Desperate Housewives

From episode titles lifted from Stephen Sondheim songs to luscious Jesse Metcalfe's well-groomed bushwhacker, Desperate Housewives, the surreal send-up of prime time soaps, was embraced by audiences both gay and straight like few other television series in recent memory. Now all 23 episodes of the first season are available in a deluxe six-disc DVD set that includes a veritible welcome wagon of bonus features, including deleted scenes, bloopers, and shorts on costume and set design. Most notably, each of the ladies of Wisteria Lane (Teri Hatcher, Marcia Cross, Eva Longoria, and Emmy winner Felicity Huffman) selects her favorite scenes and offers an audio commentary over them and out creator Marc Cherry provides additional commentary and reveals in an interview that the rigid Bree was based on his own mother. -- Jeremy Kinser

Family Guy presents Stewie Griffin:
The Untold Story!

The scabrous animated comedy Family Guy is such a cult phenom that the creators have assembled a starring vehicle for the breakout character, maniacal baby genius Stewie. In the exclusive (and completely uncensored) DVD premiere, Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story!, Stewie is distracted from his plans for world domination when he sees a man who looks just like him on television. Convinced that this man must be his real father, Stewie sets off on a cross-country road trip to find him. But his incredible journey leads him to discoveries far more vile and shocking than anything found in his diaper. The laughs are non-stop and a gay sensibility permeates (one character quips while giving his daughter a much-needed makeover, "You'll be beating guys off with both hands!"). Stewie even finds time to indulge in a duet of "Enough is Enough (No More Tears)." Bonus features include a full-length audio commentary by creator Seth MacFarlane, cast members and writers. -- Jeremy Kinser

Punk: Attitude

Director Don Letts' knowing look at the mid-'70s punk rock revolution, Punk: Attitude, premiered on IFC earlier this year, but is now available in a two-disc DVD set with more than two hours of additional footage. While the narrative is compelling and informative (Chryssie Hynde, Steve Jones, and Henry Rollins are among the figure heads who

reminisce about the movement's origins), it's the archival performance footage that makes the film truly mesmerizing. Featurettes on punk fashion, women in punk, and, best of all, L.A. Punk, a 30 minute documentary by Dick Rude that gives props to the West Coast punk scene given short shift in the feature, make this a must-own. -- Jeremy Kinser

Round Trip

Round Trip is less a lesbian love story than it is a life story. An Israeli woman (Anat Waxman) flees her stagnant marriage and brings her children to Tel Aviv, where she struggles to make ends meet as a bus driver. She hires a beautiful and vivacious woman from Nigeria (Nathati Moshesh) to help with the kids, and discovers a new kind of love that revitalizes her. The film transcends its potentially pat storyline with a portrayal of the women's deep and honest relationship, and brings light to the limited choices of working class women. The weighty issues are a lot for this compact film to tackle in one swoop, but its heart remains intact. -- Sarika Chawla

The Phantom of the Opera

Listen up. This one is on the test for your gay identity papers. The year was 1986 when Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber first rolled out his ultimate backstage musical The Phantom of the Opera at Her Majestry's Theater in London's West End. The gorgeously bloated tale, celebrated by everyone from Sarah Brightman to Brett Easton Ellis since, follows soprano ingénue Christine Daae as she not only wows the 19th century Paris Opera set, but also stares down one hell of an Elimidate between the Vicompte de Chagny and the John Merrick wannabe living beneath the Paris Opera House who eventually sends its chandelier crashing to the floor.

If you've also been holed up in a catacomb since then, you might have missed this musical's long slouch toward the big screen. Perhaps it was the boatload of British theater awards it set sail for America with, or maybe it was the seven Tony Awards it picked up after its 1988 Broadway debut, where it continues its reign as the top musical of all times, but Phantom arrived in theaters this past Christmas with more baggage than Barbara Hutton and promptly sank like a stone at the box office.

Enter the DVD. It may finally set the record straight. Joel Schumacher's two-hour plus gloss on Lloyd Webber's source material is dazzling filmmaking truly worth the wait. His Phantom is to the gays what Spielberg's Schindler's List is to the Jews, right down to its opening shot of a candle blown out in reverse. Sure, there are some missteps along the way: the entirely of Minnie Driver's performance from her Carlotta's hammy fauxtalian to her incessant lip-synching (casting note: if theirs really was the most amicable divorce in the history of musical theater, where's Brightman's turn as the opera diva?), the jazzy, double-time handclaps added to the title song (as if this material needed gaying up) and the drab, colorless Girlie Show meets "Ascot Gravotte" treatment of act two savior "Masquerade" (yes, Schumacher's got his poor actors Vogueing). Still, these are all minor quibbles. If Chicago and Moulin Rouge proved anything, it's that there are no direct flights to Mecca. -- Tony Phillips