NOTABLE DVDS | Coming this month

TODAY
"American Dreams: Season One": This "extended music edition" of the debut 2002-03 season includes musical performances by Usher, LeAnn Rimes and others that were not seen on TV.
"Columbo: The Complete First Season" and "Magnum P.I.: The Complete First Season": Two of the most enduringly popular TV detective series, starring, respectively, Peter Falk as a deceptively clever police detective in Los Angeles and Tom Selleck as a down-to-earth private eye in Hawaii, make their DVD debuts.
"The Alfred Hitchcock Signature Collection": Available in a deluxe box set or as individual titles, the eight films from the 1940s and '50s by the master of suspense include "Dial M for Murder," "Foreign Correspondent," "Suspicion," "Stage Fright," "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," "Strangers on a Train," "I Confess" and "The Wrong Man."
"Judgment at Nuremberg": The 1961 drama about the Holocaust and the Allied tribunal that prosecuted German judges for war crimes under the Nazi regime was directed by Stanley Kramer and stars Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Marlene Dietrich and Maximilian Schell. One of the bonus features includes a conversation between Oscar winners Schell and screenwriter Abby Mann.
"More Treasures from American Film Archives, 1894-1931": This three-DVD boxed set presents more than nine hours of influential and rare silent films, both fiction and nonfiction.
SEPT. 14
"Angels in America": Mike Nichols' stunning HBO production of Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning play about AIDS, politics and morality in 1980s New York is released on DVD a week before the Emmy Awards, for which it received 21 nominations. The stellar cast includes Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, Mary-Louise Parker and Jeffrey Wright.
"The Ladykillers": Tom Hanks teamed up with the Coen brothers to make this outrageous 2004 comedy about minor criminals planning a major heist.
"THX 1138": George Lucas' first feature film, a 1971 sci-fi adventure starring Robert Duvall, appears in a director's cut along with a commentary by Lucas, and more.
SEPT. 21
"Star Wars" trilogy: This four-disc set brings together George Lucas' first three films in his epic sci-fi saga, including "A New Hope" (originally titled, and still popularly known as, "Star Wars," 1977), "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980) and "Return of the Jedi" (1983), all newly restored and remastered, plus a 21/2-hour documentary, "Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy," and other bonus features.
"The Battle of Algiers": A three-disc edition of Gillo Pontecorvo's seminal political film about Algeria's struggle for independence from France. It includes seven documentary features about the movie's influence, the director's filmmaking style, the history of popular resistance to French colonialism, and more.
"John Cassavetes: Five Films": This eight-disc boxed set celebrates one of the founding fathers of modern American independent filmmaking. Director Cassavetes' films included in the set are "Shadows," "Faces," "A Woman Under the Influence," "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" and "Opening Night," plus three DVDs-worth of bonus features.
"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind": Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet star in this offbeat 2004 comedy about lost memories and found love, written by Charlie Kaufman.
"The Pallisers: The Complete Collection": This 22-hour BBC miniseries, based on Anthony Trollope's novels about life among the aristocrats in Victorian England, launched PBS' "Masterpiece Theatre."
SEPT. 28
"Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic": These legendary televised concerts, produced from 1958-73, have long been considered one of the most entertaining introductions to classical music ever made. The nine-disc set includes 25 concerts.
"Homicide: Life on the Street: The Complete Season 5": From 1996-97, this collection of 22 episodes from one of TV's all-time-best police dramas includes the memorable Emmy Award-winning "Prison Riot" episode, featuring guest star Charles S. Dutton.
"Super Size Me": Morgan Spurlock's 2004 documentary hit examines what will happen to a human body -- Spurlock's, in this case -- if it consumes an all-McDonald's diet.
"Van Helsing": A mild disappointment at the box office earlier this year, the makers of this costly, special-effects extravaganza about a vampire fighter, starring Hugh Jackman, hope to recoup their expenses via DVD sales.
Source: Bruce Dancis, Sacramento Bee