The odyssey is nearing its dramatic end.

Battlestar Galactica, a sci-fi series with an intensely loyal cult following, has one half-season to go.

So the timing of the new DVD set is appropriate.

Battlestar Galactica: Season 4.0 arrived this week as a four-disc, widescreen-only set that takes us to the brink of that final frontier. The half-season, which starts broadcasting this month, will be titled Season 4.5 when it later comes to DVD.

Season 4.0 of producer Ronald D. Moore's creation brought the wandering souls of the giant space ship Galactica back to Earth. The final episode in this DVD set, Revelations, depicts the elation of the landing. This is followed by the shock of ... well, you need to watch it yourself.

Moore calls it "the mid-season finale" and, because of the Hollywood writers strike, it was very nearly the end of it all. Extras on the DVD explain how the Battlestar team struggled "to put a period at the end of the sentence," in the words of Moore.

The new box set also contains the 101-minute movie, Battlestar Galactica: Razor in its unrated, extended edition. While it never aired and lives only on DVD, it was the bridge to what was to become the final season.

The extensive extras chart the journey, re-introducing us to cast members from Edward James Olmos on down through the ranks -- including excellent Canadian star Callum Keith Rennie. We see them in their bittersweet mode on set for 4.5.

"I think we're all painfully aware that this is it," Moore says. "This is senior year for Battlestar Galactica. And it really intensifies our drive to make every single episode a little gem."

Ping Pong Playa

Sports comedies are absurdly predictable, no matter the sport. The outcome is never is doubt. But Chinese-American filmmaker Jessica Yu's Ping Pong Playa succeeds because the characters are so much fun. And the cultural milieu she depicts -- ethnically diverse Los Angeles -- has some zest.

Developed with her male star, producer-writer-actor Jimmy Tsai, the movie shows how the lazy, basketball-loving son of a Chinese-American family finally takes responsibility and concentrates on the family's passion. Along the way, he collects a gaggle of "grasshoppers" -- his ping pong posse of misfit kids.

The charming movie debuted on widescreen DVD this week, playing in English and in some Chinese (with subtitles). The only down side is the stupid way that some swearing is bleeped out, as if kid audiences don't know what the actors are saying. Clumsy bleeping draws undue attention to profanity.

The DVD has a lot of loose extras. Besides the Yu-Tsai commentary, none is really insightful but we do see the goofiness that apparently made the shoot enjoyable.

Sukiyaki Western Django

In cult horror circles, as well as at midnight madness programs in filmfests, Japan's Takashi Miike is a god. Quentin Tarantino worships him. So he agreed to co-star as the only non-Asian gunfighter in Miike's first western, Sukiyaki Western Django.

The movie, shot in Japan but dressed up as a Old West American movie, plays mostly in English, with some Japanese, including from Tarantino. All the actors butcher both languages, making that part of the dry comedy.

As for story, two rival gangs, the Reds and Whites, battle for supremacy in a Nevada town where legend has it that a gold treasure has been buried somewhere. It is an ugly race war spiked by greed and lust.

Sukiyaki Western Django, which debuted this week on widescreen-only DVD, should be cooler than cool. And it does look fabulous. And it is as absurd, extreme, violent and weird as all of Miike's other films.

But I found some passages so loathsome that the cult appeal vanished. Scenes of misogyny and rape -- as the rival gangs treat the town's most beautiful young woman as a piece of raw meat -- turned me off.

For fans who ignore that, the DVD includes a comprehensive making-of doc that shows the unique Miike on set and in action.