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2009
Gift Guide
 Video
In
case you hadn’t noticed, the economic collapse of the last
year, which had a catastrophic effect on almost everything,
hit DVD and Blu-ray sales hard—and, subsequently, had a catastrophic
effect on the number of DVDs the studios have been releasing.
Or,
more to the point, not releasing. Twentieth Century
Fox Home Video shut down its “classics” division; given
the excellent films they released over the last few years,
this caused real pain among cinephiles. Warner Home Video
introduced the Warner Archive Collection, an online-only,
pressed-on-demand series of DVD-R versions—of unrestored films,
a real sore point with videophiles—from their vast movie and
TV holdings. And, not to be too flip about it, Paramount Home
Video decided to stick to collections of old TV shows (Barnaby
Jones! Cannon!) and not bother with
any movie older than, oh, six months ago—unless it starred
Audrey Hepburn or John Wayne.
That doesn’t mean there haven’t been some wonderful films
released this year. A few classics made it to Blu-ray, including
stunning editions of Buster Keaton’s hilarious The General
(Kino), the Technicolor wonder Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs (Disney), Gone With the Wind
and The Wizard of Oz (both Warner Home Video).
Flying monkeys were never so creepy; ruby slippers were never
so red.
There have been a few notable box sets, too. The Criterion
Collection just issued AK 100: 25 Films by Akira Kurosawa,
which contains most of the familiar classics like The Seven
Samurai, Kagemusha, Throne of Blood and
High and Low, plus a few new-to-video, judo-themed
films from the beginning of the director’s career. It ain’t
cheap, however, with a list price of $399.95.
After years of skimpy classic-film releases, Sony came through
with The Jack Lemmon Film Collection, which includes
five comedies from Lemmon’s early 1960s prime, and The
Samuel Fuller Film Collection, which has two films directed
by the passionate Fuller (the racial drama The Crimson
Kimono, and the crime melodrama Underworld USA),
plus five more written or cowritten by Fuller.
Also from Criterion, Chantal Akerman’s three-hour, haunted
domestic drama Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce,
1080 Bruxelles is available in a beautiful edition.
It’s hypnotic and devastating, an essential film of the 1970s.
Universal Home Video has some fine new offerings for the season.
The Claudette Colbert Collection has six films by the
Hollywood icon of the 1930s-40s, including the essential early
screwball comedy Three-Cornered Moon. The special two-disc
edition of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds
is out on Dec. 15, and it’s jam-packed with quirky extras.
Universal would also like you to take a look at a couple of
comedies that kinda-sorta died at the box office last summer,
Sacha Baron Cohen’s ultra-transgressive Brùno,
and Judd Apatow’s male weepy, Funny People.
Is there a sports fan on your list? Buy them the amazing documentary
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 (Kino), a fascinating
snapshot of an era (the late 1960s) and an amazing football
game between a couple of Ivy League rivals.
Now, for the aforementioned Warner Archive (wb.shop.com/warner-archive).
It’s the damndest collection of films you’ll ever see. There
are a few masterpieces by great directors, like Francis Coppola’s
The Rain People and King Vidor’s nifty Marion
Davies comedy The Patsy, but mostly it’s a smorgasbord
of cinema wonders. There are 1980s cult items like Carny,
with Gary Busey and Jodie Foster, and Robert Aldrich’s girl-wrestler
drama All the Marbles; and there are made-for-TV
miniseries like The Deliberate Stranger (2-disc
edition) starring Mark Harmon as Ted Bundy, and The
Betty Ford Story with Gena Rowlands as the addict
First Lady. There are fast-moving pre-code dramas, including
the vicious Edward G. Robinson vehicle Two Seconds,
and a taut melodrama in which Ann Dvorak brings to life The
Strange Love of Molly Louvain. And there are collections
of musical shorts, comedy shorts, and on and on. Visit the
Web site; there’s gotta be something appropriately weird for
that hard-to-buy-for person on your list.
—Shawn
Stone
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