Overrated/Underrated: May all video become home video, and VR isn’t all that revolutionary

UNDERRATED

Don Hertzfeldt: A one-of-a-kind blur of skills in his own right, Hertzfeldt has written, directed, produced and animated his deceptively simple, undeniably beautiful short films for going on 20 years. He first attracted a following in 2000 with “Rejected,” a twisted venture into artistic madness as told through stick figures, and in 2013 he was the first to release a film on-demand on Vimeo. He earned another Oscar nod for his wonderful 2015 follow-up, “World of Tomorrow,” and all without distribution outside of art houses and festivals. Few have the stamina to follow his lead as an overworked artist and production house, but we can be thankful Hertzfeldt does.

All video as home video: Let us take a moment to appreciate the communion of single-screen cinemas and fresh popcorn smells and let them become the stuff of revival houses. Expensive, effects-heavy franchises have helped push ticket costs toward $20, and while blockbusters can be seen as something akin to a trip to the amusement park, so much more should enter on demand with open arms. With our LCD TVs and surround sound we can make our own popcorn — but let’s get the pricing sorted out. To really shift the conversation, it’s not a family of four’s box-office costs that the likes of Screening Room need to beat. It’s the ticket for two.

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OVERRATED

The virtual reality future: All apologies to those preparing for Oculus and its competitors for at last allowing us to pull on a Jeff Fahey onesie from “Lawnmower Man” and enter new worlds far more controlled than ours, but we’ve been locked into virtual reality for years. Streaming whatever we desire, following distant (or nearby) live events on social media, paging through snapshots of other people’s lunch — our smartphone screens offered an alternate reality well before headgear was added to the mix. On the bright side, think of how enhanced reality will be watching masked strangers wriggle in their chairs at coffee shops as VR goes mainstream.

Videogames as movies: Did we learn nothing from Uwe Boll? Best known as the mid-00s videogame-to-screen filmmaker who brought us the admittedly forgettable “Alone in the Dark,” “Postal” and multiple “Bloodrayne” installments, Boll should have laid to rest the viability of the shift from chips and consoles to the multiplex. But here we are again with a Duncan Jones-directed “Warcraft” on the way, along with “Assassin’s Creed,” which is generating plenty of Michael Fassbender-buzz. Games have come a long way, but keep in mind this only encouraged recent deals to adapt Atari relics “Missile Command” and “Centipede” for the big screen. Ready, player one?

UPDATES:

For the Record: Fri., 12:43 p.m. An earlier version of this post misidentified the release year of Don Hertzfeldt’s “Rejected.” Additionally, Hertzfeldt has been active as a filmmaker for more than 20 years, not 10.