It’s not a huge week for DVD drops, although cinephiles will have the chance to catch up on some of the smaller films that never made it to the local cineplex. Home entertainment entities probably figure viewers will spend their TV time watching the Olympics.

The most prominent of this week’s new releases is Smart People because of its stellar cast, which includes Sarah Jessica Parker, Dennis Quaid, Ellen Page and Thomas Haden Church. You might be wondering why a film with a cast like that only made $9.5 million. It could be because it didn’t get a particularly wide release, but also because of its an extremely dark and cerebral dramady.

CJ7 from Stephen Chow, the writer/director and star of Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer, is a new family offering about Ti (Chow), a poor father who works all day, everyday at a construction site to make sure his son Dicky Chow (Xu Jiao) can attend an elite private school.  Despite his father’s good intentions to give his son the opportunities he never had, Dicky, with his dirty and tattered clothes and none of the “cool” toys, stands out from his schoolmates like a sore thumb. While out “shopping” for a new toy for his son in the junkyard, Ti finds a bizarre “pet” with extraordinary powers.  Armed with his “CJ7,” Dicky seizes this chance to impress his fellow schoolmates for the first time.  But CJ7 has other ideas, and when Dicky brings it to class, chaos ensues.

How the Garcia Girls spent their summer is also new on DVD this week. It’s a rough indie starring America Ferrera as one of three generations of women in a small hot Southwestern town. All three of them, grandmother, mother and daughter, learn lessons of love in different ways. It’s pretty much for America Ferrera fans only.

Circumventing the theaters and coming to you straight on DVD is The Art of War II: Betrayal, a follow up to Wesley Snipes’ The Art of War (1999). Hey, a guy’s gotta pay the tax man somehow. This time around Agent Neil Shaw (Snipes) comes out of hiding to avenge his former mentor's murder and winds up on the trail of betrayal and lethal corruption. Under the charge of his friend and Senatorial candidate, his mission is to set things straight. But when more people turn up dead, Shaw realizes that he's been framed. Now he's letting the fists fly where they may to get to the bottom of an assassination conspiracy that everyone thinks he's behind.

It's probably safe to say that NBC and its many cable stations will not fear Olympic competition from the video store this week.