I'm obviously behind the curve on this one, but Fred Camper is working on a two-disc package from Criterion collecting Stan Brakhage films. I can't say enough about how fucking great this is. Brakhage has been interviewed at length by Bruce Kawin, who teaches with him at CU — Boulder and who has been trying to get this project off the ground since the days of laserdisc.

Not too much to say about movies, since I was in a car wreck and haven't been able to drive for the last few weeks. I did manage to see Punch-Drunk Love and The Ring, and while I wasn't crazy about either of them I guess I'd give the former a lowercase pro and the latter a mixed. Reviews coming soon ... or not, depending on how my week goes. I'm reviewing Sony's new DVD burner for a video production magazine, and I'm struggling to get DVD-legal video files into my ancient-by-tech-geek standards PC. I spent the weekend rebuilding Windows after a disaster initiated by my innocent attempt to install some Veritas DVD-writing software, sheesh. Dying to see both Bowling for Columbine and, especially, Jackass: The Movie. The boy jus' can't help it.

OK, here's something that's been bugging me. As excited as I would be to see Criterion releasing the Stan Brakhage films and whatnot, I've grown a little weary of the DVD thing. Yes, it's still terrific to have movies at home with good video and excellent sound quality. And yes, I'm grateful that I can now rent movies from local video stores in pristine quality on a disc rather than on a worn tape that's been played through some of the stankiest VCRs in the New York metro area and boasts little detail and almost no color to speak of. But the stuff that seemed so magical -- the so-called "extras" that were a source of endless delight and fascination on laserdisc -- has been debased by current marketing mentalities.

The apparent dictum? Bigger is better. A healthy helping of more, thank you very much. I love Peter Jackson, who with the release of a mammoth laserdisc edition of The Frighteners some years ago, became reigning king of the special edition. So New Line is probably doing the right thing in releasing a four-disc (or five-disc, if you spring for the super-duper collector's box) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000067DNF/deepfocus in November, which will include a fully-scored alternate version of the film that runs a half-hour or so longer than what we saw in theaters. In fact, the folks at New Line's DVD department have done a consistently admirable job, especially in terms of how much meaningful stuff they're able to fit on a single, $24.95 DVD edition. (I was fond, for instance, of the segment on how Final Destination was radically reworked after a test screening.) Elsewhere in the industry, though, the two-disc set seems to have become de rigeur -- not, I suspect, because most movies are so precious that they deserve the treatment, but because studios have found that they can jack the price up a little by including the second disc, thus increasing margins.

But even the most lavish Hollywood packages, despite the animated menus and clever navigational concepts, are suffering from a screaming banality in their content. It's inevitable that, as you look to appeal to a market that now includes fully one third of U.S. households, you're going to shy away from hardcore film-geek talk as you assemble your supplements. I'm thinking of David Fincher speaking in almost religious tones, on the Criterion laserdisc, about the chemical processes that were used to give Se7en it's despairing look (indeed, Finch gives a shout-out to Stan Brakhage himself as the opening credits roll) or about that same company's Martin Scorsese titles, which featured the kind of hyperactive descriptions of the shooting process that made you want to go out and make your own studio movie right now goddamnit. And I won't name names, but some of the directors who regularly offer DVD commentary either don't have anything interesting to say or just don't have their heart in the task.

Studios are also more skittish about content on DVD than their third-party laserdisc publishing partners used to be. The unedited versions of movies like Scream and Breaking the Waves were available on LD but remain MPAA-censored on the studio-sanctioned DVDs. And I'm thinking of quality laserdisc boxed sets like The Lubitsch Touch, which casually collected films (including the reputedly terrific Trouble in Paradise, which I have yet to see) that remain unavailable today on VHS or DVD because the studio rights holders are no longer willing to negotiate licensing deals with interested third parties -- and the studios themselves are too busy to release such "obscure" material!

To make matters worse, when the really good stuff does come out on DVD, it too often gets dumped unceremoniously. Witness the inauspicious debut of Murnau's legendary Sunrise on DVD as a mail-order only promotional title from Fox, or much of the Fox Lorber/Wellspring catalog to date, some of it transferred from mediocre masters picked up overseas. And, finally, lots of good stuff is simply being held back by rights holders who are apparently reluctant to give up the VHS franchise. New Yorker Video, for instance, is sitting on key Godard titles — Weekend and 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her — for reasons that I can't fathom, unless it's an unwillingness to give up the lucrative rates fetched by 16mm print rentals for classroom use (and if actual film is being supplanted in film schools in favor of DVD, that raises a whole 'nother question entirely).

Did I have a point? Oh yes. As the shelves of your favorite DVD emporium are filled to overflowing with marginal titles that have been given two-disc packages loaded with superfluous making-of "documentaries" and electronic press kits; as the amount of money and effort spent on the DVD version of a title seems to rise and fall in inverse proportion to the preciousness of said title, since DVD-production dollars come mostly from studio marketing departments, which obviously favor blockbusters and other mass-market prospects; as commentary tracks consist, more and more often, solely of actors, producers, directors and others sitting around a microphone, cracking wise and congratulating each other; and as it becomes harder to locate the gems among the massive quantities of chaff clogging the distribution channels every fourth quarter, buying DVDs simply isn't as invigorating a prospect as it was in the days when the format was new, or -- especially -- when laserdisc, which catered to the obsessive-compulsive film buff, ruled the kingdom of video.

I don't want to sound too cranky. I think DVD is a terrific product, a necessary evolution, and an intriguing 21st century development in terms of film distribution, specifically as independent filmmakers start to think creatively about using DVD as the primary, rather than secondary, means of distribution from the moment of inception of any given title. It's a great business to be in, one whose runaway success must be viewed as an affirmation of the importance of cinema in the daily lives of people all over the world. But the snooty cinephile in me will always be a little disappointed that DVD, like laserdisc before it, couldn't have remained a boutique product forever.

One lucky lawyer got to spend 30 minutes on Wednesday trying to convince the U.S. Supreme Court that the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act violates the U.S. Constitution. The justices were, by most accounts, relatively unimpressed by his arguments, though some of them did seem to think Congress was generally cracked for allowing Disney to essentially extend the term of copyright every time the first Mickey Mouse movie nears public domain. Me, I think that as long as 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment is refusing to give outrageously great classics like Sunrise a proper release on DVD, there’s a strong argument for lapsing that puppy into the public domain so that hungry companies like the Criterion Collection can get their hands on it.

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The folks at Criterion have been circling the works of legendary avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage for some time, but now word comes (from the unofficial Criterion Collection forum) that Criterion honcho Peter Becker made reference to specific work on some Brakhage films at the Anthology Film Archives back in March. Specifically, he thanked John Newell of Denver’s Western Cine Lab for striking "a bunch" of new prints for Criterion and promised to make ’em look just right when they’re digitized. No, Fred Camper isn’t reaching for his wallet, but it’ll be great if Brakhage’s films can be preserved on video for a (somewhat) wider audience that doesn’t have access to the man’s legendary first-person screenings.

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Even as U.S. officials refuse to bend the rules so that Abbas Kiarostami, easily a contender for the title of world’s greatest living filmmaker, can appear at the New York Film Festival, word comes out of Tehran that his countrymen would rather slouch around the house watching Hollywood movies on DVD than go out and see the geek-revered art films that play in local theaters. Ticket sales are down, investors are reluctant to put money in the film industry, and fears are that theaters will continue to close and fewer actual Iranian films will be made. Meanwhile, director Shekhar Kapur argues in the pages of the Guardian that Hollywood’s dominance of the global film industry is about to end. "15 years from now, we won't be discussing the domination of the western media but the domination of the Chinese media, or the Asian media," he writes. "Soon we will find that in order to make a hugely successful film, you have to match Tom Cruise with an Indian or a Chinese actor." I love Hollywood movies, and I would never bet against the ol’ U.S. when it comes to a capacity for cultural imperialism, but this is sort of an exciting idea nonetheless.

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Jackie Chan says he wants to be "a real actor." Guess being one of the two or three greatest physical comedians in the history of the medium isn’t enough for some people. On the upside, he’s apparently set to appear in a film by Edward Yang, who made the magnificent Yi-Yi. And no matter what Jackie does, Drunken Master 2 will always be among the best. Movies. Ever.

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From the department of things I hoped DVD would be able to prevent comes news that the forthcoming The Exorcist: The Beginning, starring Stellan Skarsgaard as the WWII-era Father Merrin (the role Max Von Sydow originated), will be directed by none other than Paul Schrader. Never mind that Schrader’s last studio picture, Cat People, wasn’t exactly a box-office success. Anyone who’s checked out Universal’s recent Cat People special edition disc realizes not only that Schrader has little interest in horror in the first place but also that his attitude toward the genre is downright condescending. (Check out the commentary, where he comments matter-of-factly on how his tech crew "improved" the swimming pool scene, which he ripped wholesale from the original movie.) So I guess I’m hoping for the best — the script by novelist Caleb Carr may or may not be a good sign, given his lack of experience as a screenwriter — but preparing for the worst.

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The Scratch DVD released last month by Palm Pictures is terrific, with an entire second disc of bonus material including an enlightening scratch school presided over by and excerpts from an interactive tutorial disc created by DJ Qbert that actually takes advantage of DVD’s multi-angle and multi-audio functions. The movie itself ain’t too shabby, neither, with cool live turntable footage (including a re-creation of Double Dee & Steinski’s legendary "Lessons" that was staged for a Thud Rumble event) and a witty editorial sensibility.

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Image is releasing X2000, a DVD collecting four short films by 8 Women director François Ozon, in December.