What goes around comes around. Back when the wonderful laserdisc was just beginning to find its stride, and the serious movie buff could actually find most of the titles he or she was longing to see, the DVD came along and all but wiped out this entire format, this entire subculture. Now, at the dawn of 2008, it looks as if the war between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD may be coming to a close. Will one or the other format catch on? Will the regular DVD become extinct? No one can say. But when it comes to movies I'd like to see, none of this matters. 2007 brought us some amazing DVDs and DVD box sets, and the following is my wish list for titles I'd like to see produced in 2008.

(Note: I deliberately left off titles that are already available on import DVDs, such as Satantango, Celine and Julie Go Boating, Man of the West, Johnny Guitar, Lost Highway, Napoleon, The Dead, the Jean Vigo collection, and many more.)

1. Othello: 3-Disc Special Edition
In 1992, Orson Welles' daughter Beatrice authorized a "restored" version of the film that played in theaters. But purists claimed that her film deviated from what her father originally intended, and so the Criterion Collection released a laserdisc edition of Welles' original cut, the one that played at Cannes in 1952. Beatrice apparently blocked this earlier version, and so now only the 1992 cut is on DVD (and out of print besides). My fantasy DVD would be a three-disc box set (from Criterion, of course), collecting both the 1952 and 1992 cuts, as well as Orson's impossible-to-find documentary Filming Othello (1978), which is the last of his completed films I have yet to see. (There are clips of it on the Criterion Othello laserdisc.) On a side note, of Welles' thirteen completed films, seven are available on U.S. DVDs and four others are available overseas. That leaves only Othello and Filming Othello. Let's get on it!

Earlier this month, I posted about a secret film debuting at the Cannes Film Festival. All that was known at the time was that it would be a compilation of 30 shorts, each about three minutes long and directed by an internationally respected filmmaker, and that it wouldn't be shown to the public. Now, thanks to an official press release, we learn that there are in fact 33 shorts from 35 filmmakers (including two pairs of brothers) and that the film, titled To Each his Own Cinema, will air on French television on May 20 following its premiere at the festival. So now I don't have to wish I could attend Cannes; I have to wish I got Canal +.

Also revealed are the names of the 35 participants, all of whom were supposed to be kept secret until the film's unveiling, and a few details about the project. Each director was assigned the task of filming, "their current state of mind as inspired by the motion-picture theater." The only individual specifics mentioned in the press release, which was written by festival head Giles Jacob, are that Wim Wenders shot in the Congo, Tsai Ming Liang shot in Kuala Lumpur and David Cronenberg shot "in the ... toilet!" (probably meaning the bathroom, not the bowl). But anyone familiar with the directors involved can imagine the kind of diversity that will be seen in the film.

See the names of the 35 collaborators after the jump.

For its 60th year anniversary, the Cannes Film Festival will premiere new films from many past winners of the Palme d'Or. It isn't known how many of these winners will have new material this year, but apparently festival president Gilles Jacob and artistic director Thierry Frémaux tried to get many of the living "Golden Palm" vets -- winners and nominees, both -- to contribute to a special project.

Each participating filmmaker has directed a short film of 2-3 minutes in length that will be shown together as a feature-length film at a gala event on May 20. Variety reports that those known to be included are Ken Loach ('06: The Wind That Shakes the Barley), Gus Van Sant ('03: Elephant), Lars von Trier ('00: Dancer in the Dark), Theodoros Angelopoulos ('98: Eternity and a Day), Abbas Kiarostami ('97: Taste of Cherry), Chen Kaige ('93: Farewell My Concubine), Wim Wenders ('84: Paris, Texas) and non-winners (though often-nominated) Wong Kar-Wai, Michael Cimino, Amos Gitai, Manoel de Oliveira, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang. There are 30 shorts in all, so obviously a lot of other contributors are as yet unknown. Only Pedro Almodóvar (also a non-winner, and never a nominee) is known to have declined the offer.

Mani Haghighi's latest film, Men at Work, is one of the most accessible foreign films, let alone Iranian films, I've seen in a long time. Its simple story is of four middle-aged men on their way home from a ski trip who make a pit stop alongside the mountain road and obsess about a large phallic rock jutting out from the edge of a cliff. They decide that they can not leave the site until they've succeeded in knocking the thing over, and make every attempt to push it, ram it, pull it, dig it out and leverage it. Others drive by, turn around and offer assistance or make attempts of their own. The four men just keep on trying through the night.

Although steeped in allegory, political or otherwise, the film is perfectly enjoyable, and quite hilarious, in its literal sense. Its enigmatic comedy is akin to something out of Monty Python, and its most basic elements align it with Looney Tunes, and yet despite its absurdity Men at Work feels completely real and reasonable. Shot digitally, it has the impression of a home movie, as if the camera is a fifth friend who merely observes and records the endeavor.

Mansour (Hossein Yari) is guilty of murder, awaiting the decision of whether or not he will be executed. His fate does not fall in the hands of a judge, though. It falls to the family of the man he murdered; if they ever make it down to the prison to make the call. Under Iranian law in cases of capital punishment, it is up to the victim's family to either condemn the offender to hang or save him with their forgiveness, but they are required to appear on the day of execution to officially select their verdict. Mansour has already faced the day of his sentencing a few times, and each time the judgment has been postponed due to the family's absence. And so he continues to wait for his appointment with death.

Anyone familiar with existentialist Iranian cinema can predict how Day Break ends, but it doesn't really matter if Mansour lives or dies. He is like Schrodinger's Cat, simultaneously alive and dead and neither state all at the same time. Trapped in a form of limbo, he endures the psychological struggle with having an indefinite future and a definite lack of free will. The torture of not knowing, for Mansour, becomes far worse a punishment than death.