Here's a variety of recently released DVDs.
"My Name Is Nobody" (Image, 1974, PG, $19.99). Henry Fonda gets top billing, but this is Terence Hill's show, a languid spaghetti Western produced by Sergio Leone, laced with slapstick and boasting perhaps the goofiest score ever written by Ennio Morricone.
Fonda plays an aging gunfighter on the verge of retiring, while Hill plays a young quick-draw who worships Fonda and who simply refers to himself as "Nobody." But Hill never ventures far from his "They Call Me Trinity" persona as he goads Fonda into taking on the 150-strong Wild Bunch to ensure his name in history.
Amusing in places with some very funny send-ups of prototypical Western cliches. Filmed in Spain; cast includes veteran American character actors Geoffrey Lewis and R.G. Armstrong (wrongly billed as "R.K.").
Extras: Widescreen, chapters.
"The Winning Season" (Paramount, 2004, PG, $14.99). This made-for-TNT cable movie is an old-fashioned fantasy (which may bring to mind "Field of Dreams") as a young boy in the mid-1980s goes back in time to the 1909 World Series, where he interacts with Honus Wagner (Matthew Modine) and his fiance (Kristin Davis). Sentimental but warm-hearted family fare, with a nice re-creation of the period.
Extras: Full screen, chapters.
"Beaches: Special Edition" (Touchstone, 1988, PG-13, $19.99). This reissue of "Beaches" has some bonus material for fanatical fans, but the film remains a hit-and-miss affair, with its soap opera tale of a 30-year friendship between two women, childhood friends from different sides of the tracks. Barbara Hershey, as the upper-crust woman, is strangely aloof, but Bette Midler is fabulous as the wrong-side-of-the-tracks girl who makes good. Her character as a child is played by Mayim Bialik, who is also a knockout. Lainie Kazan is also good as her mother.
Extras: Widescreen, audio commentary (by director Garry Marshall), interview with Bialik, Hershey's screen test, bloopers, music video, optional French language and subtitles, chapters.
"Plain Truth" (Lifetime/Warner, 2005, not rated, $19.98).
"I Do (But I Don't)" (Lifetime/Warner, 2005, not rated, $19.98). These two Lifetime cable-channel movies are as different as night and day.
"Plain Truth" is an interesting murder mystery, laced with the genre's cliches. But the setting, an Amish community in Pennsylvania, gives it a boost, as do the performances by Allison Pill as a young Amish woman who may or may not have killed her illegitimate baby after hiding the pregnancy, and Mariska Hargitay ("Law & Order: Special Victims Unit") as her worldly lawyer.
"I Do" is a rehash of "The Wedding Planner," with Denise Richards instead of Jennifer Lopez, and with more slapstick and Richards' bad voiceover narration. She's the overworked wedding planner who is pursued by a fireman (Dean Cain), until mistakes and lack of trust come between them. All will end well, of course, in this so-so effort.
Extras: Full frame, deleted scene, making-of featurette, language and subtitle options (English, Spanish), chapters.
"Survivor: The Complete Second Season: Australian Outback" (CBS/Paramount, 2001, not rated, $49.99, six discs). The second season places the usual mix of offbeat and scheming characters in the Australian outback, which makes for a fascinating setting as we see who melts down and who is willing to do just about anything to stay on TV another week. Fans consider this one of the best seasons of the show.
Extras: Full frame, audio commentary (on six episodes by participants), making-of featurettes, "The Greatest and Most Outrageous Moments" (previously released DVD), chapters.
E-mail: hicks@desnews.com