Poring through bonus features to DVDs may sound like easy work, but it gets pretty tedious after a while. We get it, you’ve just made the greatest movie of all time. Now please get in line with everyone else, because so did they.
Props, then, to the people behind the “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” for coming up with a slew of extras that will be fun for the kids and give their parents something to chew on as well. Matthew Lewis (Neville Longbottom) and Alfie Enouch (Dean Thomas) host a series of clips where the child actors meet with various behind-the-scenes personnel, discussing editing, makeup, costumes, special effects, and even owl training. Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy), meanwhile, plays a fun game called “What’s on Your Mind?” with the cast, asking questions about their favorite food, people and places. It’s completely fluffy and light, but fun.
There are several deleted scenes, including one involving clouds gathering over Hogwarts that should have made the final cut. On the self-promotion front, there is a featurette dedicated to the opening of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Islands of Adventure in Orlando. The biggest surprise, though, is the 50-minute film (!) “J.K. Rowling: A Year in the Life,” a rather sobering documentary about her upbringing and the parallels between her life and the Potter universe. Good stuff, Warners.
After dutifully earning his bones as one of the more reliable roasters at Comedy Central’s annual events (to Larry the Cable Guy: “Why are you so popular?”), Greg Giraldo finally gets his first one-hour special, and he makes it count. His take-no-prisoners approach is intact here, and in fact he saves a lot of his best bits for third rails like children (they’re fat, sickly and autistic). He does come a tad too close to a bit that popped up in Bill Burr’s act a year or so ago (the ‘I’m not a racist, but…’ routine), but he makes up for it by hammering a “sleepy Rasta” who nodded off in the third row, and by saluting a “gaggle of squawking twats” who refused to let 9/11 ruin their friend’s bachelorette party. The bonus features include the unaired pilot episode of “Adult Content,” a Comedy Central show about, well, porn. It’s a pretty decent show, though it makes sense that they would have had trouble following it up. With any luck, “Midlife Vices” will allow Giraldo to carve out a name for himself as something other than “that roast guy,” because the material here is most worthy.
Easily the best of the “Ice Age” movies to date, though there is still room for improvement. The main characters of Manny (Ray Romano), Diego (Denis Leary) and Sid (John Leguizamo) are still bland as waffles, as are 
