Seriously, Ms. Sandy, lighten up

The Life After: What’s going on with Sandra Bullock? After turning 40 and getting hitched to “Monster Garage” star Jesse James, the star of such comedies as “While You Were Sleeping” and “Miss Congeniality” has taken a serious -- some would say too serious -- career turn.

Granted, she did garner good reviews for her work in the Oscar-winning “Crash” but, critically, her last film, “Premonition,” was a train wreck, with www.rottentomatoes.com reporting only 12 favorable reviews out of 147 posted.

Despite the drubbing, her loyal fans turned out for the film, which arrives Tuesday on DVD. The psychological thriller made $47.9 million stateside and $24 million more internationally.

Bullock plays an unhappily married housewife and mother of two girls whose husband (Julian McMahon) is killed in an auto accident. The next morning, she wakes up and he’s very much alive. Is Bullock’s Linda going nuts? Was it just a bad dream? You’ll need a Little Orphan Annie decoder ring, a divining rod and a bloodhound to figure out the plot machinations.

Brave teens fight commie invaders

Cult Classic: Teens this summer are flocking to “Transformers” and even “Live Free and Die Hard.” But 23 years ago, young audiences were drawn to John Milius’ “Red Dawn,” which is set for release Tuesday in a special DVD edition.

The patriotic tale revolves around an invasion of America’s heartland by Russian -- this was made before the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe -- and Cuban paratroopers.

A group of rugged teenagers who just happen to be crackerjacks at survival tactics and hunting take to the mountains outside of their small town to battle the invading forces.

The first film to be released with a PG-13 rating, “Red Dawn” was listed in the Guinness Book of Records as having more acts of violence than any other movie at that time, with 2.23 incidents per minute. The cast includes Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, Powers Boothe, Ron O’Neal and Jennifer Grey, who three years later re-teamed with Swayze in “Dirty Dancing.”

Kate Jackson in her ‘Rookie’ days

Couch Potato: Before she became one of TV’s “Charlie’s Angels,” Kate Jackson was a regular on the ABC police series “The Rookies” from 1972 to 1976. The first season of the popular series makes its DVD debut Tuesday. The hourlong show focused on three tenderfoot cops -- Terry Webster (Georg Stanford Brown), Willie Gillis (Michael Ontkean) and Mike Danko (Sam Melville) -- who were learning the ropes in a large Southern California metropolis.

Gerald S. O’Loughlin played their no-nonsense mentor Lt. Ryker, who was assigned to mold these young men into seasoned officers. Jackson played Jill, Danko’s wife, who worked as a nurse.

Also making its DVD bow Tuesday is “Voyagers: The Complete Series,” a flop sci-fi show aimed at the kiddies that aired on NBC from 1982 to 1983. The series revolved around a group of trained time travelers, the Voyagers of the title.

Jon-Erik Hexum played one such traveler, called Phineas Bogg; Meeno Peluce played Jeffrey Jones, a kid who becomes Bogg’s partner. At the conclusion of each episode, Peluce would tell the young viewers to go to the library to get more information about the historical events depicted.

-- Susan King