Although Will Smith plays an emotionally fragile superhero in Hancock, as a movie star he's practically invincible. By industry standards, the last genuine Smith dud was The Legend of Bagger Vance, but the actor's standing among many audiences has remained decidedly rocky. As a result, he occupies a unique corner of the Hollywood marketplace where quality and taste don't necessarily match up. Unlike, say, The Dark Knight, not many people eagerly await the latest Smith offering -- which currently has a 32% rating on Rotten Tomatoes -- but they'll see it anyway. Hancock is tracking well, thanks to a poster exclusively dominated by Smith's unshaven mug, and that pretty much seals its potent box office fate. Just as Smith's slapdash onscreen persona is bullet-proof, Smith himself is steadfastly critic-proof.

Which places movie in an interesting quagmire: After pulling in waves of cash, it will probably get relegated to the void of forgettable Smith fare, where spectacles offer passing amusement before scampering off forever. Hancock, however, deserves better than a fleeting moment in the limelight and a crash landing in the bargain bin. It's part of a genre that speaks directly to the modern state of blockbuster cinema: The superhero satire.

The critics have spoken and the massive, $300 box set Ford at Fox was named the best DVD of 2007 by the contributors at DVDBeaver.com. For the fourth annual poll, Thirty-six DVD critics from all over the world submitted their individual top ten lists -- each of which is featured -- and then editor Gary Tooze tallied up points for the final results. The coveted John Ford box contains 24 John Ford films on 21 discs; kudos to any critic who had time to watch it all.

In second and third place are The Films of Kenneth Anger Vol. 2 and Vol. 1, both distributed by Fantoma Films. Volume 2 earned a few more points, probably due to the inclusion of Anger's most famous work, Scorpio Rising. In fourth place is another huge box set, the Criterion Collection's Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980), assembling Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 15-hour film on 7 discs. Showing off DVDBeaver's dedication to international DVDs, fifth place went to the BFI's second Region 2 box set of films by Mikio Naruse, containing When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960), Floating Clouds (1955) and Late Chrysanthemums (1954). The US release of When a Woman Ascends the Stairs from the Criterion Collection was counted as a tie.

Sixth place went to my personal favorite of the year, Criterion Eclipse's five-disc box set Late Ozu, featuring five great films from the 1950s and 1960s by the Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu. In seventh place was Warner Home Video's Film Noir Classics Collection, Vol. 4, with ten films on five discs, including Nicholas Ray's debut They Live by Night (1949) and Andre de Toth's essential Crime Wave (1954). Milestone's amazing 2-disc Killer of Sheep DVD, featuring several more features and short films by Charles Burnett, ranked eighth. Paramount's Twin Peaks: The Definitive Gold Box Edition took ninth place, sneaking out a few months after people spent their hard-earned cash on the Season Two box. Criterion sealed up the list at tenth place with their two-disc Sansho the Bailiff (1954), directed by Kenji Mizoguchi.

Tooze also included the first 40 runners up. Top vote-getters include Blade Runner: The Final Cut, Inland Empire and Ace in the Hole. Other categories are "best commentary track," "best extras" and "best transfer." Voters included Jonathan Rosenbaum, Theo Panayides, Tom Charity and the staff of Slant Magazine.

A few weeks ago, I read a Hollywood Elsewhere column lamenting the lack of a DVD for the 1951 film The African Queen. I remember hearing for years that Fox was restoring the film, and now Paramount has the rights and says they're restoring it for an eventual DVD release. This is only one of many movies that, as Variety notes, are considered notable or classic but still haven't made it to DVD. Many studios feel that there's not enough of a market for older films to justify the expense of restoring the films and transferring them to DVD.

Criterion recently started a new label, Eclipse, that will give many movies a DVD release without all the bells and whistles (and price) we usually associate with a Criterion disc. Each month, Eclipse will release a short series of several DVDs by a particular director or on a theme, such as the first series of early Ingmar Bergman films due at the end of March. Warner has been distributing a number of classic films, often in boxed sets, and also has released a number of films via Amazon's download service in advance of a later DVD release.

The Variety article hints that one of Criterion's upcoming releases may be a movie I've never seen because of a lack of DVD: Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole. I suspect we all have lists of movies we'd love to rent or own on DVD but aren't available -- mine includes the 1939 romantic comedy Midnight, the 1973 cult Western Kid Blue and John Ford's 1935 film The Whole Town's Talking. I know some of these may never see the light of DVD, but I keep hoping. What's on your list?

Everyone has a different opinion regarding the greatest films in history. Since half the fun is in the arguing, pity the poor cinephile who thinks they've got it all figured out. A new DVD box set from Criterion and Janus may not claim to have finally compiled the greatest films ever, but they've gotten off to a pretty good start.

Janus was a distribution company founded in 1956 by Bryant Haliday and Cyrus Harvey. They had been showing foreign films in their Massachusetts theater for a few years before becoming the premiere distributors of foreign films in the US. Janus has teamed with their sister company Criterion to create Essential Art House: 50 Years Of Janus Film. This whopper of a collection is now available and includes films from directors like Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Luis Bunuel and Akira Kurosawa -- you can read about Criterion's remastered Seven Samurai here. In total, this box set contains 50 different films, numerous extras, and a 240-page book with an introduction written by Martin Scorsese. Most of these films have been available through Criterion for years, but not in one collection.

All of this film history doesn't come cheap though, the set has a retail price of $850. If that seems a little excessive, don't worry; Criterion is also planning on releasing individual discs from the series as well.

[via CNN Entertainment]

If you thought that DVD's effect on film preservation and restoration was minimal -- or only for hard-core film nerds -- think again: CNN.com is running an excellent piece (including before-and-after comparisons of individual frames) about the restoration of Criterion's new Seven Samurai DVD that does a great job of articulating the challenges of repairing a classic -- without completely altering it, or falling into the abyss where the perfect becomes the enemy of the good. Criterion Technical director Lee Kline is quoted as saying "For the most part, you wish you had a few more weeks ... people are used to pristine. But if we did that, we'd never get it out." Has DVD made people expect perfection? And can you make an older film 'perfect' without losing its soul? I for one love the Criterion Samurai, right down to the flaws and scratches that remain -- but are there film fans out there who, in this bit-heavy, high-def day and age, would turn off a film that offered anything less than perfect image quality, regardless of how great the story is?

One of the first Cinematical posts I ever wrote was about Whit Stillman – specifically, I was wondering what the hell ever happened to the guy who directed Metropolitan, Barcelona and The Last Days of Disco – three of my favorite indie films of the 90s. Well, it's time to cut from our non-stop Sundance coverage to bring you this breaking bulletin: the director is alive and well and, according to Anthony Kaufman, living in Paris and preparing to direct his first film in seven years. What's the holdup? "For me, time is the biggest luxury.” Apparently. In the Filmmaker Magazine interview, Stillman also discusses his first film, Metropolitan, at length, in advance of its Criterion DVD debut next month. 

Hollywood is flipping out:  movies suck, no one is going to see them, and studios are spending money like water and getting nothing back. Because instead of spending money on crappy movies, some of us are quite content to sit on our couches and watch the treasures that keep showing up on DVD. I'm not talking about the zillions of Star Wars, or Matrix, or Batman editions, though - I'm talking about the movies that weren't on VHS, were never on TV, and suddenly are in our sweaty little hands. Movies like John Boorman's Point Blank, for example. And Night Moves, which came out just as I developed a desperate, unmeetable need to see it.

Thanks largely to small, determined production houses like Criterion (US), Masters of Cinema (UK), Raro Video (Italy), and Second Run (UK) (and, happily, there are many more), films that have been unavailable for years are showing up, often gloriously restored and plumped with rare extras. Yes, there have been three American Pies and two Deuce Bigalows. But Americans can hide from them with a pile of Seijun Suzuki DVDs, and immerse themselves in an outrageous, garish world that for years was hidden from us all. In a weird way, these are phenomenal times.

I remember actually crying when I found out that Criterion was releasing Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt - I know I'm pathetic, but I can't be totally alone. What DVD release has meant the most you?