New on DVD: Almodóvar, "High School Musical" and shirtless dudes!

Jumping to a completely different corner of the DVD universe, we have two cool new releases from the Criterion Collection. I don't throw the word "poetic" around often when discussing movies, but it's a perfect description for Wim Wenders' gorgeous Wings of Desire, now available for the first time in Blu-Ray, as is the Criterion release of the moving and sharply-acted Howards End, from gay director-producer team James Ivory and Ismail Merchant (and based, of course, on the book by gay novelist E.M. Forster).

Sony gives us the first volume of Film Noir Classics, featuring The Big Heat along with four other titles making their DVD debuts. Throw in commentary and special features with the likes of Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan and James Ellroy, and you've got a collection that any lover of black-and-white intrigue has just got to have.

I don't know if this will make you feel as old as it did me, but Say Anything... is being reissued for the film's 20th anniversary. Yikes. "Joe Lies" still holds up as one of the great breakup songs, though.

And finally, there's I Love You, Beth Cooper, a thoroughly middling comedy that doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Say Anything... but it has a might-be-gay best-pal character in it, so I felt compelled to include it. You can wait until it hits cable, though, if you need to see it at all.