new on home video

February 9, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Available today:

“A Serious Man,” the Coen Brothers’ Academy Award-nominated movie, leads this week’s DVD releases, although the pack’s sales leader probably will be the un-nominated “Couples Retreat,” written by and starring Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau.

But there’s much more of interest in today’s releases, including “Emma,” the BBC adaptation of the Jane Austen romance, with Romola Garai in the title role, Jonny Lee Miller (Eli Stone in the TV series) as Mr. Knightley, Michael Gambon (the “Harry Potter” films) as Mr. Woodhouse and Rupert Evans (”Hellboy”) as Frank Churchill.

The film, whose three-part PBS Masterpiece Classic showing ended Sunday, comes to home video just two days later. Bonus bits include features on costumes and locations and an interview with Gambon. The two-disc set is unrated and has a list price of $34.98.

“Bad Girls of Film Noir” is a two-volume collection of films (priced separately) made between 1946 and ’56, all featuring dangerous dames. The films are unrated, and each volume costs $24.96. Volume 1 includes “The Killer That Stalked New York,” “Two of a Kind,” “The Glass Wall” and the lusciously over-the-top “Bad for Each Other,” starring Charlton Heston trying to choose between the good-girl nurse played by Dianne Foster and the tempting socialite-divorcee played by Lizabeth Scott. Volume 2 features “Night Editor,” “One Girl’s Confession,” “Over-Exposed” and “Women’s Prison.” Ida Lupino, Cleo Moore and Lupino’s husband at the time, Howard Duff, star in this film set in a prison where women are in one “division” and men are caged on the other side of the wall.

—The Sacramento Bee