HobbitExtThe Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – Extended Edition (New Line, Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, DVD) follows the pattern that director Peter Jackson set on his The Lord of the Rings films. The theatrical cut came out earlier this year, and now the “Extended Edition” arrives. In the previous trilogy, those additions returned scenes from the book that had been edited out for narrative momentum, giving the film more heft as well as more intimacy. In the case of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, however, less than 15 minutes of footage is added to the film, and many (including myself) feel that it’s too long in the first place.

Tolkein wrote The Hobbit long before even contemplating his epic trilogy and the book is a modest, simple fantasy adventure compared to the sweep and scale of the subsequent books. Jackson approaches his adaptation, however, in light of the “events to come” and directs with the same gravity and sense of peril as we experienced in The Lord of the Rings, which seems like overkill to this smaller scale story. It’s impressively produced but overburdened with import and foreshadowing. Bilbo (Martin Freeman) and the dwarfs don’t even get out of the hobbit hole for an hour and they can just see their destination on the horizon before the credits roll. While some fans may enjoy the added time in Middle Earth, it just slows their journey that much more.

More attractive than the added footage is the epic extras. The theatrical cut carried about two hours of behind-the-scene featurettes originally produced for the web. This edition offers commentary by Jackson and co-writer Philippa Boyens and two more chapters in the epic “Appendices” with more than nine hours of documentaries, behind-the-scenes featurettes, interviews, and other explorations of the book and the adaptation. This is what makes Jackson’s special editions more special than anybody else’s.

PassionThere isn’t a lot of passion in Brian De Palma’s Passion (eOne, Blu-ray, DVD) but there is a love of kinkiness, flirtation, sensation, and the thrill of playing big business games and an odd intimacy that we don’t always get in De Palma’s coolly observed, stylistically exacting cinema. The opening scene has an easy intimacy of colleagues (Rachel McAdams as boss Christine and Noomi Rapace as trusted assistant Isabelle) with their respective guards down, or so it seems. “There’s no backstabbing here, it’s just business,” claims Christine after taking credit for Isabelle’s idea, and her attitude suggests that she really believes it. Isabelle, however, takes it personally, something between a betrayal and a personal affront, and when she kisses Christine on the lips, it’s not a seduction or a forgiveness. She’s planting the kiss of death.

As usual, De Palma plays with perceptions and perspective, choreographing his camera with the grace of a dancer and the precision of a surgeon. And when he finally executes a trademark extended split screen, with the ecstasy of watching a ballet set next to the cold-blooded murder of rival, it is a piece of theater, a sex game, a fever-dream fantasy, and a Hitchcockian set piece by way of a De Palma dance of death. Those looking for logic and psychological subtlety should look elsewhere, but if you like De Palma’s larger-than-life plays of power and desire and retribution as melodramatic ballets of cold-blooded elegance, this is for you. Features interviews with De Palma, McAdams, and Rapace.

LovelaceAmanda Seyfried stars in Lovelace (Anchor Bay, Blu-ray, DVD), a biographical drama from directing team Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman about the young woman who made Deep Throat and years later set the record straight about her life of abuse and forced prostitution. The film follows a similar structure, presenting her story as a starry-eyed stumble into X-rated history and then rewinding to show the real ordeal of coercion, abuse, assault, rape, and predation at the hands of her sleazebag husband Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard in sleazy charmer mode). It’s interesting and well-meaning enough that I wish it was a more perceptive and provocative film. Co-stars Juno Temple, Chris Noth, Adam Brody, and an unrecognizable Sharon Stone.

More new releases:

WhiteHouseDownWhite House Down (Sony, Blu-ray, DVD), directed by Roland Emmerich (a filmmaker with a thing for blowing up the White House) and starring Channing Tatum as the lone D.C. cop who can save the White House from a military coup and Jamie Foxx as the kick-ass commander in chief, is the big Hollywood bang bang of the week. It features a handful of featurettes on the DVD and about a dozen featurettes and a gag reel on Blu-ray.

The Adam Sandler reunion home movie Grown Ups 2 (Sony, Blu-ray, DVD) as the hit comedy that only Adam Sandler fans will see. Kristen Wiig stars in the comedy Girl Most Likely (Lionsgate, Blu-ray, DVD) with Annette Bening and Matt Dillon and Parkland (Millennium, Blu-ray, DVD) retells the assassination of JFK with a cast that includes Zac Efron, Marcia Gay Harden, Billy Bob Thornton, and Paul Giamatti.

ComputerChessIndies this week include Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess (Kino Lorber, DVD), a period piece set in the days of pioneering computer programming, and James Franco’s As I Lay Dying (Millennium, DVD), his adaptation of the William Faulkner novel.

Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay (Kino Lorber, DVD) profiles the magician, raconteur, and sleight-of-hand maestro, and Renoir (Flatiron, Blu-ray, DVD) tells a tale of the aging impressionist master Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Michel Bouquet) and his final muse.

VOD / On Demand exclusives:

2 Guns (Universal, Digital), the action thriller starring Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg, is available as a digital download two weeks before it debuts on Blu-ray and DVD.

2GunsDigArriving On Demand same day as theaters are the dramas How I Live Now with Saoirse Ronan and Tom Holland and The Motel Life with Emile Hirsch and Dakota Fanning and the comedy A Case of You with Justin Long and Evan Rachel Wood. Making its way before disc release is Museum Hours.

White House Down, Grown Ups 2, and Parkland debut On Demand same day as disc. The Internship, with Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, and the coming-of-age comedy The Way, Way Back also arrive this week.

Now available VOD is the eighties hip-hop landmark Wild Style (Cinedigm, VOD), plus The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear (Cinedigm, VOD) and Underdogs (Freestyle, VOD).

More releases:Broken

Broken (Film Movement, DVD, Digital)
Syrup (Magnolia, Blu-ray, DVD)
Out in the Dark (Breaking Glass, DVD)
Bounty Killer (Arc, DVD)
The Green Wave (Strand, DVD)
Hava Nagila (The Movie) (Docurama, DVD, Digital)
The Big Picture: Rethinking Dyslexia (Docurama, DVD, Digital)
The Greatest Ears in Town (NuNoise, DVD, VOD)