A+E

Once again, this month's peanut butter, King's Delicious Nuts Honey-Roasted Peanut Butter, is a traditionally flavored selection without any fancy frills. That's a good thing, since the King's Delicious is tasty and appealing—chunky but not too chunky—with a rich peanut flavor and a hint of honey roasting that's not overpowering. That's more than you can say for the Ujarra's Imported Costa Rican Pineapple Jelly, whose pineapple flavor is a little strong and whose texture is disturbingly stringy. It's fine if you really like pineapple, but otherwise it's worth a pass. aab

More info:
www.lovepbj.com

Normally, players clubs offer their members such perks as free meals, rooms, and best of all, money. So what are we to make of the Palms handing out gasoline? With inflation-adjusted petrol prices still far, far below what they were in 1981 (or 1939, for that matter), the Arco gas cards are still a creative incentive for gamers. At the Weekly, we're looking forward more to the day when we can barter nylons for oh-so-precious aluminum foil.

Dian Diaz

Dian Diaz (5 stars)

The chanteuse of Bellagio's Fontana Room debuts with a remarkably produced adult-contemporary album. Diaz's solid, passionate voice mixes a Latin flavor into R&B and pop, and the singer-songwriter's result is a disc that could easily take its place alongside Celine Dion or Gloria Estefan.

The Warriors: The Ultimate Director's Cut (R) (3 stars)


$19.99

The Warriors again proves that classic stories never grow old. Walter Hill's hyper-violent gangland drama was inspired by Anabasis, Xenophon's account of the retreat from Persia of a Greek mercenary army after supporting Cyrus the Younger in his attempt to gain the Persian throne. Hill's staging ground is the Bronx and Cyrus appears in the personage of a messianic thug whose assassination is mistakenly blamed on a gang from Coney Island. To avenge Cyrus' death, dozens of gangs put aside their differences long enough to set traps for the retreating Warriors. Upon its release in 1979, nervous Nellies in the media predicted real-life hooligans would emulate the movie's cartoonish gangs and terrorize the nation's malls and multiplexes. Somehow, the republic survived the threat.

Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection (PG) (5 stars)


$119.98

The Val Lewton Horror Collection (NR) (5 stars)


$59.92

Distributors often resort to hyperbole in an effort to differentiate their newly released titles from previous editions of DVDs and retrospective collections. Universal probably didn't have to add the word "masterpiece" to the title of its hefty new Hitchcock set but it correctly describes the contents. The same holds true for the tag "legendary" on Warners' collection of thrillers produced by Val Lewton.

The Hitchcock set boasts a 36-page book, 14 documentaries, nine featurettes and remastered editions of Saboteur Shadow of a Doubt, Rope, Rear Window, The Trouble With Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, Psycho, The Birds, Marnie, Torn Curtain, Topaz, Frenzy and Family Plot.

Lewton was responsible for a string of highly stylized flicks through RKO's B-movie mill: Cat People, The Curse of the Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, The Body Snatcher, Isle of the Dead, Bedlam, The Leopard Man, The Ghost Ship, The Seventh Victim and Shadows in the Dark. Considering he was limited to a budget of around $200,000 per picture, the quality of his signature films was amazing. Watch Lewton and Jacques Tourneur's Cat People alongside Paul Schrader's not-bad 1982 adaptation, and the artistic principle "less is more" will make perfect sense.