Best in BluRay and DVD for 2009

This past decade has been a memorable one for home video technology, seeing the widespread adoption of the convenient and inexpensive DVD format replacing two decades of videotape, only to see DVD’s growth level off with the troubled economy and become affected further by the unexpectedly rapid acceptance of the higher-quality BluRay format, which finally was introduced to the consumer market three years ago.

This past year may be considered “the year of the BluRay,” with cheaper HDTVs leading to player prices dropping as low as $78, movies selling as low as $8, and a wide variety of classic, foreign, and popular catalog titles joining the releases of recent boxoffice hits.

Reviewers are preparing their “ten best” lists. The most-chosen titles among the half-dozen critics at cutting-edge website Blu-Ray.com span the decades, including the new Disney-Pixar digital cartoon “Up,” Fox’s controversial 1999 social satire “Fight Club,” MGM’s classic 1959 Hitchcock thriller “North By Northwest” (released by Warner Home Video), and of all things the enigmatic and experimental 1960 French artfilm, “Last Year at Marienbad,” released by the prestigious Criterion Collection.

This column will survey my personal top ten of this year’s releases to the BluRay format, considering a combination of the title’s general interest and entertainment value, historical and cultural importance, and its BluRay presentation of picture, sound, and bonus features.

#1 -  “The General” (1926) – Silent comic Buster Keaton’s dryly satiric Civil War masterpiece looks magnificent in this hi-def transfer from a print made off the original camera negative. Kino International’s BluRay, like its “ultimate edition” DVD, includes three different music scores and a wealth of bonus features, many now in HD.

#2 - “An American in Paris” (1951) – This love letter to Paris, art, and the music of George Gershwin remains one of the most beloved musicals produced by MGM at its height, featuring the inimitable Gene Kelly and introducing Leslie Caron to the screen. The new “ultra-resolution” HD transfer of the film is simply breathtaking in clarity, and a new HD documentary and numerous great bonus features round out the disc.

#3 -  “Star Trek – The Original TV Series” (1966-1969) – All three seasons of the groundbreaking sci-fi sociopolitical allegory that rapidly became embedded in world culture and spawned nearly a dozen theatrical films are now on BluRay. Paramount Home Video created stunning transfers of the original episodes (which luckily were shot on 35mm film), as well as extra versions of each episode with new digital visual effects, and a generous selection of bonus features.

#4 - “The Seventh Seal” (1957) – Ingmar Bergman’s moody masterpiece exploring faith, doubt, and the meaning of life in the context of medieval Sweden has a top-notch BluRay edition from the Criterion Collection. It’s a must-have for any library of significant cinema.

#5 – TIE: “Wings of Desire” (1987) and “Kagemusha” (1980) – Wim Wenders’ poetic meditation on human life was remade as a mediocre Nicholas Cage romance called “City of Angels” but the original is the film to see. Criterion’s BluRay looks great and has a nice bunch of bonus items. Akira Kurosawa’s late-career samurai saga shows him in top form after his classics of the 1950s and early 60s, and again gets fine treatment from the Criterion Collection on BluRay.

#6 - “Fight Club” (1999) – David Fincher’s violent examination of the American male psyche is well-worth revisiting a decade later, with an accurate BluRay transfer of the film’s grungy look, all the bonus features from the fine DVD release (including FOUR audio commentaries!), plus a few new HD bonus features for BluRay.

#7 -  “Woodstock” (1970) – This landmark documentary of the landmark 1969 musical event is a vivid trip back in time and a marvelous record of the key music from the Sixties.

#8 - “North By Northwest” (1959) – Alfred Hitchcock’s romantic comedy thriller may be the most entertaining and most archetypal film of his career, and looks great on this BluRay “Digibook” edition, with a fine selection of bonus features including a fascinating commentary by screenwriter Ernest Lehman.

#9 - “South Pacific” (1958) – Joshua Logan’s screen adaptation of the hit Broadway musical looks gorgeous in Warner’s hi-def transfer from the 65mm film, and has a superb collection of bonus features including the complete roadshow version (each with a different audio commentary), documentaries, and featurettes.

#10 – TIE: “Do the Right Thing” (1989) and “Saturday Night Fever” (1977) – Spike Lee’s best film remains his exuberant and thought-provoking “Do The Right Thing,” with interesting bonus features and a good HD transfer from Universal (although shifting the colors somewhat from the original film that had been preserved in Criterion’s standard DVD release).

More culturally important than entertaining, “Saturday Night Fever” has a great HD transfer and a large selection of HD bonus features.

Despite the logarithmic growth of the BluRay market, there were still some significant DVD-only releases during 2009, particularly box sets.
At the top of these may be the fascinating collection of early French films, “Gaumont Treasures 1897-1913,” over 75 early films by pioneer directors Alice Guy, Louis Feuillade, and Léonce Perret. Kino’s 3-DVD set is an abridgment of a previous French video release, but introduces American viewers to a wide range of notable films, including several 1906 productions with synchronized sound, early uses of manually-applied color, and a few unexpectedly powerful feature-length efforts like “The Defect” (1911) and “The Child of Paris” (1913) .

Two previously “lost” classics by 1920s matinee idol John Gilbert are on a fine double-disc set from Flicker Alley. “Bardelys the Magnificent” (1926) is a lavish and lively swashbuckling adventure that was believed destroyed ten years after its premiere, but a nearly complete print was discovered in France just three years ago and reconstructed with stills bridging the brief missing section. “Monte Cristo” (1922) is a wonderful version of the classic Dumas novel, that survived only in a Czech archive with “flash” titles only a few frames long and in Serbo-Croatian, until this restoration translated them back into English and stretched them to readable length. A new documentary on Gilbert’s career and a 20-page booklet fill out this worthwhile mini-collection.

“Becoming Charley Chase” is a lovingly produced 4-DVD set from Allday Entertainment (distributed by VCI Entertainment) of over 40 comedy shorts from 1915-1925, chronicling the development of a major silent comic who is little known today by the general public but rivaled Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd in his timing and inventiveness. Every film has an audio commentary by comedy film experts and there are also a documentary and a number of other bonus features.

Another worthwhile box set from Kino this year is “The John Barrymore Collection,” featuring the first DVD release of his rare 1922 version of “Sherlock Holmes.” Three other discs include fine video presentations of the horror classic “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (1920), swashbuckling comic-adventure about poet François Villon “The Beloved Rogue” (1927), and the romantic epic of the Russian revolution, “Tempest” (1928).

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