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Welcome to How to Spend $20, BOP's look at the latest DVDs to hit stores nationwide. This week: Two pop culture icons celebrate milestones, while Brendan Fraser goes to the center of the Earth...but does he return?

Pick of the Week

For people who knew Bluto was a zit before he told us: Animal House (30th Anniversary Edition)

Made on a budget of only a couple million dollars, Animal House surprisingly scored more than $140 million in domestic theaters when it was released in July 1978. Arguably the father of the gross-out film genre, the sex comedy celebrates its 30th anniversary this year with a brand new DVD, packed with an assortment of goodies like a feature-length documentary about the classic.

Of course, this is one those movies that needs no synopsis refresher. If you're in the dark, then you're probably not going to go out and get this anyway. What's that? You've never heard of double secret probation?

Disc includes: Animal House's 30th Anniversary documentary (98 minutes), Animal House: The Inside Story featurette, The Yearbook: An Animal House Reunion featurette, Scene it?: Animal House, Where Are They Now?: A Delta Alumni Update.





For people who enjoy sunflower seeds: The 4400: The Complete Series

What was originally scheduled to be just a one-off miniseries turned into much more than that. Up until its cancellation last year, The 4400 was a gargantuan hit for the USA Network, which kept the sci-fi series on air for more than a season due to better-than-anticipated ratings. However, that same justification — the ratings — contributed to its eventual decline. With low numbers in its fourth season, The 4400 got the boot, despite ending its run on a cliffhanger.

The series, from co-creators René Echevarria and Scott Peters, revolves around a group of 4,400 people that are deposited in the foothills near Mount Rainier, Washington. As early as 1946, each of them disappeared at various times in a beam of white light (cliché, but bear with me for now). Obviously disoriented, members of the 4400 group, none of whom have aged from the time of their disappearance, remember nothing and do what they can to figure out what exactly happened.

Disgruntled by the cancellation, fans of the show emulated successful television mail-in campaigns (Jericho's peanuts, Roswell's Tabasco sauce) by sending sunflower seeds to USA Network (a favorite of 4400 character Dr. Burkhoff). But alas, the movement didn't go over quite so well. The end result? The 4400 remains dead and USA Network now has a boatload of sunflower seeds.

Disc includes: Video introduction, audio commentary, The 4400: The Ghost Season featurette, deleted scenes.

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