Iron Man—Ultimate 2-Disc Edition

DVD (retail $29.99)Amazon



Robert Downey Jr. is terrific as a wealthy munitions supplier who has a change of heart and begins fighting—in a high-tech, impenetrable metal suit—the criminals he inadvertently helped create. Iron Man soared into theaters earlier this summer but was eclipsed at the box office when another crime-buster spread his dark Bat-wings. Here’s a second chance to spend some quality time with a heavy-metal superhero worth his weight in good-guy gold. The nearly four hours’ worth of extras include a seven-part making-of documentary, Iron Man’s comic-book history and additional scenes.

—Neil Pond, American Profile





Mystery Science Theater 3000—20th Anniversary Edition

DVD box set (retail $69.99)Amazon



One of TV’s most unique shows—in which a human and his robot sidekicks provide running comedic commentary to laughably bad B movies—celebrates an anniversary milestone. This special edition includes a collectible figure of the show’s “mascot” robot, Crow, and finds the funny in four otherwise unmemorable chunks of Hollywood cheese about aliens, werewolves, desert mutants and slave-hunting dinosaurs. It’s the next best thing to going to the drive-in with a car full of your wittiest wisecracking buddies!

—Neil Pond, American Profile





Wisdom

By Andrew Zuckerman

Hardcover, 216 pages

(retail $50)Amazon



What are life’s most important lessons? Photographer and filmmaker Zuckerman logged 65,000 miles to pose the question to dozens of well-known people over the age of 65, all of them trailblazers in their respective fields. The result: this landmark coffee-table book of large-format portraits and first-person essays from Nelson Mandella, Henry Kissinger, Billie Jean King, Clint Eastwood, Willie Nelson, Buzz Aldrin and 45 other iconic contributors, plus an accompanying DVD. If you could bottle up the been-there, done-that between these pages, you’d have an elixir for the ages.

—Neil Pond, American Profile





The DC Vault

Hardcover, 192 pages (retail $49.95)Amazon



More than just a handsome coffee-table book, this “museum in a box” is super-packed with photos, artwork and more than 25 removable archival reproductions—like a Wonder Woman mask and a Justice Society decoder ring from 1942—that unfold the colorful history of the hands-down granddaddy of all comic book companies.

—Neil Pond, American Profile