Baby Mama

DVD ($29.98 retail) Amazon



Tina Fey and Amy Pohler, both of whom cut their comedic teeth on Saturday Night Live, are big-screen standouts in this smart, sassy and frequently side-splittingly funny story of a successful single businesswoman who hires a pregnancy surrogate to bear her child. When their very different worlds collide, it’s nine months of hilarious maternal tug of war. DVD extras include deleted scenes, a making-of featurette, commentary by Fey and Pohler and an interview with the actresses and director. (Rated PG-13)

—Neil Pond, American Profile





Bob Schieffer’s America

By Bob Schieffer

Hardcover, 278 pages

(retail $24.95)Amazon



The veteran CBS newsman shares his thoughts on a sweeping variety of topics in this collection of 171 short, colorful essays, most of them commentaries he delivered as the weekly wrap-up of Face the Nation over the last 14 years. From war and peace and politics to cell-phone etiquette, baseball and Paris Hilton, the topics take you on an engrossing journey inside the wide-ranging mind of one of America’s most celebrated TV journalists.

—Neil Pond, American Profile





High School Flashback Collection

3-DVD box set (retail $39.98)Amazon



Three classic coming-of-age movie comedies from the 1980s re-emerge in this bonus-crammed repackage (in a miniature combination locker—clever!) of The Breakfast Club, Weird Science and Sixteen Candles. All were directed by the era’s Hollywood golden boy, John Hughes, and featured young stars from a pool of adolescent actors that came to be known as “the Brat Pack,” including Molly Ringwold, Ally Sheedy, Emilio Estevez and Anthony Michael Hall—the only Packster to pull off a high-school hat trick by starring in all three. DVD extras include new interviews with cast members, audio commentary and the TV pilot for the USA Network series spawned by Weird Science.

—Neil Pond, American Profile





Leading Couples: The Most Unforgettable Screen Romances of the Studio Era

By Frank Miller / Introduction by Robert Osborne

Hardcover, 232 pages (retail $19.95) Amazon



Done in conjunction with a Turner Classic Movies film festival of the same name airing Nov. 18 and 25, this compendium of unforgettable movie pairings from the era of big-studio productions is packed with rare photos, juicy factoids, delightful trivia and authoritative insight into the on- and off-screen sparks generated by Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, Elvis Presley and Ann-Margaret, Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, and more than 30 other classic silver-screen couples. A must for movie buffs who’d like to bask in the sweet, sometimes sweltering passions of Hollywood’s golden age.

—Neil Pond, American Profile