One of the best Valentine’s Day gifts I’ve seen is the new Limited Edition DVD gift set for The Notebook. The romantic 2004 motion picture, featuring Rachel McAdams, Ryan Gosling, James Garner, Gena Rowlands and James Marsden, stands on its own (I thoroughly enjoyed it). The usual DVD extras—commentary, deleted scenes, promotional features—are included. Besides the disc, this Warner Bros. product is additionally packed with a hardcover, ringed pictorial mini-scrapbook about the movie (with blank pages, stickers, and photo corners for your own love story), 16 Notebook notecards and envelopes, and, my favorite, bookmarks (I can never have enough). The attractive gift pack for The Notebook, packaged in a ribbon-lined letterbox, is available directly from the studio for $ 23.95.
The Burbank, California, studio offers a DVD set it dubiously calls a Romance Classic Collection of four B-movies starring its contract players Troy Donahue and Connie Stevens. Among the movies: Palm Springs Weekend (scripted by Earl Hamner) and one of Claudette Colbert’s last movies, the melodramatic tobacco farm epic, Parrish. The others are Susan Slade and Rome Adventure. They’re mildly trashy with limited value.
On the other hand, Nights in Rodanthe, which, like The Notebook, is based on a Nicholas Sparks novel, is a memorable experience. I didn’t like the ending when I saw it in the theater, but I’ve since taken a second look at the DVD. With sweeping vistas of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, an affair between Richard Gere’s guarded doctor and Diane Lane’s damaged housewife, long takes, romantic score and an oncoming hurricane, it’s grand entertainment. There’s a twist (which I still don’t like) that shifts the picture into an epilog of liberation. Watch Lane’s character evolve from daddy’s child in the first frame to independent woman imparting the lesson of real, rewarding love—Lane’s at her best here—and you’ll get the idea. Also featuring James Franco, as good here as he is in Milk, Scott Glenn and Doubt’s Viola Davis. Nights in Rodanthe and The Notebook, in that order, make a perfect Valentine double feature. No extras on the Nights DVD.
