There’s Even More to Show of Guest’s ‘Best in Show’

Warner’s DVD of Christopher Guest’s smart, funny “mockumentary” “Best in Show” ($25) includes 16 loony deleted scenes complete with wry, dry commentary from Guest and co-writer and co-star Eugene Levy.

Guest, of “This Is Spinal Tap” and “Waiting for Guffman” fame, spoofs the world of competitive dog shows in “Best in Show,” chronicling a group of dog owners who prepare for the biggest dog show in America. Besides Guest and Levy, the film stars Michael McKean, John Michael Higgins, Catherine O’Hara, Parker Posey and Fred Willard. Guest and Levy wrote the story, but allowed each of the performers to improvise their dialogue.

Though the deleted scenes were cut for various reasons--including time constraints--they are wonderfully entertaining. There’s a terrific scene in which Guest’s sweet-natured hound dog owner, Harlan, shows off his collection of beach balls, which are stuffed into the annex of his log cabin home. McKean and Higgins, who play a gay couple, have a field day as they talk about how they met. Levy, whose character has two left feet, shines in a scene where he talks about his devotion to his job as a salesman in a big and tall men’s shop.

Besides the wide-screen version of the film, the disc includes esoterically amusing comments from Guest and Levy. Guest admits that he fell madly in love with Rocky, the hound dog who played Harlan’s prize dog, Hubert.

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New Line has done a nice job with its digital edition of Julian Schnabel’s “Before Night Falls” ($25), a gripping bio-pic about the gay Cuban writer-poet Reinaldo Arenas (Javier Bardem, in his Oscar-nominated role).

The DVD features the wide-screen transfer, the trailer, talent files, an interview with the real Arenas from the early 1980s, a short but fascinating behind-the-scenes documentary shot and narrated by Schnabel’s daughter, Lois, and a documentary focusing on Schnabel’s career as a painter.

Schnabel also provides the audio commentary, as does co-writer Lazaro Gomez Carilles, who is played by Olivier Martinez in the film, cinematographer Guillermo Rosas and Bardem. Carilles talks about how he got involved with the project, Rosas discusses how he attempted to make the film look like a Schnabel painting. Bardem, who is very apologetic about his English, is a real charmer, whether he is recalling how he met Schnabel in New York or his fear of doing a movie in which he had to speak so much English or the difference between a Spanish accent and a Cuban one.

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Darren Aronofsky’s “Requiem for a Dream” (Artisan, $25) is a tough sit. Based on Hubert Selby Jr.’s novel, “Dreams” offers a grim, nightmarish look at drug addiction that features the Oscar-nominated performance of Ellen Burstyn as the lonely mother of a drug addict who becomes addicted to diet pills.

The special-edition digital edition includes a revealing “making of” documentary--with intelligent commentary from Aronofsky--which offers insight into the young director’s style. There are also deleted scenes, production notes, a wide-screen edition of the film and a fascinating interview between Burstyn and Selby.

The disc includes two commentary tracks: one with Aronofsky and the other with cinematographer Matthew Libatique.

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The DVD of the box-office hit “Vertical Limit” (Columbia TriStar, $28) is best watched with a big bucket of popcorn. Chris O’Donnell and Robin Tunney star in this thrill-a-minute flick about a brother who risks his life to save his sister trapped in an ice cave on the dangerous K2 mountain. The enjoyable digital edition includes the film in wide-screen; a better-than-average HBO “making of” documentary chronicling the difficult mountain climbing training the stars endured; a documentary, “Quest for K2,” that aired on the National Geographic Channel; two other brief featurettes and sturdy commentary from the soft-spoken director, Martin Campbell, and the equally low-key producer, Lloyd Phillips.

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There’s nothing low-key about the rollicking 1959 comedy classic “Some Like It Hot,” which arrives in a special DVD edition from MGM ($25) this week. Billy Wilder co-wrote and directed this outrageous ‘20s-era comedy--named the best comedy of the 20th century by the American Film Institute--about two womanizing jazz musicians (Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis) who, after witnessing the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, disguise themselves as women and join an all-girl orchestra. Marilyn Monroe plays the sultry singer for whom they both lust.

The DVD includes a crisp wide-screen transfer of the comedy, the trailer and a fun interview conducted by Leonard Maltin with Curtis, who is just as outrageous as the movie itself. The two chat about “Some Like It Hot” at the Formosa Cafe, the Hollywood landmark where the cast used to hang out. Also included is a nostalgic interview with four of the actresses who were Sweet Sue’s All-Girl Band.

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Marlene Dietrich and director Josef von Sternberg made many movies together in the 1930s, including “The Blue Angel” and “Morocco.” The Criterion Collection recently released the DVD of their deliciously over-the-top 1934 extravaganza “The Scarlet Empress” ($30). Dietrich plays Russia’s Catherine the Great, Sam Jaffe is her dimwitted, evil husband and John Lodge, later governor of Connecticut, is the love of her life. An enjoyable hoot. The DVD includes a decent transfer of the film, a production stills archive and a short but nifty 1966 BBC documentary, “The World of Josef von Sternberg.”

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“Jaws 2,” the 1978 sequel to Steven Spielberg’s shark classic, is nowhere near as enjoyable and audacious as the original. Nevertheless, the special-edition DVD (Universal, $27) is quite entertaining, thanks to enjoyable interviews with producers David Brown and Richard Zanuck, writer Carl Gottlieb and director Jeannot Szwarc.

The sequel, which stars original “Jaws” performers Roy Scheider, Lorraine Gary and Murray Hamilton, was fraught with problems. Production was shut down after the first director left a few weeks after filming began. Szwarc, who had done TV and a few small films, was tapped as the new director. He had the script rewritten and recast a lot of the characters. Szwarc also thought it was an important to show the Great White shark on the attack as much as possible.

Besides the wide-screen version of the film, there are interviews with composer John Williams and actor-turned-director Keith Gordon, a photo gallery, trailers and a history of sharks.