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Welcome to How to Spend $20, BOP's look at the latest DVDs to hit stores nationwide. This week: Futurama's fifth season surges onward with a second straight-to-DVD release, Michael Bay impersonator Roland Emmerich goes big with 10,000 B.C. and Kyle Chandler proves he actually had a job before NBC's Friday Night Lights.

PICK OF THE WEEK

Futurama: The Beast With a Billion Backs

What a little success story Matt Groening's Futurama has turned into. Like Family Guy, it holds the title as yet another smart, animated sitcom cancelled by Fox. Although unlike Family Guy, a red-faced Fox didn't revive the series for another go on its famed Sunday night comedy block. But that's where Comedy Central steps in. The cable net struck a deal with the Futurama team for a 16-episode fifth season, created through four straight-to-DVD movies that are later neatly sliced into four episodes a piece for television. Picking up where Bender's Big Score left off, The Beast With a Billion Backs, which marks round two of this first-of-its-kind experiment, focuses on a planet-sized monster that comes to Earth via a giant tear in the universe. The being takes control of everyone on Earth, becomes Pope of the tentacle religion and forces humanity to completely evacuate Earth to make room for the planet's newest inheritors: robots. Guest voices include Brittany Murphy, David Cross, Stephen Hawking and the voice of Homer Simpson, Don Castellaneta.

Disc includes: Commentary By Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, Billy West and others; Futurama: The Lost Adventure (a full length movie for the Futurama video game); audio commentary By Matt Groening, David X. Cohen, Billy West and others; Meet Yivo! featurette; A Brief History Of Deathball featurette; 3D Models With Animator Discussion; storyboards; bloopers; deleted scenes; Futurama: Bender's Game (sneak peek at the next DVD movie).

The Spiderwick Chronicles (Special Edition)

Similar to The Chronicles of Narnia, The Spiderwick Chronicles is a series of short children's books that caught the eye of Hollywood execs who decided to cash in on its literary success by adapted the franchise to screen. However, unlike the fat cats at Walden Media who thought it best to separate C.S. Lewis' impossibly brief stories into separate film chapters, Paramount Pictures broke Hollywood tradition when it decently combined all five Spiderwick entries – each ranging anywhere between 108 and 160 pages a piece – into one epic film. With an admirable cast featuring the likes of Mary-Louise Parker, Freddy Highmore, Martin Short, Nick Nolte and Seth Rogen, The Spiderwick Chronicles is based on the adventures of the Grace children – twins Simon and Jared, and older sister Mallory – who discover a world of faeries they never knew existed from an abandoned field guide they happen upon after moving into the Spiderwick Estate with their mother. What Seth Rogen was doing in a film like this is anyone's guess.

Disc includes: Spiderwick: It's All True featurette, It's A Spiderwick World featurette, Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide featurette, Spiderwick: Meet the Clan featurette, Making Spiderwick featurette, The Magic of Spiderwick featurette, A Final Word of Advice featurette, deleted scenes, Nickelodeon TV spots, trailers.





10,000 B.C.
Director Roland Emmerich is on a roll, more or less, in the category of big budget blockbusters. Following Universal Soldier and Stargate in the early '90s, Emmerich was behind the camera for 1996's Independence Day, 1998's Godzilla, 2000's The Patriot, 2004's The Day After Tomorrow and now 10,000 B.C., released earlier this year. Though lambasted by critics -- just 9% of 'em liked it on Rotten Tomatoes -- the prehistoric era "period piece" did decent business at the box office, accumulating $94 million Stateside, and close to $270 million total when factoring in worldwide figures. Featuring a cast with virtually no star power, 10,000 B.C. is about a young mammoth hunter, D'Leh, who leads a group of hunters in pursuit of warlords who captured members of D'Leh's tribe, including his Evolet. After the expected strong DVD sales for this title, Emmerich is back to work on another big film: 2012, an apocalyptic thriller starring John Cusack and Amanda Peet.

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