‘Best Pictures’ on BluRay: The Stats

By Christopher P. Jacobs
Staff Writer

Whether or not one agrees that the Academy-Award-winning or even the nominated films are actually the best produced in any year, the fact remains that they tend to be a reasonably good cross-section of popular and critically acclaimed titles reflecting the era they were made. Most are well worth seeing and many are worth owning.

The Academy voters have made their choices and the 2010 Oscars presentations for the best of 2009 have now been made. There were no big surprises and I guessed half of the 24 categories correctly, including every major award except Picture and Original Screenplay (my usual average is 10-15 right). Film fans may naturally disagree on which titles should actually have won, but many have likely been unable to see all the nominees, as not all of them played in local theatres.

Every one of this year’s Best Picture nominees is now available on BluRay or will be by the end of April, and almost all the nominees in other categories should be out later this year. Thus anyone with a high-definition video projector can catch up with or revisit them, looking more or less just as they did on theatre screens.

But what of past films honored by the Motion Picture Academy? One can find most nominees for Best Picture going back several decades on DVD and/or VHS. But on the near film-quality BluRay format, only the past three years’ worth of nominees can be found, and every winner back to only 2002. From 2005 and before at least one or more of the nominees are not yet available on BluRay—and of those that are, ironically nine (including three Best Picture winners) can only be purchased outside the United States.

It turns out that there are 33 Best Picture winners currently available on BluRay (or announced for release before the end of this year) out of the 82 Academy Awards presentations from 1929 through 2010. That’s over 40%, a fair representation considering it includes only eight “Best Pictures” from before 1970 and only 16 from 1970 to 1999. From the past 10 years, only “A Beautiful Mind” from 2001 is missing on BluRay.

Naturally, more Best Picture nominees than winners are available, but they actually have a much smaller representation on BluRay than the winners. There are 126 nominees you can track down on BluRay (a few require region-free players) out of the 478 films that have been up for the Best Picture Oscar since 1927. This is a paltry 26% of the total (and one of them, Paramount’s 1928 film “The Patriot,” no longer even exists!).

Predictably, the more recent the film, the more likely it is to be on BluRay. From the 2000s there are 46 out of 55 nominees available (84%), and from the 1990s there are 23 out of 50 nominees on BluRay (46%). Then it drops to 11, 15, and 10 films from the 1980s, 70s, and 60s, respectively out of 50 nominees for each decade (20-30%). The 1950s have only 6 films on BluRay out of 50 nominees (12%), the 1940s have 9 out of 70 nominees (13%) but three of those are British “Region B” discs. The decade with the most Best Picture nominees was the 1930s (with 90 contenders), but only three are currently on BluRay, with one more set for May and another announced for November (about 5½ %). The Oscars ceremonies began in 1929 for films going back to 1927-28, and out of 13 competing for the top honor, only one is on BluRay and that must be ordered from England (although at least it’s a region-free disc).

For those interested in what people found Oscar-worthy in the past, here’s a decade by decade list of the Best Picture winners whose BluRay release finally lets modern viewers see them as sharp as when they first came out. The one available winner from the 20s is “Sunrise” (1927), and its BluRay includes both the American cut and the slightly different and shorter European cut. It must be bought from England, but the disc is region-free.

The only Best Picture winners from the 1930s are the beloved epic “Gone With the Wind” (1939), on a lovingly restored BluRay edition, and “Mutiny On the Bounty” (1935), which is scheduled for release in November.  Other nominees on BluRay so far are 1938’s “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” and 1939’s “The Wizard of Oz” and “Stagecoach” (the latter available this May).

From the 1940s, the only winner available in the U.S. is “Casablanca” (1943), with “Hamlet” (1948) available in a Region B disc from Britain. Other nominees available are “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946), “Great Expectations” (1947) and “Miracle on 34th Street” (1947), with “The Maltese Falcon” (1941) and “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948) scheduled for BluRay in October. British Region-B-only nominees include “Henry V” (1946) and “The Red Shoes” (1948).

BluRay editions of 1950s winners are “An American in Paris” (1951) and “Gigi” (1958), with “Ben-Hur” (1959) announced for November release. Best Picture nominees from the 50s include “Quo Vadis” (1951), “The Robe” (1953), and “The Diary of Anne Frank” (1959).

Interestingly, not a single Best Picture winner from the entire decade of the 1960s is on BluRay, although there are 10 nominees: “The Longest Day” and “The Music Man” from 1962, “How the West Was Won” from 1963, “Becket” and Dr. Strangelove” from 1964, “Dr. Zhivago” from 1965 (scheduled for May), “The Sand Pebbles” from 1966, “Bonnie and Clyde” and “The Graduate” from 1967, and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” from 1969.

The 1970s, on the other hand, have 8 out of 10 Best Picture winners already on BluRay, plus seven more nominees. BluRay winners are “Patton” (1970), “The French Connection” (1971), “The Godfather” (1972), “The Godfather Part II” (1974), “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), “Rocky” (1976), “The Deer Hunter” (1978, only available in Europe), and “Kramer vs. Kramer” (1979). Nominees are “M*A*S*H” (1970), “A Clockwork Orange” (1971), “Deliverance” (1972), “The Exorcist” (1973, scheduled for October), “The Towering Inferno” (1974), “Dog Day Afternoon” (1975), and “Midnight Express” (1978).

BluRay editions of Best Picture winners get sparse again for the 1980s, with only “Amadeus” (1984) and “The Last Emperor” (1987) now available, and “Out of Africa” (1985) coming in April. There are eight other 80s nominees on BluRay.

From the 1990s we have five winners: “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991), “Unforgiven” (1992), “Forrest Gump” (1994), “Braveheart” (1995), and “The English Patient” (1996, only available in Canada). There are 16 additional 90s nominees on BluRay including one available from Hong Kong, and three upcoming U.S. releases.

From the 2000s, there are only eight nominees and one winner that are NOT yet out on BluRay, although again two nominees can only be ordered from Canada.

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