From here to eternity, I will never drink the elixir flowing from Dan Brown's book, The Da Vinci Code, nor swoon to the intoxicating appeal of Ron Howard's film.

But Brown's book has sold more than 40 million copies and Howard's film version was a mega-hit, despite the rough media treatment it got at its Cannes Film Festival world premiere, and afterward.

A mythical conspiracy surrounding hidden "facts" about the family life of Christ obviously has resonance. So the public has spoken -- loudly -- and critics must admit we are out of synch with mainstream tastes on this one.

The Da Vinci Code arrived on DVD this week to serve that public. The film itself is no different and, in my mind, no better than the mediocrity I saw at Cannes. But credit where credit is due. For the fans, Howard, Hanks and Brown have collaborated on a splendid special-edition DVD.

This two-disc set is a professional job that combines making-of material with compact interviews, including with Brown, and tangents that entice. Those include a too-brief yet still provocative featurette that explains how the filmmakers laid out new visual codes to break.

"These aren't easy codes," Brown says, "and they're buried in absolutely fascinating, really fun ways."

That is hype, but the featurette does reveal some codes, from easy to obscure to silly. One example: the cover art on Langdon's book is Botticelli's Birth Of Venus. Botticelli was a member of the Priory of Sion, which figures into Brown's conspiracy tale.

IN THE REAL WORLD: Related to The Da Vinci Code but more interesting to those of us who prefer reality over hocus-pocus, there is The Exodus Decoded. It is a documentary, and a life's passion, from Canadian filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici. He worked with James Cameron, who serves as enabler, executive producer and co-host.

Together, with a giddy level of cinematic magic that elevates this doc into high-class visual fare, they try to explain the Bibical story of the Exodus of the Semites out of Egypt. Using geology, archaeology, ancient texts and modern research, Jacobovici invokes science to conjure a plausible explanation for everything in the "mythic" story, including the 10 plagues and even the parting of the sea.

But not the Red Sea -- instead, he offers that it was a freshwater "reed sea" that was elevated by seismic upheavals followed by a tsunami that wiped out the Egyptians in pursuit. Remarkably, the tale makes sense, and has profound implications, even if there are leaps of "faith" in accepting some information as fact.

Significantly, the film neither tries to prove the existence of God, nor deny Him. Instead, the focus is on validating the details of the Biblical story.

The widescreen DVD version of the film, which aired on Canada's Discovery Channel, is newly available exclusively in Indigo stores or online (chapters.indigo.ca).

CROWNING KONG: Peter Jackson is at it again, offering a deluxe extended edition of his misunderstood masterwork, the 2005 remake of King Kong. But, unlike the extended DVDs for each part of his epic trilogy, The Lord Of The Rings, Jackson is fiddling with his film, not enhancing it, with this new three-disc, widescreen-only set.

There are 13 new minutes of footage: some in whole scenes, plus seconds added to tweak existing scenes. None of the new scenes add depth. Instead, they are fun action sequences, such as the encounter with the swamp monster or the battle with the killer ceratops.

More significant is an enormous expansion of extras, including 38 minutes of deleted scenes plus the kind of extensive, exhaustive bonus materials we now have come to expect from Jackson & his Kiwi company.