Scalpel and 50cc of drama: Grey's Anatomy Season Three.

Byline: Dan Webster

Sep. 14--From its opening 2005 season, this medical melodrama surrounding the surgical intern Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) and her friends Cristina (Sandra Oh), Izzie (Katherine Heigl) and George (T.R. Knight) has flirted with that familiar television syndrome: jumping the shark. Boasting a musical score that often opposes the action occurring on screen -- light and frothy strings accompanying a life-and-death struggle -- characters who are as in need of therapy as they are more surgical study, not to mention plot lines that vie in outlandishness with those offered up by "General Hospital," "Grey's Anatomy" gets by with quick pacing and actors such as Heigl and Patrick ("McDreamy") Dempsey who are as nice on the eyes as their characters are hard on the emotions. This is series television at its best/worst. If nothing else, viewers come back just to see where the series' writers will dare go next. The seven-disc DVD set, subtitled "Seriously Extended," includes 25 hour-long episodes, four "extended" episodes, making-of features and audio commentaries. (not rated)

"The Graduate 40th Anniversary Edition"

-- -- -- --

Mike Nichols took the screenplay that Calder Willingham and Buck Henry adapted from Charles Webb's novel and won his only Best Director Oscar. Four decades later the film still holds up, capturing the angst of a young man caught between his parents' high expectations and a world obsessed with empty values ("Plastics"?). Dustin Hoffman stars as the young man, Katharine Ross as the dreamy Elaine, but it's the late Anne Bancroft who centers the film as the older woman, Mrs. Robinson. Fortieth-anniversary two-disc DVD set includes audio commentaries by director Nichols and Steven Soderbergh, stars Hoffman and Ross, making-of featurette, screen tests and Simon and Garfunkel CD soundtrack. (1:46; rated PG for nudity, sexual references)

"Manhunter"

-- -- -- 1/2

Even though Thomas Harris' character Hannibal Lecter has become forever linked with Anthony Hopkins and "Silence of the Lambs," the role was created by Brian Cox. Michael Mann's 1986 imagining of Harris' novel "Red Dragon" cast Cox as the cannibal killer, even though the main story line is about an FBI investigator (William Petersen) who tries to use Lecter to find another, equally savage serial murderer (Tom Noonan). This is a reissue, one with no real extras, but it's one any Harris fan is likely to find interesting. (1:59; rated R for violence)

"Cautiva"

-- -- -- 1/2

Cristina (Barbara Lombardo) wakes up one morning the protected, pampered 15-year-old daughter of a retired Argentine federal policeman. By the end of the day, she is taken from her Catholic school to the office of a federal judge who tells her that everything that she has known about her life is a lie. Blood tests taken secretly show conclusively that she is the daughter of a couple who, in 1978, were taken into custody by police. Cristina -- whose real name is Sofia -- was born in a secret jail, adopted by the policeman and his wife while her real parents ... "disappeared." Patiently told, brilliantly photographed and featuring terrific performances by Lombardo and the late Susana Campos, "Cautiva" is -- as I wrote in February, 2004, when the movie played at the Spokane International Film Festival -- "the best film you have never seen." DVD is in Spanish with English subtitles. (1:55; not rated)

To see more of The Spokesman-Review, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.spokesmanreview.com.

Copyright (c) 2007, The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

Scalpel and 50cc of drama: Grey's Anatomy Season Three.

Byline: Dan Webster

Sep. 14--From its opening 2005 season, this medical melodrama surrounding the surgical intern Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) and her friends Cristina (Sandra Oh), Izzie (Katherine Heigl) and George (T.R. Knight) has flirted with that familiar television syndrome: jumping the shark. Boasting a musical score that often opposes the action occurring on screen -- light and frothy strings accompanying a life-and-death struggle -- characters who are as in need of therapy as they are more surgical study, not to mention plot lines that vie in outlandishness with those offered up by "General Hospital," "Grey's Anatomy" gets by with quick pacing and actors such as Heigl and Patrick ("McDreamy") Dempsey who are as nice on the eyes as their characters are hard on the emotions. This is series television at its best/worst. If nothing else, viewers come back just to see where the series' writers will dare go next. The seven-disc DVD set, subtitled "Seriously Extended," includes 25 hour-long episodes, four "extended" episodes, making-of features and audio commentaries. (not rated)

"The Graduate 40th Anniversary Edition"

-- -- -- --

Mike Nichols took the screenplay that Calder Willingham and Buck Henry adapted from Charles Webb's novel and won his only Best Director Oscar. Four decades later the film still holds up, capturing the angst of a young man caught between his parents' high expectations and a world obsessed with empty values ("Plastics"?). Dustin Hoffman stars as the young man, Katharine Ross as the dreamy Elaine, but it's the late Anne Bancroft who centers the film as the older woman, Mrs. Robinson. Fortieth-anniversary two-disc DVD set includes audio commentaries by director Nichols and Steven Soderbergh, stars Hoffman and Ross, making-of featurette, screen tests and Simon and Garfunkel CD soundtrack. (1:46; rated PG for nudity, sexual references)

"Manhunter"

-- -- -- 1/2

Even though Thomas Harris' character Hannibal Lecter has become forever linked with Anthony Hopkins and "Silence of the Lambs," the role was created by Brian Cox. Michael Mann's 1986 imagining of Harris' novel "Red Dragon" cast Cox as the cannibal killer, even though the main story line is about an FBI investigator (William Petersen) who tries to use Lecter to find another, equally savage serial murderer (Tom Noonan). This is a reissue, one with no real extras, but it's one any Harris fan is likely to find interesting. (1:59; rated R for violence)

"Cautiva"

-- -- -- 1/2

Cristina (Barbara Lombardo) wakes up one morning the protected, pampered 15-year-old daughter of a retired Argentine federal policeman. By the end of the day, she is taken from her Catholic school to the office of a federal judge who tells her that everything that she has known about her life is a lie. Blood tests taken secretly show conclusively that she is the daughter of a couple who, in 1978, were taken into custody by police. Cristina -- whose real name is Sofia -- was born in a secret jail, adopted by the policeman and his wife while her real parents ... "disappeared." Patiently told, brilliantly photographed and featuring terrific performances by Lombardo and the late Susana Campos, "Cautiva" is -- as I wrote in February, 2004, when the movie played at the Spokane International Film Festival -- "the best film you have never seen." DVD is in Spanish with English subtitles. (1:55; not rated)

To see more of The Spokesman-Review, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.spokesmanreview.com.

Copyright (c) 2007, The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.