Get Ready, Get Set

Digging through this year's DVD collections.


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Published: Dec 12, 2007

DEATH BECOMES WHORE: Hanna Schygulla and Barbara Sukowa as prostitutes in <i>Berlin Alexanderplatz</i>.

DEATH BECOMES WHORE: Hanna Schygulla and Barbara Sukowa as prostitutes in Berlin Alexanderplatz.

(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Think of a DVD boxed set as the gift that keeps on giving. Sure, you could plunk down for a nice sweater or some fancy cheese, but the one will spend half the year in mothballs and the other will be eaten before Epiphany. Whereas you'll be lucky to get through some of these collections by the time next Christmas comes around.Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film 1900-1934

Don't let the wonky title fool you. This invaluable four-disc set has plenty to fascinate the amateur. From labor unrest to women's lib, the 48 films offer takes fascinating and comical (and sometimes both) on the turmoils of the early 20th century. A brief cartoon produced by Ford Motor Co. shows Uncle Sam beating off a Bolshevik rat, while the surviving reel of a feature produced by the AFL demonstrates the benefits of unionization. Commentaries and an accompanying book make for a generously overstuffed package of pleasantly daunting scope.

The Cinema of Peter Watkins New Yorker's five-disc set collects some of the best films from the social critic and professional bomb thrower, including The War Game and Punishment Park. New to DVD is Watkins' uncut two-disc Edvard Munch, hands-down the greatest portrait of an artist at work.

I Am Cuba/Killer of Sheep: The Charles Burnett Collection A tiny distributor with exquisite taste, Jersey-based Milestone gets into the boxed-set game with a three-disc version of Mikhail Kalatozov's propagandistic fever dream. A mock cigar box houses a new transfer of the film, a two-hour portrait of the director, and Vicente Ferraz's sharp making-of, The Siberian Mammoth. The Burnett collection holds his formerly rare, much-praised Killer of Sheep, and his even-rarer follow-up, My Brother's Wedding, as well as a quartet of visionary shorts. A major, and hugely overdue, step in the acknowledgment of an American genius.

The Roger Corman Collection Speaking of genius ... well, maybe Corman doesn't qualify. But he combined horse sense and hucksterism like no one else. The quality of these eight Corman features, including Gas-s-s-s!, Bloody Mama and The Trip, may vary, but their energy never does. Spanning the '60s, the collection demonstrates Corman's uncanny nose for talent: Peter Fonda, Shelley Winters, Bruce Dern and Robert De Niro show up onscreen, and screenwriters include George Armitage and Jack Nicholson.

Twin Peaks: Definitive Gold Box Edition You've got every right to be peeved if you shelled out for Season Two in April, especially since the features don't overlap. But with all 29 episodes plus the long-awaited pilot, all remixed in surround sound by David Lynch himself, the "gold box" lives up to its (somewhat silly) name.

Stanley Kubrick Kubrick crybabies have been picking nits, but if you've never drooged up for Halloween, this is (almost) all you'll ever need. The absence of Barry Lyndon is a drag, but the wide-screen transfers of 2001, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut (finally — finally! — available in its uncensored form) neatly cover Kubrick's second act. Commentaries and featurettes abound, but the press-shy director remains as mysterious as ever.

Berlin Alexanderplatz We could have filled a page with worthy Criterion releases (the audio commentary on Days of Heaven alone is a major gift from the gods), but this seven-disc, 15-hour work illustrates what they do best. Daunting when considered as a film, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's magnum opus seems far more approachable in an era when entire TV seasons are regularly consumed in an afternoon. Following ex-con Franz Bieberkopf (Gunter Lamprecht) through the treacherous streets of Weimar Berlin, the movie is an archetypal Fassbinderian tale of a corruptible innocent (albeit one who is, in this case, a murderer) ripped apart by a greedy and soulless world. The seven-disc set also includes a 1931 adaptation of the source novel, mercifully compact at 91 minutes.

Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 5 The latest of Warner Bros.' exemplary animation collections includes a disc devoted to Looney Tunes' early years and another devoted to such fractured fairy tales as Goldimouse and the Three Cats. The cartoons, of course, can be enjoyed by anyone, but Warners does right by animation fans with ample supplements, including a lengthy PBS documentary on the legendary Chuck Jones.

Hot Fuzz: 3-Disc Collector's Edition Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's action spoof is nearly as exhausting as the movies it sends up, but they know their audience; fans who loved the movie will drool over the beefed-up package, which includes an 18-year-old Wright's first take on the genre.

Futurama: Bender's Big Score OK, so it's not a boxed set, but the unlikely return of the defiantly geeky animated series is the best Christmas present a recovering math nerd could ask for. The plethora of extras includes a full-length episode of Everybody Loves Hypnotoad. They'll think it's funny, even if you don't.

(s_adams@citypaper.net)