In The Balcony DVD of the Year Award

We’re going to keep you in Hitchcockian suspense for a moment (or at least William Castlian suspense) before we reveal this year’s winner of the what we like to call the Supreme Achievement in the Art of Protecting and Promoting the History and Artistry of Cinema by Jamming it onto Little Shiny Metal Discs award, but most people simply refer to (when they refer to it at all) as the Amazing Colossal In The Balcony DVD of the Year Award®, sponsored by La-Z-Boy™ recliners, Jolly Time™ popcorn, and Diet Pepsi™.
 
The ground rules for selecting the winner each year are actually quite simple: there are no ground rules, except that we look for a combination of a really, really special package wrapped around a film or films that deserve the treatment. Just imagine that only one of this year’s DVD releases could be placed in a time capsule for hundreds of years to be opened by the Cockroach People who inhabit Earth in that era, or maybe those wacky Morlocks. What should it be?

The seven previous recipients of the award in this Valhalla of DVD Overall Quality Goodness, and we'll review them first, so pardon us if we digress.

Previous Winners

2001: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Disney) This is the only DVD on our list that’s currently out of print, but it’s readily available from private sellers at amazon.com or otherwhere on the Internet. The first and best of the Disney 2-disc Platinum Editions, the groundbreaking first feature from Disney positively glows with color, life, and character… watching it digitally remastered is like seeing it for the first time. Packed with bonus features, too.

2002: Citizen Kane (Warners, $26.98) Well, they tell me this is the best movie ever made. People ask me what is so great about it, and I usually say, “I can tell by watching a reel of an old movie whether it was made before or after Kane.” Orson Welles took what he learned from watching John Ford pictures and reinvented the art of cinema with this 1941 masterpiece. The 2-disc Special Edition includes a 2-hour documentary on the making of the film and William Randolph Hearst’s quest to destroy it. The film itself includes commentary by Roger Ebert, and it’s the finest commentary ever recorded for a film.

2003: The Adventures of Robin Hood (Warners, $26.98) This is the greatest adventure ever filmed, the 3-strip Technicolor is eye-popping and jaw-dropping, Errol Flynn makes all other screen swashbucklers look like pansies, and you get the usual plethora of outstanding short subjects from Warners, including the funniest darn cartoon the studio ever made, Robin Hood Daffy. If you love action and adventure and romance and derring-do, this is your favorite film, even if you haven’t seen it yet. Trust us. 
 
2004: The Rules of the Game (Criterion, $39.95) You’re not going to get far down a list of greatest DVDs without running into a wall of Criterions; the company has set the bar high for classic films in the digital format. Most people don’t even refer to them as DVDs; they’re always “Criterions”. Jean Renoir’s stylish film, about servants and masters in a house in France on the eve of WWII, is usually referred to as a comedy/drama, but that doesn’t do it justice: the comedy is dramatic, and the drama is funny. Depends how you look at it. It’s kind of like real life: complicated, ain’t it? Criterion takes a film that’s been hard to find in good condition over the years and releases a 2-disc edition, packed with extras, that’s worthy of one of the greatest films ever made.

2005: King Kong (Warners, $26.98) First of all, note that the great original 1933 version (obviously, the one we're discussing here) is available in single disc and boxed set editions (with Son of Kong and Mighty Joe Young), but for the purposes of this award, we stuck with the 2-disc Special Edition. For years, Warner Bros. (which owns the rights to the RKO original) was asked, “Where is KONG on DVD?!?” Their stock answer is, “We’re working on it.” It was worth the wait: the film looks and sounds better than it has in 70 years, and the set includes a Kong-sized 7-part documentary with everything you’ll ever need to know about the making of the film, plus some. The film itself set the standard for inventive filmmaking of the 1930s, and the DVD matches it for showing what can be done with the digital format for home viewing. Magnificent.

2006: Seven Samurai (Criterion, $49.95) Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 epic was one of the first films ever released by Criterion, and it was sorely in need of an upgrade. It got one, and the new 3-disc edition takes its place alongside the greatest DVDs of the greatest films. This is a film I love to recommend to people who wince when I tell them it’s a 3½ hour B&W film in Japanese. “Probably good for me, but not much enjoyment to watch,” is the general response. Well, guess what? It is exciting, thrilling, engrossing, sometimes hilarious, and always fascinating. You’re going to get so involved in the characters you’re going to be sorely disappointed when the film ends. (The story was Americanized as The Magnificent Seven).

2007: Ford at Fox (Fox, $299.98) Two dozen films and magnificent bonus materials and frankly, this colossal boxed set is so essential to any movie collector that it was impossible to give the award to any other release. Includes authentic American movie treasures; My Darling Clementine, How Green was My Valley, Grapes of Wrath, and Young Mr. Lincoln are as well-known as any films of their era, but you’ll also find wonderful collaborations between Ford and Will Rogers (such as Judge Priest), rediscovered masterpieces (the pre-code Pilgrimage, the best movie Ford made that you’ve probably never seen) and so many other entertaining movies it would do them a disservice to simply list them. In addition, there are full-color replicas of two large souvenir books from the silent movie days, a coffee table hardback book of stills from each film, and a great documentary on Ford. The films are broken into three subsets and sold separately, but spring for the box. If you’re In The Balcony, it’s the kind of entertainment investment you should be making. A lifetime's worth of entertainment in a big, black, box.

And that, dear Balconeers, brings us to this year’s coveted winner. The Crack FNF Awards Committee poured through a comprehensive list of worthy nominees, whittled that down to about a dozen finalists, and then – noting that the bar was closing soon – picked one. And a fine choice they made.

The 2008 Winner

Mornau, Borzage, and Fox Box Set (Fox, $239.98) I know the economy is in the tank, but if Fox is going to put all that work into these remarkable year-end sets, the least we can do is recognize their effort, hefty cost notwithstanding. I don’t see Sony, Warners, Universal, Paramount or anybody else lavishing time and effort into giant prestigious megasets like this; when my ship sinks, I grab this or last year’s Ford at Fox set as I tumble overboard (in fact, DVDs not withstanding, the colossal boxes would make handy lifeboats).

This collection spans the late silent and early sound era and includes two films from F.W. Murnau (killed in an auto accident in 1931) and ten from Frank Borzage, plus two coffee table sized books and an impressive array of other bonus material.

The films include Murnau’s Sunrise (1927; won the first – and only – Academy Award ever given out for “Most Artistic” film) and City Girl (1930) and Borzage’s Lazybones (1925), Seventh Heaven (1928, and an Oscar-winner for Janet Gaynor), Street Angel (1928), Lucky Star (1929), all of which are silent with musical scores, and They Had to See Paris (1929, Will Rogers’ talkie debut), Liliom (1930), Song O' My Heart (1930), Bad Girl (1931, Oscar winner for Borzage), After Tomorrow (1932), and Young America (1932, with Spencer Tracy).

The best DVD release of the year, not just for prestige but for one big, huge box of movie history and entertaining fun.

Other Great DVDs This Year

American Slapstick Vol. 2 (Facets/All Day Entertainment, $34.95) Sadly, sales of this set were disappointing and All Day has postponed its next release, a collection of Charley Chase films. While praise doesn’t pay the rent, the All Dayers can be proud of the work they do preserving a valuable part of our American heritage; there are a lot of companies who present comedy short subjects on DVD but nobody that does it with as much love as All Day. Includes Harold Lloyd and his brother Gaylord, ‘Snub’ Pollard, Larry Semon, Louise Fazenda, and a terrific feature version of Charley’s Aunt from 1925 starring Charlie’s brother Syd Chaplin.

Budd Boetticher Box Set (Sony, $59.95) In the late 1950s, Boetticher directed a series of low-budget westerns starring Randolph Scott, most of them written by Burt Kennedy, and if you’re saying “So what?” you haven’t seen any of them: taut, no-nonsense B-movies at their very finest. The set includes The Tall T, Decision at Sundown, Buchanan Rides Alone, Ride Lonesome, and Comanche Station, as well as a new documentary on Boetticher produced by Clint Eastwood, who learned a lot from him. You don’t have to love Westerns to love this set; you may love them by the time you’re done, though.

Bonnie & Clyde: Ultimate Collector’s Edition (Warner, $39.98) Frankly, I don’t like to include re-issued titles in my Best of lists because I would kind of like studios to get them right the first time. I’m making an exception with this one, because the reissue is so spectacular (making up for a very poor initial DVD release of this title several years ago). In addition to the film itself, the best picture of 1967 (says me; the Academy didn’t agree), beautifully restored and remastered, includes more than 3 hours worth of bonus features, a hardcover book on the film, and documentaries on the making of the film and on the real Barrow Gang.

The Dick Tracy chapterplays (VCI, $29.99 each) Republic studios produced a quartet of cliffhanger serials starring Ralph Byrd as Chester Gould’s razor-chinned flatfoot, but until 2008 only the original Dick Tracy (1937), which is in the public domain, has been available on DVD – and it’s by far the weakest of the four serials. This past year, VCI Entertainment released the three superior sequels and each is 15 episodes of non-stop excitement beautifully transferred. Dick Tracy Returns (1938) offers Charles Middleton as Pa Stark, head of a criminal family (Ma Barker with bigger balls); Dick Tracy’s G-Men (1939) has Irving Pichel as a formerly dead gangster and Jennifer Jones in one of her first screen roles; and finally Dick Tracy vs. Crime, Inc. (1941) offers the Ghost, a maniacal supervillain (those are the best kind) capable of turning invisible. Scribe Max Allan Collins contributes introductions to each title. Toss in VCI’s Dick Tracy: The RKO Classic Collection ($14.99), four Tracy features, two with Byrd and two with Morgan Conway, and you’ve got everything you need, unless you feel you really, really need Madonna.

Earrings of Madame De… (Criterion, $39.95) In an outstanding year for Criterion (even by that company’s always-lofty standards) this stood out as their classier release, a brilliant Max Ophuls film about a woman who sells a gift from her husband and starts in motion an epic tale of love and woe. Woah! Loaded with the usual Criterion extras, including the original Louise de Vilmorin novella. I love it when Criterion gives us a book with our movie; makes me feel so literary.

The General: Ultimate 2-disc Edition (Kino, $29.95) Buster Keaton’s masterpiece may be the least funny comedy you’ll ever hear me call a great movie. Audiences in 1927 had no idea what to make of it, and it was a flop that led directly to Keaton’s unhappy servitude at MGM. But… The General is… well, “amusing” as hell as well as being inventive, exciting, and a monument to Keaton’s talent to do what nobody else in the movies was doing then or has done since. Keaton is an Army reject who finds his own way to fight in the Civil War as he chases a stolen locomotive. The best movie on this year’s list (with the possible exception of Hitchcock's Notorious), and Kino’s new edition is from a 35mm print struck from the original camera negative, with a choice of three separate scores. An essential part of any film collection.

Hitchcock Premiere Collection (MGM, $119.98) Since moving its home video distribution rights to Fox, MGM seems content to re-release vault titles at the expense of restoring and releasing unavailable titles. At least here they did it right, with eight interesting Hitchcock titles, including the great (Notorious, Rebecca, Lifeboat) and the overlooked (Young and Innocent) plus Sabotage, Spellbound, The Paradine Case, and the silent The Lodger, all looking gorgeous and with the necessary accruements of commentary, radio shows, isolated music tracks, and good stuff like that. Unfortunately, MGM packaged the darn thing in the most unwieldy box you can imagine: I guarantee it will fit on no shelf in your house.

Houdini: The Movie Star (Kino, $39.95) When you think about it, not too many celebrities of the Jazz Age still have widespread name recognition, but Houdini (who died in 1926) is an exception. Houdini (real name: Ehrich Weiss) parlayed his fame as a magician and escape artist into a series of film appearances, and the entire canon that still exists is included in this 3-disc set, highlighted by the full serial The Master Mystery (a delightfully daffy 1919 chapterplay with a kooky mechanical man), three features, and many other fragments and newsreels. Fun stuff.

Lubitsch Musicals (Eclipse Series 8) (Criterion, $59.95) Four early Paramount sound musicals with that Lubitsch touch; includes The Love Parade, The Smiling Lieutenant, One Hour with You, and Monte Carlo, mainly starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald. Forget the seamy inner-city melodramas and violent gangster pictures; the real reason the Hays Office cracked down on the motion picture business was because of films like these, that had the temerity to insinuate that sex could actually be *gasp* FUN!

Touch of Evil: 50th Anniversary Edition (Universal, $26.98) Another essential revisit to a classic title; the last true film noir was – as usual with the filmmaker – taken away from him by skittish studio executives. This set includes an original preview version, the theatrical release version, and a restored version based on Orson Welles’ notes for the film: and even includes a copy of those notes. Hollywood history in a box. As for the film, Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh and Welles in a tale of corruption and kidnapping on the Mexican border.

Vampyr (Criterion, $39.95) The most highly-anticipated release of the year did not disappoint; Carl Theodor Dreyer’s atmospheric horror story is an example of how artistic cinema can be while still providing great entertainment. Includes the original screenplay and Sheridan Le Fanu’s novel Carmilla, the inspiration for the film. The best stand-alone DVD release of the year and the true mark of a great film: the more you watch it, the more you appreciate it and learn from it.

Special Mentions

The Complete Steve Canyon on TV Vol. 1 (Milton Caniff Estate, $19.95) was the year's biggest surprise; the original series ran for one season on NBC primetime 1958-1959 and was forgotten a week later, seemingly. Caniff, so unhappy with earlier adaptations of his work (particularly Terry and the Pirates), insisted on an adult-oriented, technically accurate approach to this show. After cancellation, the 34 episodes went into the Caniff family vault, seemingly forever, until the estate decided to make them available to fans of the comic strip, Caniff worshipers, classic TV junkies, or just plain ol' adventure lovers. This 2-disc set includes the first 12 episodes of the series, 10 of them with bonus commentary by Marion Ross, Russell Johnson, and others and is remastered from the original 35mm films. Plus, you get original commercials and network promos with each episode. Because I was unfamiliar with this show, it was as if somebody had invented a time machine and zipped back 50 years to create a "new" TV show with a vintage cast. Dean Fredericks stars as Steve Canyon, crack pilot at the Big Thunder Air Force Base. You can order this and future volumes from http://stevecanyondvd.blogspot.com/.

Honey West: Complete Series (VCI Entertainment, $39.99), on the other hand, was a childhood favorite of mine and I was delighted to find that the TV show (1965-66) was as suave and enjoyable as ever. Anne Francis is Honey, solving crime, fixing her lipstick, and petting her pet ocelot, not always in that order. A plethora of guest stars, vintage TV commercials, network promos, and all 39 episodes of one of the most fondly recalled (albeit short-lived) spy shows of the James Bond era. Supposedly, the show was popular enough to warrant renewal, but ABC-TV realized it could import The Avengers for less than it was paying to show Honey West, and reasoned that TV wasn't big enough for both Honey West AND Emma Peel. As a male adolescent of the era, I beg to disagree, but it's a little late now to complain about it, right?

Little Rascals: Complete Collection (Genius, $89.95) was the year’s most controversial release. Some of us celebrated it for its sheer exuberance and breadth: all 80 Our Gang/Little Rascals short subjects produced by Hal Roach from the first talkie in the series (1929) through his sale of the Our Gang rights to MGM in 1938. Others complained that some of the film transfers were disappointing, had non-original title cards, or were from unsatisfactory source materials. To those complainers we can only point to the li’l sign on the Balcony door that says “No whiners!” Our big complaint is that Leonard Maltin wasn’t brought in to oversee the product so that we wouldn’t have embarrassing moments like the documentary narrator talking about Sunshine Sammy while the footage shows Farina. The set also includes a handful of silent Our Gang comedies and interviews with surviving members. Watch the films chronologically and see Wheezer, Dorothy, Chubby, Joe Cobb, Farina, Stymie, Spanky, Alfalfa, Porky, Buckwheat, Jackie Cooper, Darla, and the rest of ‘em come, grow, and go. Oh, and then there’s that adorable Miss Crabtree. My, my, my.

Discuss these and other DVDs and films on our MESSAGE BOARDS.