Holiday buying guide

Looney Tunes - The Golden Collection (Warner Home Video, $64.92): To see if this four-disc set belongs under a loved one's tree, simply put on Wagner's "Flight of the Valkyries." If he or she starts singing, "Kill the Wabbit! Kill the Wabbit!" then, my friend, you have a winner. Sadly, "What's Opera, Doc?" is missing from this collection of 56 classic shorts (as is "One Froggy Evening"), but what's here is so good, it's easy to forgive the folks at Warner for holding out for next year's "even-more-special" edition. Disc 1 stars the wascally wabbit, Disc 2 is devoted to Daffy and Porky, and Discs 3 and 4 showcase shorts starring everyone from Pepe LePew to the little penguin who cries ice cubes. Each disc is larded with interviews with Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, and the rest of the Termite Terrace gang; commentaries; music-only tracks; and other extras - all of which border on the worshipful. While it's a little silly to hear Daffy and Co. discussed in the kind of solemn tones usually reserved for the Middle East peace process, the remastered cartoons look fantastic - as if they were whipped off the drawing board just in time for Saturday morning. By Yvonne Zipp

It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (MGM, $19.98): When NBC first aired this special in 2002, Muppet fans everywhere breathed a sigh of relief. It is so good to see Kermit and Co. back in fine form in this parody of "It's a Wonderful Life" (with a dash of "A Christmas Story" and "Moulin Rouge" tossed in). After Rachel Bitterman (a fantastic Joan Cusack) forecloses on the Muppet Theater, Kermit wishes he had never been born. Enter an angel (David Arquette), who shows what life would have been like for the rest of the Muppets gang. Some of the humor is a little too suggestive for small viewers, and there are no "Rainbow Connection"-like gems among the songs, but this is still one of the best Muppet outings since Jim Henson's passing. Extras include a parody of "Inside the Actor's Studio" starring Pepe the Prawn, bloopers, and deleted scenes. - Y.Z.

James Bond 007 Special Edition DVD, Vols 1-3 (MGM, each set priced at $124.96): Sure, you could wait for the annual Bond marathon on TV, but you won't be able to get through a full ski chase without a commercial break. Now, all 20 films in the series are available in three boxed sets. Unless you're a completist, you'll want to pick the selection with your favorites. My pick is Volume 1, which includes three of the strongest films of the series, "Goldeneye," "License to Kill," and "Goldfinger." Each DVD comes with a nifty "dossier" booklet with 007 trivia but the extras on the individual films are often leaner than George Lazenby's film résumé. The most glaring omission is the absence of a single commentary by any of the Bond actors. Even so, the voiceover tracks by directors, crew, and supporting actors are terrific - Benicio Del Toro, for instance, confesses that he left a permanent scar on Timothy Dalton's hand after a knife-scene accident in "License." There are also several featurettes wedged between music videos for Bond songs. One of them reveals why Connery looks so terrified when a huge shark brushes him aside in "Thunderball" - the beast had managed to slip through a transparent barrier. For once, Connery was at a loss for a one-liner. By Stephen Humphries

Alias (Buena Vista Home Entertainment $69.99): At last! I can finally throw away all those treasured tapes with episodes of the second season of "Alias." Here in one nice digital package: all 22 of them. Time to replay all those ambiguous scenes between sleek Lena Olin as the inscrutable mom and the tortured - but equally sleek - Jennifer Garner, as her spy daughter. There is simply not enough time in a life to slo-mo all of this, but that's what makes digital so great. It would take forever to cherry pick these scenes on VHS tapes. Then there are all the nifty extras. These aren't rocket science, but they're lots of fun - a quick reel of all Jennifer's coolest looks (who believes she only wore that red wig once?), the shooting of the big finale scene, oh, and the de rigeur blooper reel, of course. - Gloria Goodale

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