From Stacie Hougland: The X-Files: I Want to Believe sequel--coming what, 10 years after the first movie and series finale?--is right around the corner. To whet the appetites of X-Philes everywhere, Fox Home Video gives you X-Files Revelations - The Essential Guide to the X-Files Movie, the idea being to reacquaint old fans with the concept and characters and lure new ones with eight "critical episodes" to see before watching the new movie.

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Memba them?

It's a handy compilation, especially if you've forgotten a lot of the series' nuances and details, and a good recommendation to those who may never have seen the show in its 1990s heyday.

The 2-disc set includes all kinds of fun new stuff, including introductions to each episode by series creators Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz; the X-Files 2 theatrical trailer; plus footage of the panel discussion at WonderCon earlier this year with Carter, Spotnitz and stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. (I was there for that jam-packed presentation, which had so much buzz, it was like, "Iron Man who?"). The DVD also contains coupons toward DVD collections of the show and $8.50 off the price of a ticket--not too shabby.

Obviously without having seen the movie, who knows how necessary it is to see these episodes, but they do give a well-rounded idea of what the show was about.

Here's a list of the episodes included.
Season 1:
Series pilot
"Beyond the Sea"

Season 2:
“Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose"
“The Host”

Season 4:
"Memento Mori"

Season 5:
“Post-Modern Prometheus”
“Bad Blood”

Season 6:
“Milagro”

Think they missed any?

Also New This Week: Batman Begins on Blu-Ray

Batman Begins has been released and re-released and re-re-released on DVD umpteen times, but (holy coincidence, Batman?) this week, on the eve of The Dark Knight's release, Warner Bros. has put it out on Blu-Ray for the first time, in a limited edition gift set.

First off, LOVE the movie in Blu, and it's really the highlight of this set, which includes a 32-page comic adaptation of the Dark Knight prologue, collectible postcards of never-printed Batman Begins artwork, script pages and storyboards, packaged with a pretty cool-looking 3D plastic cover (called a "lenticular").

There's also a 2-disc standard-def version of the set, that has the key art as well as a Batman-branded 128MB flash drive.

Both versions came out July 8. The BD will run you $49.99, SD about 10 bucks less.