Considering that a lot of people are gearing up to do their holiday shopping, this week's list of releases doesn't hold much promise. Of the major theatrical releases making their way to a home theater near you, we have another SNL offering in Hot Rod (with Andy Samberg), Waitress, starring Keri Russell (and directed by Adrienne Shelley, who was tragically murdered shortly before her film was accepted at the Sundance Film Festival), and Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean's Holiday.

I'm not inclined to put any of these in my Netflix queue this week: I'm definitely not in the target demographic for one, another sounds a bit too saccharine for my taste, and I've seen Mr. Bean before and I'm not quite sure why people find him funny.

So what is there on the list that's slightly out of the mainstream that you or I might find appealing?

Futurama fans (and I count myself among them) will be glad for the release of Bender's Big Score, a full-length feature starring the crew we've all come to know and love. This is supposedly the first of four such features, and according to the description from Amazon, the box is full of extra goodies, including feature commentary from series creator Matt Groening, writers Ken Keeler and David X. Cohen, director Dwayne Carey-Hill, and cast members Billy West (Fry), DiMaggio, and Phil LaMarr. This looks like a very nice gift to put under someone's tree.

The Criterion Collection once again comes through for the more serious cinephiles with a release of Akira Kurosawa's 1948 Drunken Angel, which was heralded as his breakthrough film. This post-war release is also notable for bringing noted actor Toshiro Mifune to the forefront. If this ought to be on your shopping list, you should take note of the fact that it ships from Amazon within one to three weeks.

Facets Multimedia brings together a collection of 16 shorts and feature films representative of Britain's Free Cinema movement, aptly titled Free Cinema. The movement, which flowered in the 1950s and presaged social realism in film, held that the medium should be a tool for self-expression and serve as a catalyst for social change. This collection was selected by the British Film Institute and should be of interest to anyone who wants to learn more about the evolution of modern cinema.

Warner Home Video has re-released two 1970s sci-fi staples: Soylent Green (1973) and Logan's Run (1976). These look to be fairly bare bones releases, but if you're into the genre (or the era, for that matter) and don't already have these in your collection, now's as good a time as any to snap them up. Having seen both of them during their respective theatrical runs (and several times since then on TV), I can say that they both seem a bit dated, but they've earned their place in history. Soylent green is people, people.