Belle Toujours (New Yorker) Manoel Oliveira's droll Bunuel treatment gets a worthy treatment from a hit-and miss label. Well done.
The Big Trail (Fox) Raoul Walsh, John Wayne, early (1930) 70mm, essential all around.
Blast of Silence (Criterion) A great Noir maudit given its long-overdue due.
The Carmen Miranda Collection (Fox) For the upgraded transer of The Gang's All Here.
Come Drink With Me (TWC/Dragon Dynasty) The Weinstein Company should thrive just to keep its excellent Dragon Dynasty disc line alive. This release in particular is a perfect merging of the seminal and the utterly entertaining.
The Darjeeling Limited (Fox) The first Wes Anderson denied the Criterion treatment! Argh! A great disc anyway!
Douglas Fairbanks: A Modern Musketeer (Flicker Alley) Really, just buy everything Flicker Alley puts out. No questions.
Easy Living (Universal) Screwball classic from a division of Universal—Studio Classics, they call it—that really ought to accelerate their release sked.
El Cid (TWC) See below.
Fall of Roman Empire (TWC) Two of the last Manns, given exemplary treatment. Beautiful stuff.
The Films of Budd Boetticher (Sony) Just grand, and about frickin' time.
Forbidden Hollywood 2 (Warner)
Fox Western Classics (Fox) For the bizarre, magesterial Garden of Evil alone. Although the other two ain't bad. The Fox horror boxes—featuring Chandu the Magician, among others—also bear buying.
Georges Melies: The Wizard of Cinema (Flicker Alley) Wow. Just wow. Much like the below Murnau/Borzage box, a reminder that miracles really happen. Again: just buy everything that Flicker Alley puts out.
Griffith Masterworks #2 (Kino) Genius at work. Way Down East is a desert island movie, for sure.
Hammer Icons of Horror (Sony) A great piece of archeology, unearthing, among others, The Gorgon, seen above. Famous Monsters kids, rejoice.
Larissa Sheptinko Shepitko [oy](Criterion/Eclipse) The Russian filmmaker's The Ascent makes an exemplary diptych with Klimov's later Come and See. War cinema at its most unsparing.
Lubitsch Musicals (Criterion/Eclipse) Unalloyed delight.
Man of the West (MGM) Magnificent Mann.
Mishima (Criterion) Schrader's bold experiment is newly vindicated with every viewing.
Mizoguchi’s Fallen Women (Criterion/Eclipse) These Eclipse boxes pretty much can do no wrong.
Murnau, Borzage and Fox (Fox) A gift from the cinephile gods; so many treasures, including two previously little-seen films that should remake your conception of film history once you see them: Murnau's City Girl and Borzage's Lucky Star. Sublime stuff all around.
Criterion Ophuls (Criterion) Some controversy about the transfers...but nobody says they're bad. Three masterworks (Earrings, Plaisir, La Ronde) from the divine Max in one fell swoop, what's not to like.
Pierrot Le Fou (Criterion)
Quiet City/Dance Party (Benten) Who loves American indie film? Benten loves American indie film. I think their Katz is still the best of the lot, and I look forward to more more more in '09.
Silent Ozu (Criterion/Eclipse)
The Skull (Legend)
Vampyr (Criterion) Another miracle.
Warner Brothers And The Homefront Collection (Warner)
White Dog (Criterion)
BLU-RAY
An American In Paris (Japanese Warner)
Black Narcissus (ITV)
Casablanca (Warner)
Criterion: Their first four, Chungking Express, The Third Man, Bottle Rocket, and The Man Who Fell To Earth, all masterpieces and must owns.
From Russia With Love/Dr. No (MGM) Actually, Thunderball's pretty good, too.
The Fall (Sony)
The Godfather Restoration (Paramount)
How The West Was Won (Warner)
Ray Harryhausen Collection (Sony)
Sleeping Beauty (Disney)
Sweeney Todd (Paramount)
Wall-E (Disney)
FOREIGN REGION
Chikamatsu Monogatari/Uwasa No Onna (Eureka!/MOC) Masters of Cinema does a bang-up job with everything, including their multiple Ozu Mizoguchi sets; this gets a special mention just because none of the films in this particular set have gotten a good U.S. DVD release.
The Devil, Probably (Artificial Eye)
Judex (Eureka!/MOC)
The Last Laugh (Eureka!/MOC)
Love on the Ground (Bluebell) Rare Rivette in a good transfer of a complete version.
Make Way For Tomorrow (BAC) Leo McCarey's legendary masterpiece finally gets on disc. With burned-in subs. Oh well. It'll have to do until, you know, Universal accelerates its Studio Classics line.
La Notte (MOC)
Police (Eureka!/MOC) Or Enfance Nue, MOC's other Pialat of 2008. Collect 'em all, I say.
Phantom Carriage (Tartan)
Shimizu boxes (Shochiku) Perhaps, but maybe not, to be supplanted by an upcoming Eclipse box from the Japanese master.
Sirk Collection 2 (Carlotta) Tomorrow's Foreign Region DVD Report, it happens.
I really am going to have to shell out the pennies for Murnau, Borzage and Fox aren't I? I live in the UK and it went for £170 on ebay here the other day. Sheesh...
Posted by: Account Deleted | January 05, 2009 at 11:06 AM
Oh, and great list Glenn, thanks.
Posted by: Account Deleted | January 05, 2009 at 11:07 AM
I love when Criterion digs deep for movies like "Blast of Silence". I not only bought that one this year, but also "Carnival of Souls" (an old Criterion release, I know, but part of the same unofficial "series").
And speaking of Criterion, I've heard that "Darjeeling" will get the treatment in the not-too-distant future.
The Boetticher set is near the top of my to-buy list.
Posted by: bill | January 05, 2009 at 11:35 AM
Excellent call on Come Drink With Me. I sometimes wish Dragon Dynasty had some sort of subscriber service; I want nearly everything they release, and it would save me the trouble of having to drive to the store. (Although then I wouldn't get to impress the sales clerk with my knowledge of kung-fu flicks, so it'd be a mixed blessing.)
Thief of Bagdad from Criterion was pretty terrific as well.
Posted by: Zack Handlen | January 05, 2009 at 12:20 PM
Nah, THUNDERBALL looks like ass on Blu-ray; Lowry slathered on the DVNR and the black levels were ridiculously pumped up to compensate. I really hope the second batch of Bonds is more consistently excellent.
Posted by: Bill C | January 05, 2009 at 12:31 PM
Haven't seen the Blu THUNDERBALL, but DR. NO has the sharpest images of any of the 30-odd Blus I've seen so far.
Posted by: Michael Adams | January 05, 2009 at 12:46 PM
Any word on Carlotta's Kiju Yoshida releases? Was thinking about purchasing...know nothing about the guy, though he's evidently esteemed alongside Ozu and Sirk (who make a perfect buddy team).
Posted by: David | January 05, 2009 at 02:47 PM
Absolutely, Michael. The DOC NO Blu-ray is nonpareil.
Posted by: Bill C | January 05, 2009 at 03:37 PM
"Blast of Silence" was worth buying blind, and so was "The Naked Prey". I find increasingly most of what I buy instead of Netflix is Criterion and Eclipse. Words can't express how much I'm looking forward to their Shimizu boxed set.
Posted by: Dan | January 05, 2009 at 04:45 PM
Thanks for all the MoC nods, GK! One quick note, though -- I think you intended to type "multiple Mizoguchi sets", rather than "Ozu". We haven't released any Ozu as of yet, which isn't to say we wouldn't love to, of course. In any case, agreed that Criterion has been doing a great job with getting Ozu's work exposed to a wider audience. Their two Eclipse sets (the two released this far) are astonishingly great.
Posted by: craig keller. | January 05, 2009 at 07:04 PM
@Craig: Ooops. That's what I get for posting at such and early hour....
Posted by: Glenn Kenny | January 05, 2009 at 08:06 PM
I know you couldn't very well list every Criterion release of the year, but I believe their lovely edition of Alex Cox's WALKER came out in early '08, no? A big discovery for me and many others I'm sure.
Posted by: B.W. | January 06, 2009 at 12:31 AM
I've read that the packaging for the Murnau/Borzage set is a bit of a disaster and damages the discs, can anyone confirm this?
Posted by: Account Deleted | January 06, 2009 at 04:07 AM
great list glenn... and thanks for giving me even more DVDs I have to buy.
I picked up come drink with me sight unseen and am dying to see more of the dragon dynasty collection.
and I agree with BW regarding Walker. I'd never heard of it before it came out, netflixed it and, as soon as I finished it, went to the deepdiscount buy 1 get 1 free criterion sale last summer and ordered it (ohmygodispentsomuchmoneyonthatsale).
Posted by: Chris B. | January 06, 2009 at 05:31 AM
@Chris B.
What killed me was Criterion's 40% off sale. I pigged out on Eclipse sets.
Posted by: Dan | January 06, 2009 at 10:52 AM
@Mark J: The paper sleeves of the Murnau/Borzage box are probably not ideal, but represent an improvement on the way the discs in the Ford box were packaged. Speaking for myself, none of the discs in either of the boxes I own are/were damaged, although I could see this happening more easily during shipping than with some more conventional packages. That said, "handle with care" should be the mantra when interacting with these sets.
Posted by: Glenn Kenny | January 06, 2009 at 01:23 PM
Thanks Glenn, that sounds a lot more promising than i'd heard.
Posted by: Account Deleted | January 06, 2009 at 01:36 PM
What's a "Sheptinko"?
And, re: the Kiju Yoshida sets, he's an amazing director (the one major Japanese New Wave director who's unknown in the west), but the Carlotta DVDs don't have English subtitles, do they? I know there are fansubs in circulation for at least some of them, but nobody's given me the secret handshake.
Posted by: Stephen Bowie | January 06, 2009 at 01:57 PM
And yeah, it was a pretty good year for DVDs, wasn't it? Maybe the last one.
Posted by: Stephen Bowie | January 06, 2009 at 01:58 PM
Nice..THUNDERBALL looks like ass on Blu-ray; Lowry slathered on the DVNR and the black levels were ridiculously pumped up to compensate.
Posted by: x-ray fluorescence | January 13, 2009 at 12:26 AM