"Guy Maddin's lovingly twisted portrayal of a very unusual childhood in Central Canada comes to home video in a definitive presentation from the Criterion Collection. Brand Upon the Brain! has been given a widescreen transfer to disc, letterboxed at 1.85:1 on conventional televisions and enhanced for anamorphic playback on 16 x 9 monitors. The film was shot on black-and-white Super-8 film and looks intentionally grainy as a result, but the transfer gives the image a slightly soft retro look while allowing the details to shine through; Maddin approved this transfer, and this disc does a superb job of replicating the picture's signature look. The audio has been mastered in Dolby Digital Stereo, and the fidelity is excellent, capturing all the nuances of Jason Staczek's wonderful score. Brand Upon the Brain! was conceived as a silent film and for its initial engagements it was screened with in-person accompaniment by a 11-piece orchestra, a vocalist, sound effects artists, and a narrator. For their DVD release, Criterion has offered eight different audio options, with the music and effects accompanied by three studio-recorded narrative tracks (featuring Isabella Rossellini, Louis Negin, and Maddin himself), as well as five tracks recorded during live presentations of the film (featuring Rossellini, Laurie Anderson, John Ashbery, Crispin Glover, and Eli Walach). The narration is in English, and this DVD includes optional English subtitles but no multiple language options. As a bonus, this disc includes two short films by Maddin -- It's My Mother's Birthday Today, an impressionistic profile of vocalist Dov Houle, and Footsteps, which examines the process of creating the sound effects for the movie. Also featured is 97 Percent True, a documentary on Maddin's work and the making of Brand Upon the Brain!, as well a deleted scene and the original theatrical trailer. The accompanying booklet features a lively essay by Dennis Lim on Maddin and his films. Guy Maddin is a true maverick in the contemporary cinema, and no one else could have made Brand Upon the Brain!; few home video companies would have been willing to give this film such an attractive presentation, and none besides Criterion would have released it in so thorough a package, which is as strange and wonderful as the film itself."