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Hyde's Favorite DVDs of 2002January 22, 2003
Our resident DVD columnist Les Winan recently wrote a nice year-end wrap up detailing some great ways to have spent your money on disks during the past calendar year. However, given the amazing wealth of riches that showed up in this format during 2002, one could have easily spent one's money in a completely different manner and still have ended up with a wonderful collection of films. Here's how. The following list of the best DVDs of the past year has essentially been assembled with the same sort of criteria used in the previous "How To Spend $486.33 with shipping" piece. Some of the films listed below were chosen for the simple greatness of the movie released, yet others are here because the package assembled was of exceptionally high quality and contained so much material as to make it stand out. Though I've made some effort to detail the extras included on the disks, I've mostly not bothered to comment overmuch on the visual or auditory aspects of the release as this is more of a year end overview than a detailed analysis of the offerings. With that in mind, let's take a look at another way you could have drained your wallet of many funds this year.
Shaw Brothers Region 3 Releases (Celestial Pictures)For this reviewer, 2002 mostly represented the year of the all-region DVD solution. Tired of being unable to watch top-notch cinema from Asia and Europe due to the slowness of North American companies in releasing Region One versions of this material, it was finally necessary to break down and get a player capable of playing DVD's from all over the world. The final impetus for this act came from the Region 3 release of the Shaw Brothers catalog by Celestial Pictures. Though the surface of this incredible archive of Hong Kong cinema has only just begun to be scratched, the first couple batches of these included some great treasures. This space has already extolled the many virtues of King Hu's classic Come Drink With Me, but in addition to that gem there were plenty of other worthwhile ventures released. Chief among them were a swinging sixties pop musical with Cheng Pei-Pei (Hong Kong Nocturne), a Chor Yuen martial arts vehicle (Killer Clans), a sumptuous Linda Lin Dai historic drama (The Kingdom and the Beauty) as well as one of the greatest swordplay movies of all time (The Magic Blade). And though these five films might be enough for anyone to absorb, there were another fifteen or so released at the end of the year that also looked quite good. The fun won't stop there, though, since in 2003 another couple hundred films will hit the market from this great library - including many releases that have been long awaited by fans of classic Hong Kong cinema.
Singin' In the Rain: Special Edition (Warner)One of - if not the - greatest American films of all time finally got the DVD treatment that it deserved last year. Fifty years after it opened, this movie still retains all of its effervescence, and this two-disc set has lots of spectacular extras that complement the brilliance of the film itself. Commentaries by Debbie Reynolds, Donald O'Connor, Cyd Charisse, co-director Stanley Donen and others offer insights into the making of the film, and the second disk contains both an excellent documentary on the MGM musicals of Arthur Freed as well as a featurette concentrating solely on Singin' in the Rain. There's other material here too - the original theatrical trailer, an outtake of a song that was cut, scoring stage sessions of the music, et cetera. An incredible package that pays tribute to a classic film in a fitting manner and can be purchased for the very reasonable price of twenty dollars. What are you waiting for?
Die Nibelungen (Kino)Here's a release that you're likely to see a full review of once I wade through the entire five hour length of Fritz Lang's silent adaptation of the Nordic classic. Kino has put together a high-grade set that is a full 100 minutes longer than any previous version available in the United States, and the result is an awe-inspiring masterpiece from the Silent Era. Not content simply with that contribution to film history, the company has also tossed in some footage of Lang on the set, new translations for the English titles, production design and special effects sketches and the full 1924 score as performed by the Munich Radio Orchestra under the direction of Gottfried Huppertz.
Blue Velvet: Special Edition (MGM)For some reason, David Lynch seems to want to eschew commentary tracks when his films are released to DVD. Like much in this man's nature, this seems to contradict the general universal truth that most directors are such conceited fatheads that they'd likely blather on and on about their movies even if no one at all was listening. Perhaps he's saving it all up for a great additional audio track for the special edition of Dune, so we can all finally figure out just what the HELL went on with that movie. In any case, though there's no appearance like that by the director with this release of his seminal film from the 1980s, he did at least deign to supervise the sweet looking new visual transfer used for this release. Additionally, MGM has dug up a few nice extras to include on top of the usual trailers - stills from some deleted scenes (admittedly, not as cool as giving us the scenes themselves), the original Siskel & Ebert review, and an hour long documentary (Mysteries of Love) that has interviews with many of the principals involved in the shooting of the film, including some vintage footage from the director himself. Overall, simply a fine package dedicated to one of the great American films of the last twenty-five years.
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Milestone)As there's already a full review of this one available in the archives, this paragraph will be a bit cursory. Still, this disk needs inclusion here, for the importance of this pioneering animated classic shouldn't be overlooked. Hailed as the earliest surviving feature-length animated film (there are reports of an earlier Argentine movie that might hold the honor as the first such effort, but no known prints of that one exist), the jaw dropping quality of the fantastic silhouette work of Lotte Reiniger alone makes this one worth owning.
Re-Animator: Millennium Edition (Elite)For this reviewer, there are four primary films from the 1980s that inspire nostalgic reminiscences of whiskey-fueled trips to the Holyoke Mall to take in the latest gore-filled offering: Street Trash, Seven Doors of Death (aka The Beyond), Evil Dead 2, and Re-Animator. Now, thanks to this quality release from Elite, those hazy halcyon days of horror can be relived in all their splatter-filled glory. Though some of the material included in this two-disc set has been previously released, there's enough new stuff here to make the package worth your attention. Along with audio commentaries by the director and a bunch of the cast members, there are now copious numbers of new interviews, trailers, tv spots, deleted and extended scenes, storyboards and other material to add to your appreciation of this offbeat and entertaining genre piece. To top it all off, the producers of the DVD have enhanced nearly all the included material for widescreen televisions making the package all that more attractive for viewers with that capability.
Grave of the Fireflies: Collector's Series (Studo Ghibli - Central Park Media)Perhaps one of the most stunning and powerful anime films ever produced, this 1988 Isao Takahata wartime drama has now been given the high quality DVD that befits its stature. A poor quality transfer marred a previous release, but this one utilizes the much crisper version that came out in a Japanese special edition during the year 2000. In addition to the great looking visual quality of this DVD, some excellent bonus material completes this stupendous package. There are interviews with the director and the author of the film, another with critic Roger Ebert, a featurette on the movie's restoration, alternate angle storyboards, original trailers and some historical commentaries included, and truth be told that's not even all that's here. A quality Region 1 release of an overlooked Asian gem.
Giants and Toys (Fantoma)There are a number of releases from Fantoma that might easily have made it onto this "best of" list - their Fassbinder reissues are great, the material contained within their Educational Archives series is exceptional, and their resurrection of Mario Bava's colorful sword-and-sandal epic Hercules in the Haunted World was welcomed by every fan of that Italian giant. But in addition to these great releases, in early 2002 the company chose to bring to the light of day a little-known Japanese film by director Yasuzo Masumara, Giants and Toys. This disc actually has very little in the way of extras, but the film itself is good enough to make it worth noting as one of the best DVDs of the year. A hilarious picture of the madhouse world of commercial advertising in Japanese children's toys, this one represents yet another brilliant decision by Fantoma on what slightly obscure film to bring to wider attention. I can't wait to see what they choose to put out in the coming year.
MiscellaneousGiven that I've already detailed 12 titles worthy of purchase (counting five for the Shaw Brothers) that came out during the last year above, you might think that I'd have gone some way in exhausting the possibilities worthy of consideration. But the year 2002 was far too filled with great releases for that to be able to cover everything. South Korea alone had enough good stuff this year to fill an entire article, with Nabi, My Sassy Girl, Oasis and Take Care of My Cat all coming out in special editions. Also worth pointing out is Thailand's The Eye, which also came out in its own special edition. Though this disk was fairly short on extras, the film itself was creepily atmospheric enough to warrant a purchase.Additionally, on the sci fi/horror front there were a plethora of films screaming for a glance. Columbia/Tri Star intelligently combined both versions of a Jacques Tourneur movie onto one DVD with their Curse of/Night of the Demon disk. Synapse Films brought out a widescreen edition of Jean Rollin's Bacchanales Sexuelles that restored the 30 minutes of film that had previously been cut from the US release. Not content with that alone, they also delivered with the Barbara Steele Euro-horror vehicle Castle of Blood and the 1950s commie exploitation number Invasion USA. And one final release that bears mention here with regards to this genre comes to us from the small screen: MGM's package of the full first season of the seminal sci fi show The Outer Limits is required viewing for anyone who (like me) grew up being petrified by the likes of The Zanti Misfits. Lastly, what year-end wrap up on the best of DVD 2002 would be complete without at least a brief nod towards the people over at the Criterion Collection? Nearly impeccable taste seems to pervade this company when it comes to the selection of films that they choose to release, and last year's slate certainly backs that up. New DVDs of Solaris, Children of Paradise, Bob le Flambeur, Ratcatcher and Red Beard (among others) proved once again that when it comes to picking great films to be done over for this young medium, there are few companies with as accurate an eye as this bunch. I almost wish they had poorer taste, since their incredible offerings have resulted in my total inability to keep up with their amazing catalog. So there you are, the best DVDs of the year 2002 as seen from this corner. Sifting through the titles listed above should give any interested film fan plenty of material to throw money away on, though there is one rather large catch. In perusing the titles that will be coming out in the upcoming year (and there may be another column in the offing detailing some of these) it becomes patently obvious that there isn't much time available for catching up on last year before embarking on a campaign to keep up with the present schedule. Playing the DVD aficionado these days appears much akin to being stuck on a quickly rolling treadmill. And with each passing minute it seems that it's one that continues to spin faster...and faster...and faster...and faster...
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