Two of today's most eagerly anticipated video arrivals remind us how history is always open to human interpretation. The award-winning animated feature "Persepolis" reduces momentous Iranian social changes to a stylized cartoon for adults, while "10,000 B.C." goes the other way: It employs live actors and computer fakery to turn man's prehistoric beginnings into a sort of pre-fab theme park -- "Woolly World," anyone?

To start with the sublime before venturing to the ridiculous: "Persepolis" (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, rated PG-13, $29.95) was actually produced in France and depended on numerous English subtitles when it played in art houses last fall. The big advantage of the new DVD is a fresh (though optional) English soundtrack that leaves one's eyes free at last to drink in the images.

The film was taken from four "graphic novels" written by Marjane Satrapi about her coming-of-age in Iran as the Shah's police state was replaced by a repressive Islamic regime.

Wonderfully human details about relationships and private feelings capture the experience of this headstrong girl whose adolescent changes are reflected by the severe cultural upheavals happening around her. To the extent that it treats historical events as human events, "Persepolis" attains a universality beyond the particulars of Iranian politics.

Again, it's the amazing look of the film that scooped up the honors at the Cannes Film Festival and won it an Oscar nomination as 2007's Best Animated Feature. "Persepolis" is being simultaneously released as a high-definition Blu-ray Disc ($38.96 suggested retail price), and it's here that one can most fully admire the animators' fanciful use of black-and-white with occasional splashes of color. The bold shapes and hard contrasts elevate the violent images into the realm of German expressionism, perhaps with a touch of Charles Addams thrown in.

The menu of the Blu-ray Disc is harder to navigate than it should be, but the extras are worth the trouble. Here you'll be taken behind the scenes for visits with the writers and animators, then on to the 2007 press conference that introduced the film at Cannes.

As to the ridiculous: "10,000 B.C." (Warner Home Video, rated PG-13, $28.98) is not an accurate depiction of prehistoric man, nor is it an incredible simulation. It's more like how the prehistoric era might appear inside the mind one of Jay Leno's "man on the street" interviewees:

Tribal cavemen with perfect white teeth and trendy dreadlocks wander bare-chested across a frozen tundra, chasing babes and stalking the woolly mammoth using only wooden spears and native cunning. Meanwhile, down in the foothills and a short trek across the desert sands live the survivors of Atlantis. (Yes, that Atlantis.) They worship a false god but have managed to forge metal, invent agriculture and domesticate the woolly mammoth to help them build a prototype Egyptian city, complete with pyramids, a good 6,000 years before the pharaohs got into the business.

The land between these two worlds is primitive, populated by computer-animated beasts like giant meat-eating birds and saber-toothed tigers who are vicious and territorial but never forget a helping hand lent by a human brother. When the Atlantans encroach on the dreadlocks and take a number of them back as slaves to the desert, a posse of warriors embarks on a mythic odyssey to rescue the captives and fulfill an ancient prophecy.

All of this could be more fun than it sounds, but it's not. Director and co-writer Roland Emmerich ("Independence Day") needed far better plot twists and dialogue to sustain our interest through the long waits between action sequences. Also available as a Blu-ray Disc ($35.99), it's hard to believe the unforgiving clarity and detail of high-def will do anything but damage to the corner-cutting beasts and video-game trappings.

Carmen Miranda's last rites

There's an impressive, four-part biography of Carmen Miranda in the new box of musicals from 20th Century-Fox Home Entertainment entitled "The Carmen Miranda Collection" ($49.95). Who knew "the Brazilian bombshell" was born in Portugal and was already a film and recording star down "South America Way" before stepping in front of her first American movie camera at age 30?

The documentary is filled with rare photos of her early years as a struggling singer, long before she adopted the flamboyant costumes that exaggerated even carnivale attire with jewels and fruit-laden turbans. If the six films she made in Brazil still exist, no clips are included here, but her American movies pretty much prove that she loved to grab the spotlight and had the goods to hold it.

There are no surprising sides to Miranda revealed by the five movies in the new set. She was always the spitfire sidekick with the fractured English and the big heart -- a down-to-earth "bad girl" who could say the things that the stilted "good girls" like Vivian Blaine and Alice Faye were only thinking.

The gem here is 1943's "The Gang's All Here," director Busby Berkeley's first color movie, which also appeared in last year's Alice Faye box. That drab and disappointing transfer has been corrected by technicians, who raised the white balance and cranked up the color levels for a warmer approximation of the Technicolor hues. The two versions have all the identical extras, making this the version to own (it's also available separately at $14.95).

The other four titles are all new to DVD. "Greenwich Village" and "Something For the Boys" are both Technicolor time capsules of popular entertainment during World War II. Don Ameche stars in the first as a composer who gets mixed up with Manhattan's bohemian set. Look for Broadway legends Betty Comden and Adolph Green in a rare screen appearance as The Revuers. "Something For the Boys" is based on a minor Cole Porter musical about soldiers' wives putting on a show to renovate a run-down plantation.

The other two movies -- "Doll Face" and "If I'm Lucky" -- are black-and-white productions made after the bosses at Fox decided that Miranda no longer justified the expense of Technicolor. Her upbeat, effervescent personality is still on display, but it doesn't provide the same tingle in shades of gray.

Her contract lapsed, Miranda kicked around live clubs a while and showed up on TV, famously collapsing during the taping of "The Jimmy Durante Show." She died that very night at age 46 of heart disease.

Also new on DVD

"4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days" (Genius Products, not rated, $24.95). As in last year's foreign language Oscar-winner "The Lives of Others," the horrific face of Communism continues to emerge in films from the former Soviet bloc. Cristian Mungiu spins a harrowing tale here about two Romanian college girls seeking an illegal abortion in a hugely indifferent society comprised of the corrupt, the desperate and the hopeless. In every way, this is "Juno's" evil twin, with no music and long takes. The authentic feel raises the film well above the level of morbid curiosity. The DVD includes an interview with Mungiu and one deleted sequence.

"Fool's Gold" (Warner Home Video, rated PG-13, $28.98). Sparring spouses on a treasure hunt used to be enough to assure escapist fun at the movies, but no more. Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson make for tedious company when their testy divorce is upstaged by clues to a sunken Caribbean fortune. The shallow stars never generate romance or mirth, and the frequent shootings and deaths scuttle what might otherwise be mistaken for a formula Disney comedy, circa 1960. That Dean Jones -- now there was charisma.

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