Anniversary DVD does right thing by Spike Lee film

"Do The Right Thing" (20th Anniversary Edition) - It all starts with those pictures on the wall.

A customer inside a pizzeria notices that the pictures all feature Italian celebrities: Frank Sinatra, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro. He asks the owner why no black people are on his "Wall of Fame."

Because it's my pizzeria and I can hang whatever pictures I want, the owner says, not unreasonably. Open your own place and put whomever you want on the wall.

Yeah, but your pizzeria is in a black neighborhood, the customer replies, also making sense. Most of your customers are black, so we should have a place on the wall.

And with that, a time bomb starts ticking. This petty argument, the kind that takes place a million times in a million places every day, will trigger an explosion of rage and racially tinged violence in Spike Lee's brilliant "Do The Right Thing," the director's 1989 masterwork and, for my money, one of the best American movies ever.

Twenty years after storming into theaters, "Do The Right Thing" hasn't lost any of its power. The film documents a long, blisteringly hot day on a block in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. We watch the block's residents as they talk, work, argue, laugh and generally live their lives. But we also see, simmering just under the surface, age-old tension between people who look and/or speak differently.

It all still works: Lee's dazzling camerawork; Ernest Dickerson's cinematography, blazing with color; and pitch-perfect acting from an exceptional ensemble cast. Lee tells the story with a sure hand, letting tension build while giving us vibrant, touching and frequently hilarious glimpses at urban life.

Lee, who wrote the script and plays Mookie, the film's central character, resists the urge to stack the deck in favor of one character or point of view. Sal, the old-school pizzeria owner played by Danny Aiello, is as sympathetic as Buggin' Out, the young militant played by Giancarlo Esposito who wants to see some color on the wall. When the block literally goes up in flames at the end, Lee provides no easy answers. It's up to the audience to decide who did the right thing.

Universal's two-disc 20th anniversary DVD set is excellent. It includes most of the extras from the Criterion Collection release of a few years back, along with tasty new stuff, including deleted scenes, a superb retrospective on the movie featuring cast interviews and a new commentary by Lee. The Criterion extras include a fascinating making-of, video from the tumultuous 1989 Cannes press conference and an in-depth look at the riot sequence. (One key extra from the Criterion set not included here is the Lee-directed video for Public Enemy's "Fight the Power.") "Do The Right Thing" is a cinematic treasure; this anniversary DVD set does it justice. (R; Universal, $29.98 or $39.98 for Blu-ray)

"White Sox Memories: The Greatest Moments in Chicago White Sox History" - White Sox fans like me understand that we live in a Cubs world. So it's particularly gratifying to see a DVD like this one hit the shelves. "White Sox Memories" provides a quick overview of the franchise from its beginnings at the turn of the 20th century all the way to the present day. It touches on all the big highlights - the 1906 "Hitless Wonders," the Black Sox scandal, the 1959 "Go Go Sox," the 2005 championship team - and provides plenty of footage that will make fans smile (though hard-core fans probably won't learn anything new about the team). I wasn't happy with every editing choice here; the film spends too much time on Bo Jackson's short tenure with the team and not nearly enough on the exciting squads from 1977 and 1990, for example. Also, I could have done with fewer comments from Richard Roeper and more from real baseball experts. Quibbles aside, this is a nice celebration of Chicago's "other" baseball team. "Na na na na... " (NR; Shout! Factory, $19.99)

Also out this week - "Jonas Brothers: The Concert Experience" (Disney); "Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li" (Fox); "Two Lovers" (Magnolia), "The It Crowd: The Complete Second Season" (MPI Home Video)