"TINKER BELL." (2008. RATED G. WALT DISNEY STUDIOS. $29.99.)"I believe in fairies!" "I believe in fairies!" Thus so many young kids clapped and shouted as they watched "Peter Pan" on television in the 1960s. And all that excitement brought a little ball of light named Tinker Bell back to life. Now Disney has come out with a straight-to-DVD animated movie in which Tinker Bell talks for the first time. (They're not counting live-action Tinks like Julia Roberts in "Hook.")Kids will be charmed by this tale, which could be subtitled "How Tinker Bell Got Her Mojo." The movie opens with the feisty fairy learning that she has the gene for the Tinker class of fairies. But the Tinker class never gets to go to the Mainland (the human world) and has to stay in Pixie Hollow. So she tries to learn the talents of the nature fairies, such as water and light, but is a dismal failure and unwittingly puts spring -- and the natural order of things -- in jeopardy. But Tink proves her mettle with her mental skills and wins over all the fairies in Pixie Hollow. Sounds trite, but it's thoroughly enjoyable and has a witty twist at the end.Mae Whitman voices the little sprite and has help from a supporting cast that includes Kristin Chenoweth, Lucy Liu, America Ferrera and Anjelica Huston. Huston, known for roles as wicked stepmothers and other meanies, plays the good Queen Clarion. Extras include a DVD-ROM of Tinker training, an interactive guide to Pixie Hollow and some music videos.-- Leba Hertz"THE EDGE OF HEAVEN." (2007. NOT RATED. STRAND RELEASING. $27.99.)Turkish-German director Fatih Akin has created an unconventional but powerful film, whose effect is cumulative and deep. It takes place on a wide canvas, taking in a whole assortment of characters, some in Germany and some in Turkey, whose lives intertwine through a series of coincidences and extraordinary events. It all begins when a vigorous old man, a Turk in Germany, picks up a prostitute. The story expands to follow the life of his son and her daughter, a Turkish freedom fighter. A passionate lesbian relationship becomes central to the story, and Hanna Schygulla, one of the indelible European stars of the 1970s and 1980s, has a strong role as a woman who can only watch as her daughter is swept up in a life-changing passion.The film is about exteriors and interiors, ways of life and the world of the soul, and the poetic English-language title evokes the ecstasy that the characters desperately seek. The original German title, translated as "On the Other Side," is more descriptive, however, in that it accurately sums up the action of a film in which characters keep finding themselves going to completely foreign places, within and without.The director made this film when he was 34, but he has the ruefulness and insight of an artist 30 years older. It's the unmistakable product of a fully developed talent.-- Mick LaSalle"ALFRED HITCHCOCK PREMIERE COLLECTION." (1927-47. NOT RATED. VARIOUS DATES. MGM. $119.98.)Most of the eight films here are not among Hitchcock's masterpieces, but even his second-echelon stuff is well worth a look. The big three in this set are the terrific "Rebecca" (1940) -- Hitchcock's first American film and an Oscar winner, starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine -- plus two films with Ingrid Bergman, "Notorious" (1946, with Claude Rains) and "Spellbound" (1945, with Gregory Peck). All three have been out of print for years, and MGM is also releasing them individually.The other titles in the collection include "The Lodger" (1927, the director's silent take on the Jack the Ripper story); "The Paradine Case" (1947, with Peck and Alida Valli); "Lifeboat" (1944, set entirely on a lifeboat floating in the Atlantic during World War II); and "Sabotage" (1936, an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Agent").Rounding out the set is a personal favorite, "Young and Innocent" (1937), not a great picture but an entirely entertaining one. Based on a Josephine Tey novel, the movie has Hitchcock's beloved theme of the innocent man accused, with dashing Derrick de Marney as a fugitive who is aided by a policeman's daughter (Nova Pilbeam).An ocean of extras comes with this set, including the "AFI Tribute to Hitchcock," a 32-page booklet, commentaries by numerous film historians, interviews with the director by Peter Bogdanovich and Francois Truffaut and radio plays of several of the films.-- Walter Addiego(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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