The ALIAS Cube!! Animated TREK!! Borat!! Katz!! Seinfeld!! Herc's Season-Box DVD Vault!!

“What. Was Wrong. With the black one?”
I am – Hercules!!

Here’s what the “Alias” season-sets run you on Amazon if you buy them new and separately: $45.88 Season One $55.99 Season Two $62.99 Season Three $45.99 Season Four $27.87 Season Five $238.72 the complete series But for only $139.87, you can get The Rambaldi Cube, containing every disc in the five season sets, plus some exclusive bonus items. (Note please that $139.87 is about $25 less than you’d pay for the first three seasons by themselves.) What The Rambaldi Cube has that the season sets don’t: THE RAMBALDI BOX The box itself is a replica of the ornate faux-Renaissance cube we saw in the series, all felt and foil and hidden magnets holding it together. One side of the cube features a map of the world (including the Americas, which Rambaldi apparently rendered with perfect accuracy years before Columbus “discovered” them). The only text on the cube is the small word “IRINA” etched in the top. (The series’ writers explain why within.) The thin “Alias” cardboard strip that adorns it (and assures us that only 40,000 copies of this set will ever be manufactured) can be slid easily on and off. Without the “Alias” strip, it could pass for an elaborate metal jewel box (or something else not at all series-set-like). THE RAMBALDI BOOK For those unfamiliar, know that Milo Giacomo Rambaldi, born 1444, is an unseen but crucial figure in “Alias’” underlying mythology. An inventor who somehow knew of his future and ours, he was apparently able to design and produce technologies far more advanced than any we utilize today. Anyone who could unlock his secrets today could conceivably use them to rule the world. Exclusive to the Rambaldi Box is the 28-page hardcover booklet in which the show’s writing staff answers some of the most frequently asked questions regarding the seer and inventor, including: * Is Sydney, Sloane or any other character related to Rambaldi? * What is Rambaldi’s endgame? * What is “The Prophesy”? * Is “The Passenger” a specific person? * When Ana got transformed into Sydney, did she take Sydney’s place in The Prophesy? * Is that Sydney on Page 47? * How could Rambaldi have conceived an image of Sydney over 500 years ago? * Why is Irina’s name on The Cube? The writers answer other questions as well, such as: * What really happened with Jack, Irina and Sloane? * Who is Nadia’s dad? Is it definitely Sloane? * Did Bill Vaughn steal Nadia from Irina personally or from the KGB? * Did Irina really love Jack? * Is Nadia really dead? * Did Sloane really sacrifice Nadia, or was it an accident? * At his core, is Sloane good or bad? * Sark: good or bad? * Who was “Deep Throat”? * What are some storylines that never saw the light of day? (One of the ideas batted around, apparently, was that Rambaldi was actually a time traveler from the 21st century who got stuck in the 15th!) THE HIDDEN RAMBALDI BONUS DISC The “Alias: The Complete Collection” bonus disc – which is “hidden” (but fairly easy to find once you remove everything from within the box – just don’t pull apart anything that’s glued together!!) - embraces the Milo Rambaldi component of “Alias” as aggressively, perhaps, as ABC sought to ditch it. The first thing that greets the viewer (after the Buena Vista Home Entertainment logo and the FBI warning, of course) is a small, glowing “Rambaldi Eye,” the bracket-O-bracket that disappears when you try to publish it in HTML code. Click the eye and discover the bonus disc is divided into seven sections: I. Case Closed: A Look Back at Five Years of Alias II. Alias Time Capsule: The Pilot Interviews III. Forty-seven IV. Axis of Evil V. Deleted Scenes VI: Alias Magazine: Complete Cover Gallery, and VII: Register Your DVD I. Case Closed is itself divided into five sections: IA. Introduction (1:41) Steven Spielberg(!) and others discuss the appeal of the series. (Apparently Tom Cruise wasn’t the only one who watched the season sets J.J. Abrams’ assistant handed out as parting gifts.) IB. Created By (7:43) A look at Abrams and the first TV show he created solo. Learn that an 11-year-old Abrams, shortly after the release of “Jaws,” sent Spielberg a fake severed finger. Learn from Spielberg that an associate of Spielberg hired a 14-year-old Abrams to edit movies Spielberg made when Speilberg was 14! See pre-production test footage with writer-director Abrams using Barbie dolls, toy cars and office carpet to work out shots for the pilot. See more test footage with a cinematographer Michael Bonvillain running and jumping about in a Bristow-like manner. Learn of the doubts had about Jennifer Garner before she started taking Karate lessons. Hear Spielberg speculate on the influence on “Alias” of John Woo, Jackie Chan and Hong Kong cinema generally. IC. Alias Undercover (6:00) A look at all the aliases employed by the characters over the years in their undercover missions. See Syd introduce herself as a great many different people in many different wigs and sexy outfits. See Jennifer Garner remember an astonishing amount of foreign-language dialog. ID. A Fan Farewell (9:25) Perhaps my favorite feature. Abrams briefly discusses how he consulted the Internet fan sites after each episode, but most of this segment is comprised of numerous videotape submissions from fans (former “Man Show” host Jimmy Kimmel among them). My personal favorite comes from one Rachel Lane, who discusses why the famous second-season Super Bowl episode, “Phase One,” is her favorite. “I will never forget that night my entire life,” remembers Lane. “Me and my friends sitting around the couches, screaming and not being able to form coherent thoughts or sentences.” (I had the same reaction, but eventually collected myself; read AICN’s five-star appraisal of that episode, and the reaction of numerous other readers that remarkable Sunday here.) IE. The Final Chapter (11:58) A look at the making of the series’ last episode. Behold an awkward would-be on-screen kiss shared by Mrs. Ben Affleck and her former boyfriend. See Rachael Nichols’ teary farewell to the crew. Learn that the last shot Garner filmed involved Syd cradling her mortally wounded pop. II. Alias Time Capsule: The Pilot Interviews (6:43) A shaky hand-held camera appears to invade the cast’s trailers as the pilot is being shot. Garner seems astonished to be at the center of a big-deal network enterprise. Michael Vartan, just coming off the male lead of “Never Been Kissed,” seems a little amazed he may have just signed up to do a TV show for five years. III. Forty-Seven (4:52) Page 47 of the Rambaldi artifacts was the one with Syd’s face on it. This minidoc illustrates the many instances in which the writers (and others in the show’s employ) utilize that magic number. With exactly 47 seconds left to go in this segment, J.J. Abrams finally explains: “It was always meant to represent the mystery of life […] I feel that there’s a wonderful conclusion to that original promise, which is: there’s something weird in the world.” Which sheds much light, I think, on 4 18 15 16 23 42 and the vast number of coincidences that have come to populate Abrams’ subsequent creation, the sci-fi drama “Lost.” IV. Axis of Evil (4:20) A rundown of the many SPECTREs and SMERSHes and CHAOSes that menaced Syd, including SD-6, The Alliance, K-Directorate, The Covenant, FTL, The Man and Prophet 5. V. Deleted Scenes. These are all from season five. (The proper season-five set collected in The Rambaldi Box does not contain deleted scenes.) V-A. Prophet Five: Protection (:46) Vaughn explains why he couldn’t tell Syd something. V-B. Bob: Jack and Elizabeth (1:52) Syd’s Dad shares a cuddle with a married friend. V-C. All The Time in the World: Testing (2:12) A super-cool Syd-Dixon flashback scene (cut, I’d wager, from the series finale), set while Syd was still interviewing for her first job at SD-6. VI: Alias Magazine: Complete Cover Gallery. 23 covers, 20 of which feature Garner’s kisser. A slightly annoying extra. Even when one enlarges the covers to fill the screen, it’s impossible to make out the dates of the issues, and difficult-to-impossible to make out a lot of the cover text. One issue, apparently published prior to season four, features a pencil sketch of Syd and reads: “Exclusive: The Making of The Animated Alias.” VII: Register Your DVD is just a page of text trying to get you to sign up for, among other things, “notification of special offers and updates on other Buena Vista Home Entertainment DVD titles.”

FIFTH SEASON BONUS FEATURES: (In the Rambaldi Box but also presumably available on the fifth season-set available separately.) Celebrating 100 (9:38) Director Robert Williams describes the 100th episode as both as the most difficult episode of the series and like shooting “Alias: The Motion Picture.” First-season characters Will Tippin and Ana Espinosa came back. Rachel Nichols speaks her first foreign-language dialogue. The tank of red fluid that transforms Ana into Syd was leaky, unsound and lit from below. Watch as cast members get hammered and eat a giant cake. The Legend of Rambaldi (7:32) Starting like a Discovery Channel documentary, it tells us the seer was abandoned at birth on the step of a monastery, and was soon put to work as a cardinal’s engineer and prophet. We visit the production prop room where all the Rambaldi artifacts are stored. A clock billed here as “the first” Rambaldi artifact, a clock, cost $10,000 and blew the budget. We also get a good look at the real Rambaldi cube, which did not contain any DVDs. Heightening the Drama: The Music of Alias (8:53) Composer Michael Giacchino gets his moment in the spotlight. We learn that the show grew less “techno”-sounding as the seasons wore on. We learn that there’s both a “Good Sloane Theme” and a “Bad Sloane Theme.” Many horns and violins are glimpsed! The New Recruit: On Set With Rachel Nichols (7:45) The towering former model, science whiz and “The Inside” lead takes us inside her trailer and show us her plastic, flesh-colored “adhesive bra.” See her fluff a scene by getting her jacket caught in a door! We see her audition tape. Nichols tells us David Anders has very soft lips. Abrams tells us she has hands the size of Buicks. The Bloopers of Alias (5:32) Abrams and Garner reenact their first conversation regarding “Alias.” Rachel Nichols takes a punch to the cooter. Tragically, all the naughty language is bleeped. FIFTH SEASON COMMENTARIES: “Prophet Five” features commentary by Victor Garber, writer Jeff Pinkner and director Ken Olin. “Bob” features commentary by Rachel Nichols, David Anders and writers Monica Breen and Alison Schapker. “The Horizon” features commentary by writers Johs Appelbaum and Andre Nemec and director Tucker Gates. “There’s Only One Sydney Bristow” features commentary by production assistants Sparky Hawes, Brian Studler, Cliff Olin and Chris Hollier.

HBO Home Video was smart to issue for the holidays a discounted edition of the brilliant and relentlessly hilarious Da Ali G Show: Da Compleet Seereez but silly, given the looming “Borat” blockbuster, not to stick Borat and Bruno beside Ali on the cover. All of Borat’s early HBO adventures are included, along with Borat footage at the Hamptons Horse Show and the American Patriotism Event that never found its way to HBO. The set also contains bonus footage with Ali and Bruno and commentary by improvisational supergenius Sacha Baron Cohen and fellow writer/producer Dan Mazer.

First-rate improvisation attends also Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist: The Complete Second Season. The 13 episodes comprising the 1995-96 season feature vocal appearances by comedians Tom Agna, Todd Barry, Joy Behar, Sandra Bernhard, Bill Braudis, Eddie Brill, Louis CK, Janeane Garofalo, Dom Irrera, Brian Kiley, Carol Liefer, Marc Maron, Kevin Meaney, Emo Phillips, Ray Romano, Rita Rudner, Lew Schneider, Gary Shandling, Barry Sobel, Fred Stoller, Judy Tenuta and Steven Wright. Jonathan Katz and Laura Silverman (Sarah’s sister, who plays the disdainful receptionist) offer commentary. At $17.87, the Katz set has more episodes than the Ali set for about half the price.

In Seinfeld: The Complete Seventh Season, the last season overseen by co-creator Larry David, George gets engaged to NBC exec Susan, Elaine and Kramer kidnap the dog that won’t stop barking, Elaine consults a Rabbi with a cable show, Elaine begins dating “The Maestro,” Jackie Chiles helps Kramer sue a coffeehouse, a grapefruit mishap causes George to wink involuntarily, Kramer makes a baseball promise to a very sick boy, Kramer gets a hot tub, Elaine gets writer’s block, George hides his ATM code from Susan, a one-legged man thinks Jerry is mocking him, Kramer tries to reorganize the fire department, George spends the night at J. Peterman’s house, George freaks out when Jerry encourages Elaine to befriend Susan, Jerry freaks out when George tells Susan the secret of Jerry’s jeans size, Kramer starts giving out movie showtimes, George buys Jon Voight’s car, Elaine dates a jazz musician who won’t go down on her, a scheme to replace a marble rye is hatched, a tardy locksmith puts George in line for a promotion, Elaine takes on the “braless wonder,” George gets angry when Susan’s cousin poaches the name he was saving for his first offspring, Jerry dates a woman who always wears the same dress, George learns he could have dated Marisa Tomei, Kramer torments a cable guy, Elaine tests positive for opium, Newman secures black-market shower-heads, Jerry mocks Uncle Leo on “The Tonight Show,” George is spooked by a doll that looks like his mother, Jerry starts dating Susan’s best friend, Jerry walks off with a Friars Club jacket, Elaine thinks a “deaf” coworker is faking, Kramer puts on a back-up dreamcoat and pulls a hooker from his car, Jerry dates a girl who can get anything she wants, George’s job is tied to calzone access, Kramer and Newman hatch a bottle-refund scheme, Jerry’s mechanic is appalled by his neglect, Steinbrenner has George committed, Elaine overbids for Kennedy’s golf clubs, Kramer’s jeans prove dangerously tight, Jerry falls for his own female doppelganger, Susan succumbs to her own wedding invitations, George angers The Soup Nazi and Elaine introduces the phrase “sponge-worthy.” Because the sitcom has manifested such a huge presence in syndication for so long, Sony is obligated to fill all the “Seinfeld” season sets with loads of extras, and Seinfeld: The Complete Seventh Season does not deviate from pattern. Included are deleted scenes, a blooper reel, Seinfeld stand-up footage and seven featurettes, and 10 of the 24 episodes carry commentaries.

In 1973, four long years after NBC booted the live-action series and six long years before Paramount released the first movie, Star Trek: The Animated Series was heralded among fans as a Saturday-morning miracle. Not only did the cartoon version get Shatner, Nimoy, Kelley, Doohan, Nichols and Takei to reprise their most famous characters vocally, it got a lot of the better live-action “Trek” writers to script, including Samuel A. Peeples (“Where No Man Has Gone Before”), Margaret Armen (“The Paradise Syndrome”), David Gerrold (“The Trouble With Tribbles”), Stephen Kandel (“I, Mudd”), David P. Harmon (“A Piece of the Action,” “The Deadly Years”) and D.C. Fontana (“Charlie X,” “Tomorrow is Yesterday,” “This Side of Paradise,” “Journey to Babel”). Harry Mudd, Cyrano Jones, Sarek, Kor and the Guardian of Forever returned, and the series introduced a slew of new recurring characters, including the Enterprise’s orange three-armed navigator Lt. Arex and the bipedal feline Lt. M’Ress. Acclaimed sci-fi novelist Larry Niven got his first screen credit by adapting a his story “The Soft Weapon” into the episode “The Slaver Weapon” – a terrific installment that effectively sucked Spock into Niven’s esteemed “Ringworld” universe! The time-travel episode “Yesteryear” gave us our first look at Spock’s childhood pet sehlat. And we learned that one Robert April was the first man to captain the NCC-1701. We learned in the episode “The Practical Joker” that Kirk’s NCC-1701 had a holodeck. (If that sounds improbable, we’d learn much later that Jonathan Archer’s NX-01 had the same technology a hundred years earlier.) “Life-support belts” created personal force fields that allowed crewmen to survive harsh environments without spacesuits. Numerous elements introduced in the animated series migrated to “Trek” video games, comics and novels, and a few even turned up in the subsequent “Trek” movies and TV series, including a tribble predator called a “glommer” and Spock’s mom’s maiden name being “Grayson.” Sixteen episodes were produced in the first season, only six more in season two, and all 22 are collected in this pretty white box. From Curt Danhauser’s Guide To The Animated Star Trek:

The extras officially confirmed are: * "Drawn to the Final Frontier - The Making of Star Trek: The Animated Series" * "What's the Star Trek Connection?" * Photo Gallery * Show History * Wallpaper * AIM Icons * Text Commentaries by Michael Okuda and Denise Okuda ("Yesteryear," "The Eye of the Beholder," "The Counter-Clock Incident"). Unconfirmed extras that behind-the-scenes sources have mentioned include commentary and/or interviews featuring: * Associate Producer/Story Editor/Writer D.C. Fontana. * Filmation Producer Lou Scheimer * Director Hal Sutherland who helmed 20 of the 22 episodes. * David Wise, the Co-Writer of the episode "How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth". * Writer David Gerrold, talking about his episodes "Bem" and the original series tribbles sequel, "More Tribbles, More Troubles". * Judith and Garfield Reese-Stevens (STAR TREK novelists, Enterprise Writers/Co-Producers, Co-Authors of several non-fiction Trek books including STAR TREK: Phase II, The Art of Star Trek and the tenth anniversary tome STAR TREK: The Next generation - The Continuing Mission) to discuss their perspective on the animated series' place in Trek history. * Walter Koenig, writer of "The Infinite Vulcan" animated episode.

Herc’s Popular Pricing Pantry!! The all-important Christmas shopping season looms, and the DVD vendors want you to give their stuff instead of everybody else’s.

Note please that Warner Bros. Home Entertainment has lopped a whopping 50% off a load of its sets, including its first three wonderful, extra-crammed Looney Tunes golden collections. Each set contains 60 of the best shorts produced for the cinema series and typically go for about $45 or $50 each: Looney Tunes Golden Collection $32.47 Volume One $32.47 Volume Two $32.47 Volume Three