When Two Fat Ladies aired on PBS and the Food Network from 1997 to 1999, it was an unusual, droll take on the cooking show. Jennifer Paterson (right) and Clarissa Dickson Wright (left), the portly women of the title, traveled around Britain in a Triumph Thunderbird motorcycle and sidecar to prepare old-fashioned British meals for different sets of guests. The setting for each dinner was nearly as interesting as the food — Westminster Cathedral, an Irish convent and a safari park — and the ladies always made a point of collecting fresh ingredients from local farmers, fishermen, butchers and bakers. They often broke into song, glorified “streaky bacon” and cream, and joked about vegetarians. The series ended when Paterson died of lung cancer in 1999. All 24 episodes are now available on Two Fat Ladies: The Complete Series ($38), a two-disc DVD set that includes a tribute to Paterson. As for the recipes, they’re available in the cookbooks Cooking with the Two Fat Ladies (from $10.36, used and new on Amazon), The Two Fat Ladies Ride Again (from $2.50, used and new, on Amazon) and The Two Fat Ladies Full Throttle (used and new from $5.20). Jennifer Paterson’s Seasonal Receipts (used and new from $4.74) contains recipes from Paterson’s weekly column in the British Spectator. Whether you try their recipes for chicken and ginger soup, sugar-browned potatoes or chocolate crème brulée, you’re in for a treat.

A few months back, Rolling Stones fans lucky enough to live near an IMAX theater got the treat of seeing the legendary band on a 50-foot-plus high screen — a format that was almost enough to capture the still phenomenal physical presence of Mick Jagger (pictured with bandmates). Now that movie, the Martin Scorsese concert film Shine a Light, is available for the home-theater equivalent of IMAX, Blu-ray, making it the most rock-and-roll flick on the format of the summer, at least until The Doors arrives in August. There’s plenty of other new music on standard DVD, of course, from Bob Dylan and The Clash’s Joe Strummer to The Smiths and newcomer Amy Winehouse. The musical double feature of the moment, though, is as far from the Stones as can be: the raunchy Oingo Boingo cult favorite Forbidden Zone (newly colorized or in the original black and white) and the disco-on-skates cornball extravaganza Xanadu (recently turned into a hit Broadway musical) — both of which involve true-love-inspired trips to the Underworld and a lot of very peculiar song-and-dance routines.

With the Olympics only two weeks away (Aug. 8 to 24, in Beijing), the world’s focus is on American swimmer Michael Phelps, who won six gold medals and two bronze medals during his last Olympic outing in Athens in 2004. For all things Phelps to show your support, SpeedoUSA is the place to start. While in Beijing, the Phelps and the rest of the American swim team will be wearing the Speedo LZR Racer Bodyskin (pictured), billed as the world’s fastest swimsuit — since its release in February, swimmers wearing these form-fitting suits have set nearly 40 world records. The LZR Racer can be pre-ordered for October delivery ($550). The Speed Socket goggles are like the ones Phelps wore in Athens; they have shatter-resistant polycarbonate lenses with UV protection ($25). A Michael Phelps silhouette T-shirt ($24) has an image of Phelps on the back, along with his signature, and the Speedo USA logo on the front. Zazzle sells a grey and blue “Team Phelps” T-shirt ($21) with a more basic design. Put up this “Michael Phelps One More Time” poster with a striking photo of Phelps underwater ($10). Get a look at Phelps’ rivalry with fellow swimmer Ian Crocker in the DVD Unfiltered ($20) or improve your technique with the instructional DVD Personal Best: Butterly Instructional DVD with Phelps and his longtime coach Bob Bowman ($35). For the full story on Phelps, check out his autobiography, Michael Phelps: Beneath the Surface, ($16.50), which he wrote with Sports Illustrated writer Brian Cazeneuve.

Pick a number between 1 and 10. Close your eyes and spin around once. Open your eyes. You were thinking of the number 5, right?  Ok, OK, so we’re not as advanced as master magician/illusionist Criss Angel. But we do have some suggestions for getting into the spirit of magic in advance of Wednesday’s (7/23) Season 4 premiere of Criss Angel Mindfreak on A&E. Catch up on Season 1, Season 2 and Season 3 via DVD  ($15-$25). Pick up Criss Angel Mindfreak: Secret Revelations Book for $22 at A&E’s Angel shop. It includes 304 pages of intimate revelations and magical insights, plus reveals the secrets behind 40 mindfreaks. The Criss Angel Official Store sells everything from Criss Angel shotglasses to sweatshirts to belly button rings. The Angel 13 sweatshirt comes in 4 sizes and sells for $70. The shot glass set includes 5 glasses with different logos ($22), while the belly button ring features three CA Logos on baby cable chains dangling from a single 6mm crystal stone. For your little aspiriring magician, pick up a My First Magic Set ($15). The set includes 12 tricks created for small hands, plus the carrying case can be personalized. Magic-inspired gifts might be applicable for the casual fan. The magic wand letter opener is handmade to resemble a wand popular in the ’80s — Moon and star cutouts float along with shimmering metallic beads in the opener’s base ($50). The Magic 16 magnetic puzzle, a perfect accent for the executive’s desk, is like a spherical version of Tetris. And while it doesn’t take a magician to solve, it’ll take your own brand of abracadabra to find the solution.

It’s no news that everyone from retailers to movie studios and electronics manufacturers wants you to buy a Blu-ray DVD player. They hit early adopters with “be the first on your block” ad campaigns, and now that the format war is over they’re still offering the kind of incentives usually seen when a technology is new: Just recently, Amazon started offering buyers of select Blu-ray players an $80 add-on bundle that would get their movie collection jump-started. (The titles included are a mixed bag, pictured, but $10 per film is quite a price.) Some of the incentives are a bit more thoughtful than usual. Martin Scorsese lovers who already own the standard DVD version of Gangs of New York, for instance, can ease the pain of buying a second version for Blu-ray by mailing in a coupon for a $10 rebate (other titles are eligible as well). A better development — financially and practically — is the new trend of “digital copy” bundling. Some movie studios are bundling second discs with certain Blu-ray titles that contain a digital file users can install on iPods for mobile viewing. Fox’s Juno was a prominent early example, but other companies — like Warner Brothers, with 10,000 B.C. and Lionsgate with the latest Rambo flick — are getting into the game. Hopefully, it will soon become an industry standard to let buyers own portable digital versions of the DVD movies they buy.

As hard as it is for a sports-hating, small-town refugee to admit, Friday Night Lights is one of the best shows on television in recent years. Anchored by a rock-solid performance by Kyle Chandler, who plays a high-school football coach with a steadfast sense of right and wrong that resonates with viewers in a powerful, old-fashioned way. It’s one of those shows that over time makes you care about characters you hate passionately at first (like Taylor Kitsch’s drunken, sometimes mean Tim Riggins) and worry sincerely about the fate of others, like the tender-hearted quarterback whose sudden success threatens to change him completely. In the second season, just released on DVD (and a bargain, offering 15 episodes for the price of one feature-length movie), the screenwriters take some drastic measures in an apparent attempt to draw viewers: Within the first couple of episodes we get a killing and a cover-up on one hand, a life-threatening scam on another, and intimations of sex scandals down the road. All of which are too extreme to fit the mood Lights has established, but the season stays aloft thanks to actors who’ve earned our trust and our faith that the show will recover from the writer’s strike. In other TV series discoveries, the justly praised Mad Men is now out on both standard DVD and Blu-ray — a glossy and increasingly mysterious look at Manhattan’s corporate world circa 1960. Less famous but worth comedy fans’ time are two British TV series, Black Books and the cult item Spaced, whose casts and sensibilities will be familiar to fans of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

The recent Jack Black/Mos Def comedy Be Kind Rewind just hit video stores, overflowing with love for movies that are handmade, technically challenged or just plain weird. The Internet is kind to movies like that, supplying enthusiasts with corners devoted to every kind of oddball cinema. Take Onar Films, for instance, which specializes in Turkish films. There, a subspecies of cult movie takes (ahem) liberties with American icons, as in a Turkish Superman that’s so shoddy the planet Krypton is obviously represented by a Christmas ornament. On these shores, tiny video companies develop specialties of their own. Synapse has a line of the Japanese sex-and-swordplay Pinky Violence films that influenced Kill Bill; Mondo Macabro digs up Indonesian oddities like Mystics in Bali, where a disembodied head goes flying around in search of victims; and Dark Sky releases tons of “drive-in” fare like this Del Tenney collection that contains the screen debut of the late Roy Scheider. (Beware: Fig around these sites and you’ll find all sorts of lurid, gory, potentially offensive movies — which is what you’re looking for, right?) Inching into the mainstream movie biz are indie black-comedies like the John Waters TV series ‘Til Death Do Us Part and the undead mockumentary American Zombie. Most in keeping with Be Kind’s happy do-it-yourself theme, though, is the delightful anthology The Animation Show (pictured), in which Mike Judge (King of the Hill) and Don Hertzfeldt (Rejected) pick their favorite cartoons of the year, from scribbly yarns about overprotective guard dogs to meticulously morphing geometric compositions and video-game-appropriating samurai films.

While architects like Frank Lloyd Wright may have more famous names, it’s unlikely that any can boast a style as distinctive or immediately recognizable as Antoni Gaudí, whose magnificently decorated buildings are surely responsible for a large chunk of Barcelona’s annual tourism income. The Criterion Collection has just released a two-disc DVD devoted to the singular designer. The main film (directed by Japanese filmmaker Hiroshi Teshigahara, whose enigmatic movies are the focus of an earlier boxed set) is not the straightforward biography or art-history lesson some viewers may expect — rather, it’s a moody, explanation-free tour through Gaudí’s haunts. The set does offer bonus films that take a more informational approach. The DVD spends lots of time in the Sagrada Familia (pictured), an almost unbelievably huge cathedral that remains under construction more than eight decades after the genius’s death. That epic project is also the subject of Gaudí Unseen, a new in-depth look at the design process, explaining the fascinating geometric insights underlying it and offers many views of the site that are off limits to tourists. Other books take a more comprehensive view of the architect, with this one from Taschen giving an affordable roundup of all of his famous buildings. For something more extensive, head to the Web site of Triangle Postals, a publisher whose catalog ranges from basic to lavish and contains many titles on not only Gaudí but also the other artists and locales that (along with fantastic food and thriving nightlife) make Barcelona one of the most delightful of Europe’s famous cities.