DVD 'FINDING NEMO' IS CATCH OF THE DAY.

Byline: Rob Lowman Entertainment Editor

One of the extras on the two-disc DVD of ``Finding Nemo'' is a series of ``virtual aquariums,'' animated screen savers from the movie. A neat trick and less messy than having the young ones insisting on getting a clownfish like the film's two main fish - Marlin (voiced by Albert Brooks) and his son, Nemo (Alexander Gould).

Those Disney/Pixar people behind this winning and brilliantly animated film seem to think of everything, including how to balance the story (earnest but not maudlin) and the humor (silly at times but never cutesy) so it's appreciated by those of all ages.

``Finding Nemo'' is filled with eye-popping 3-D-looking animation. It seems impossible that Pixar (``Toy Story'' and ``Monsters, Inc.'') could surpass itself - but it did. Even if the rest of the film didn't match the animation, you you could drift along watching the spectacular aquatic scenes (or you could just watch the aquarium - very soothing).

But ``Finding Nemo'' - directed by Andrew Stanton - is as good as the visuals, and that's good enough that the film could get an Oscar nomination for best picture and not just animation.

One of the reasons that Pixar has been successful is that it knows how to tell a good story. In this case, Nemo - the only survivor of 400 eggs after a barracuda attack by a larger fish kills his mother and destroys the other eggs - has grown tired of obeying his overprotective father. He swims away from his protective reef and is captured by a scuba-diving dentist who takes him back to the tank in his office in Sydney, Australia. The crazed Marlin then starts his improbable journey to find Nemo and bring him home.

The action then cuts between the tank, where Nemo meets a diverse bunch, including Gill (Willem Dafoe), a scared black-and-white-striped Moorish idol who keeps devising plans to get back to the ocean (echoes of ``The Great Escape''), and the ocean, where Marlin encounters some scary creatures, including the comic Bruce (Barry Humphries), a great white shark who's trying to curb his need to eat other fish despite his instincts, and some helpful ones like Crush, a 150-year-old surfer-dude turtle (voiced by director Stanton).

But Marlin gets the most help from the unlikeliest of sources, Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), an ever-cheery blue tang with a case of short-term memory loss. As Nemo plots his escape with Gill before the dentist's monstrous 8-year-old niece shows up to claim him, Marlin learns about trust.

Somehow through the humor, lessons are gently learned - those of overcoming your fears, the need for trust and letting go - for both parents and kids. Not bad for a kids' film. The ``Nemo'' DVD comes with numerous extras for the young ones, but the movie itself is likely to get the most play.

``Finding Nemo'' (Disney; $29.99) includes commentary with deleted scenes and recording sessions; ``Making Nemo'' documentary; ``The Art of Nemo,'' narrated by the artists; virtual aquariums; ``Exploring the Reef,'' a new short with Jean-Michel Cousteau and your Nemo friends; the Pixar short ``Knick Knack,'' with commentary; a peek at the next Pixar film, ``The Incredibles''; and the Fisharades game.

Out of Hemingway came Bogey and Bacall

The story - true or not - is that while on a fishing trip, director Howard Hawks bet Ernest Hemingway that he could make a good film out of the novelist's worst book. The result was the Humphrey Bogart classic ``To Have and Have Not,'' which is out today on a remastered DVD. Except for the title, the movie bears little resemblance to the book, which was about a married American fisherman who is forced to run rum between Cuba and the Florida keys in the 1930s.

In Hawks' 1944 film, Bogart plays Harry Morgan, the captain of a fishing charter boat on the French island of Martinique after France has fallen into Nazi hands. It's probably no coincidence that Bogart's character and the situation are not too dissimilar to that of Rick Blaine (also played by Bogey) in ``Casablanca,'' which was made by the same studio - Warner Bros. - a couple of years earlier.

But that's all anybody needs to know about the plot. There is one stuffed into this delightful cinematic potpourri, but what people remember is this:

``You know you don't have to act with me, Steve,'' the then-18-year-old Lauren Bacall, playing Marie ``Slim'' Browning, purrs to Bogart's Harry. ``You don't have to say anything, and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and ... blow.''

As everyone knows by now, Bacall was having an affair with her 45-year-old co-star, and Steve and Slim were the couple's pet names for each other. The off-screen passion spilled over into the filming, which is why you see them refer to each other as Steve and Slim instead of Marie and Harry.

But everything in ``To Have and Have Not'' has that loosey-goosey feeling, including the jaunty music of the house band led by Cricket (Hoagy Carmichael). When Harry's deckhand, the rummy Eddie (the great character actor Walter Brennan) asks different people, ``Was you ever stung by a dead bee?'' it's a test of whether you get the joke of the movie or not - and the audience surely wanted to be in on the joke. That Hawks tossed out the core of Hemingway's dour novel to create an entertaining souffle is why people shouldn't judge a movie by the book cover.

``To Have and Have Not'' (Warner; $19.98) includes a new making-of featurette called ``A Love Story: The Story of 'To Have and Have Not.' ''

``Friends: The Complete Fifth Season'' (Warner; $44.98).

The Great One's greatest

Before we had shows about nothing (``Seinfeld'') or neurotic comings and goings adding up to nothing (most everything else), there was a show called ``The Honeymooners,'' about a guy who drove a bus, Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason); another guy who worked in a sewer, Ed Norton (Art Carney); their wives, Alice (Audrey Meadows) and Trixie (Joyce Randolph), respectively; and their New York City apartment-dwelling lives. It, along with ``I Love Lucy,'' are in one way or another the templates of most successful sitcoms, and both still stand the test of timeless laughs.

An eight-disc DVD set of what many consider the show's best season, 1955-56, with all 39 episodes is being released today. There are no extras but plenty of laughs - and that's enough.

``The Honeymooners - Classic 39 Episodes'' (Paramount; $49.99).

Rob Lowman, [phone]

robert.lowman(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

(1) ``Finding Nemo''

(2) HUMPHREY BOGART and LAUREN BACALL in ``To Have and Have Not''

(3) ART CARNEY, left, and JACKIE GLEASON in ``The Honeymooners''