The concluding film in this trilogy, “L’Eclisse” (1962), is available in a pristine edition from Criterion (as is “L’Avventura”; both discs boast plentiful extras). “La Notte” (1961), the middle installment, can be found in a no-frills package from Fox Lorber.Of the early work, Antonioni’s first feature, a fatalistic noir titled “Story of a Love Affair” (1950), was released in a two-disc edition by the small company No Shame Films. “Le Amíche” (1955), an effective if atypical melodrama, is available from Image Entertainment and “Il Grido” (1957), an important transitional work with intimations of “L’Avventura,” from Kino International. Key formative works like “The Lady Without Camelias” and “The Vanquished” (both from 1953) and the socially conscious documentaries that Antonioni made in the 1940s have never been released.The only other two features on DVD are from his later incarnation as a globe-hopping chronicler of the zeitgeist. “Blowup” (1966, Warner Home Video), his time capsule of swinging London, remains his best-known film. “The Passenger” (1975) — until recently Antonioni’s most notoriously unavailable film, thanks to its protective star, Jack Nicholson (who owned the rights) — was reissued on its 30th anniversary in a slightly longer cut than the release version.

Nicholson’s commentary on the Sony DVD, reverent and warmly anecdotal, is well worth the time.A maddeningly large portion of this major filmmaker’s work has been altogether overlooked on home video. “Identification of a Woman” (1982), the last film he made before suffering a stroke in 1983, and “Beyond the Clouds” (1995), his tentative return to filmmaking (co-directed with Wim Wenders), are no longer in print; both are minor works but not without interest. The bigger crime is that two of Antonioni’s greatest films are among the titles missing on DVD: “Red Desert” (1964), his first color film, is a haunting story of industrial pollution and environmental illness. (An Australian edition has just been released.) And “Zabriskie Point” (1970), his immersion in post-Kent State youth radicalism, forms a loose trilogy, along with “Blowup” and “The Passenger,” about the counterculture and its discontents.. There appears to be no end in sight to the “High School Musical” phenomenon, now transformed into a stage musical and spreading to public school, community theater and professional stages across the country — and the world.In addition to an expected 2,000 licensed high school and amateur productions by the end of the year, a 60-city professional stage tour was launched last month in Chicago. The Broadway-style musical will be coming to Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre in December at the same time local high school productions may also be taking place.”We’ve all been looking for something like this. It’s really hard to interest this generation in ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ ” said Ann Hunter, drama director of Arlington Heights High School in Fort Worth, which this year staged the Disney theatrical adaptation along with crosstown Western Hills High for their annual joint summer production.Reflecting the popularity of the TV movie, she said, twice as many kids showed up for the audition, and audiences overflowed a larger-than-usual venue chosen to accommodate the expected crowds.

Following the boundary-crossing theme of the movie, more boys, even some athletes, showed up to sing and dance, she said.Budget-challenged and struggling, the Texas school drama directors hope to leverage the enthusiasm surrounding the “High School Musical” phenomenon to build local support for their theater arts programs. Disney filmed a “documusical” of their production and a series of two-minute spots to help launch a theater grant initiative.The Anaheim-based NAMM, an international music products association, will also help selected schools, as it did in Fort Worth, with costumes, makeup and lighting.Steve Fickenger, vice president of Disney Theatrical Productions, said the play has been “hugely embraced” in Britain, Japan and Scandinavia. Eventually, he said, “the story will be told all over the world.”. EEDS” is back, and it’s about time.

Showtime’s banner dramedy about a pot-dealing suburban mom is one of the best reasons to pay for cable. As Nancy Botwin, Mary-Louise Parker captures the sardonic narcissism of a widow who enters the drug world out of desperation (what else could an upper-middle-class, stay-at-home mom do? Sell Avon?) only to be seduced by early success and her own bad-girl self.Surrounded by suburbia’s socially and emotionally mangled — slacker-stoner brother-in-law Andy (Justin Kirk), loser-stoner accountant Doug (Kevin Nealon), socially climbing-nonstoner frenemy Celia (Elizabeth Perkins), troubled sons Silas (Hunter Parrish) and Shane (Alexander Gould) — Nancy finds order and a certain clarity on the proverbial other side of the tracks, bonding with supplier Heylia (Tonye Patano) and Conrad (Romany Malco).But her ambition gets the best of her, and there are reasons nervy mothers living in gated communities aren’t drug kingpins as Nancy found at the end of Season 2. In Season 3, almost everyone faces payback, and this sort still rhymes with rich.A suburban dystopia with a cast to die for, “Weeds” is as much character study as dark comedy; this season’s additions of Matthew Modine as a sleazy community developer and Mary-Kate Olsen as a love interest for Silas promise to make those characters even darker and more hysterical than before. The only problem is the show’s length — a half-hour is not nearly enough time to spend each week at the Botwin house.(Showtime, Mon., 10 p.m.)– Mary McNamara. Stevie WONDER’S mother, Lula Mae Hardaway, famously co-wrote his hits “I Was Made to Love Her” and “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours.” So after she died last year, Wonder soon realized that there couldn’t be a more fitting way to recover than to take those songs on the road for his first full tour in 12 years.”It’s a place of healing for me and the things I’ve dealt with over the last few years, like losing my mother,” Wonder said at a recent L.A press conference.

“Through it all you need a mantra, and my mantra has been music.”His “A Wonder Summer’s Night” tour, which stops at the Greek Theatre on Sept 5, has special resonance for him. But like his landmark album “Songs in the Key of Life,” the tour was prompted by Wonder’s observations on both emotional pain and larger forces including Hurricane Katrina and growing schisms in American culture.”We’re looking at a very interesting political situation and things that have happened socially, and I think people have to come together to free themselves to a positive place,” Wonder said.Vintage soul and spacey funk, much of it inspired by Wonder’s sound, are doing quite well on the pop charts these days. With artists such as Amy Winehouse and Sean Kingston digging through dusty crates of Motown vinyl for their reference points, how does the original article feel about the kids rediscovering his classic work?”People think they’ve heard it all, but then there are things you hear again done differently, and it’s exciting,” Wonder said “Ne-Yo, he’s a great writer. And I love Beyoncé very much.”–Intriguing links to CambodiaAnyone who’s caught a set from Cambodian psych-rock band Dengue Fever knows its sound is one of the most original things going in Los Angeles. But there’s a long tradition behind Dengue’s Southeast Asian surf-rock hybrid. That history gets an overdue retrospective Tuesday, when the Knitting Factory screens “The Golden Voice,” a documentary on ’60s Cambodian pop luminary Ros Sereysothea, for the first time in L.A.Ros was one of the first singers to layer traditional Cambodian melodies and vocal inflections over searing, reverb-drenched garage-punk, though her life and career were cut short by the ascent of the Khmer Rouge.