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2008
Gift Guide
Videos
/ DVDS
 DVD
Box Sets and Special Editions
Just
out this week, 20th Century Fox Home Video’s Murnau, Borzage
and Fox is, if you’re a cinephile, wonderful almost beyond
description. It collects the 12 surviving films that F.W.
Murnau and Frank Borzage made for William Fox in the late
silent and early sound years, when Fox had a lot of money
and was willing to spend it on “artistic” productions. The
set includes the canonical classic Sunrise (by Murnau,
seen here in both the U.S. and international versions) and
Borzage’s unjustly neglected trilogy of films that present
transcendence through romantic love, Seventh Heaven,
Street Angel and Lucky Star. There is also Murnau’s
mostly unknown drama City Girl and Borzage’s poignant-yet-rough-edged
depression romance, Bad Girl. The inclusion of the
latter is especially heartening; a lot of early Fox talkies
have disappeared, and it has been easier to check out (at
the Albany Institute of History and Art, no less) one of the
two Oscars Bad Girl won than the film itself. This
hefty box also includes a new, two-hour-long documentary and
two coffee-table books of essays and photos.
It has been suggested by more than a few critics that The
Godfather Collection: The Coppola Restoration (Paramount)
is a good reason to invest in a Blu-ray player. I don’t know
from Blu-ray, but even on a regular DVD the good efforts of
a lot of worthy people (including Martin Scorsese, who prodded
Paramount into doing the right thing and restore the films,
and cinematographer Gordon Willis, who was consulted extensively)
went into making Francis Coppola’s epic gangster films—especially
the first, which reportedly was in awful shape—look the way
they should.
Speaking of Scorsese, he joins fellow filmmakers Clint Eastwood
and Taylor Hackford in introducing the movies in Sony’s The
Budd Boetticher Box Set. These are a much admired group
of serious, taut 1950s westerns directed by the one-time bullfighter
Budd Boetticher. All were made under the auspices of producer-star
Randolph Scott; the set includes The Tall T, Decision
at Sundown, Buchanan Rides Alone, Ride Lonesome,
and Comanche Station. To round out a perfect gift package
for someone who loves westerns, you can add Paramount’s DVD
of another Boetticher-Scott collaboration, Seven Men
From Now. This film features a wicked performance
by a young Lee Marvin.
Also from the 1950s is Universal’s Touch of Evil:
50th Anniversary Edition (Universal). This 2-disc edition
of the Orson Welles noir masterpiece includes the 1998 version
re-edited according to Welles’ own memo (a copy of which is
reproduced and included here); the original 1958 release version;
and the slightly longer preview version that turned up in
the 1970s. What makes this set special—aside from the sparkling
new transfers—are the multiple commentary tracks, which feature
actors (Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh), critics (Jonathan
Rosenbaum) and historians (Rick Schmidlin).
Now for something completely, um, crazy: The Pink Panther:
The Ultimate Collection (MGM). This compiles all but one
of the Pink Panther comedies starring Peter Sellers, Steve
Martin, Roberto Benigni (ouch) and Alan Arkin (weird but fun),
as well as all 190—really, they made that many—of the Friz
Freleng-produced Pink Panther (and Inspector and Aardvark)
cartoons. The chasm between brilliance (Sellers) and dreck
(Benigni) in this set is staggering.
Speaking of the swinging ’60s, the Cult Epics imprint has
issued a two-disc edition of the glossy 1969 French romance
Slogan. It’s interesting as a visually slick
cultural time capsule starring French singer-songwriter Serge
Gainsbourg (who also did the music, of course) as a shallow
ad man who, despite having a pregnant wife, gets involved
in an affair with a Brit model-singer played by Jane Birkin,
Gainsbourg’s real-life muse. The extras include interviews
with the director, Pierre Grimblat, and Birkin.
From out of the vaults, and courtesy of the Criterion Collection,
comes Samuel Fuller’s White Dog. The 1982 drama
is the story of a young woman (Kristy McNichol) who takes
in a stray German shepherd with a nasty secret—he’s been trained,
by a white supremacist, to attack black people. (Village
Voice critic J. Hoberman, in the DVD notes, dubs it Rin
Tin Tin Joins the Klan.) The film, which costars Paul
Winfield and Burl Ives, had limited initial screenings; the
resulting uproar caused Paramount to shelve it. Here it is,
finally, and it’s earning raves for its typically Fullerian
pulpy power and tough anti-racist stance.
Finally, Zeitgeist is offering a serious upgrade of the previous
DVD edition of Olivier Assayas’ 1997 French cult fave Irma
Vep: It sports a new anamorphic transfer, a featurette,
30 minutes of on-set footage, black-and-white rushes from
the film-within-the-film, and a 16-page booklet with essays
by the director and critic Kent Jones. The film, a comedy
about the botched filming of a remake of Feuillade’s Les
Vampires, features Hong Kong star Maggie Cheung as “herself,”
and French New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud as an eccentric
director. It’s a sly portrait of the filmmaking process, and
a wicked satire of certain French attitudes about “culture.”
—Shawn
Stone
Holiday
DVDs
There
is no home-video holiday awesomeness this year more awesome
than A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All
(Comedy Central). Finally, a contemporary TV host who
gets it. Gets what, you may ask? “Gets” that what Real Americans
want are new variety specials at Christmastime! Relax with
the rest of the Colbert Nation as Stephen Colbert is joined
by a stellar array of musical guests, including Willie Nelson,
John Legend, Feist (as an angel of the Lord), Toby Keith,
Elvis Costello, and Stephen’s Jewish friend Jon Stewart, who
tells the Colbert Nation all about Hanukkah.
I think an Amazon.com commenter from Lutheran Minnesota best
captured what makes A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift
of All so special: “What an incredible joyous time we
had watching Stephen Colbert and his struggle with bears!”
Meanwhile, Universal offers up its third DVD version of Irving
Berlin’s Holiday Inn, a three-disc edition that
has the original black-and-white film, a colorized version
and a soundtrack CD. With its snappy dialogue, great songs
and terrific stars—Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire—it’s a holiday
perennial.
Finally, Warner Home Video offers A Charlie Brown Christmas:
Remastered Deluxe Edition, promising improved visual quality.
Fine, just don’t mess with the Snoopy dance.
—Shawn
Stone
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