Cheapest BABYLON 5 & SMALLVILLE Ever!! JUSTIFIED!! MILDRED!! HITCHCOCK!! PAINS!! WILLOUGHBY!!...

Herc’s Popular Pricing Pantry

The first season of “Babylon 5,” $56.49 in 2010 and $30.99 last week, just plummeted to an all-time low of $13.99!! (77% Off!!)

The final season of “Smallville,” $53.99 in October and $44.99 last mont, just plummeted to an all-time low of $14.99!! (75% Off!!)

The third Blu-ray season of “True Blood,” $55.99 in March and $49.99 last month, is momentarily $36.99!! (54% Off!!)

The first season of “La Femme Nikita,” $61.49 in May and $55.99 last week, has just plummeted to $11.08!! (84% Off!!)

The complete series set for “The Ben Stiller Show” (starring Bob “Better Call Saul” Odenkirk), $17.99 last month, has plummeted to $6.95!! (74% Off!!)

The first two seasons of “McCloud,” $30.99 two months ago, have momentarily fallen to an all-time low of $9.29 for 11 mystery movies!! (77% Off!!)

New This Week

“Justified’s” excellent second season was the season of the Bennetts – Dickie, Doyle, Coover, Mags and would-be adopted daughter Loretta McCready. I think my favorite season-two episode – and the one that hewed most closely to the series’ Elmore Leonard roots – was the one about Rachel’s brother-in-law, a halfway house escapee. This was also the season that explored – via a forgotten load of evidence-room cash – the depth of Raylan Givens’ commitment to his fabulous ex-wife. It’s interesting that Leonard’s next novel, “Raylan,” features a coal-mine exec named Carol Conlan (not Carol Johnson) and dope-dealing brothers named Dickie and Coover Crowe (as opposed to Dickie and Coover Bennett or Dewey Crowe).

An almost-six-hour HBO miniseries adapted by writer-director Todd Haynes (“Poison,” “Safe,” “Velvet Goldmine,” “Far From Heaven,” “I’m Not There”) from the novel by James M. Cain (“Double Indemnity,” “The Postman Always Rings Twice”), “Mildred Pierce” follows a pie-making Southern California mom who finds her life upended by the Great Depression and a philandering husband.

It’s melodramatic, full of random-seeming plot twists and a little weird thespianily, and will keep viewers guessing until the very naked end. The story follows Mildred (Kate Winslet) and her class-conscious daughter, Veda (Morgan Turner and, in the final hours, Evan Rachel Wood), and the project’s fatal flaw is that Veda comes off from the get-go as such a two-dimensional little witch it’s hard to muster much rooting interest in the relationship.

I will say it was not much of a chore getting through the five hours (though I wouldn’t have minded if the opera performances were cut down a bit), and Guy Pearce is winning as the dashing customer who sweeps Mildred off her feet. Former pretty boy James LeGros (“Drugstore Cowboy,” “Singles”) has embraced is inner character actor and gained all sorts of weight, as if to better serve his surname.

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