This week, the fifth and final Best Picture nominee from last year makes its DVD debut, and a whole lot of TV and Blu-Ray releases hit the market.

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Somebody noticed that Paul Haggis's Crash has been Netflix's "No. 1 rented movie" for more than three and a half years, since it was released on DVD in September 2005. Needless to say, this is not the kind of factoid that speaks for itself and must be dealt with until a satisfactory explanation if forthcoming. God knows that Haggis, who write and directed the Academy-Award-winning message movie, has no earthly idea why anyone would want to rent the thing: "I have no idea why anyone went to the movie in the first place," he told the Chicago Tribune, "let alone rent it. It was a little independent film, and when people started to see it, I was amazed." (Haggis, to his credit, is also bewildered that the fruit of his loins won the Oscar. "I love the Oscars; I just think they are the best thing in the world, but if you asked me if it was the best film of the year, I'd say, 'Of course not.'" He adds, "I happened to like my second film [In the Valley of Elah] better than Crash, but no one went to see it." Incidentally, Elah was technically his third movie as a director, the first having been 1993's Red Hot, but apparently even he didn't see that one.) If it makes him feel better, Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey confirms that, based on his numbers, "More people have now seen Crash on Netflix than in the theater." He added that, because the movie is on so many people's queues, it's always out and people have to wait a long time to get to rent it, which in turn "adds to the demand for people wanting to see it."

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It's been 24 years since Bret Easton Ellis's debut novel Less Than Zero opened a West Coast branch of the '80s Literary Brat Pack franchise, an two years less than that since the movie version, directed by Marek Kanievska. Now, Ellis has written a sequel to the novel, called Imperial Bedrooms--the man does love his Elvis Costello references--and has informed MTV's movie blog that he can already see the movie version. Actually, it sounds as if he may have hatched the idea partly in hopes of reconnecting with the spectacular but unpredictable comet that is the career of Robert Downey, Jr. As one of our most stylish and perceptive voices on the contemporary movie scene noted last year, it was Downey's high-wire performance as Julian, a rich boy caught in a drug-fueled downward spiral, that first hinted that Downey, already a known commodity as a gifted comic actor, might be a performer capable of then-unimaginable levels of depth and daring. “It’s in present-day,” Ellis says of the new book. “You’ll find out where all the characters from the book have now ended up, for better or for worse...When I began to outline the book and figure out who’s going to be around and who’s not – some of the main people are going to be okay. There was some supporting cast that I realized was expendable – you knew something bad was going to happen to them. But the leads? Yeah, they kind of stuck around.” As for Julian, Ellis says that the character is "in the book is sober. Fragile, but sober.”

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Greetings, Screenbag fans. William Shatner here to take you where no man has gone before. That is, no man besides that Steve Don Vodiak who usually does the Highlight Reel on Fridays. I thought it was important to step in today because I’m deeply troubled by the 21 Stars We Hate (Parts One, Two, Three and Four). Not because I wasn’t included – it would take a sick mind, a truly disturbed psychosis to even think of such a thing – but because I don’t see such names as George Takei, Adrian Zmed and James Spader on the list. God love them all, but they are truly unspeakable screen presences, whose lines and close-ups I was forced to cut – for their own good!

And speaking of Takei, this Star Trek Showdown post is greatly offensive to me, excepting, of course, the parts of it that confirm the dreadful mental illness that Sulu fellow has labored under lo these many years. I prefer to focus on the positive, such as these reviews of Six Man, Texas, Fear(s) of the Dark and Synecdoche, New York, rather than dwell in the sick cesspool of negativity where posts about The Big Fix, Turkey Shoot, Pride and Glory and Meet the Browns drown in their own repulsive bile.

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Thanks to reader Jason Alley for requesting this week’s review. As always, for instructions on how to request the next review for this feature (to run in two weeks) see the bottom of this post.

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Taking off from our popular list of the greatest sex scenes in cinema, Nerve Video presents The Hollywood Sex Scene Database. All your favorites, sortable and scorable, with a James Spader special feature running as we speak. Mmm. James Spader.

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