DVD

The Best DVDs of 2008

By January 5, 2009No Comments

Gorgon

Whazzzzup?

Say what you will about how “meh” the year in actu­al movies was, 2008 kicked ass in the DVD divi­sion. Hence, I give myself no lim­its, and I dare say I miss some favor­ites any­way. Three cat­egor­ies: stand­ard def, Blu-ray, and for­eign region. Alphabetical order. Comments (mine): option­al. Comments (yours): requested. 

STANDARD DEFINITION DISCS

Belle Toujours (New Yorker) Manoel Oliveira’s droll Bunuel treat­ment gets a worthy treat­ment from a hit-and miss label. Well done. 

The Big Trail (Fox) Raoul Walsh, John Wayne, early (1930) 70mm, essen­tial all around. 

Blast of Silence (Criterion) A great Noir maudit giv­en its long-overdue due. 

The Carmen Miranda Collection (Fox) For the upgraded transer of The Gang’s All Here.

Come Drink With Me (TWC/Dragon Dynasty) The Weinstein Company should thrive just to keep its excel­lent Dragon Dynasty disc line alive. This release in par­tic­u­lar is a per­fect mer­ging of the sem­in­al and the utterly entertaining. 

The Darjeeling Limited (Fox) The first Wes Anderson denied the Criterion treat­ment! Argh! A great disc anyway!

Douglas Fairbanks: A Modern Musketeer (Flicker Alley) Really, just buy everything Flicker Alley puts out. No questions. 

Easy Living (Universal) Screwball clas­sic from a divi­sion of Universal—Studio Classics, they call it—that really ought to accel­er­ate their release sked. 

El Cid (TWC) See below.

Fall of Roman Empire (TWC) Two of the last Manns, giv­en exem­plary treat­ment. Beautiful stuff. 

The Films of Budd Boetticher (Sony) Just grand, and about frickin’ time.

Forbidden Hollywood 2 (Warner)

Fox Western Classics (Fox) For the bizarre, mages­teri­al Garden of Evil alone. Although the oth­er two ain’t bad. The Fox hor­ror boxes—featuring Chandu the Magician, among others—also bear buying. 

Georges Melies: The Wizard of Cinema (Flicker Alley) Wow. Just wow. Much like the below Murnau/Borzage box, a remind­er that mir­acles really hap­pen. Again: just buy everything that Flicker Alley puts out. 

Griffith Masterworks #2 (Kino) Genius at work. Way Down East is a desert island movie, for sure. 

Hammer Icons of Horror (Sony) A great piece of arche­ology, unearth­ing, among oth­ers, The Gorgon, seen above. Famous Monsters kids, rejoice. 

Larissa Sheptinko Shepitko [oy](Criterion/Eclipse) The Russian film­maker­’s The Ascent makes an exem­plary dip­tych with Klimov’s later Come and See. War cinema at its most unsparing. 

Lubitsch Musicals (Criterion/Eclipse) Unalloyed delight. 

Man of the West (MGM) Magnificent Mann. 

Mishima (Criterion) Schrader’s bold exper­i­ment is newly vin­dic­ated with every viewing. 

Mizoguchi’s Fallen Women (Criterion/Eclipse) These Eclipse boxes pretty much can do no wrong. 

Murnau, Borzage and Fox (Fox) A gift from the cinephile gods; so many treas­ures, includ­ing two pre­vi­ously little-seen films that should remake your con­cep­tion of film his­tory once you see them: Murnau’s City Girl and Borzage’s Lucky Star. Sublime stuff all around.

Criterion Ophuls (Criterion) Some con­tro­versy about the transfers…but nobody says they’re bad. Three mas­ter­works  (Earrings, Plaisir, La Ronde) from the divine Max in one fell swoop, what’s not to like. 

Pierrot Le Fou (Criterion)

Quiet City/Dance Party (Benten) Who loves American indie film? Benten loves American indie film. I think their Katz is still the best of the lot, and I look for­ward to more more more in ’09.

Silent Ozu (Criterion/Eclipse)

The Skull (Legend)

Vampyr (Criterion) Another miracle. 

Warner Brothers And The Homefront Collection (Warner)

White Dog (Criterion)

BLU-RAY

An American In Paris (Japanese Warner)

Black Narcissus (ITV)

Casablanca (Warner)

Criterion: Their first four, Chungking Express, The Third Man, Bottle Rocket, and The Man Who Fell To Earth, all mas­ter­pieces and must owns. 

From Russia With Love/Dr. No (MGM) Actually, Thunderball’s pretty good, too. 

The Fall (Sony)

The Godfather Restoration (Paramount)

How The West Was Won (Warner)

Ray Harryhausen Collection (Sony)

Sleeping Beauty (Disney)

Sweeney Todd (Paramount)

Wall‑E (Disney)

FOREIGN REGION

Chikamatsu Monogatari/Uwasa No Onna (Eureka!/MOC) Masters of Cinema does a bang-up job with everything, includ­ing their mul­tiple Ozu Mizoguchi sets; this gets a spe­cial men­tion just because none of the films in this par­tic­u­lar set have got­ten a good U.S. DVD release.  

The Devil, Probably (Artificial Eye)


Judex (Eureka!/MOC)

The Last Laugh (Eureka!/MOC)

Love on the Ground (Bluebell) Rare Rivette in a good trans­fer of a com­plete version. 

Make Way For Tomorrow (BAC) Leo McCarey’s legendary mas­ter­piece finally gets on disc. With burned-in subs. Oh well. It’ll have to do until, you know, Universal accel­er­ates its Studio Classics line. 

La Notte  (MOC)

Police (Eureka!/MOC) Or Enfance Nue, MOC’s oth­er Pialat of 2008. Collect ’em all, I say. 

Phantom Carriage (Tartan)

Shimizu boxes (Shochiku) Perhaps, but maybe not, to be sup­planted by an upcom­ing Eclipse box from the Japanese master. 

Sirk Collection 2 (Carlotta) Tomorrow’s Foreign Region DVD Report, it happens. 

 

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No Comments

  • markj says:
    January 5, 2009 at 11:06 am

    I really am going to have to shell out the pen­nies for Murnau, Borzage and Fox aren’t I? I live in the UK and it went for £170 on ebay here the oth­er day. Sheesh…

  • markj says:
    January 5, 2009 at 11:07 am

    Oh, and great list Glenn, thanks.

  • bill says:
    January 5, 2009 at 11:35 am

    I love when Criterion digs deep for movies like “Blast of Silence”. I not only bought that one this year, but also “Carnival of Souls” (an old Criterion release, I know, but part of the same unof­fi­cial “series”).
    And speak­ing of Criterion, I’ve heard that “Darjeeling” will get the treat­ment in the not-too-distant future.
    The Boetticher set is near the top of my to-buy list.

  • Zack Handlen says:
    January 5, 2009 at 12:20 pm

    Excellent call on Come Drink With Me. I some­times wish Dragon Dynasty had some sort of sub­scriber ser­vice; I want nearly everything they release, and it would save me the trouble of hav­ing to drive to the store. (Although then I would­n’t get to impress the sales clerk with my know­ledge of kung-fu flicks, so it’d be a mixed blessing.)
    Thief of Bagdad from Criterion was pretty ter­rif­ic as well.

  • Bill C says:
    January 5, 2009 at 12:31 pm

    Nah, THUNDERBALL looks like ass on Blu-ray; Lowry slathered on the DVNR and the black levels were ridicu­lously pumped up to com­pensate. I really hope the second batch of Bonds is more con­sist­ently excellent.

  • Michael Adams says:
    January 5, 2009 at 12:46 pm

    Haven’t seen the Blu THUNDERBALL, but DR. NO has the sharpest images of any of the 30-odd Blus I’ve seen so far.

  • David says:
    January 5, 2009 at 2:47 pm

    Any word on Carlotta’s Kiju Yoshida releases? Was think­ing about purchasing…know noth­ing about the guy, though he’s evid­ently esteemed along­side Ozu and Sirk (who make a per­fect buddy team).

  • Bill C says:
    January 5, 2009 at 3:37 pm

    Absolutely, Michael. The DOC NO Blu-ray is nonpareil.

  • Dan says:
    January 5, 2009 at 4:45 pm

    “Blast of Silence” was worth buy­ing blind, and so was “The Naked Prey”. I find increas­ingly most of what I buy instead of Netflix is Criterion and Eclipse. Words can­’t express how much I’m look­ing for­ward to their Shimizu boxed set.

  • craig keller. says:
    January 5, 2009 at 7:04 pm

    Thanks for all the MoC nods, GK! One quick note, though – I think you inten­ded to type “mul­tiple Mizoguchi sets”, rather than “Ozu”. We haven’t released any Ozu as of yet, which isn’t to say we would­n’t love to, of course. In any case, agreed that Criterion has been doing a great job with get­ting Ozu’s work exposed to a wider audi­ence. Their two Eclipse sets (the two released this far) are aston­ish­ingly great.

  • Glenn Kenny says:
    January 5, 2009 at 8:06 pm

    @Craig: Ooops. That’s what I get for post­ing at such and early hour.…

  • B.W. says:
    January 6, 2009 at 12:31 am

    I know you could­n’t very well list every Criterion release of the year, but I believe their lovely edi­tion of Alex Cox’s WALKER came out in early ’08, no? A big dis­cov­ery for me and many oth­ers I’m sure.

  • markj says:
    January 6, 2009 at 4:07 am

    I’ve read that the pack­aging for the Murnau/Borzage set is a bit of a dis­aster and dam­ages the discs, can any­one con­firm this?

  • Chris B. says:
    January 6, 2009 at 5:31 am

    great list glenn… and thanks for giv­ing me even more DVDs I have to buy.
    I picked up come drink with me sight unseen and am dying to see more of the dragon dyn­asty collection.
    and I agree with BW regard­ing Walker. I’d nev­er heard of it before it came out, net­flixed it and, as soon as I fin­ished it, went to the deep­dis­count buy 1 get 1 free cri­terion sale last sum­mer and ordered it (ohmy­god­ispent­somuch­moneyonthat­sale).

  • Dan says:
    January 6, 2009 at 10:52 am

    @Chris B.
    What killed me was Criterion’s 40% off sale. I pigged out on Eclipse sets.

  • Glenn Kenny says:
    January 6, 2009 at 1:23 pm

    @Mark J: The paper sleeves of the Murnau/Borzage box are prob­ably not ideal, but rep­res­ent an improve­ment on the way the discs in the Ford box were pack­aged. Speaking for myself, none of the discs in either of the boxes I own are/were dam­aged, although I could see this hap­pen­ing more eas­ily dur­ing ship­ping than with some more con­ven­tion­al pack­ages. That said, “handle with care” should be the man­tra when inter­act­ing with these sets.

  • markj says:
    January 6, 2009 at 1:36 pm

    Thanks Glenn, that sounds a lot more prom­ising than i’d heard.

  • Stephen Bowie says:
    January 6, 2009 at 1:57 pm

    What’s a “Sheptinko”?
    And, re: the Kiju Yoshida sets, he’s an amaz­ing dir­ect­or (the one major Japanese New Wave dir­ect­or who’s unknown in the west), but the Carlotta DVDs don’t have English sub­titles, do they? I know there are fan­subs in cir­cu­la­tion for at least some of them, but nobody’s giv­en me the secret handshake.

  • Stephen Bowie says:
    January 6, 2009 at 1:58 pm

    And yeah, it was a pretty good year for DVDs, was­n’t it? Maybe the last one.

  • x-ray fluorescence says:
    January 13, 2009 at 12:26 am

    Nice..THUNDERBALL looks like ass on Blu-ray; Lowry slathered on the DVNR and the black levels were ridicu­lously pumped up to compensate.