By BRUCE DANCIS, Sacramento Bee

"Cool Hand Luke," starring Paul Newman, is filled with contrasts and ironies.

When he was a seventh-grader in Michigan, the teen-ager who would grow up to become Malcolm X went to the movies to see "Gone With the Wind." Many years later, he recounted what happened:"I was the only Negro in the theatre, and when Butterfly McQueen went into her act, I felt like crawling under the rug," he wrote in "The Autobiography of Malcolm X."

In this age of globalization, fish-out-of-water stories about naive and unprepared Americans who are thrust into foreign lands can make for compelling, if sometimes obvious, moviemaking. Two independent films just receiving their DVD debuts explore this theme with very different results.

So you think this is all there is to the Three Stooges: Moe gets mad, pokes Larry in the eye and hits Curly on the head, followed by a torrent of flying pies, nyuk-nyuk-nyuks and woo-woo-woos.Well, how about the Three Stooges as Nazi fighters?

When Steven Spielberg and George Lucas' "Indiana Jones" trilogy was finally released on DVD in 2003, it was one of the home-video events of the year.Audiences had waited years for the action-adventure series to come out on DVD, and few were disappointed with the frame-by-frame restoration, digital remastering and new Dolby Digital soundtrack.

"CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR." (2007. RATED R. UNIVERSAL STUDIOS HOME ENTERTAINMENT. $29.98.)

In the early years of the 20th century, Harry Houdini was larger than life. He was the world's best-known escape artist, the "king of handcuffs," the No. 1 draw in vaudeville and, according to one biography, "America's first superhero."

"Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"One and two discs, Paramount Home Entertainment, $29.99/$39.99, rated R

It's hard to overestimate the impact of "Bonnie and Clyde" on American moviemaking.

"It was evident to everyone on the set (of 'The Pride of the Yankees') that (Gary Cooper) had never swung a baseball bat. He trained with professional players to learn a few fundamentals, but the right-handed actor still couldn't swing convincingly from the left side of the plate.