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[jfb]

The Times Arts & Leisure section is completely overrun by articles about DVDs, which "have reshaped the way we experience culture". Wow!

• "The esoterica of film culture, formerly consumed by a moneyed geek elite, is now aimed directly at - and snapped up by - the broader public."
• Interactive pornography! Six hours of There's Something About Mary! And a new set of Chaplin reissues!

  Chaplin instinctively resisted the literary models that the Hollywood studios forced more and more on movies in the 20's and the 30's, and arrived at an alternative structure that bore more than a passing (though probably coincidental) relationship to Brecht's epic theater, a form that emphasized its own artifice, that declined psychological realism and scrambled high and low culture into a mélange not far removed from today's post-modernism.

  So that's where Baz Luhrmann got it.
• Dance on DVD! Plays on DVD! Classical music on DVD (sometimes in cartoon form)!
• TV shows on DVD! Sometimes with commentary tracks! Like Wiseguy!

  At the time, it wasn't quite clear how much could be read into Vinnie and Sonny's charged relationship. But today there's no denying: the first half-season of "Wiseguy" is a testosterone-drenched love story of aggressive men attracted to the manliness they recognize in each other.

  (Why was it unclear in the 80s but undeniable now?)

  This article also mentions a pet peeve of mine. TV shows whose creators put a lot of effort into choosing the right songs for the right moments have to obtain DVD rights to the songs separately, and sometimes they aren't obtained--which, the article says, mars a crucial scene in Wiseguy. I had this problem with Felicity, a show whose songs were an early part of the appeal for me. In one case, I have the reverse problem--I really like a song on the DVD, and the canonical source lists only the songs from the broadcast version.

• Music videos on DVD! Made by directors!

  Well, you hope it won't detract from the original music or feeling that someone might get when they listen to that music. But I suppose if you're successful, you make a video that people can't separate from the music. In a way, it's a horrible thing to do to someone. Because they'll never listen to that music the same way again.

  In a small way, I had related qualms about my instant cover of "Southdown"--by recording my own version so quickly, was I stealing attention from Scott and Shannon, or somehow interfering with the song they made? Did it become more of a "geeky experiment" (said one critic) and less of an artistic endeavor? I don't know.
• Art on DVD! David Byrne's PowerPoint art! (I'm open to the idea but unimpressed by the samples.) Also, Matthew Barney!

  Through the Barbara Gladstone Gallery, Mr. Barney sold each "Cremaster" film in a limited edition of 10, numbered and encased in table-size vitrines. These pieces have since sold at auction for as much as $387,500.

  This just makes me angry. I liked this:

  And a young Baltimore video artist, Jon Routson, whose work explores bootlegging itself, has tackled Matthew Barney's work head-on. In April at New York's Team Gallery, Mr. Routson showed his "made for TV" version of "Cremaster 4." He cut a grainy VHS bootleg of Mr. Barney's 45-minute film down to 22 minutes, dropped in actual commercials, compressed the end credits and even floated ABC's logo in the lower corner of the screen.

  But even more, from the first article, I liked this:

  A DVD's ability to play either in projection or on personal computers anywhere in the world has great appeal for Mr. Weiner, who welcomes opportunities to make his art more public. (He has even done New York City manhole covers.) "Why make something if not for people to see?" he said. "You make media to have a basic conversation with your own culture."

• The DVD special even overflows to the front page of the paper, in an article which notes: Home video brings in more money than theatrical exhibition. DVD is the growth market in home video. Men buy more DVDs than women. And the DVDs they're buying are action movies. So, expect even more crap.