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Woody Allen shot September twice in its entirety instead of reshooting the scenes that initially dissatisfied him. He did this to achieve a cohesion between the play-like set pieces, and the stark film certainly feels stagebound: its major unifiers--sultry music, and the ubiquitous sound of crickets--evoke Tennessee Williams, while the narrative's temporal confinement (it takes place over the course of a weekend, mostly a night) is in the Eugene O'Neil tradition. But September is slighter than Allen seems to realize, with six characters circling each other's feelings at the roomy Vermont house of a movie star (Elaine Stritch), whose daughter, Lane (Mia Farrow), is there recuperating from a nervous breakdown. It is still August but the autumn chill has already set in; a broken heart is everybody's destiny, and Major Revelations will surface in act three. I admire September for its adroit picture of misaligned romantic yearnings--it's just never quite profound enough. MGM's DVD release of September features a superior 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer--this is the best-looking disc in the studio's second "Woody Allen Collection." As for the mono mix, dialogue sometimes loses in a competition against ambient fill. Extras: a trailer and yet another fine collectible booklet. I also want to point out that the computer-animated Orion logo that precedes September is new to these eyes.-Bill Chambers