5 Smart DVDs: Doing the Math

Here are several recent DVD releases that look at the intertwining of corporate America and middle America. They include the Oscar-nominated Up in the Air, about downsizing, the Oscar-winning The Blind Side, about a white mother and a black football prospect she takes in, and the eminently watchable documentary Capitalism: A Love Story, about the effects of large businesses on the middle class. We ve also got the third season of the Emmy-winning Mad Men, about life in the 1960s, and an acclaimed series that explores the world of mathematics.

Directed by Jason Reitman
Paramount; $29.98

Although it didn t win any Oscars, Up in the Air has continued to be a buzzed-about movie, particularly because of its subject: downsizing. Through the story of Ryan Bingham, viewers see the toll that downsizing takes.

Bingham is an outsourced downsizer someone companies hire to fire their employees. The movie gives us a feel for the plight of those who are let go, and the ruthless corporate disregard for employees (such as outsourcing the job of firing them).

Up in the Air also details the road-warrior s life of mileage points, loyalty programs and anonymous hotel hookups, which can involve a more calculating series of choices than sacking employees. George Clooney s performance as Bingham helps root the character in recognizable human terms.

Directed by Michael Moore
Starz/Anchor Bay; $29.98

Investors are, naturally, interested in capitalism. And by extension, the role of corporations in which they may invest. Yet investors may still be intrigued (if not outraged) by Michael Moore s documentary about corporate power in our democratic country.

Moore looks at business in America through various eras, and how we felt about it then and now. His point is that the corporate world has somehow undermined the country's democratic principles, and created a shrinking middle class that is dependent on companies that, like morally bankrupt communist regimes, don t care about people.

While the big guns are fair targets these days, Moore goes back to the roots of our finger-wagging at acceptance of corporate malfeasance, to the days of FDR. He points out that as a nation, we ve become inured to corruption.

Directed by John Lee Hancock
Warner Home Video; $28.98

Sandra Bullock just won an Oscar for her portrayal of Leigh Anne Touhy, a southern mother who took in Michael Oher, a young, African-American teen with a busload of potential, and helped steer him toward a football scholarship at the University of Mississippi.

The movie, based on a book by Michael Lewis, is one of Bullock s most popular films to date (it s made over $250 million domestically so far), and its portrayal of a certain kind of American life clearly struck a chord with the movie-going public.

The football scenes play well especially because viewers become emotionally caught up in Michael s fate. The cast is appealing, too in addition to Bullock, there s Quinton Aaron as Michael, Kathy Bates as Michael s tutor, and country star Tim McGraw as Touhy s husband.

Various directors
Lionsgate Home Entertainment; $49.98

This acclaimed series, about corporate life in the 1960s, is told through the prism of the personal and professional lives of people associated with the fictional Sterling Cooper advertising agency. It presents a compelling portrait of America then and how we got to America now.

The debonair antihero, Don Draper, a self-made man in many respects, is played by Jon Hamm with great skill and a remarkable amount of empathy for a character who is tortured by his past and often by his own bad decisions in the present.

In this season, the show deals with the Kennedy assassination, the nature of divorce and commitment in the 1960s, the civil rights movement, the shifting role of women at home and the workplace, the stirrings of the counterculture and the fading of Eisenhower s middle America. None of it is didactic all of it is heartfelt and unflinching in its exploration of what makes Americans tick.

The show has much more humor sometimes of a gruesome kind than it s given credit for, as in the episode Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency, which has the verve and pathos of a John Cheever story. The satisfying season finale sends the series off into a new direction as the 1960s further unfold.

Various directors
Athena: $59.99

This four-episode series may seem like it s tailored to the egghead crowd, but it s an accessible guide for everyone interested in numbers. It tackles the universe of mathematics that drives everything we do, from investing to simple business transactions, to art and science and even how we get around each day.

The series was written and presented by Marcus du Sautoy, a professor of math at Oxford. As a popularizer of science and math he is like a younger British version of the late Carl Sagan enthusiastic and friendly with the ability to demystify complex concepts. Du Sautoy walks viewers through turning points, such as the invention of zero (which made sophisticated calculations possible), and discoveries by both ancients including Euclid (who pioneered geometry) and moderns such as Georg Cantor (who explored the concept of infinity).

The series may not make you qualified to become a highly paid quantitative analyst, but it s likely to make you appreciate the appeal of such arcane concepts in modern finance. A bonus disc in this set explores prime numbers, important in the world of computing, atomic energy and all of today s financial transactions.