes are contained here) are brilliant and deserve a special place in film history right along with 1998's other most talked-about sequence: the opening Normandy invasion in Saving Private Ryan.

The video also contains Pixar's delightful Oscar-winning short, Geri's Game. Box art varies. --Doug Thomas

Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman), a widower with a 13-year-old son, named George-Michael (Michael Cera), is forced to keep his large and dysfunctional family together after his father (Jeffery Tambor) is arrested for shifty accounting practices at the family-owned conglomerate and the Bluth family assets are frozen, making each member of the eccentric family panicking. Michael's snobbish mother, Lucille (Jessica Walter), finds herself living alone in a penthouse without the financial means to maintain it, while Michael's two brothers, GOB (Will Arnett) and Buster (Tony Hale), and his sister Lindsay (Portia DeRossi) with her husband Tobias (David Cross) and her daughter Mae (Alia Shawkat) also find themselves having to recreate their lifestyles to fit their new financial status.

Episodes:The Cabin ShowThe British BombshellForget Me NowNotapusyMr. FThe Ocean WalkerPrison Break-InMaking a StandS.O.B.sFakin' ItFamily TiesExit StrategyDevelopment Arrested

Format: DVD MOVIE

Michael Bay "I bought a car. Turned out to be an alien robot. Who knew?" deadpans Sam Witwicky, hero and human heart of Michael Bay's rollicking robot-smackdown fest, Transformers. Witwicky (the sweetly nerdy Shia LaBeouf, channeling a young John Cusack) is the perfect counterpoint to the nearly nonstop exhilarating action. The plot is simple: an alien civil war (the Autobots vs. the evil Decepticons) has spilled onto Earth, and young Sam is caught in the fray by his newly purchased souped-up Camaro. Which has a mind--and identity, as a noble-warrior robot named Bumblebee--of its own. The effects, especially the mind-blowing transformations of the robots into their earthly forms and back again, are stellar.

Fans of the earlier film and TV series will be thrilled at this cutting-edge incarnation, but this version should please all fans of high-adrenaline action. Director Bay gleefully salts the movie with homages to pop-culture touchstones like Raiders of the Lost Ark, King Kong, and the early technothriller WarGames. The actors, though clearly all supporting those kickass robots, are uniformly on-target, including the dashing Josh Duhamel as a U.S. Army sergeant fighting an enemy he never anticipated; Jon Voight, as a tough yet sympathetic Secretary of Defense in over his head; and John Turturro, whose special agent manages to be confidently unctuous, even stripped to his undies. But the film belongs to Bumblebee, Optimus Prime, and the dastardly Megatron--and the wicked stunts they collide in all over the globe. Long live Transformers! --A.T. Hurley



More Than Meets the Eye 
The Original Movie 
Transformers Mania 
The Soundtrack



Transformers Image Gallery (click for larger image)

There's a new law enforcer in town and he's half man, half machine! From the director of Total Recall and Basic Instinct comes a "sci-fi fantasy with sleek, high-powered drive" (Time) about an indestructible high-tech policeman who dishes out justice at every turn! When a good cop (Peter Weller) gets blown away by some ruthless criminals, innovative scientists and doctors are able to piece him back together as an unstoppable crime-fighting cyborg called "Robocop." Impervious to bullets and bombs, and equipped with high-tech weaponry, Robocop quickly makes a name for himself by cleaning up the crime-ridden streets of violence-ravaged Detroit.

Arguably the most talked-about television show of the 2006-2007 season, the Emmy-nominated fantasy Heroes gives viewers blends comic book-style adventure with plotting and characters as rich and layered as any graphic novel or drama series. Creator Tim Kring's premise is deceptively simple - ordinary individuals in locations around the globe discover that they have, for lack of a better term, super powers, and wrestle with this reality while facing challenges both global (the destruction of New York City, for one) and personal (indestructible cheerleader Hayden Panetierre has family issues - serious ones, as the true identity of her adoptive father reveals; Milo Ventimiglia's Peter Petrelli, who absorbs other powers, must overcome his own insecurities). Add to this mix a terrific villain - Zachary Quinto's Sylar, who hunts and kills people with extraordinary powers like our heroes - and viewers have a riveting series that exhibits an almost-perfect balance of cliffhanger thrills (the action and special effects are truly impressive for a network program) and genuine drama that sets the show apart from most speculative fiction (save, perhaps, the revived Battlestar Galactica, which it compares too favorably). The seven-disc set of Heroes: Season One offers a wealth of extras for fans, who may be familiar with some of them through the NBC.com website, especially the cast commentaries, which are featured on half of the episodes. Kring is featured on the 73-minute uncut pilot episode, which for some viewers, may be even better than the network version; the main difference is the degree of character development, including an entire storyline for D.L. Hawkins that isn't featured in the broadcast version. Also on deck are some 50 deleted scenes from the episodes, several by-the-books making-of featurettes, including coverage of the special effects and stunt work, and a profile of artist Tim Sale, whose illustrations are used for Isaac Mendez's prophetic artwork. Prospective buyers should note that while all of these supplemental features are included on the HD-DVD version of this set, the special Web-connectivity elements are not available here. -- Paul Gaita

Fill your Inbox with hilarious moments from The Office Season Three in this four-disc collection that's crammed with extensive bonus features and all 22 episodes of the 2006 Primetime Emmy Award winner for Outstanding Comedy Series! Steve Carell is back in his Golden Globe-winning role as earnest but clueless boss Michael Scott, who can't help but contribute his own irreverent commentary to the daily happenings at the Scranton branch of the Dunder Mifflin paper company. As the staff deals with potential office closures, mergers, romances, and advancement, Michael's always there to say all the wrong things at all the right times. Including five supersized episodes and over three hours of deleted scenes, The Office Season Three is packed with classic moments from the show that TIME magazine praises for "satirizing the culture of coffee, cubicles and Chili's with heart and laser precision."

It begins with a solemn funeral…for a car. By the end of Chris Paine's lively and informative documentary, the idea doesn't seem quite so strange. As narrator Martin Sheen notes, "They were quiet and fast, produced no exhaust and ran without gasoline." Paine proceeds to show how this unique vehicle came into being and why General Motors ended up reclaiming its once-prized creation less than a decade later. He begins 100 years ago with the original electric car. By the 1920s, the internal-combustion engine had rendered it obsolete. By the 1980s, however, car companies started exploring alternative energy sources, like solar power. This, in turn, led to the late, great battery-powered EV1. Throughout, Paine deftly translates hard science and complex politics, such as California's Zero-Emission Vehicle Mandate, into lay person's terms (director Alex Gibney, Oscar-nominated for Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, served as consulting producer). And everyone gets the chance to have their say: engineers, politicians, protesters, and petroleum spokespeople--even celebrity drivers, like Peter Horton, Alexandra Paul, and a wild man beard-sporting Mel Gibson. But the most persuasive participant is former Saturn employee Chelsea Sexton. Promoting the benefits of the EV1 was more than a job to her, and she continues to lobby for more environmentally friendly options. Sexton provides the small ray of hope Paine's film so desperately needs. Who Killed the Electric Car? is, otherwise, a tremendously sobering experience. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Stills from Who Killed the Electric Car? (click for larger image)

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is another entertaining romp for the Marvel-superhero franchise. Reed Richards, Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffudd), is treading on thin ice when his fiancée, Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman (Jessica Alba), thinks he's more interested in a series of cosmic phenomena occurring around the earth than in the preparations for their upcoming wedding. Sorry, ladies, but Reed is right. The disturbances are caused by a surge of cosmic power from a mysterious being called the Silver Surfer (an all-CGI creation, modeled by Doug Jones and voiced by Laurence Fishburne), who not only zooms around the skies on his board, but also has enough power to fight the FF, sometimes by turning their own power against them, not only mixing up Sue and Reed, but also Johnny Storm, the Human Torch (Chris Evans), and Ben Grimm, the Thing (Michael Chiklis). But that's not the worst of it. The Surfer is only an opening act, a herald looking for planets that his master, Galactus, can consume for his sustenance.

With its initial installment, Fantastic Four established itself as the superhero franchise that didn't take itself too seriously, and that continues here. There are numerous moments of laugh-out-loud humor, and the most angst they suffer is whether Sue and Reed will ever be able to live a normal family life. (That, and whether they'll ever really get married, of course.) If Fantastic Four were a normal superhero franchise, the ending would be a knock-down drag-out war with Galactus, featuring the FF in a colossal battle for the planet Earth and the lives of everyone on it. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer… just doesn't do that, and we don't quite get the payoff we expected. Effects are dazzling, but the Surfer looks too metallic, more like a skyriding T-1000 robot. --David Horiuchi

View Stills from the Blu-Ray's Exclusive Games (Click for larger image):

David Lynch Season 1
Twin Peaks devotees, who have kept the mystery alive on myriad Web sites, will jump at the chance to return to the spooky town that might just be the anti-Mayberry. Rarely syndicated, the Twin Peaks television series has lost none of its quirky and queasy power to get under your skin and haunt your dreams. So brew up a pot of some "damn fine coffee," dig into some cherry pie, and lose yourself in David Lynch and Mark Frost's murder mystery and soap opera, which unfolds, in one character's words, "like a beautiful dream and terrible nightmare all at once." Twin Peaks was a pop culture phenomenon for one season at least, until the increasingly bizarre twists and maddening teases so confounded audiences that they lost interest in just who killed Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). This series was a career peak for most of its eclectic ensemble cast, including Kyle MacLachlan as straight-arrow FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper, Michael Ontkean as local Sheriff Harry S. Truman, Sherilyn Fenn as bad girl Audrey Horne, Peggy Lipton as waitress Norma Jennings, and Catherine Coulson as the Log Lady. Alumni enjoying current success include Lara Flynn Boyle ("The Practice"), as good girl Donna Hayward, and Miguel Ferrer ("Crossing Jordan"), hilarious as forensics expert Albert Rosenfield (who has absolutely no "social niceties").--Donald Liebenson

Season 2
"Don't search for all the answers at once," says a giant appearing to FBI Agent Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) in a vision. "A path is formed by laying one stone at a time." In Twin Peaks, that's easier said than done. Over the course of two seasons, that path went nowhere and everywhere. "Bureau guidelines, deductive technique, Tibetan method, and luck" don't cut it here. It also takes a little magic, which is what makes David Lynch and Mark Frost's bracingly original serial drama one of TV's ultimate trips, and still the stuff that fever dreams are made of. With the DVD release of season 2, die-hard Peakers can rekindle their obsession with this macabre, maddening, sinister, and surreal series set in the rural Pacific Northwest community whose bucolic surroundings hide "things dark and heinous." (If you're new to Twin Peaks, best to get the lay of the land by watching the brilliant feature-length pilot and the instant-cult-classic first season, which capture Twin at its peak.) Three main mysteries drive season 2. First, there's the still (!) unresolved murder of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). Then, there's the question of who shot Cooper in the season 1 cliffhanger. And finally, ultimately: What about Bob? With its dream logic, bizarre behavior, and nightmare imagery, much of what transpires goes right by you. Some subplots (Sherilyn Fenn's sexpot Audrey held captive at the bordello, One-Eyed Jacks) are easier to latch on to than others (amnesiac Nadine believes she's an 18-year-old high schooler) And, yes, that's a pre-X-Files David Duchovny as Dennis/Denice, a transsexual DEA agent.

In Twin Peaks' second season, the truth is out there, but we are entering A Few Good Men territory. When Laura's killer is at last revealed in episode 16, no doubt many will not be able to handle the truth. The teases, red herrings, and out-and-out gonzo looniness will try the patience of viewers with a more conventional bent. But, as Cooper observes at one point, "All in all, [it's] a very interesting experience," with enough doppelgangers, allusions, pop-culture references, and in-jokes to keep bloggers buzzing. If, for example, you get any pleasure from recognizing Hank Worden, who played Mose in The Searchers, as "the world's most decrepit room service waiter," then Twin Peaks may just make you feel right at home. --Donald Liebenson





Deeper into the Woods of Twin Peaks 
Essential DVDs by Director David Lynch 
The Soundtrack 
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me




Taste That Famous Cherry Pie

The Recipe

8 inch Crust: 1-1/2 c. flour, 1/2 c. Crisco, 1/4 c. ice water
Mix flour and Crisco with fork. Add ice water. Mix with your hands. When blended, roll into ball and refrigerate overnight. To roll out: flour both rolling pin and flat surface, split ball in two, roll out 1/2 to fit pan and 1/2 for lattice.

Filling: 3 c. cherries (pitted, sour frozen); 1 c. water; 1c. Baker's sugar; 4 T. cornstarch; 1/8 t. salt
Thaw cherries at room temp and strain (yields 2 c. juice). Taste for sweetness, more/less sugar may be needed. Add 1 c. water to make 3 c. juice (reserve 1 c. juice for cornstarch mix). Dissolve cornstarch in 1 c. juice, stir with whip. Combine 2 c. juice, 2/3 c. sugar, salt, and bring to a boil. Add cornstarch mix, cook until clear, about 5 min. (if cooked to long, syrup gets gummy). Remove from heat, stir in 1/3 c. sugar (blend thoroughly). Pour mixture over cherries, fold with wooden spoon, cool (stir mix while cooling to prevent scum from forming on top). Pour mix in pie shell. Top completed pie with lattice crust.

Bake @ 425 degrees for 35-40 min.



Stills from Twin Peaks (coming soon)