HOME ENTERTAINMENT : UCLA’s Ultimate Hoop Dream on Video

Some UCLA basketball fans are still up there on Cloud Nine, reliving the recent championship season.

That’s what CBS Video is counting on, releasing the tape “Wizards Again!: The Official 1995 NCAA Championship Video” today, priced at $20.

“Real college fans are fanatics,” said Eric Paulin, who produced the tape for Black Canyon Productions. “They’ll want anything they can get their hands on that has to do with the Bruins.”

If he’s right, this 45-minute tape chronicling the team’s triumph in the NCAA college basketball tournament, will be a hot item in Los Angeles--both at retail and mail order, (800) 747-7999.

This is CBS Video’s sixth annual NCAA Tournament rush job, with the tape being completed a mere nine days after the Bruins’ victory over Arkansas in the April 3 championship game.

The tape doesn’t cover the entire season, just the NCAA Tournament. About two-thirds of the tape is devoted to UCLA; about half is new footage. Some of the sequences were culled from CBS network coverage, but CBS Video also had its own cameras, mainly used to provide different perspectives during the two semifinal games.

“A lot of the shots are low-angle stuff,” Paulin said. “We’re right there at courtside. You can hear the guys moaning and groaning. You can see the sweat flying.”

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Wooden: Touchstone’s “Ed Wood” was released on Tuesday, featuring the Oscar-winning performance by Martin Landau as horror-film star Bela Lugosi. Tim Burton’s comedy-drama is an affectionate homage to schlock 1950s director Ed Wood.

But the film covers only part of this unusual man’s life. After the ‘50s, his career spiraled and he died in poverty at age 54. To find out the real scoop on Wood, see one of the excellent documentaries about him, Rhino’s “Ed Wood: Look Back in Angora” or MPI’s “The Ed Wood Story: The Plan 9 Companion.”

Rhino also just re-released the hard-to-find “Glen or Glenda,” an unintentionally hilarious tale of a cross-dresser, co-starring Wood (himself a transvestite), that has to be seen to be believed. All five of Rhino’s Wood films have been reduced to $10.

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Ginger Rogers Videos: If you’re looking for movies with Ginger Rogers, who died Tuesday, remember two things: Most of her movies with Fred Astaire were by far her best and hardly any of her movies after 1940 were memorable.

In her best movies with Astaire, the plots were feeble but the music and dancing were great. Any one of them could be offered as a definition of the movie musical. Most are available in bargain bins for $10-$15. The cream of the Astaire-Rogers movies:

“The Gay Divorcee” (1934), featuring “Night and Day”; “Top Hat” (1935), with an exceptional Irving Berlin score and arguably their finest number, “Cheek to Cheek”; “Swing Time” (1936), boasting the best score--co-written by Jerome Kern--in an Astaire-Rogers movie, including “The Way You Look Tonight” and “A Fine Romance”; “Follow the Fleet” (1936), with an outstanding Irving Berlin score, featuring “Let’s Face the Music and Dance”; “Shall We Dance” (1937), featuring a classic score by the Gershwins, including “They All Laughed,” “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” and “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.”

“The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle” (1939) is interesting because it’s the last of the RKO movies Rogers made with Astaire. Though entertaining, it’s not in a class with their best.

The performance in “Kitty Foyle” that won her the 1940 best actress Oscar now seems overwrought. This melodrama about a career woman having an affair with a married man didn’t age well.

Hard to find, but worth it if you do: “Vivacious Lady” (1938), a romantic comedy about a singer (Rogers) married to a college professor (James Stewart); “Stage Door,” a 1937 comedy-drama co-starring Katharine Hepburn, about a boardinghouse that caters to aspiring Broadway actresses.

Prominent Rogers movies that are just so-so: “Flying Down to Rio” (1933), “Romance in Manhattan” (1934), “Tender Comrade” (1943), “Weekend at the Waldorf” (1945), “The Barkleys of Broadway” (1949) and “Monkey Business” (1952).

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What’s New on Video: “Hoop Dreams” (New Line): Two skilled teen basketball players from a Chicago ghetto dream of becoming rich pro stars. This absorbing, often powerful three-hour documentary follows them for five years, starting at a predominantly white, middle-class Catholic high school. One of last year’s best movies.

“Blue Sky” (Orion): Jessica Lange’s Oscar-winning performance is the reason to see this absorbing family drama set in the early 1960s. She plays a neurotic free-spirit married to an Army scientist (Tommy Lee Jones) working on a nuclear testing project. The movie is mostly about the impact of this volatile woman on those around her. Jones is nearly as good as Lange. The only negative is the contrived ending.

“Quiz Show” (Hollywood): Intriguing drama, featuring terrific performances, about the rigging of a TV quiz show in the innocent 1950s, when contestants on high-stakes “Twenty-One” became national celebrities. As a congressional investigator (Rob Morrow) slowly uncovers the scheme, we see the devastating effects on a scholarly winner, Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes), and a blue-collar loser (John Turturro). Some may find it too slow and cerebral. Oscar nominations included picture, director (Robert Redford) and supporting actor (Paul Scofield).