Dogma: Take Three (and four)

For those of you who just can’t get enough Kevin Smith, (and I know you’re out there), Lions Gate Entertainment has announced a third version of the film to hit shelves this fall.

After a fairly decent but barren initial release of the film for the casual viewer, Columbia released the film last year as an excellent special two disc special edition with enough legitimate features to keep anyone occupied. The one missing element was a controversial documentary explaining and in some ways defending the film to its detractors. In the end, the doc was deemed more controversial than the film itself and pulled last minute. The documentary has been restored for this new version and the film itself has been slightly lengthened, most likely with footage previously seen in the deleted scenes section of the existing DVD set. The new DVD will be made available both as the theatrical version or the lengthened version.

So once again, Dogma will hit shelves, this time with two releases from Lions Gate in the fall and with a suggested retail price of $24.95 each.

In search of ‘Dogma’

Speaking of lost documentaries, remember that “Judge Not: In Defense of Dogma” doc that fans never saw? Pulled at the last minute from Columbia’s otherwise-excellent two-disc Dogma special edition released last year, now fans can finally see what all the fuss is about…if they don’t mind getting a little Vulgar. Lions Gate will release the View Askew film in separate R-rated and unrated editions, the latter featuring an extra 3 minutes of footage, and both versions will include anamorphic widescreen transfers, a Dolby 5.1 surround track, audio commentary with director Bryan Johnson and producers Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier, deleted scenes, a gag reel, and… the full Judge Not: In Defense of Dogma documentary. Retail is $24.95 for either version.

Those close to the issue can only guess: the distribution network is flawed, the story lines are too muddled, the medium creaks with age, and on and on. A common idea comes from director Kevin Smith, perhaps the medium’s most visible, vocal proponent: He owns a comic shop, writes superhero stories for Marvel and DC and casts Ben Affleck in his films as an artist. He tells me that most folks think comics are kids’ stuff, bad guys vs. good guys, tights and capes.

“But there’s plenty of comics that don’t have people in costumes, no superhero,” he said last year while working on his new film, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, which tells of two drug dealers who become the subject of a comic book, which then becomes a mega-budget movie. “A lot of what people call underground comics or indie comics aren’t either underground or indie. They’re just stories that have nothing to do with traditional comic book stories.”