'Return of the King' will return again later

By Terry Lawson
Knight Ridder News Service

Viggo Mortensen is Aragorn in "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King," the final film in the fantasy trilogy. It hit DVD shelves this week, but a splashier version will be out in November. Advertiser library photo

"Lord" fans know that this release is a stopgap aimed at the geeks who can't wait and the few people who made the mistake of missing it on the big screen. (You could miss it again if you buy this in the compressed full-screen version instead of wide-screen; check the box carefully.)

The film itself looks great and the sound mix is stunning, but the extras are limited to two 20-some-minute production infomercials, the National Geographic "Beyond the Movie" special that examines the historical and literary influences on author J.R.R. Tolkien, brief profiles of the stars and ads for the "Rings" video games.

What isn't here is a preview of the four-DVD set promised for November, which is still being edited. At a minimum, director Peter Jackson told the Detroit Free Press, that version will add at least 30 minutes of unseen footage to the concluding chapter of the saga. Jackson says he filmed even more of the thread-tying finales, so if you thought the farewells went on a bit long, be prepared.

Also available today is a six-DVD box of all three theatrical cuts, but the complete "Lord of the Rings" box coming just in time for Christmas will be, at minimum, a 12-disc affair.

Back to World War II

It remains to be seen if the world is currently in the mood to watch any war movies that aren't entirely a product of imagination, but the Memorial Day holiday and the impending 60th anniversary of D-Day have inspired the release of a lot of battle-themed films.

The most awaited is "Saving Private Ryan: D-Day Commemorative Edition" (Universal/Dreamworks), a two-DVD set of Steven Spielberg's powerful 1998 account of the Omaha Beach invasion and the subsequent mission that takes Tom Hanks and his men behind enemy lines to retrieve the only one of three brothers who has survived the fighting.

It is the same DVD transfer as that issued in 1999, but this version is appended with 90 minutes of extra material, including a look at how the film evolved from screenplay to screen, and the sort of production footage that Spielberg fans were denied in the recent "Schindler's List" set. Spielberg also introduces the film, and sound designer Gary Rydstrom, who won an Oscar for his work, provides some perspective on the film six years after its release.

The anniversary also provides the excuse for an upgrade of 1963's "The Great Escape" (MGM), John Sturges' classic POW movie, based on the true story of a mass Allied escape from a Nazi prison camp, with a script by James Clavell ("Shogun") and one of the all-time international casts: Steve McQueen, James Coburn, James Garner, Richard Attenborough and John Leyton are among the plotters.

It benefits greatly from a new transfer and a remix into 5.1 Surround (although it occasionally and inexplicably lapses into mono), and has a commentary track cobbled together from interviews with Sturges and various cast members. There is new making-of material, divided into featurettes, but the best supplement is the one-hour documentary about the real escape that was included on the previous DVD.

Warm 'Northern Exposure'

The best of the week's TV boxes by more than a few latitudes: "Northern Exposure — The Complete First Season" (Universal), which contains the first eight episodes (it began as a summer series in 1990, then won a mid-season replacement berth the next year) of the slow-starting but ultimately beloved series.

Following a young doctor (Rob Morrow) sentenced, as part of his tuition obligation, to minister to the eccentric citizens of Cicely, Alaska, the first copies of the two-disc set come clothed in a little parka, but the real attraction for fans who have been awaiting this is the additional footage that graces every episode.

Also new: "Cheers — The Complete Third Season" (Paramount), four discs containing every episode of the last season with Coach behind the bar; and "The Complete Third Season" (Paramount) of its recently departed spin-off "Frasier."

Elvis and the werewolves

The week's crop of recent theatrical releases is less than impressive, headed as it is by "Underworld" (Columbia Tristar), an unrated extended version of the stylish but empty werewolves-versus-vampires thriller that owes more than a small debt to "Blade."

"Bubba Ho-Tep" (MGM), a comedy in which a not-dead Elvis (Bruce Campbell) coincidentally hooks up with an unassassinated JFK (Ossie Davis) in a Texas retirement home to do battle with an Egyptian zombie with a cowboy obsession, was barely released to theaters. But that doesn't prevent this future cult item from warranting a Limited Collector's Edition whose add-ons include outtakes and a commentary by Campbell in the guise of the King.

Then there's "Club Dread" (Fox). The Broken Lizard comedy troupe's follow-up to the hilariously dumb "Super Troopers," this is set in a vacation resort, run by a Jimmy-Buffet-like entertainer (Bill Paxton), that is being terrorized by a serial killer.

It has the dubious distinction of making 1986's "Club Paradise" look funny.

You can experience something like true dread seeing "The Weather Underground" (New Video), a documentary recounting the rise and fall of the American terrorist group of the title. The film was co-directed by Bill Siegel and Sam Green, who was inspired to make the movie after meeting some former Weather people in Ann Arbor, Mich. The director's commentary is accompanied by another by ex-members Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers.