Baseball's Greatest Games: New York Yankees' Postseason Heroics (1996 - 2001/A&E/Lionsgate/MLB DVDs)/Sunset Strip (2013/MVD/VSC Blu-ray)/Teenage (2013/Oscilloscope DVD)

Picture: C+/B-/C+ Sound: C+/B-/C+ Extras: D/B-/B Main Programs: B/B/B-

Here are some new special interest documentaries you should know about...

Baseball's Greatest Games: New York Yankees' Postseason Heroics (1996 - 2001) is another strong MLB release from A&E (now with Lionsgate) that offers four great key games by one of the most successful (loved and not so much) teams in all of baseball history with Derek Jeter leading the team to some of its most memorable victories here. The 1996 ALCS Game One has the team and Jeter slaying the Baltimore Orioles, 2000 World Series Game Four moving the Mets pout of the way, 2001 ALCS Game Three out atletecizing the Oakland As and 2001 World Series Game Four recutting the Arizona Diamondbacks.

There are no extras, but it is a solid treasury and historical set worth your time, especially if you are a diehard fan.

Hans Fjellestad's Sunset Strip (2012) is a mostly very very well done documentary on the ow landmark, famous, key, important and how it started as just another dirt road before one man decided to do something with it, then Hollywood happened and it became an epicenter of the creative, commercial, artistic and sometimes political universe. Many people from there you might not have heard of, plus many you have like Dan Aykroyd, Jonny Depp, Slash, Mickey Rourke, Keanu Reeves, Hugh Hefner, Tommy Lee, Lou Adler, Kenneth Anger, Edd Byrnes, Alice Cooper, Clifton Collins Jr., Cherie Currie, Billy Corrigan, Clive Davis, Pamela Des Barres, Perry Farrell, Mick Fleetwood, Steven Dorff and Peter Fonda are among the many new interviewees.

There is also a very generous helping of older footage on film, then tape that shows the rise and constant reinvention of the stretch of insanely famous land and all the famous people and even key events that happened there. It's role in music, motion pictures, TV and even the counterculture movement is spelled out and we get plenty of key history. My only complaint is that the work stops being as insightful and the history is turned off for a few overly long music moments that take time that could have been used to tell more important stories as the extras prove. A few questions are also left unanswered, but this is a great work more than worth your time.

Extras include Extended Interviews, an Original Theatrical Trailer, featurette on the animation for the credits and four more featurettes on the title locale covering Sex, Rock n' Roll. Comedy and even Riots on The Sunset Strip.

Matt Wolf's Teenage (2013) is a little short at 77 minutes, but the documentary is based on a book by Jon Savage (who co-wrote the script) about how the idea of teenagers came out of the early years of the Industrial Revolution (1875) and culminated into the final events of WWII (1945) with plenty of troubles (WWI) and issues (the different ways different countries treated their youth, with the results being more historic and historically important like the U.S. vs. Germany) than has been discussed.

Ben Wishlaw and Jean Malone are among the voices for people of the past, a remarkable amount of vintage film footage is furthered by some terrific recreations of events and times key to those being discussed (shot on 16mm and sometimes Super 8mm film to the makers' credits) and I only wish it was longer and again, a few more questions were asked. Either way, it is a very compelling work and another impressive must-see that reveals some great hidden things and people we should all know more about.

Extras include a feature length audio commentary track by Wolf and Producer Kyle Martin, four archival short films at full length featured in the film, an Original Theatrical Trailer, On The Set With The Bright Young People featurette showing how new footage was literally filmed to add authentic recreations to the narrative and Wolf and Martin are joined by Executive Producer Jason Schwartzman for the featurette Dreaming Documentary: Making TEENAGE.

The 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Sunset has footage (film and video) that can show the age of the materials used, but this is the best of the three presentations here as expected being the only Blu-ray, yet expect some nice shots in several formats. The 1.33 X 1 image on Baseball (all shot on video) is not bad and the anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Teenage (made of film old and new) look food for the formats used, but have some softness and flaws they cannot help. Teenage would likely look better on Blu-ray.

Though listed as Dolby 5.1 without saying what kind of Dolby, theatrical sound on Sunset is a DTS-HD HR (High Resolution) 5.1 mix that is the best on the list, though you get more than a few old monophonic sound clips and a few moments of location audio issues. Otherwise, it is what you'd expect for a wide-ranging documentary and is decent. Both DVD releases have lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo tracks, but Teenage also offers a slightly clearer, lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mix that is preferable, but not enough to really pull it ahead of the Baseball DVDs since this work is quiet in nature.

- Nicholas Sheffo