This Week on DVD: The Shield, Season 6

 THE SHIELD, SEASON 6 Confession time: I have yet to see an entire episode of the most ballyhooed TV series of recent years, The Wire, or the equally lauded Deadwood. (Hey, bring it up with Comcast, which for some reason refuses to give me free premium cable.) But since those are now sleeping with Fish, may I suggest an alternate as the Best Drama Currently On TV? Creator Shawn Ryan winds his good-cop-bad-cop procedural tighter with each season: Michael Chiklis' Vic Mackey may be the most compelling anti-hero pounding a TV beat since Andy Sipowicz, but the season-long warping of Walton Goggins' good ol' bad lieutenant Shane into an unrepentant sociopath—a pupil now armed with all his master's tricks—made every episode a nail-biter. Start 'em now, and you'll be hooked by the time the final season premieres next month on FX. Also arriving on DVD: —Chicago 10: Brett Morgen's animated documentary about the chaotic Chicago Seven trial of Abbie Hoffman, Bobby Seale, Jerry Rubin and other protesters after the 1968 Democratic convention, featuring the voices of Mark Ruffalo and Nick Nolte. (No, it doesn't include "If You Leave Me Now.") —Postal: Ein film von Uwe Boll, who takes another craptastic voyage with a deliberately offensive videogame-derived comedy that only starts with a slapstick restaging of 9/11. Watch for full frontal Dave Foley and a love that dare not speak its name between our sitting president and Osama bin Laden. —Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom: An enchanting date movie from those masters of the blithe romantic trifle, director Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Marquis de Sade. Out of print for many years, the notorious Fascist squirm-a-thon arrives once again from Criterion to set new standards for cinematic punishment—especially for those who paid through the nose for it on eBay. —A pair of French cult movies in special editions: Jeunet et Caro's grisly post-apocalyptic cannibal comedy Delicatessen, and Christophe Gans' Brotherhood of the Wolf—perhaps the best Gallic martial-arts period-piece werewolf movie ever made, with a bonus trek over the snow-capped peaks of Monica Bellucci.
Aug. 26-Sept. 1, 2008