"Rent": Director Chris Columbus went from back-to-back blockbusters with the first two "Harry Potter" flicks to box-office dud with this lame adaptation of the stage musical smash, which leads a rush

"Rent": Director Chris Columbus went from back-to-back blockbusters with the first two "Harry Potter" flicks to box-office dud with this lame adaptation of the stage musical smash, which leads a rush of underachieving new releases hitting DVD. "Rent" reunites most of the original Broadway cast, including Taye Diggs, Adam Pascal and Tony winner Wilson Jermaine Heredia, with Rosario Dawson leading the newcomers in playwright Jonathan Larson's story of friends, lovers, transsexuals and addicts coping with poverty, landlords and AIDS. Along with five deleted scenes, the two-disc set packs a documentary examining the life of Larson, who died as the show was going into previews in 1996, and the phenomenon the play became after his death. Columbus is joined by cast members for commentary. DVD set, $28.96. (Sony)
"North Country": The best of the week's new releases still is no prize with its sappy courtroom conclusion, though it features terrific performances led by Charlize Theron and Frances McDormand, who earned Academy Awards nominations. Theron stars as a single mom who bucks tradition and goes to work in the mines of Minnesota, where she ends up leading a sexual harassment case over the rotten treatment the company's handful of female miners receive from male co-workers. Along with McDormand as an ailing miner, Theron is backed by a top-notch cast that includes Sissy Spacek, Woody Harrelson, Richard Jenkins and Sean Bean. The DVD has a background segment and deleted scenes. DVD, $28.98. (Warner Bros.)
"The Weather Man": Nicolas Cage brings gray skies to this bizarrely dreary comic drama from Gore Verbinski, another director who went from blockbuster ("Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl") to box-office stinker. Cage stars as a weather man who makes a fortune for his easy gig on a Chicago TV station and has an audition for a network job yet is perpetually bummed-out over his failed marriage, the shadow cast by his brilliant father (Michael Caine) and pretty much everything else in his life. The DVD has five behind-the-scenes featurettes whose titles -- such as "Atmospheric Pressure: The Style and Pallette" and "Relative Humidity: The Characters" -- are as clever as anything in the movie itself. DVD, $29.99. (Paramount)
"Domino": The week's true bomb is this action thriller from director Tony Scott, who sinks to new extremes of excess with the outrageous fictional plot the movie appends to the intriguing life story of Domino Harvey. The daughter of actor Laurence Harvey, Domino worked as a model before taking a U-turn to become a bounty hunter. Keira Knightley goes for broke with an all-out earnest performance in the title role, backed by Mickey Rourke as her bounty-hunting mentor and partner, as they become swept up in an explosively preposterous casino heist. Scott teams with screenwriter Richard Kelly for commentary, and the DVD has nine deleted scenes, a segment on the real Domino Harvey and a featurette on the movie's lurid visual style. DVD, $27.98. (New Line)
"All the President's Men": Thankfully, great stuff from the vaults helps offset the week's unremarkable new releases. Alan J. Pakula's superb 1976 thriller about the Watergate investigation and the fall of a president, previously available in a bare-bones DVD release, gets a nice makeover with this two-disc set. The set features commentary from Robert Redford, who stars as Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward opposite Dustin Hoffman as journalistic partner Carl Bernstein. Other DVD extras include segments about the two journalists and on Deep Throat, Woodward's clandestine source, along with a making-of featurette. Also included is a 1970s interview with Jason Robards, who won an Oscar as Post Editor Ben Bradlee. DVD set, $26.99. (Warner Bros.)
"Midnight Cowboy": Another Dustin Hoffman treasure from the back-catalog gets a DVD update. John Schlesinger's 1969 buddy tale stars Hoffman as the manic street rodent Ratso Rizzo and Jon Voight as a naive stud in the big city, the two forging an odd-couple comic drama that went on to win best picture at the Oscars. Hoffman and Voight contribute new interviews on the two-disc set, which includes segments looking back on the career of the late Schlesinger and the furor caused by the film, which was rated X back in the day. The package also has commentary from producer Jerome Hellman and a set of "Midnight Cowboy" postcards. DVD set, $29.95. (Sony)
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