Smaller screen a smarter fit

Smart People

Miramax, $29.99; Blu-Ray, $34.99

Director Noam Murro’s serio-comedy “Smart People” stars Dennis Quaid as a stuffed-shirt literature professor and features Thomas Haden Church, Ellen Page and Sarah Jessica Parker as the friends and family who try to drag him out of his crippling grief over the loss of his wife. Mark Jude Poirier’s screenplay is overstuffed with the kinds of character quirks and offbeat incidents that happen only in trying-too-hard-to-be-clever indie films, but the soapiness of it all plays reasonably well on TV. The DVD includes a commentary, deleted scenes, cast interviews and footage from the film’s Sundance premiere.

Brand Upon the Brain!

Criterion, $39.95

No one else makes movies like those of Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin, who uses the handmade techniques of silent film and the avant-garde to tell dark, funny stories ripped from his subconscious. “Brand Upon the Brain!” follows two teen detectives investigating a plague of head wounds visited upon children who travel to the island owned by a family named Maddin. Self-analytical and crazily abstract, “Brand Upon the Brain!” originally toured North America with live music and live narration; the Criterion DVD gives the viewer an option of different audio tracks. The disc also contains a making-of documentary and two new Maddin shorts.

Irina Palm

Strand, $27.99

If nothing else, director Sam Garbarski’s black comedy “Irina Palm” might be the best movie ever made about a 50-year-old woman who masturbates strange men in Soho peep-show booths. Former British pop star Marianne Faithfull plays the title character, a widow who takes a job working in a sex shop to pay for her grandson’s medical care. “Irina Palm” plays its melodrama straight, even when it takes a turn toward the lurid. The DVD keeps it simple too, arriving devoid of special features.

The Wire:

The Complete Fifth Season

HBO, $59.99

The final season of arguably the greatest sustained achievement in serialized TV completes creator David Simon’s mosaic of Baltimore life by focusing on the newspaper business. All of “The Wire’s” usual cast of cops, bureaucrats, drug dealers and addicts are represented, but this time Simon considers how the media have failed to tell the full story of urban rot. Given that “The Wire” remained a little-seen, Emmy-poor cult show throughout its run on HBO, Simon might well be right. At least the DVDs will always be there, containing a full complement of commentaries and featurettes to contextualize an amazing show.

And . . .

“CJ7” (Sony, $28.96; Blu-Ray, $26.95); “The Secret” (Image, $27.98; Blu-Ray, $35.98); “Watching the Detectives” (Peach Arch/Genius, $19.95).

-- Noel Murray