The tagline gets it perfectly: “The robbery should have taken 10 minutes. Four hours later, the bank was like a circus sideshow. Eight hours later, it was the hottest thing on live TV. Twelve hours later, it was all history. And it was all true.” Dog Day Afternoon (SaReGaMa; VCD Rs 199) must be the least famous of Al Pacino’s films, strangely, and as one critic put it, the best performance by an actor not to win an Oscar. Rated as “one of the greatest acts in movie history”, Al Pacino is at his mesmerising mostest, in this Sidney Lumet minor American classic.

A man robs a bank to pay for his homosexual lover’s sex operation; but it turns into a hostage situation and a media circus. Based on an actual event in Brooklyn one hot summer day, DDA is part comedy and part tragedy. There is nervous energy, rude humour and understated pathos. Known for the hard-as-nails characters Al plays, DDA comes as a histrionic treat to feast upon, watching a “warm-and-fuzzy” Al in his portrayal of Sonny.

DDA deservedly picked up several Academy Award nominations in 1975 for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, and was awarded Best Original Screenplay. One of screenwriter Frank Pierson’s challenges here was that Al Pacino refused to play any overt homosexual scenes. So a way had to be devised to convey Sonny’s feelings for his lover Leon (Chris Sarandon) without ever putting the two men onscreen together. He came up with two superb scenes — a phone conversation between Sonny and Leon, and a later scene in which Sonny dictates his will. Dog Day Afternoon would have remained an average film if it weren’t for Al Pacino’s awesome performance.

Here’s reliving one of the recent hilarious comedies. Who can forget the excellent comic chemistry that gave us the superhit and the super-funny trio — Paresh Rawal as Baburao Ganpatrao Apte, Suniel Shetty as the poker-faced Shyam, and Akshay Kumar as the bratty Raju. And they are back in Phir Hera Pheri (Shemaroo; DVD Rs 499) for yet another laughathon.

In Phir Hera Pheri they no longer live in a chawl, but have a huge mansion of their own with a swimming pool but by nature they are still the same — Paresh throws a bucket into the pool and pulls out water to bathe instead of going into the pool, Suniel still hears the song Golmaal hai bhai sab golmaal hai and Akshay is still on the lookout for a quick buck. And no sooner they all get entangled in a mess, thanks to you know who.

They not only lose all their wealth, but also get back to the chawl. They find themselves involved in a scam and targetted by several underworld gangs. How they get out of the situation raises plenty of good laughs. Joining them this time are Bipasha Basu, Rimmi, Rajpal Yadav and Johny Lever. This DVD pack includes, along with the special promotional videos, the funky video of Ae meri zohra jabeen which was missing in the film.