According to an article in USA Today, sales of DVDs in 2007 were down 3% over 2006. “Economic hurdles” are cited as the only culprit, but I’d hazard a guess that buyer hesitation due to the HD format war, DVR/Tivo, On/InDemand channels, and the fact that DVDs as a technology have peaked all probably played a part in the sales downturn.

The jury seems to be out on whether HD discs or downloading HD is the true next step, but I’m starting to think it’s going to be a balancing act between the two. Sure, it’s looking like in the! future! you’ll be able to download 2001 or a season of The Sopranos or whatever in HD, along with hundreds of thousands of other movies — but if you want to keep them, where the hell are you going to store them?

Anyway, it’s ok DVD. You had a great run.

Overall, about 90 million homes have a DVD player, 2 million more than in 2006. “But some lower-income homes rent DVDs because they don’t have the income to build a big library,” says Wade Holden, an entertainment industry analyst at research firm SNL Kagan. “Where the growth is really coming is subscriptions like Netflix and Blockbuster Online.”

He estimates that in 2008, such subscriptions will increase from $1.7 billion to $2.1 billion.

Another area of growth: the movie download market, which is expected to double from $689 million in 2006 to $1.6 billion in 2008, SNL Kagan estimates.

As for high-definition discs, so far they amount to about 1% of the home-video market (about $300 million). But many industry watchers expect that Warner Home Video’s decision to go exclusively with Blu-ray discs could end the nearly two-year-long format war with rival HD DVD — and spur consumer spending.

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It’s hard not to think that Warner Brothers announcing that it’s going Blu-Ray exclusive is directing HD-DVD towards an early grave.

From the press release:

In response to consumer demand, Warner Bros. Entertainment will release its high-definition DVD titles exclusively in the Blu-ray disc format beginning later this year, it was announced today by Barry Meyer, Chairman & CEO, Warner Bros. and Kevin Tsujihara, President, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group.

“Warner Bros.’ move to exclusively release in the Blu-ray disc format is a strategic decision focused on the long term and the most direct way to give consumers what they want,” said Meyer. “The window of opportunity for high-definition DVD could be missed if format confusion continues to linger. We believe that exclusively distributing in Blu-ray will further the potential for mass market success and ultimately benefit retailers, producers, and most importantly, consumers.”

Warner Home Video will continue to release its titles in standard DVD format and Blu-ray. After a short window following their standard DVD and Blu-ray releases, all new titles will continue to be released in HD DVD until the end of May 2008.

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If you have a second and want to read something nutty, consider the kind of insane legal saga of Joe Francis, the creator of Girls Gone Wild, who is currently in jail on a tangled web of multiple charges that include civil suits, tax evasion, and “introducing contraband into a detention facility.”

Mr. Francis’s troubles started nearly five years ago when he included Panama City Beach, a Panhandle city of white-sand beaches on the Gulf of Mexico, in a highly publicized pay-per-view event from three Spring Break locations. “Girls Gone Wild” camera crews, who usually film college women at bars, parking lots, hotel rooms and other party hangouts, had been to Panama Beach City before, but in 2003 they arrived with unusual hoopla.

Mayor Sullivan took exception and law enforcement officials cracked down on acts of lewd behavior, which interfered with the filming. Mr. Francis sued the officials, claiming violation of his First Amendment rights, and got them to settle and back down. But Mr. Francis and some of his crew were arrested when the father of one of two women filmed in a shower scene at the hotel room the filmmakers had rented contacted the county sheriff’s office, saying the girls were minors.

The officials came down hard: They confiscated Mr. Francis’s Ferrari and private jet, announcing cocaine had been found on the plane. Mr. Francis was charged with more than 70 counts, including racketeering, drug trafficking, prostitution and promoting the sexual performance of children.

A judge ended up throwing out all but six of the criminal counts, which revolve around the use of minors in a sexual performance, because of a flawed search warrant. And as it turned out, no cocaine was found on the plane.

The best part of this article, by far, is the testimonial from Quincy Jones. Bonus wtf points!

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Just wanted to let people know that Amazon is having a sick DVD sale during the pre-Christmas run up with some serious price cuts. Carnivale for $20 a season or Smallville S1 for $15 is some deep discounting, and they’ve got a ton of other box sets listed as well.

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One of the main purposes of KFR’s existence is our continuing quest for “good garbage,” which is, in short, any aspect of pop culture that is surprisingly interesting. A movie, song, video game, TV show, comic, piece of graffiti, commercial, or anything that has a bit more going on underneath its disposable exterior.

A great, obvious place to look for this kind of quality trash has historically been B-movies, but there aren’t too many true wide-release low-budget flicks anymore; one of the reasons being that there seems to be fewer workmanlike directors who set out to make a cheap but solid, fun, unassuming flick with some style that doesn’t pretend to be anything else but entertaining. The question arises: where are the Roger Cormans of today? The Budd Boettichers? The Sam Fullers? Are guys like Richard Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino too self-aware to fall into this category?

I don’t want to oversell John Stockwell by putting him up there with that estimable company — he’s not nearly as innovative, artistic, or skilled. But still, he is one of the few working directors that can make a cheap, satisfying entertainment that doesn’t aspire to be anything beyond cheap and satisfying, and benefits from that attitude. That might be damning with faint praise, but at the end of the day, this is the thing: when a movie of his arrives on cable, I inevitably watch it, and inevitably I am surprised to find myself distracted and entertained.

In 20-30 years will the next generation of film nerds be reevaluating Stockwell’s catalog like they do Larry Cohen’s or Mario Bava’s? It’s tough to say. Stockwell’s films are very watchable, commendably economical, briskly edited, appealingly modest, never boring, and not stupid. He makes a legitimate effort to create real movies.

However, they’re also insidiously dopey, crassly commercial, and exist in a world that involves no chest hair and wet hard bodies (mainly women) in skimpy clothing. Then again, his movies seem aware of all this, and maybe that’s part of why they’re so fun to watch. There are much bigger Hollywood movies that are far worse and far more forgettable.

Anyway, let’s evaluate what the former actor — anyone remember My Science Project…? — turned director’s done so far (with the exception of Crazy/Beautiful, which I’ve never seen) using a special ratings scale/checklist we tailor made for this particular piece.

I recommend all three of these movies by the way. They’re above-average weekend afternoon or weekday night distractions. Read about all of ‘em right after the jump.

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Last year it was Criterion’s Janus Box Set, and this year we have an insanely extensive and expensive set of films by one of the country’s greatest (maybe the greatest) directors: John Ford. Man are these glorious times to be a cinephile.

Ford at Fox collects 24 of the maestros 50 films for the Fox studio (he made nearly 150 in his lifetime) including one of my personal Ford faves My Darling Clementine, and also The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, Drums Along the Mohawk, and a host of rarely seen titles.

The New York Times rightly refers to the set as more of an archive of vital American art and culture — akin to the Library of America series — than a regular old box o’ flicks.

The most insane part? They’re probably already working on a second volume…

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Despite the fact that I was only semi-entertained by Superman/Doomsday (why on earth did they insist on making Superman look like a 55 year old man?), I’m sufficiently stoked about the next DC Direct To DVD project. Based on Darwyn Cooke’s beautiful mini series, “New Frontier” looks to maintain Cooke’s art style while still incorporating a bit of the Dini magic, if these screenshots are any indication. Very, very excited to see how this baby turns out!

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I’m unclear on how it’s already managed 16 5 star reviews since it was just released, oh, tomorrow as of this writing, but that’s unimportant. The thing we all need to know is that the first Futurama direct to DVD flick is (more or less) here. Hopefully it’ll follow the path tread by Family Guy and be just as good as the late, lamented series and not some robot zombified cel-animated corpse dragging around old jokes like an arm held on by a few still connected tendons. Whatever the case, I like seeing a prematurely canceled show getting a second shot a second shot on DVD and wouldn’t mind one bit if someone were to someday try this for a live action series.

Amazon has a half-minute clip to promote the release, but a) I’m not sure if it’s an actual clip from the movie or a clever ad commissioned by Amazon and b)it’s still not embeddable, so you’ll kinda have to go there to watch it.

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