If you didn't catch WALL-E in theaters, it's the touching romance between a hard-working little trash-compacting robot who gets left alone on earth and the sexy probe robot who is sent to see if Earth is again viable enough to support human life. Through a string of random events, (with little dialogue), WALL-E ends up following EVE to her space ship the Axiom, and helps return society to their planet and gets the human race off of their ever-expanding asses. It's kinda deep, but the characters are so freakin' adorable, sometimes you can just forget about the "message."

And according to the commentary, that's exactly what director Andrew Stanton (who also was responsible for Finding Nemo) would like you to do. He insists that the film was originally not supposed to be about the reduce/reuse/recycle green message, he just wanted to make a film about a robot who had been forgotten on Earth. He is wise enough to realize that the cynical among us will not buy this. But I'm willing to believe it. Some of the random extras support this idea, and since I like him even more for talking about how much he adored Triplets of Belleville and seeming genuinely sad that it was up against his juggernaut Nemo during Oscar time.

Stanton also hosts the deleted scenes (the better of which are on Disc 1). One of which includes a fully animated scene, very rare for a movie of this genre to have a completed scene axed, but they made a few big tweaks towards the end of the production, which really give the EVE/WALL-E relationship a lot more impact.

Also on Disc 1, a featurette on the animation sound design. Apparently that's very important in a film that is short on dialogue. Interesting, but a little long. You can also watch Presto, the sweet and silly short about the magic rabbit that aired before the film in theaters. And the best thing is BURN-E, a brand new short made for the DVD. It's about the little robot that got stuck outside when WALL-E and EVE zipped back on to the Axiom after their outer-space dance. It's all about this one character, how he came to be there and he is just irresistibly sweet and crazily frustrated. There's also this like "Sneak Peek" thing which promises a look at WALL-E's tour of the universe, but it is basically a commercial, which directs you to the official film site, which in turn takes you to another site where you can look at real outer space stuff. I was unhappy about the commercial being billed as an extra.

However, Disc 2 is jam-packed with so much stuff, that it is hard to complain about one little ad being snuck in. You can pick between Humans and Robots. Humans is for film fans, and there are six separate features that look at the making of this film. The highlight is the Captain's Log, where it is revealed that the people in this film were originally supposed to be green gelatinous aliens who used robots as slaves and WALL-E had to save his fellow mechanical kind. Though the "Life of a Shot" segment where they show exactly how many layers and people are required to make one shot of a movie is utterly fascinating, and sort of overwhelming.

Also in the human section is a History of Buy N Large, with commercials and confidential information about the clean up. Very enjoyable. A few more deleted scenes, with the scarier version of Auto (the autopilot), and the hour and a half documentary The Pixar Story, which chronicles this inventive film studio's creation and development.

In Robots, there's more kid friendly fare. However, the one thing that I found the most entertaining on the entirety of Disc 2 was here, not sure what that says about my mentality. In WALL-E's Treasures and Trinkets, the characters (though mostly WALL-E) are goofing around playing with other robots, and hula hoops and balls etc... But hip hop dancing WALL-E might be the cutest thing I've ever seen in my life. He pops and locks!

There's also Bot Files, which has info on each robo character featured in the movie. There are so many of them. They are all adorable. I'm still mostly in love with M-O though (I want one to come clean my house. I promise to treat it well!) And the Lots o' Bots Storybook, which is kinda weird. You use the cursor to put robot pieces together. Then it turns into a Dr. Seussian WALL-E tale. Weird, but again, this is probably for the younger set.

Disc 3 is just the digital version, which you can put on your iPod or MP3 player or whatnot. I love this new development which saves on paying for things twice, because sometimes you just want a little WALL-E to watch after a rough day at work. You can buy it now.

Maybe my expectations were too high. I mostly found this kinda dull, with stilted dialogue interspersed between elaborately animated fight scenes. Though good on them for making Anakin slightly less wooden than he was in the films. And the characters I thought I'd enjoy -- Rotta the baby Hutt, Ziro the "Truman Capote" Hutt -- drove me bananas. Especially Ziro. I'm just not sure what they were thinking. Plus, there's a girl Jedi, which I was beyond excited about. But while Padawan Ahsoka Tano has the skills, there are moments where she was a little too bratty. And it probably needlessly annoyed me that for most of the film she's saddled with taking care of the baby Hutt. Finally we get to see a lot of a female Jedi and she's stuck in the mom role? Sure, she's a caregiver who kicks ass, but she gets too mushy when the baby Hutt is sick and it kind of made me angry. The only truly awesome female in the film is the villain Asajj Ventress. What is up with that?

But this isn't supposed to be about why I liked/didn't like the film, or how this film treats its female characters. It's supposed to be about the Extras, and since it is something with the Lucasfilm stamp on it, you can bet your bottom dollar that it's got a heck of a lot of those.

On the first disc, aside from the film itself, there's the commentary, by the director and creative crew behind this release. If you aren't aware already, this takes place between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. But instead of a the big wordy crawl explaining what has happened and where we're at in the story, it's done by a narrator in a strange newsy voice that is really irksome. The creative people say this is a choice, and it replaces the scrolling text into space with visuals. I think that was a bad idea. People might not read much, but I'd rather read this instead of hearing the odd voice over. That just doesn't say "Star Wars" to me. Anyway, ranting again. I tried listening to most of the commentary, but it meant having to watch the movie again, and I'm just not ready for that again. I'm sure the true devotees will delight in pouring over this for all the little nuggets of nerdy detail.

Disc 2: All Special Features, All the Time
"The Clone Wars: The Untold Stories" is a preview of the TV season, which tackles topics that were skipped over in what Lucas calls "The Skywalker Saga." It actually looks kind of good... maybe I'd like Clone Wars in installments instead of in movie form? I'd have less time to be bored and/or annoyed. Then there's "Voices of the Clone Wars," which is kinda fun. I like that they film all of the characters together in the same room. It seems a switch from so much of the animation now, which seems like they do one voice at a time. This has a goofy hanging-out vibe, like they're enjoying making this movie. And it's cool to see the side-by-sides of the voices with the animation, especially when it's a performer who does multiple voices going back and forth. The guy who does General Grievous does some amazing electronic things vocally to play a droid. There's also the voice of Obi-Wan doing a faux commentary on how he looks in a given scene, which is a good laugh.

There's a long tedious feature about the new score. It's not John Williams, but it sure does sound like him. There's a gallery of concept and production art, which is a lot of digital landscapes. There's making-of webisodes, which feature the creative people talking about how this came about, and how the new characters were developed and the look and feel. It's like commentary, but in little chunks and far more fascinating than having to sit through the movie again. Just what I always wanted. There's also Deleted Scenes, including one in a Rancor pit that ends with Anakin taking "Stinky," who nearly pukes on him, which I appreciated. And another scene of Anakin fighting with "the slug" on his back in a little Yoda-like pouch. There's also the original trailers for the film, if you really care to watch them when you've already got the entire DVD.

For the true Star Wars devotees, you can buy it now.

If you haven't seen the movie (and if you don't have kids under 10, you probably haven't) Jack Black is a panda who aspires to be a Kung Fu master, but works at his family-run noodle shop. Until one day he's plucked from obscurity and named as the Dragon Warrior, gets some intense training, is subject to a lot of ridicule and fights a big bad guy. Sort of predictable, but it has a strong voice cast, and is really kinda funny, even though its brand of humor lacks the subtlety of a Pixar film.

The main disc is loaded with extras, starting with the Filmmaker Commentary. It's the two directors, Mark Osbourne and John Stevenson. You may never have heard of them, and normally I hate listening to commentaries that aren't from actors or people I know, but this was pretty interesting. They talked with reverence about the colors, and the 2-D animation that they used at the beginning of the film, and they even lament visual jokes that don't work. Which you'd normally write off, but after spending four years of your life working on a project, if people don't get a chuckle at the fact that you showed Po the Panda's dad in shadow looking like a panda before pulling back to reveal him to be a goose, you'd probably be a little sad, too.

And my wish for some talk from the stars was granted in the "Meet the Cast" featurette, where all the voice actors discuss how they got involved with the film and how they got into character. This is amazing not only because you see Angelina Jolie unleashing her inner Tigress, but also because there is nothing more awesome than seeing Ian McShane growling into the microphone. It's like Swearengen has returned. Oh, and there's a moment where he's serious and says that "bad guys always get the best lines," and then he smirks. I adore him. There's also lots of time spent with Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Lucy Liu, Seth Rogen, David Cross, Jackie Chan and some of the other supporting cast. It's pretty decent, and you don't have to watch the entire film again, like you would have if they'd done it as a commentary. I appreciate that.

Then there's a lot of techie stuff, for you animation junkies out there. "Pushing the Boundaries" focuses on how they did the clothes and fighting scenes, but mostly is a lot of the directors saying they came up with wild ideas and dumped them on the animators so they could figure them out. And "Sound Design" shows how they made the noises.

There's some fun stuff for the kiddies, unless they, like me, find Cee-Lo kind of terrifying. He does a video of his "Kung Fu Fighting" remake, which features a dance sequence (this information will be important later), a little girl teaching you how to use chopsticks, the Dreamworks Jukebox, the Dragon Warrior Training Academy (which is essentially a video game) and "Conservation International," which has Jack Black encouraging the kiddies to help save the pandas and explaining global warming. Not as preachy or annoying as it sounds, thankfully. And then the best part, which is Food Network guru Alton Brown at Mr. Chow's restaurant (he says he couldn't get a reservation at Mr. Ping's) watching as the head noodle chef shows how the food is so carefully crafted. Fascinating.

Secrets of the Furious Five
This short is about 30 minutes long and has Po telling the most precious little bunnies to do Kung Fu, but first gives them the backstory on how the much-hyped Furious Five learned the true meaning of the martial art. Features great 2D and 3D animation and those little bunnies bopping each other is just too cute for words.

After that, they've put on the "extra" extras. Stuff that maybe wasn't enough fun to make it to the main disc. So there is "Learn the Panda Dance," where HiHat instructs you on how to do the Cee-Lo dance from the aforementioned "Kung Fu Fighting" video. Kung Fu lessons, in all the different styles. Determining which fighting style you are, the history of the animals of Kung Fu Panda and a Chinese Zodiac calendar that helps you figure out your animal and what that means.

There's a learn-to-draw game, where you can pick from any of the characters. The animators are the teachers, and they seem remarkably comfortable with their instructions. There's the "Dumpling Shuffle," which is three-card monte with dumplings. And then a host of game demos which I refuse to write about as they are commercials, and not actually an extra feature.

You can buy the 2-DVD set now, and you can also buy the single DVD all wrapped and ready to go, for all your lazy holiday giving needs.

Menu Screens: First of all, the menu screens are beautiful. The chapter select is set up like a D&D game table, and the Languages and three Features screens each have a breakdown of the main characters' applicable gaming levels, like "Strength," "Intelijence" and "Armor Class." (Bender's armor class is "Shiny Metal." He must have been talking about his armored ass.)

Commentary: Somehow, they manage to get Futurama creator Matt Groening, executive producer David X. Cohen, voice actors Billy West (Fry, Zoidberg, Zapp, Prof. Farnsworth), John DiMaggio (Bender) and Tress MacNeille (Mom), writer Michael Rowe, producer Claudia Katz and director Dwayne Carey-Hill into one room to talk about the movie. I'd be curious to see it, and apparently you can see it on the Blu-ray version, in what may be the first video commentary track. But the audio is still plenty entertaining, since you get to hear from the creators, writers, performers and animators, with interjected impersonations by the voice talent. They manage not to talk over each other too much, and it's a good time.

Storyboard Animatic: While it's cool that this DVD has the animated black-and-white storyboards for the first half-hour of the movie -- including the Yellow Submarine-inspired opening sequence, which has nothing to do with the plot -- there isn't much to say about them. The sound plays over the entire thing, though, so if you ever wanted to watch a cartoon about a bunch of rough sketches who have a space ship, this is your dream featurette.

Futurama Genetics Lab: On one level, this is just a fun game; on the other hand, it's a peek inside the animators' sketchbooks, showing their brilliance and creativity. What you do is, you pick two characters from the seven provided -- Fry, Leela, Bender, Prof. Farnsworth, Dr. Zoidberg, Morbo the newsanchor and the Hypnotoad -- and you hit "Merge," and you're shown an original character that's a combination of the two. If I did my math right, that's 42 different characters, and they're all pretty awesome. Of course, seven of them are some kind of toad, but they're still neat. I recommend Zoidberg + Morbo = Zorbo, and Fry + Bender = Friender.

D & D & F: Dungeons & Dragons & Futurama: This is a mini-documentary about Futurama's love of Dungeons & Dragons. I thought it would be mostly a rundown and explanation of D&D references in the TV series, but it's also a look at of writers David X. Cohen, Eric Kaplan and Mike Rowe, who are pretending to play D&D in Eric's mother's basement and are dressed to suit. In a T-shirt with a stretched-out neck, Cohen looks like every D&D player I've ever known, and he shows off his childhood Dungeon map, from before he and his friends realized the game didn't need a board. Kaplan wears a chain mail hood and carries a flail, and is immediately brutalized by the D&D-hating Rowe, who carries a baseball bat for beating D&D fans like Kaplan. Whenever anyone's D&D explanation gets too nerdy, Rowe starts to bring out the bat. The weird part is that there are only three or four D&D-inspired TV scenes that they talk about before they start talking about clips from Bender's Game, the movie you just watched. Still, it's a pretty funny segment.

How to Draw Futurama in 83 Easy Steps: When I was younger, and The Simpsons was funny, I used to love the part of the Simpsons Magazine that showed you how to draw the Simpsons characters. Well, now the creative types at Rough Draft Studios are here to tell you how to draw the Futurama characters! ...Three of them, anyway. It's actually pretty informative, as we see Bender's Game director Dwayne Carey-Hill draw Bender, assistant director Derek Thompson draw Zoidberg, and supervising director Rich Moore use a 3B pencil to... call up his assistant, retake director Crystal Chesney-Thompson, and get her to draw Leela. (You can also read an interview and see amazing artwork by all three artists here.)

3D Models With Animator Discussion: Similar to the wire-frame breakdowns of the cars on the Speed Racer DVD, this featurette shows spinning models of all of the spaceships used in the demolition derby, including George Takei's Enterprise, Bakula's Enterprise, the ship, the "Lego-esque" ship, the Apollo module, the dump truck, Lrrr's ship and the space pickup truck. Director Carey-Hill and supervising director Moore talk about each ship, what it was based on and exactly how it had to be animated. Visually boring, but some interesting facts.

Deleted Scene: Cup or Nozzle? A short animatic scene, in between Farnsworth trying to smell-detect the crystal and Mom detecting the crystal, in which Cubert and Dwight are in line at an ice cream truck. The crystal in Cubert's pocket hums ominously, Dwight smells something, and Cubert opts to get his ice cream from the nozzle, causing a tube to be shoved into his mouth and ice cream to be dispensed. Throwaway, but it's nice they included it, if only to introduce a new fan-favorite character: shifty alien ice-cream vendor.

Blooperama 2: Outtakes from Bender's Game: Live-action footage shot during a group recording session for the movie. There are a few outtakes, but mainly it's to show the cast goofing off, and to show you what they look like in real life, leading you to realize that you've seen John DiMaggio on television before.

Bender's Anti-Piracy Warning: In case you didn't realize, Bender is not the best person to advocate not stealing things. It's pretty funny. His organization is called "D.O. I.T." In fact, you should just watch it now.

David X. Cohen's Dodecahedron Collection: Proving that he is an actual gaming nerd, and not just playing one for the purposes of the extras, Cohen shows off all of the 12-sided objects he owns that aren't actually dice. Well, one is a big, plush die, but that belongs to his daughter. The rest are made of wood, rubber, or naturally forming pyrite. Yes, 12-sided dice appear in nature! Maybe primitive man played D&D! (This is a "secret" extra, behind the Zoidberg skull on page three of the Features menu.)

"Wedgie It On In There": If you want to see Billy West say that line wrong 17 times, as the rest of the cast gets more and more exasperated, click on the castle on page three of the Features menu. Is it secret? Yes. Is it safe? Not really.

Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder: A sneak peek at the next Futurama movie. Normally, I wouldn't count previews as extras, but it certainly felt like a bonus for me, especially since Cohen has said that they would all be content if this was the last Futurama thing they ever did. The plot involves an ancient battle or some such, and it somehow involves the Robot Mafia, Zapp Brannigan and the voice of Snoop Dogg, which is all I needed to hear.

The future is now, so why wait? Buy it here!

There are some extras, but not very many. There is a "Deck the Halls Sing Along" and "12 Days of Christmas Sing Along", which feature edited sequences from the Madagascar penguins in A Christmas Caper, set to classic songs. Annoying, because things don't match up, the "12 Days of Christmas" lyrics have been changed from "three French hens" to "three wrapped fish," but they show a picture of four wrapped fish, and there are supposed to be "10 shoppers," instead of "10 lords-a-leaping," but there are only like eight. These things drive me crazy. My two-year-old didn't seem to mind. Though she wanted to know why there weren't any Shrek babies.

There's a game: Gingy's Dunking game. There are pictures of the Gingerbread Man with different faces and you have to find the match. Not challenging, for any age group. A trial of a Shrek Carnival game... which is not an extra. It's a commercial. And then the only feature that is actually worth anything, is the Dreamworks Animation Jukebox, which means that you can just watch the "Move It" scene from Madagascar and "I'm a Believer" from Shrek.

All in all, not really worth a full-price DVD. It won't even keep your kids busy for an hour. So if you feel that 18 bucks for a half hour's worth of entertainment is a good buy, go for it. You can buy it here.

I'm not going to describe the plot. If you haven't seen the film or read the book... go check Wikipedia and come back. I'll wait. As some of the filmmakers point out in the "making of" documentary, it's really hard to make an entire feature length movie out of a story that is four or five paragraphs long. Apparently, it was Walt Disney's particular gift to be able to transform classic fables and make them addictive film fare for audiences young and old. He also knew how to cross-promote the hell out of his content, as I learned in "The Peter Tchaikovsky Story." This biopic originally aired as part of Wonderful World of Disney and was a history of the composer that was used to plug the heck of Sleeping Beauty. At the top of the feature, Walt talks about the forthcoming Magical Mural Screen (widescreen for those living in this century) and how it will be the first time anyone has seen this on their TV sets. He also explains about Stereophonic sound, which you can achieve by turning on the radios in your house at the same time as the TV and tuning them so they all played the special at once. And he hypes that this is the first full-length animated feature to be filmed in Technirama 70, and how this film cost a whopping six million dollars to make. The Tchaikovsky biopic is slow and skippable, but to see the widescreen broadcast is pretty damned impressive.

Also on the first disc is audio commentary by Pixar founder John Lasseter, Disney animator Andreas Deja and Leonard Maltin. Three smart guys talking about the film and the nitty gritty details, kinda fascinating. There are self explanatory Princess Fun Facts and a version of the "Grand Canyon Suite" with pictures that was released way back when and can cure even the most serious cases of insomnia. There's a convenient song selection menu that allows you to just cut straight to the sing-a-long versions of the scenes (parents will appreciate this the 100th time a toddler requests to listen to "Once Upon a Dream"). The misleading "Fast Play" is NOT a feature and a complete misnomer. It's something that Disney has on most of their DVDs now that allows parents to put on the movie and have it play all of the commercials -- you have to SKIP the Fast Play in order to get straight to the movie. It's their sneaky way of getting you to watch their commercials and I don't like it one bit. And the other thing I don't like? Emily Osment singing "Once Upon a Dream." You may not know who she is, but she's the younger sibling to Haley Joel and equally, if not more, annoying.

On Disc 2 you've got the options, but instead of picking the blue pill or the red pill, you can visit the Cottage or the Castle. Cottage takes you to games for the kiddies where you can learn to dance like Briar Rose and stuff. Castle takes you to the more grown up fare, including songs that were cut from the movie. "It Happens I Have a Picture" in which the two stupid kings expound upon the merits of their respective children (I really can't stand those dopes), the sweeping "Go to Sleep" which played as the fairies put the whole kingdom down for a nap, and the infectiously addictive "Riddle Diddle," in which the fairies prep for Aurora's birthday. There's also the Alternate Opening with another song "Holiday," which is an uplifting number with the townsfolk celebrating the birth of Princess Aurora. They completely recycled this for Beauty and the Beast because it pretty much has the same exact flavor/sound to it.

"Picture Perfect" is the making of, filled with stories from all those involved who are still around, including Mary Costa (who did the voice of Aurora). I learned so much about how it took nearly a decade to make it, and it was a conscious decision not to have talking mice or dwarves. There's a great extra called "Sequence 8" in which more of the same people specifically talk about the "Once Upon a Dream" portion of the film, which apparently went through a number of changes, cost more than $10,000 (a lot back then) to make and was nearly the cause of the film shutting down production. There's a feature on Evyind Earle, who was in charge of the art, and there's a whole history of his sad upbringing as well. And another Wonderful World of Disney special about four artists painting one tree, where Disney hypes the different personalities and styles he has working for him, and mentions they worked on Sleeping Beauty. Evil genius, that man. I swear. And if you like the art/animation stuff, there are galleries and storyboard sequences galore to be had, as well as the artists sketching from live action performers and the original trailers (hidden under the guise of publicity). It's really insanely thorough and could keep you busy for days.

My personal favorite feature (since I always wanted to be an Imagineer) was a walk-through of Sleeping Beauty's castle where there's a look at what the attraction used to look like back in it's heyday before it was shut down. There used to be peepholes where you could see Malificent's Demons, or a reflection of your own eye looking back at you like a million times. Creepy and cool. And I liked that there were multiple versions of it so you could see it with a guided explanation, or just pretend you were "wandering." Those Disney people are always thinking... and suckering me into buying more of their stuff.

Suckered in yet? Then buy it now!