These menus also showcase -- through their layered, control-room motif -- the unprecedented visibility behind the scenes of epic moviemaking that clearly is a passion – and mission – for King Kong and Lord of the Rings maestro Peter Jackson.

The Post Production Diaries included on the bonus disc in this package continue a DVD saga that Universal and Jackson began last December, when the film was released in theaters. The studio and epicmaker at that time cleverly exploited the movie's mammoth marketing coverage by simultaneously marketing an elaborately boxed two-disc DVD set branded “King Kong: Peter Jackson’s Production Diaries.”

Apart from being a nod to the power of the K² franchise and to Jackson’s magnetic pull, this digital chronicle is notable for how it husbands virtually real-time online video to create value-added packaged media, complete with four production artists' prints and a high-gloss booklet of date-specific production diary stills and fluffy text.

The 131 days of production diaries documented on the two discs – spanning September 6, 2004 through April 8, 2005 – first appeared on the Kong website within a day of each diary entry being produced on set. Compiled en toto, and pressed into service as a film fan’s off-the-shelf, live-action guide to moviemaking, it is a bountiful bargain, infinitely more informative and intriguing than the ersatz backlot tours that are a mainstay of studio-owned theme parks.

APPETIZING MENUS

Jackson’s meticulous and resourceful workstyle rubs off on those around him, including DVD producers. In the newly-released Post Production Diaries disc that accompanies the movie itself, when a menu appears, we see and hear several seconds of video and audio drawn from that segment. When the clip loops back to the start, however, the audio is muted by default, so it is only heard once. What a sound for sore ears. There’s also a time-lapse bar that gives the viewer a relative indication (no minutes or seconds are marked) how long the menu clip will play.

Picking up where the voluminous Production Diaries discs left off, the Post Production Diaries can be accessed by post production department or by date. The start date is last April, 33 weeks before the December 2005 gala premieres in New York and New Zealand, both available here as Premieres, one of seven post-production sections.

The other six are Music, Sound, Miniatures, Visual Effects, Pickups, and Peter Jackson. Clicking on any of those offers an option to Play All the date-specific chapters within each department in chronological sequence, or to randomly select a department’s diary entry by date. The quartet of discs in the separately issued Kong releases – the two-disc production diaries plus the two-disc movie and post production diaries – constitute a 14-month retrospective of the making of a blockbuster. That in itself deserves some kind of award.

Even if he were a prima donna on the set, which isn’t at all evident from the home viewer’s vantage point, the newly-svelte Jackson has earned such lofty privilege. What’s all the more creditable, though, is that no filmmaker of his rank ever has engaged the mass audience so directly, so generously, so insistently -- nor, it should be added, has had the tools of today's technology to do so. It’s as if Jackson is saying, sotto voce, “They may call this movie magic, but to me it’s another day at the office, and damn hard work.’

The only other moving image impresario who comes to mind in the same spirit of public access is Robert Rodriquez, whose special edition DVD of Sin City is a magical movie tour in its own right, and will be covered in a separate edition of Hollywood Mediaware.

As for Jackson, not only does he gladly invite us inside his workshop, but patiently explains painstaking and ingenious processes that may take days, weeks, even months to conjure, only to end up on the screen for fleeting seconds, or perhaps be strewn on the cutting-room floor, when there was such a quaint place to leave deleted scenes. Now, they’re strewn on silver platters as -- drum roll, please -- Bonus Features. Let's hear it for the marketers, otherwise known as Euphemism Experts.

GREAT FEATURETTE ON GREAT DEPRESSION

Speaking of bonus extras -- is there an echo in here? -- the featurette Kong’s New York 1933, included in the new K²  DVD's Post Production Diaries, is a very well produced, incisive documentary that is classroom-caliber in its scholarly and absorbing look at historical periods such as The Great Depression, Vaudeville, and the rise of New York City’s world-famous skyline, with its crowning glory, The Empire State Building.

In fact, every kid today should hear how the featured historians describe destitute and proud wage earners – including today’s kids’ grandparents and great grandparents in the 1930s – who were reduced to begging for food and money like today’s homeless. This is DVD at its best, using the Trojan Horse of mass entertainment to spirit in to the home valuable lessons about society and culture.

Also included in the previously released Peter Jackson’s Production Diaries is “Anatomy of a Shot: T-Rex Fight,” that gives a glimpse into, among other things, how star Naomi Watts’s face was digitally cloned to capture certain close-up facial expressions.

Other favorite moments of mine gleaned from the Production Diary entries: a plaintive stunt man stands idle -- watching vehicularly versatile Oscar-winner (for "The Pianist") Adrien Brody drive a car himself for an action sequence -- and confesses to the camera, “So now, I’m unemployed”; a segment that shows the logistical lengths, literally, Jackson went to install on a set in New Zealand underground pipes that generated street-surface steam for the Manhattan sequences. “It’s one of the details that make it come alive,” says a production supervisor. “These are fantastic environments, but they have to be real. That's the way it is with Peter.”

One only can wonder what he might do for an encore -- on film OR on disc OR on line. These days, anything's possible.

[Check out DVDJ Mediapar's further rants, deemed not suitable for DVDA.ORG, at www.dvdj.info (still in beta).]