New on DVD

The very definition of art cinema, Alain Resnais' 1960 "Last Year at Marienbad" defies audience identification, narrative clarity, even any assurance that anything we see is "real" in any sense. Characters without names, played by actors who barely change expression, walk through the lavish but coldly alienating vacation castles reserved for the rich and aristocratic, lost in time and space. It could be a ghost story (the church organ score is appropriately eerie and ominous), a remembrance or a dream, all taking place in a European castle that could be the foreign version of the Overlook Hotel. And as the mysterious man (Giorgio Albertazzi) tries to convince the coolly elegant woman (Delphine Seyrig) that they had an affair last year, it could be simply an elaborate tale, a seductive promise cutting through the stifling existence of social decorum.

The new transfer is superb; the perfectly sculpted and intricately art-directed imagery looks astounding, and the rich cinematography practically shimmers on Blu-ray. The original half-hour documentary "Unraveling the Enigma: The Making of Marienbad," featuring all-new interviews with production designer Jacques Saulnier and second assistant director Volker Schloendorff (among others), offer details of the making of the film and insight to the collaboration. Alain Resnais is conspicuously absent from the documentary but is present in a generous 33-minute audio-only interview, illustrated with stills, script pages with director's notes, and sketches and brief clips. Also includes early the short documentaries "Toute la memoire du Monde" and "Le Chant du Styrene," and a booklet with new and archival essays. Criterion returns to the paperboard case and slipsleeve design of their earlier Blu-ray releases. Also available on a two-disc DVD edition, also in a paperboard package. The very definition of art cinema, Alain Resnais' 1960 "Last Year at Marienbad" defies audience identification, narrative clarity, even any assurance that anything we see is "real" in any sense. Characters without names, played by actors who barely change expression, walk through the lavish but coldly alienating vacation castles reserved for the rich and aristocratic, lost in time and space. It could be a ghost story (the church organ score is appropriately eerie and ominous), a remembrance or a dream, all taking place in a European castle that could be the foreign version of the Overlook Hotel. And as the mysterious man (Giorgio Albertazzi) tries to convince the coolly elegant woman (Delphine Seyrig) that they had an affair last year, it could be simply an elaborate tale, a seductive promise cutting through the stifling existence of social decorum.

The new transfer is superb; the perfectly sculpted and intricately art-directed imagery looks astounding, and the rich cinematography practically shimmers on Blu-ray. The original half-hour documentary "Unraveling the Enigma: The Making of Marienbad," featuring all-new interviews with production designer Jacques Saulnier and second assistant director Volker Schloendorff (among others), offer details of the making of the film and insight to the collaboration. Alain Resnais is conspicuously absent from the documentary but is present in a generous 33-minute audio-only interview, illustrated with stills, script pages with director's notes, and sketches and brief clips. Also includes early the short documentaries "Toute la memoire du Monde" and "Le Chant du Styrene," and a booklet with new and archival essays. Criterion returns to the paperboard case and slipsleeve design of their earlier Blu-ray releases. Also available on a two-disc DVD edition, also in a paperboard package.

Disney reaches back to complete the high-definition collection of J.J. Abrams' addictive high-concept survival series. "Lost: Season One" was the surprise hit of the 2004-2005 TV season: What could have been "Gilligan's Island" through "The Twilight Zone" becomes a mind-bending show with supernatural echoes and conspiratorial hints and characters who all have their own hidden pasts (revealed to us in flashbacks). The well-made documentaries "The Genesis of Lost" and "Welcome to Oahu" and the revealing audition tapes are supplements worth the money. Season 2 isn't quite as strong, but it complicates matters with the hatch, the Dharma Initiative, more survivors and an increasingly hostile response by the Others. It's almost as addictive the second time around, and the 30-minute "Fire and Water: Anatomy of an Episode" is a superb start-to-finish production documentary.

Each season comes in a compact seven-disc set with all of the supplements of the earlier DVD releases - commentary tracks, featurettes, deleted scenes - along with a "Season Play" function (a handy feature that keeps track of where you left off, even if you pop the disc out of the machine). One of the most visually dense shows on TV, "Lost" is produced in high-definition, and Blu-ray shows it off better than you've ever seen it.

"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" The funniest film ever made about Cold War posturing and mutually assured destruction, Stanley Kubrick's insidious black comedy debuts on Blu-ray. In this wickedly funny version of Armageddon, a rogue general diagnoses his impotence as a Soviet plot and unleashes a nuclear attack on Russia while diplomacy descends into a slapstick scuffle. Features all of the featurettes, interviews and archival supplements of the previous DVD release, along with a Blu-ray exclusive video track of picture-in-picture interviews and trivia on the cold war and nuclear arms race. Instead of a traditional case, the disc comes in a hardback booklet with essays and photos.

Originally made for HBO, this seven-part, eight-hour miniseries (based on the biography by David McCullough and dramatized with a vivid sense of immediacy and historical texture) offers the most nuanced biographical portrait of a historical figure I've ever seen on the screen. As incarnated by Paul Giamatti, this founding father is a fascinating figure, driven by a moral conviction in the American cause and his passion for a truly revolutionary idea - a system of government that emanates from the people - but not without his vanities and contradictions. Three discs in a sturdy digipak with all of the featurettes from the DVD, plus optional picture-in-picture biographies of prominent figures within Adams' inner circle.