It’s no secret that the movie business of today’s Hollywood is geared toward the overseas market which is where the big money is. Films that appeal to mass audiences both in the U.S. and throughout the world are more often than not sensationalistic action films, many of which are mindless and forgettable. Non-action films that compete in the marketplace throughout most of the year these days generally consist of dumbed down kids’ films and bland comedies, romantic and otherwise. The dozen or so meaningful films that we now get are generally crammed into a small release window during the Fall and Christmas holiday seasons as they scramble for awards recognition. Network television is often just as bad, leaving cable TV with a void to fill, which it happily does.

One of the best cable TV series of recent years is Boardwalk Empire, which will soon enter its fourth season. The critically acclaimed series has won a slew of awards in its first two seasons and is currently nominated for nine Emmys for its third, which has just been released on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Created by Terence Winter, a producer of the last four seasons of The Sopranos, the series has a number of big name executive producers including Martin Scorsese who directed the pilot episode. Combining compelling personal stories with sudden, violent action as all the best gangster films have done since the 1920s, the characters and the actors who portray them have been at the center of this series from the beginning. Set during Prohibition, the series’ main character is Atlantic City bootlegger Enoch “Nucky” Thompson played to chilling effect by Steve Buscemi who has his softer side, especially where Kelly Macdonald as Margaret Schroeder, the Irish immigrant widow of one of his victims is concerned. Their rocky relationship has always been the series’ center of gravity, moving from calculated romance to marriage to sorrow and regret.

Almost as compelling for the first two seasons was the relationship between Michael Pitt as James “Jimmy” Darmody, a World War I vet and sort of right hand man of Nucky wanting to brand out on his own and Angela, his estranged wife played by Aleksa Palladino. Their young son Tommy, played by Brady Noon, was at times the only thing they had in common. Angela’s senseless murder toward the end of season two was followed by Jimmy’s shocking execution which ended the season leaving fans in a dither.

The fallout from Jimmy’s execution leaves Tommy in the care of Jimmy’s rotten to the core brothel madam mother Gillian, expertly played by Grethen Mol. Jack Huston, in a brilliant portrayal of Jimmy’s friend and facially disfigured hit man, becomes Tommy’s guardian in a poignant subplot that is one of the third season’s best. Also very satisfying is the romance that develops between Margaret and Nucky’s right hand man and hit man, fellow Irish immigrant Owen Slater, nicely played by Charlie Cox. You know their affair is going to have a bad ending, but you won’t see it coming when it does.

The most malevolent character introduced in season three is rival bootlegger Gyp Rosetti, played by Bobby Cannavale, who is such an evil creep you wonder how he finds anyone to come near him let alone spend time with him. Billy Magnussen provides sizzle and shock to a couple of scenes in which his Jimmy look-alike crosses paths with the scheming Gillian.

On the downside, Michael Shannon’s rogue ex-FBI agent Nelson Van Alden is a character that becomes more ridiculous as the series goes on. They either need to give this splendid actor more interesting story lines or write him out of the series altogether.

An even bigger name than Boardwalk Empire producer Scorsese is Smash producer Steven Spielberg. Unfortunately for Spielberg, however, Smash was not a cable series. It was a network series that aired on NBC for two seasons. The problem was that NBC didn’t know what to do with the show and kept changing its time period so that even the series’ most avid fans had trouble finding it. Universal, which has now released the second season on DVD has, as they have previously done with season one, has released it only on standard DVD. No Blu-ray release is planned for either season.

Whereas season one suffered from too many sub-plots that went nowhere, the season two keeps its focus on the shows it’s following, Bombshell, the Marilyn Monroe musical from season one which has not hit Broadway and The Hit List, the off-Broadway bound new show which will become a hit, transfer to Broadway and compete with Bombshell for Tonys.

Back from season one are Megan Hilty as Ivy Lynn, a second generation star trying to break out of the shadows of her megastar mother; Katharine McPhee as Karen Cartright, Broadway’s newest Cinderella; Jack Davenport as Derek Wills, the maniacal director; Debra Messign and Christian Borle as Julia Houston and Tom Levitt, the long-time composing team behind Bombshell and Anjelica Huston as Eileen Rand, Bombshell’s producer. Joining them are Jeremy Jordan and Andy Mientus as Jimmy Collins and Kyle Bishop, the composer and book writer of The Hit List. New alliances will form, old friends will become enemies and old enemies will become friends as the season progresses. The last two episodes dealing with the Tony nominations and awards leave few dry eyes among fans. Give it a look, you’ll find it’s easy to become hooked on this one.

Having been bitterly disappointed in Hitchcock, last year’s big screen take on Alfred Hitchcock and the filming of Psycho, I was loathe to invest time in the HBO TV movie, The Girl which explores the relationship between the legendary director and Tippi Hedren during the making of The Birds and Marnie. To my surprise, The Girl turned out to be the more interesting of the two.

Whereas Hitchcock didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know, The Girl at least attempts to tell us something new even if what it tells us remains highly suspect.

The film purports to present Hitchcock as a sexual predator, a fact of which there is no evidence. It would have us believe that Hitchcock attempted to rape Hedren on the way to a film shoot as his car was about to arrive on set with cast and crew milling about. Had any such thing actually happened as Hedren running from the car, her hair and clothes askew, someone in the last fifty years would certainly have said something before now. Now that all but Hedren are gone, it just rings false. Another scene which can be thoroughly debunked, is the film’s grotesque depiction of Hedren’s screen test. The actual screen test is an extra on both the DVD and Blu-ray of The Birds and can be viewed on YouTube as well.

The best thing about The Girl is Toby Jones’ perfectly nuanced portrayal fo Hitchock. Close your eyes and you’ll think you’re listening to the great director himself. Sienna Miller as Hedren as Imelda Staunton as Alma Reville (Mrs. Hitchcock) also turn in good performances.

The Girl is available on standard DVD only.

God Is the Bigger Elvis

This week’s new releases include Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby and Blu-ray upgrades of Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be and René Clair’s And Then There Were None.