The third installment in one of the more bizarre and improbable adventure series out there
arrives on DVD just in time to give Noah Wyle fans some double-feature fodder, something
to counterbalance his return to the small screen for an arc on the final season
of ER.

The TBS-incubated Librarian series began in 2004 with The Librarian: Quest of
the Spear, followed by The Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines. They’re sort of like The Da Vinci Code crossed with Indiana Jones, if that movie (or series) were to star Brendan Fraser, be written by a very enthusiastic community college instructor with only a single credit of Xena fan-fiction to his name, and then overseen by a very budget-conscious producer. It’s all air-quote tongue-in-cheek, in other words, meaning that its very chintziness is held up as a baked-in self-defense, and example of why it doesn’t aspire to more.

The movie’s stories revolve around Flynn Carsen (Wyle), a bookish chap drafted into archeological adventures, via his employer, as part of a larger battle between good and evil. This time it’s a deadly mission to recover the Judas Chalice; in tracking it down, Carsen is saved by, and falls in love with, a mysterious French woman, Simone Renoir (Stana Katic), who hides a terrifying past. When double-crossed by the respected Professor Lazio (Bruce Davison) and ambushed by a ruthless gang, Flynn realizes Simone’s secret, his true mission and a shocking discovery are all lying within a decaying New Orleans crypt — a crypt that may be holding Count Vlad Dracula, whom the world has feared for centuries.

The film benefits, one supposes, from some surrounding consistency off-screen. Director Jonathan Frakes is back at the helm, along with much of the same production team of the series, and reprising their supporting roles from the second film are also Bob Newhart and Jane Curtin (3rd Rock from the Sun). Series writer Marco Schnabel, though, isn’t able to till much clever ground in the dialogue department, and the crimped production means undercut what are supposed to be some of the film’s more cathartic, involving adventure sequences. A simple rule that The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice forgets: if you can’t afford it, don’t write it, write around it.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 audio mix and, somewhat curiously, optional subtitles in English only. (One presumes, given the swashbuckling nature of the material, that there would be a slightly bigger international audience for this type of programmer, but the narrow range of its language options seems to be a silent concession of its cheesy narrative faults.) Bonus features arrive in the form of some behind-the-scenes footage and three deleted scenes, running just over seven minutes. The biggest of the excised scenes is an extended sword fight, rightly snipped because of its awkward blocking and pacing, in which Carson gets his rented tuxedo slashed, and parries around and through sculpture and paintings. An additional seven minutes on the movie’s visual effects showcases tweaked material (it’s mostly background material) via comparative split-screen wipes. Finally, there’s 150 seconds of edited together rehearsal footage from a monastery scene within the movie. Rounding things out are previews for Termination Point and a handful of other Sony home entertainment releases. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) C- (Disc)

The Bible’s Buried Secrets is a landmark two-hour NOVA special taking viewers on a fascinating scientific journey that began 3,000 years ago and continues to this day. The film presents the results of more than 100 years of excavation and centuries of biblical scholarship, digging deep into the origins of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament.

A reasoned, well mannered archeological detective story, the documentary tackles some of the biggest questions in biblical studies. Where did the ancient Israelites come from? Who wrote the Bible, when, and why? How did the worship of one god — the foundation of modern Judaism, Christianity and Islam — actually emerge over polytheism? The film’s roster of interviewees is wide and varied, including The Gift of the Jews
author Thomas Cahill and academicians like P. Kyle McCarter of John
Hopkins University, Michael Coogan of Stonehill College and Manfred
Bietak of the Austian Academy of Sciences. The result is a powerful intersection of science, scholarship, and scripture; The Bible’s Buried Secrets provides unique insight into the deeper meaning of the biblical texts and their continuing resonance through the centuries.

Perhaps most interesting are the movie’s clear contextual framings. Several other films, including Walking the Bible, have delved into the archeological history of the Bible, but The Bible’s Buried Secrets is upfront about the lack of historical reference and support, for instance, for the Israelites’ desert wandering, which would have had to have been sometime between 1275 and 1208 B.C. Side-by-side discrepancies between accounts of the Great Flood and Noah’s Ark are also spotlighted (“40 days and 40 nights” is the most popularly recited length, but the Bible also tabs the event as lasting 150 days), and linguistic analysis supports the argument that the first five books of the Bible, also known as The Torah, was written not by Moses, but many generations of scribes, spanning 100 or more years.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The Bible’s Buried Secrets comes presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen with optional closed captions and described video for the visually impaired. Unlike most other WGBH Boston Video titles, there are bonus features included — this time in the form of a half hour of extra scenes/excised material. Materials and activities for educators are also spotlighted via a link to the NOVA web site. To order any DVD or VHS release from WGBH Boston Video, including the aforementioned Walking the Bible, phone (800) 949-8670 or click here. B+ (Movie) B- (Disc)