Screen Presents

For the osculatory apple of your eye, whoever that may be: The Kisses box (Citadel/Turner, $29.98) is romantic mush of a high order. It contains a sleek coffee-table tome that collects stills of Hollywood's greatest smooches and a video of the equally glossy tie-in clip show that aired on TBS a while back. Old-movie nuts will notice a definite skew toward MGM product over that of other studios — gee, could it be because Ted Turner owns the Metro library? Still, this is guaranteed to give the givee ideas — so be careful who gets it.

For animation-illiterate kids, who think moving drawings began with The Flintstones: How about a taste of something really Stone Age — Mickey Mouse: The Black and White Years Volume I (Image, 5 CAV discs, $124.99)? Available only on laser, this enormous set (four-plus hours) definitively catalogs the mouse's earliest, friskiest phase, 1928 to 1935. After that, he grew too popular to be allowed rude behavior like tormenting barnyard animals and bussing Minnie full on the mouth, as he does here. The 33 shorts look so stunningly rich that your kids shouldn't mind the lack of color, and a passel of extra goodies turn the package into a nifty cartoon classroom: More than a thousand still-frame "storyboard" script sketches show how animators planned their scenes, a "pencil test" version shows what the initial drawings look like before they're inked, and there's a long-lost 1932 color short done for the Oscars. In style and scale, it's anything but Mickey Mouse.

For Cousin Hepzibah, who keeps framed photos of Luke, Laura, and Erica — rather than Sonny, Hubby, and Mom — on her desk: ABC Video's three Daytime's Greatest Weddings tapes ($14.98 each) will allow her to vicariously relive those cheesy matrimonial thrills with one cassette per of One Life to Live, General Hospital, and All My Children. And lest anyone forget that these really are soap operas, each tape includes up to $5 in coupons for Lysol products — perfect for keeping those picture frames germ-free.

For teenage daughter Marva, who — ever since she was cast in a walk-on in the school play — has been wilting about the house like Blanche du Bois: So You Want to Be an Actor (Colline Productions, price unavailable) should actually be called So You Want to Be an Actor in New York City, since hosts Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara lead the viewer through an amazingly thorough guide to thespian survival in the Big Apple. Want to know what neighborhood not to live in, which union to join, and how to get a head shot? It's all here, Marva, alongwith a handy Ross Report-size booklet to carry along on auditions.

For little nephew Jason, who likes to climb the furniture and hang from the chandeliers pretending to beam up: Star Trek: The Starfleet Collection (Paramount, $199.95). Granted, it's a little pricey, but isn't the little geek worth this Star Trek set-of-sets? Paramount's new limited-edition collection features all six ST films in wide-screen video format, a watch, hologram trading cards, and a certificate of authenticity for each of the 5,000 copies available. Although no number of techie knickknacks can disguise the not-so-hot quality of a couple of these films (especially the first), all these goodies will make any Trekkie green as a Gorn with envy.

For Mom and Dad: The African Queen Limited Commemorative Edition (FoxVideo, $59.95). All the extras in this deluxe set — the cool lobby cards, the James Agee script, the hardbound memoir by Katharine Hepburn — they're all gravy. The meat is the remastered print of African Queen on the tape — proof positive that (a) some couples are just meant to be together, no matter how unlikely a pair they make, and (b) there's a little bit of Kate and Bogie in all of us.