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Welcome to How to Spend $20, BOP's look at the latest Blu-ray discs and DVDs to hit stores nationwide. This week: Woody Harrelson proves he's boss of the zombies. Also, now that we're in the throes of the Oscar season, check out some re-released favorites.

Pick of the Week

For people who have always wondered whether Bill Murray would make a good zombie: Zombieland

I heart Bill Murray. The fact that he cameos in Zombieland as himself looking a whole lot like a zombie – but is not, actually, a zombie... he just wants to play golf amongst the infected without serious penalty – is yet another reason why I need to see this movie already. The trailer made it look super fun, what with a half-crazed Woody Harrelson offing zombies with a sawed-off shotgun. I mean really, who's better fit for something like that? (Well, maybe Cillian Murphy...). Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin are in this one too, all whom I adore. (Emma Stone in particular. She's been a favorite of mine since her break in Superbad as Jonah Hill's innocent crush, Jules. She was also a delight in, ahem, The House Bunny. Emma was, in fact, one of the few good things about that movie).

Based on the movie's modest success – a $24.7 million opening; $75.6 million domestic tally – a sequel is already planned, though no firm start date has been announced. Much of the blame rests on hot-shot writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, who at the moment are busy penning scripts for Venom, Deadpool and an original feature based on a pitch they sold to Universal called Earth Versus Moon. It's a hard life.

Disc includes: Deleted scenes, audio commentary, In Search of Zombieland: Behind-the-Scenes featurette, Zombieland in Your Land featurette, visual effects progression scenes, trailers, Beyond the Graveyard: Behind the Scenes Picture-in-Picture Track, MovieIQ, digital copy





For people who think souls are overrated: Cold Souls

Typically, I'm game for actors who play themselves* in a movie. (An asterisk is necessary in a discussion such as this, since more often than not the "character" is a twisted version of how we'd expect X to act). What Ricky Gervais did with his guest talent on Extras is a perfect example. In film, there's the aforementioned Bill Murray in Zombieland, Bruce Willis and Sean Penn in What Just Happened, and probably most notably, John Malkovich in Charlie Kaufman's mostly brilliant, Being John Malkovich. Paul Giamatti joins the ranks in Cold Souls, playing an anxious actor named Paul who decides to deep freeze his soul courtesy of a unique company, only to want it back later. Due to a soul trafficking scheme, Paul's soul has ended up somewhere in Russia, leading him there in an effort to find his soul.

I was a bit shocked at how underwhelmingly this one performed at the box office, considering the noise it made at film festivals prior to its release. Never unspooling in more than 50 theaters in a given weekend, Cold Souls couldn't even budge $1 million, ending up with $903,000 and change.

Disc includes: Not available

For people who would have called the cops after catching their neighbor filming them with a cheap camera, instead of simply removing their top so said neighbor could get a good look at their jugs: American Beauty (Gold Collection)

A Mandarin-dubbed American Beauty disc could make its way onto store shelves and I'd still leave space for it in the column. I love this movie. I've watched it countless times. And if it isn't my favorite movie of all time – I have trouble picking favorites – it isn't too far behind. American Beauty stars Kevin Spacey as middle-aged cubicle worker Lester Burnham, who announces at the onset – as we're flying over his neighborhood – that this is his street, his life, he's 42-years-old and in less than a year, he'll be dead.

American Beauty is a slice of life, a snapshot of suburbia near the end of the 20th century. Sexually frustrated, Lester's wife (Annette Bening) takes a liking to a prominent real estate agent. Lester's angsty teenage daughter pursues a relationship with a strange boy next door. And Lester himself – experiencing an insanely epic midlife crisis – blackmails his boss, quits his job, chases after one of his daughter's friends, smokes pot regularly and, unbeknownst to him, falls under the suspicious eye of Col. Frank Fitts, a conservative, retired marine who suspects he's getting intimate with his son.

There's a whole lot going on in this flick. Enough, really, to fill a season's worth of episodes on a cable drama. In many ways, American Beauty feels like a precursor to Alan Ball's masterful Six Feet Under, which hit HBO two years after American Beauty was released in theaters.

Disc includes: American Beauty: Look Closer... featurette, cast and crew interviews, audio commentary, exclusive storyboard presentation with commentary, digital screenplay with corresponding film footage and storyboards (DVD-ROM), cast and crew bios, trailers

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