Video Patrol: 'Lord of the Rings' DVD suitable for film's fans

New Line. VHS-DVD. 223 min. Rated PG-13. $24.99/$39.99. In stores Nov. 18. Grade: A.

If you liked the theatrical version of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, you're going to love the expanded edition on video and DVD.

Director Peter Jackson has added 43 minutes, bringing an already super-size fantasy to a new running time of three hours and 23 minutes.

And not just superfluous footage, either. No, these additions help flesh out the story and lend texture to the plot. You actually learn details missing from the original narrative.

The plot hasn't changed this middle piece of the Middle-earthtrilogy. The human Aragorn (Viggo Mortsensen), the wise elf Legolas (Orlando Bloom), and the dwarf Gimli (John Rhyes-Davies) continue their search for a pair of kidnapped Hobbits, even as Frodo and faithful companion Sam (Elijah Woods, Sean Astin) head toward Mordor where they hope to destroy the powerful ring that could annihilate Middle-earth.

The new material extends some scenes and better connects others. We learn, for instance, that Aragorn is 87 years old. How and why? You'll have to watch. There's also more of Merry and Pippin in the forest of talking trees, and an eight-minute extension to the finale of this chapter that adds not only context, but a nice dollop of comedy.

The expanded feature takes up two discs; a slew of extras take up another two. It's like bonus material on steroids: Audio commentary by the director, writers, designers and the principal actors; 15 mini-documentaries, covering everything from the music to Andy Serkis' performance as the enigmatic Gollum; a Middle-earth Atlas and a look at some of the "abandoned concepts" that never made it into the finished film.

In the end, of course, icing is irrelevant if you've got a rotten cake. Fortunately for old and new J.R.R. Tolkien fans alike, Peter Jackson does a masterful job of bringing his Middle-earth masterpiece to life.

"Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd."

New Line. VHS-DVD. 96 min. Rated PG-13. $19.96/$27.95. Grade: C.

Back in 1994 "Dumb and Dumber" proved the breakout movie for Jim Carrey and the Farrelly brothers, a comical collision of the slapstick and the crude that chronicled the mishaps of two utter morons (Jeff Daniels being Dumb to Carrey's Dumber).

So why did it take nine years for Hollywood to deliver a sequel?

Probably because the first one pretty much exhausted the subject. That hasn't kept director Troy Miller from giving it the old college try. He casts look-alikes Eric Christian Olsen and Derek Richards in the roles of Harry and Lloyd, and backs the story up to their high school years. The plot has something to do with the goofs recruiting students to join a special education class concocted by the principal to bilk money from the district.

The only bright spots are supporting performances by Eugene Levy and Cheri Oteri as the principal and his lusty cafeteria lady love. They provide an oasis of laughter in an otherwise insipid mirage.

What? You weren't expecting Oscar-worthy fare? That's good, because you don't get anything close here. As sequels go, it's thoroughly mediocre.

"Winged Migration."

Columbia. VHS-DVD. 85 min. Rated G. Rental. In stores Nov. 18. Grade: B+.

"Winged Migration" is a remarkable achievement from the director who brought us Microcosmos a few years back. Where Jacques Perrin's earlier film chronicled the secret lives of insects, "Migration" offers us birds -- an incredible array of them -- as they encircle the globe during their fall and spring migrations.

Shot in more than 40 countries on every continent over three years, it's a movie devoted to the beauty of birds in flight. From the Arctic to the Amazon we watch as various feathered armies make their way from feeding to nesting grounds and back again.

Perrin's narration is kept to a minimum, with the focus mostly on wing-tip visuals. Five minutes into this movie and you feel like you're flying amid a flock as it soars above the clouds, dives into rivers and lakes, braves blizzards and blazing desert suns.

Yet the construction of this movie poses a minor dilemma. It's neither fiction nor traditional documentary. The moviemakers raised hundreds of birds from hatchlings to get an emotional imprint that would allow gliders armed with cameras to fly beside the flocks, yet remain unobtrusive.

You won't find this information in "Migration" proper -- or the fact that it took two months of filming to get a minute of finished footage. It's in the fascinating documentary on the DVD, which chronicles how 350 people put this astonishing movie together.

If a coffee table book about birds could fly, it would look like Winged Migration.

'All the Real Girls' catches love's thrilling fever

"George Washington" is a distinctly Southern yet transcendentally mythic exercise in regional comedy-tragedy. It didn't get much theatrical distribution, but its status as an important independent American film was confirmed when it was released on DVD by The Criterion Collection, a prestige label dedicated to definitive editions of influential movies by such directors as Truffaut, Hitchcock and Kurosawa.

Writer-director David Gordon Green followed "George Washington" this year with "All the Real Girls," which failed to expand the filmmaker's audience. Despite being picked up for theatrical release by Sony Pictures Classics, the film earned few playdates after its lukewarm reception at the Sundance Film Festival.

Now, "All the Real Girls" is available on DVD and VHS from Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment. The film is a love story, which makes it more accessible than its disturbing kid-populated predecessor, but it's also clearly the work of a unique, visionary filmmaker who seems influenced by David Lynch, Terrence Malick and the "Our Gang" comedies.

Honest and melancholy, "All the Real Girls" examines the fragile small-town love affair between Paul (Green's longtime friend Paul Schneider), an intelligent but unambitious womanizer, and smart Noel (Zooey Deschanel, of the new "Elf"), the sister of Paul's "No. 1 best friend" (Shea Whigham).

Like "George Washington," "Girls" was shot among the eerily beautiful misty mountains and railroad yards of the Asheville region of North Carolina. Also as in "Washington," the margins of the film are populated by offbeat characters (Patricia Clarkson as a professional clown) and odd sights (a defective dog walks along contentedly on its forelegs while its stunted hindlegs dangle uselessly).

Even so, "All the Real Girls" occasionally is more clunky than poetic, as when Noel tells Paul: "I had a dream that you grew a garden on a trampoline and I was so happy that I invented peanut butter." A good editor would have snipped that sentence after "trampoline."

More often, however, "Girls" is utterly believable, capturing the almost narcotic sensation of new love without manipulating the viewer with sentiment or melodrama. As Noel tells Paul: "You're the first person that I've wanted to talk to for more than five minutes, ever." To some extent, "All the Real Girls" seems to represent a holding pattern for Green, who surrounded himself with college friends during the film's apparently enjoyable and comfortable production.

Green discusses his motives and hopes on the DVD's excellent commentary track, which he shares with Schneider. Says Green of his career plans: "I want 'em to have to design a new label at Blockbuster video for my movies, 'cause they don't fit into 'Comedies' or 'Drama' or 'Action' . . ." Next, he's scheduled to direct the film adaptation of the John Kennedy Toole novel, "A Confederacy of Dunces."

Writer John Beifuss of The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn., contributed the review of 'All the Real Girls' to this article.