In The Balcony DVD of the Year Award

We’re going to keep you in Hitchcockian suspense for a moment (and no fair scrolling down!) before getting to 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 rather 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. We pretend that only one of the year’s DVD releases could be placed in a time capsule for hundreds of years, or shot into space for the li’l bitty space aliens to watch when they’re not listening to Chuck Berry records. What DVD would we choose? The six recipients of the award in the past all are ensconced on in this Valhalla of Film Goodness, and we'll review them first.

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 on eBay. The first (and best) of the Disney Platinum Editions of 2-disc sets, 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 greatest film 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 version 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).

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 16 finalists, and then – noting that the bar was closing soon – picked one. And a fine choice they made.

The 2007 Winner

It seems almost unfair to bestow our award on a mammoth multi-film boxed set with a suggested retail price of $300, but online retailers or Costco have offered it for up to 1/3 off, and it does contain 24 films and magnificent bonus materials and frankly, the Ford at Fox colossal boxed set is so essential to any movie collector that it’s impossible to give the award to any other release this year, although (as you’ll see following) there were a number of terrific DVDs this year.

Ford at Fox 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.

Other Great DVDs This Year

Army of Shadows (Criterion Collection) Astonishing 1969 French film about the anti-Nazi Resistance; the film wasn't released in the U.S. until 2006, when it made several critics’ “Best Films” lists for the year, as well it should have. Gritty, realistic, and creates its own reality that totally absorbs the viewer. The 2-disc DVD set is one of Criterion’s best, packed with worthy bonus material.

Raymond Bernard: Eclipse Series 4 (Criterion Collection) Going in alphabetical order, but our second collection is also French and also from Criterion. The Eclipse series is a special offshoot of Criterion that packages frills-free films in boxed sets; this particular one offers a massive, magnificent multi-hour version of Les Misérables (1936) with the anti-war classic Wooden Crosses (1934). Director Bernard has all but been forgotten, but hopefully this set will right that wrong.

W.C. Fields Comedy Collection, Vol. 2 (Universal) Universal did a better job this year with its classic film releases, and this one was a delightful, unexpected surprise: five more films from the canon of the funniest damn movie comic of the sound era. Not only that, but they’re five of Fields’ best films, and this set is recommended over the better-known films that were included in the first volume. Titles include You’re Telling Me!, Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, Poppy, The Old-Fashioned Way, and Man on the Flying Trapeze.

By the way, Universal has released an even better collection in England (region 2) that all movie fans with all-region players should own (and all movie fans should own all-region players). The British W.C. Fields Movie Collection includes all the films in the American boxed sets, plus the essential Million Dollar Legs, Tillie and Gus, Mississippi (with Bing Crosby), the all-star films If I Had an Million and Follow the Boys, and two films available on U.S. DVD in other collections, Six of a Kind (with Burns & Allen) and Big Broadcast of 1938 (with Bob Hope). That’s 17 Fields movies, and 1,017 laughs. A treasure.

Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 4 (Warner Bros.) The Bros. Warner (or whoever is running things these days) continues to belch out must-have boxed sets the way my grandpa used to belch out Rolling Rock beer fumes. This set contains 10 dark dramas of the noir era, including Mystery Street, Decoy, and They Live by Night. A great film festival in an itty-bitty box.

The First Kings of Comedy Collection (Genius Entertainment) Don’t overlook this one, which offers two of those wonderful Robert Youngson compilations of silent screen history. Not only that, but both The Golden Age of Comedy and When Comedy Was King have been restored and look great. This disc contains more laugh-out-loud moments than any other single release of the year.

The Jazz Singer (Warner Bros.) Arguably the most anticipated vintage release of the year for a single film, and Warners didn’t let us down with a colossal 3-disc set featuring not only the seminal talkie starring Al Jolson, but hours and hours worth of bonus material on early sound films, and a great collection of Vitaphone shorts, too. Great stuff, and a lot of fun to pour through.

Killer of Sheep: The Charles Burnett Collection (New Yorker/Milestone) This one was a surprise; Burnett’s all-but-lost 1977 film about the struggles of a poor black man is one of the greatest American films nobody’d ever seen. It’s been restored, remastered, and presented here with two versions of Burnett’s follow-up, My Brother’s Wedding (1984) and other material. An important rediscovery of an unique American voice.

Harry Langdon Collection: Lost and Found (Facets) An end-of-the-year treasure, this essential boxed set got in just under the wire. Langdon is recalled as a tragic silent-era comic who fired mentor Frank Capra and tried to be Chaplin, only to go literally overnight from one of the most beloved funnymen on the screen to an alcoholic has-been who died young, but let’s jettison all that and just watch his early Sennett films, which are charming and funny and offer delights in every reel. Nearly 2 dozen silent shorts, wonderful bonus material, a feature documentary on Harry, and a few assorted rare talkies (alas, none of his Columbia shorts, which are generally better than you’d ever expect). There’s even a wonderful booklet full of fascinating essays and a PDF copy of a Langdon pressbook. A couple of years ago, we recommended a similar labor of love, Mackinac’s boxed set of restored Fatty Arbuckle films, even though we found the films labored and unfunny, because we appreciated the effort they put into the darn thing. No such reservations with the Langdon set: the films are unique, genuinely funny, and occasionally (His Marriage Wow, Saturday Afternoon) hilarious, put together in a superb package.

The Myrna Loy & William Powell Collection (Warner Bros.) On the heels of its best-selling Thin Man boxed set came this follow-up with five more Powell-Loy films, including Manhattan Melodrama, Love Crazy, and others, plus all the bonus cartoons and vintage shorts we love.

Matinee at the Bijou selections: This one is kind of a cheat, but a fun one. Over at Matinee at the Bijou, we listed some terrific Matinee-type DVDs released this year, and we’re making that one overall choice for sheer vintage matinee entertainment. Start with a cartoon from The Complete Adventures of the Little King (Thunderbean), move along with a comedy short from Selected RKO Shorts (Looser than Loose), a thrilling chapter of the Columbia serial The Green Archer (Restored Serials), and The Giant Claw or some other goofy 1950s sci-fi film from the Icons of Horror: Sam Katzman Collection (Sony). Add a tub or two of popcorn, invite your friends, and enjoy the best time you’ll have in your TV room this year.

Popeye the Sailor, Vol. 1 (Warner Bros.) Well, it’s about DAMN TIME. While King Features squabbled over the decades with whomever happened to own the rights to the great Max Fleischer cartoons at that time, Popeye’s best cartoons sat languishing in the vault, unreleased on VHS or DVD save for a handful of public domain titles. Warners eventually acquired the cartoons, performed a brilliant restoration job on them, and issued a four-disc chronological set of the 1933-1938 cartoons, packed with bonus material. As good as the Looney Tunes sets are, and as welcome as the Woody Woodpecker collection was, this is the must-buy animated offering of the year.

The Mickey Rooney & Judy Garland Collection (Warner Bros.) You know, if Warner Bros. hadn’t spoiled us, a lot more people would be raving about this set, which is just about perfect. Includes four fun musicals (Babes in Arms, Babes on Broadway, Strike up the Band, and Girl Crazy), a bonus disc with 20 Garland performances from various films, various short subjects and cartoons, a collection of photos, a beautiful booklet, and... well, golly, how much more do you want? Yeah, yeah, I know... we're all waiting for the Andy Hardy series on DVD...

Discuss these and other DVDs and films on our MESSAGE BOARDS. Don't cost nothin'!