Laura Dern in Inland Empire A scene from Taxi Driver

DAVID LYNCH
Speaking of looks, David Lynch shot his latest film, the nearly three-hour Inland Empire, on digital video. He didn't even use a particularly advanced camera for it, à la George Lucas for his most recent Star Wars films; hence, Empire has a look all its own, a look that's accurately represented on the DVD. The stalwart DVD website DVD Beaver declares in no uncertain terms that Empire looks, well, "like crap." Almost as much as its peculiar, involving, maddening content, which I tried to come to terms with in my original review and which I'm still trying to come to terms with (although I'm holding to my argument that, contrary to what a lot of desperate critics say, Lynch does not make "puzzle" films) Inland Empire's look has generated a lot of controversy. I'm not going to argue much with those who say it looks like crap except to say that "crap" is not how I'd put it. Yes, Inland Empire's visual texture is harsher, smearier, grungier, and less elegant than the kind of image Lynch could have gotten on film. And although Lynch's hosannas about digital video have been largely apropos how it makes shooting physically easier and less costly, you can't believe that someone as visually attuned as Lynch, who trained as a painter, is not aware of how things look. It's not as if the short pictures Lynch made using crude video security cams were made that way because that's all he could get in the way of equipment — he wanted that effect. So we kind of have to conclude that the effect he got in Inland Empire was the one he wanted.

I find the "ugliness" of the digital video creates its own weirdly hobbled beauty, a beauty that revels in technical imperfection, as in a shot of a cigarette burn in a pair of panties (Lynch's version of Alice's rabbit hole, in a way) that comes close to being obliterated by backlight washout. The two-disc package, a collaboration between Rhino and Lynch's company Absurda, is a remarkable package. The first disc is one of the few Lynch DVDs with chapter stops (although the chapters are unnamed). In keeping with Lynch's disinclination for explication, there's no commentary. The second disc features part of a lengthy doc on the making of Empire, showing Lynch as a real hands-on director in more ways than most auteurs (he participates in the actual construction of his sets, for one thing); a shorter piece in which Lynch prepares the putative perfect foodstuff quinoa; Lynch telling "stories"; a short called "Ballerina"; some trailers; and, perhaps most exciting of all, 70 minutes of deleted scenes, here labeled "More Things That Happened." They don't help Inland Empire make more "sense," but they do have the film's very particular atmosphere, in case the 3 hours of the film proper didn't give you enough.

MARTIN SCORSESE
Finally, Sony Home Entertainment gives us a two-disc version of Martin Scorsese's already-familiar-to-DVD Taxi Driver, and some may say, "so what?" But this version represents probably the best we're going to see on video until a High Definition version arrives, if one ever does. In addition to the excellent transfer there are oodles of new extras, including two commentaries (one by the film's screenwriter Paul Schrader), documentaries, an array of Scorsese storyboards introduced and explained by the director himself, and more.