The Barbra Streisand Collection

She's the pop diva against which all others are measured, and that extends to her adventures in movie stardom, too. With her flair for madcap comedy and a compelling intensity in dramatic roles, Barbra Streisand puts the likes of J. Lo and Britney to shame, as this collection demonstrates beautifully. Two 1972 films--Peter Bogdanovich's goofy What's Up, Doc? and Irvin Kershner's dramedy Up the Sandbox--cast Babs as two very different, spirited, independent women: a force-of-nature ne'er-do-well, as half of a delightful screwball duo with Ryan O'Neal; and a mother and wife struggling to retain her sense of self under the demands of family life. Howard Zieff's 1979 comedy, The Main Event, is a strained attempt to recapture the Streisand-O'Neal chemistry of What's Up, Doc?, but its less than stellar presence here is more than made up for by the inclusion of Martin Ritt's 1987 Nuts, a bold, unapologetic film that finds Streisand's high-priced prostitute defiantly maintaining her sanity while the legal system and her family try to take it away. Boasting new digital widescreen transfers, the discs also feature Streisand providing insights on her film work for the first time in scene-specific audio commentaries (with additional feature-length commentaries by Bogdanovich and Kershner on What's Up, Doc? and The Main Event, respectively), as well as vintage "making-of" featurettes. Recommended. (M. Johanson)