After a roller-coaster week of bank failures and bailouts, what a relief to lower oneself into the simple designer woes of "Sex and the City."

Baltimore County devotees of the groundbreaking HBO series shouldn't need any prodding to pick up the show's 2008 "movie event," now out on DVD and Blu-ray Disc. So what follows is aimed at the significant others hereabouts -- us men.

The first thing I noticed was the unusual good cheer with which these New York City gals greet the petty annoyances of modern life. "How was your flight?" asks Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) of notoriously hot-to-trot Samantha (Kim Cattrall), who has just returned from the West Coast. "FAB-ulous," Samantha crows. Quick, someone get us the name of that airline!

Nothing seems to ruffle these ladies' cosmopolitan tail feathers: traffic, laundry, the price of oil, war, the pain of a bikini waxing -- none of it trespasses upon their staked-out parcel of nirvana. It must be a Manhattan survival skill.

Carrie is buoyant over the prospect of finding a new apartment where she can cohabit with marriage-phobic beau "Mr. Big" (Chris Noth). Charlotte (Kristin Davis) is all smiles because ... well, she's Charlotte and has married Mr. Right and adopted the single most low-maintenance child on the planet. Even Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is managing to transcend her lower nature as something of a scold to beam about the fashionable four's reunion.

All this sunny aplomb, it turns out, is something that series writer-producer Michael Patrick King has requisitioned as a "green screen" backdrop for his movie's big special-effects to come -- no, not marauding alien robots or giant bed ticks, but the more earthly border breaches of undependable men.

It develops that Carrie (Parker) at last hears the Big Question as popped from the mouth of Mr. Big. The words of his long-delayed proposal aren't quite as well chosen as Carrie might have liked -- "I wouldn't mind being married to you," is the way he puts it. Nothing wrong with that in my book. And in Carrie's favor, after 10 years of ambiguous messages, she hears wedding bells, not warning bells.

At other points, Miranda learns that adultery is much more fun when it's happening to other women -- and you can always depend on Samantha to become the most restless filly in any stable relationship.

Designer shoes are to this inner women's circle what donuts are to movie cops. So it's typical of the script's sly humor that one crucial relationship meltdown is resolved in an 11th-hour dash to rescue a pair of $500 footwear. Unfortunately, that seems to occur sometime in the movie's -- oh, 15th hour or so. I admit that the film wore me out before its final round of hugs. But it wasn't made for me. It was made for heartier souls, street-trained to "shop till you drop."

"Sex and the City" is available as a single disc containing the "R" rated theatrical version and a director's commentary (New Line Home Entertainment, $28.98), and in a two-disc special edition DVD ($34.99) containing an extended, "unrated" version of the film, the commentary, deleted scenes and various extras as well as a "Digital Copy" for downloading to computers and portable devices. The Blu-ray Disc ($35.99) has all those same extras, many of them in a high-definition format that no doubt makes it easier to read all those fashionable labels.

'Martini Movies,' bartender

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is inaugurating a new line of movies from the back library it is calling "Martini Movies" -- presumably because you have to be old enough to appreciate a good martini to even remember them.

The first five titles -- all making their bow on DVD priced individually at $19.94 -- range from 1952's "Affair in Trinidad," the oldest, to 1972's "The New Centurions," the most recent. All that these have in common with the other three newcomers -- 1957's "The Garment Jungle," 1971's "$ (Dollars)" and 1971's "The Anderson Tapes" -- are solid casts and first-rate directors.

They're also all rather dated, though not necessarily in the looks department. Sidney Lumet's "The Anderson Tapes" stars Sean Connery sans toupee as a parolee who hatches a heist scheme undermined by a bunch of new-fangled surveillance cameras. The film is memorable for introducing actor Christopher Walken. "The Garment Jungle" throws Lee J. Cobb back into a familiar setting and story as a New York garment shop owner fighting both mobsters and union organizers.

"$ (Dollars)" is a crime comedy, starring Goldie Hawn (Kate Hudson's mother) and Warren Beatty as thieves running with loot lifted from hard-boiled hoods in Hamburg. It was written and directed by the great Richard Brooks with energy to spare. And lastly is "Affair in Trinidad," a vintage film noir that re-teams Rita Hayworth with Glenn Ford of "Gilda" fame as friendly antagonists on a mission to find a nightclub killer.

All five DVDs are struck from either original negatives or from very good surviving prints, and the restorations of the color and vintage monaural soundtracks can't be faulted. Bonus features include tongue-in-cheek features like "How to Play the Leading Lady" and "How to Hold Your Liquor" which pull quotes and footage from the whole "Martini Movies" catalogue. Sony should have longtime movie lushes lined up at the bar for these house specialties.

Three for the money

Three hit titles from the Warner Bros. catalogue are getting new video life as remastered DVDs and Blu-ray Discs this month from the techies at Warner Home Video. In order of preference, they are:

* "L.A. Confidential" (rated R, DVD $20.97; $28.99 on Blu-ray Disc). Curtis Hanson's 1997 Oscar-winning adaptation of a James Ellroy novel about police corruption in 1950s Hollywood was always more fun than a month of tabloids. Now its hands are steadier and its period details more savory in a high-def master seemingly dipped in printer's ink and lit with neon colors and exploding flashbulbs. Besides the all-star commentary and several new "making of" feaurettes, the two-disc set offers the Jerry Goldsmith score on an isolated track, a TV series pilot based on the film, and that interactive map tour of the film's L.A. locations from the earlier DVD. The surround sound mix is very involving and even scary when it comes to that big, climactic shoot-out.

* "Cool Hand Luke" Deluxe Edition (rated PG, DVD $19.97; $28.99 on Blu-ray Disc). Paul Newman had one of his iconic screen roles in this 1967 hit, playing a parking meter vandal and societal misfit sentenced to hard time on a Southern chain gang. An outstanding new documentary on the film's making is just a sidelight for this still-engaging prison yarn, getting a much-deserved picture restoration and a running commentary by Newman biographer Eric Lax.

* "Beetlejuice" 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (rated PG, DVD $19.96; Blu-ray Disc coming Oct. 7 for $34.99). Tim Burton cut his teeth on this 1988 comedy-fantasy about two yuppie ghosts calling on master "polter-gasser" Michael Keaton to help them rid their home of fleshly squatters. Besides a fresh digital master (that reveals the limits of the film's art design budget), the new disc has an isolated music track and three episodes from the subsequent cartoon TV series.

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