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Welcome to How to Spend $20, BOP's look at the latest DVDs to hit stores nationwide. This week: Kate Winslet learns to read, a monster tears up a gas station and Lindsay Lohan actually wears something for a change.

Pick of the Week

For people who still can't believe this movie was up for Best Picture: The Reader

Like nearly anyone that saw this thing, I didn't love The Reader. It had its moments, but certainly wasn't deserving of all its Oscar nods. The fact it was a Holocaust movie further solidified the idea that the Academy has, and frankly will always praise, just about anything set in the time period. Either that or the Weinsteins really know how to throw their weight around (an idea promoted here at BOP by David Mumpower).

But besides all that politic stuff, Kate Winslet truly dished out an amazing performance as Hanna Schmitz. She was either going to win for this or for Revolutionary Road. Winslet owned 2008.

Based on the brief, albeit best-selling German novel from 1995, The Reader is about a young boy, Michael (David Kross), who has a passionate love affair with a much older woman, Hanna (Kate Winslet). The boy (portrayed by Ralph Fiennes much later in the story) loses contact with Hanna, but is reunited with her when his law school class sits in on her trial, where Hanna defends her Nazi past.

Disc includes: Deleted scenes, Adapting a Timeless Masterpiece: Making The Reader featurette, A Conversation with David Kross & Stephen Daldry featurette, Kate Winslet on the Art of Aging Hanna Schmitz featurette, A New Voice: A Look at Composer Nico Muhly featurette, Coming to Grips with the Past: Production Designer Brigitte Broch featurette





For people who remember the time when America appreciated Lindsay Lohan and didn't consider her a gigantic slut: Mean Girls [Blu-ray]

Do you seriously remember such a time? It sure seems so long, so long ago.

Anyway. Mean Girls would be Lindsay Lohan's breakout role as a grownup actress. Of course, she made a name for herself in The Parent Trap remake a few years prior to the release of this one. But let's get serious. She was a kid actor then, and who could have expected she'd blow up big time just a few years later? Most of us were mulling over the fact that she doesn't actually have a twin sister.

Mean Girls stars Lohan as a newbie student who learns the ins-and-outs of an American high school after she's planted there following a move from Africa with her parents. It boasts a solid resume of former Saturday Night Live players, including Amy Poehler, Tim Meadows, Ana Gasteyer and Tina Fey, who also wrote the adaptation. The movie is based on the 2002 book, Queen Bees and Wannabes, by Rosalind Wiseman.

Disc includes: Audio commentary, Only the Strong Survive featurette, The Politics of Girl World featurette, Plastic Fashion featurette, blooper reel, deleted scenes

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