New on DVD: Gay Cops, Sexy Bros, and R. Patts as Dalí

Whether you're looking for gays in uniform or gays in drag, you'll find them in this week's new DVD releases.

Read on for more!

After NBC sent Southland (starring Michael Cudlitz, above, as a gay LAPD officer) into limbo to make more room for that hilarious Jay Leno Show, we were all relieved to see the show find a new home on TNT. But if you're just now catching up with the cop drama, the newly-released Southland: The Complete First Season should bring you up to speed on this riveting police drama. (The box set also promises that it's "uncensored," so make of that what you will.)

Rupert Everett likes to give interviews complaining about how coming out as gay ruined his acting career, but he's had no qualms about throwing on a dress and camping it up as the headmistress in St. Trinian's, a British comedy that remakes the 1954 classic The Belles of St. Trinian's, about a school for larcenous young ladies. This update also features A Single Man's Colin Firth and one of my favorite British comic character actresses, Fenella Woolgar. (Just saying her name is funny enough.)

It's been theorized (not by me) that female Twilight fans are subconsciously in love with gay men, because they want a relationship of deep and true understanding with none of that icky sex. That's up for debate, of course, but fans of Robert Pattinson who want to see the actor kiss another dude are advised to check out Little Ashes, the so-so biopic where Pattinson plays Salvador Dalí during the artist's college years, when he had a swoony romance with gay playwright Federico García Lorca (Javier Beltrán).

The movie plays better as a Merchant-Ivory–style white-linen romance than as a portrait of two of Spain's most compelling 20th century artists. (Three, if you count the fact that Luis Buñuel [played by Matthew McNulty] is tossed in as a supporting character.)

Twin French brothers make their way to Spain for their mother's funeral in Give Me Your Hand, and along the way are forced to explore just how intimate their relationship has become. Alexandre and Victor Carril are lovely to look at in the lead roles, and the film asks provocative questions without becoming overly discomfiting.

Drew Barrymore made a very promising debut as a director with Whip It, a story about a nerdy teenager (Ellen Page) who finds herself through roller derby, much to the dismay of her pageant-minded mother (Marcia Gay Harden). It's a smart movie about female relationships — the mother never becomes the two-dimensional villain she might have been in other hands — and the film is full of terrific performances, from the leads to terrific supporting players like Kristen Wiig, Juliette Lewis and Zoe Bell. The film wasn't a big hit theatrically, but here's hoping Ms. B gets another shot behind the camera.

Finally, the Criterion Collection gives us Wim Wenders' heartbreaking Paris, Texas. If you know Harry Dean Stanton only as the wicked Roman Grant from HBO's Big Love, you'll be blown away by his performance as a lost soul trying desperately to reconnect with his estranged wife (Nastassja Kinski in one of her finest roles) and son (Hunter Carson). It's the kind of U.S.-set movie that only a European filmmaker could make, and it's a powerful piece of work.