DROWNING IN DISCS
The year in DVDs, a Special Collector's Extreme Ultimate report
By Andy Klein
Last winter, when our alien overlords from the planet Kronos sat down to schmooze about their plans for the coming year with the Trilateral Commission, the Illuminati, and the caretakers of the Trystero system, they doubtless welcomed what we'll euphemistically call "instability in the Middle East" as a stimulus to the higher gasoline prices that fund their intergalactic adventurism. But they really needn't have bothered: The continuing explosion of the DVD market alone could well have done the trick, what with those little silver suckers - by which we mean DVDs, not the Kronosians, who are more of a taupe, actually - being made of petroleum derivatives.
As anyone whose memory goes back to Beta/VHS wars of the '80s can confirm, a universal format is the secret of success in new audio/video technologies. So, Beta vs. VHS: slow market growth. CDs: fast growth. Laserdisc vs. CED videodiscs: almost no growth. DVDs: Yow!
Of course, this obvious correlation hasn't prevented the electronics companies from embarking on another potential debacle with the introduction of two incompatible formats for High Definition DVD. Go figure.
Seven years into its commercial history, DVD has effectively ended the twentysome-year reign of videotape; the availability of reasonably priced DVD recorders removes the last excuse for cumbersome tape technology. The price of simple DVD players themselves is a joke: Recent Christmas sale ads included at least one model for $19.95 - a model with more features, if less reliability, than the Sony I paid $500 for in 1998.
There's little point in discussing the DVDs of recent Hollywood releases: They all come out pretty quickly, many (though not all) in decent transfers, with bunches of extras - not that this stops the studios from issuing new, "improved" editions of the same stuff. Some films come out initially in plain-wrap and "Special" editions; a year later, there's a "Special Collector's Edition"; then an "Extreme Edition" or an "Ultimate Edition" or both. How many versions of Terminator 2 have been released in seven years? I've lost count.
But what's more heartening is that, as happened when CDs were announced, titles have been released that I didn't think I'd see for at least a decade, if ever: stuff like Mr. Sardonicus, The Last of Sheila, The President's Analyst ... . I thought I'd have to wait a long time for Larry Cohen's Q: The Winged Serpent, which has come out in at least two different editions. And yet ... .
For all that, try to find such trivial items as, let's say, Ernst Lubitsch films. Of the great director's 15 sound films, only The Shop Around the Corner, Trouble in Paradise, and the very minor That Uncertain Feeling are available. (To Be or Not to Be has been announced for next spring.) No Ninotchka, no Design for Living, no Heaven Can Wait.
Of the eight films Preston Sturges made at Paramount: The Lady Eve and Sullivan's Travels. John Ford: 17 out of roughly 58 talkies. Howard Hawks: doing better with 15 out of 32 sound films.
The reason Hawks has fared better is that he made a lot of films for Warner and Columbia, whose home video divisions have been far more aggressive with their old catalog. The reason the others haven't is (in one word) Universal.
Universal Home Video has been great about its Hitchcock assets - all are out, and many have been properly restored and transferred. But the company owns the '30s and '40s Paramount library, which includes a huge number of essential noir films and probably three-quarters of the great comedies from those decades: Lubitsch, Sturges, the Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, Mae West, Bob Hope, and Billy Wilder, not to mention wonderful obscurities like Murder, He Says. (I'm not holding my breath for that one.)
The difference between Universal and Warner can be seen in their treatment of their Marx Brothers films (reviewed last week): Universal took no care with the transfer or the packaging; Warner did nearly everything right. Warner also did well this year with its Hitchcock titles, a bunch of films noir, and Looney Tunes.
I have to mention Home Vision Entertainment as well. A specialty company with a corporate connection to the prestigious Criterion Collection - the folks who set the standard for classy home video presentation with their mid-'80s laserdiscs - Home Vision has put out more titles that got me juiced this year than anyone else, including a batch of Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman entries, at least a dozen titles from Kinji Fukusaku, and a bunch of Claude Chabrol films. (I realize these may not exactly be items of mass appeal.)
Of course, for a really huge audience, the event of the year was the release of the Star Wars trilogy. I'm sure it was just lovely, but, to be honest, reviewing it would have meant sitting through all three again, which was more than I've been able to face in the last 20 years. (There! I've said it! I mean, Luke Skywalker's okay and all, but he's no Buckaroo Banzai.)
Likewise, despite all my praise above for Warner, the 10-disc Ultimate Matrix struck me as extreme overkill; buy the single disc of the first film by itself, and you've got 80 percent of what's worthwhile in the mega-set.
From the skewed prospective of the likes of me, the really important DVD events this year were pretty obvious:
1. The two five-disc SCTV sets from Shout! Factory top the list. They're pricey, and some compromises were made with regard to replacing some of the original music (which no one had ever bothered to get permission for), presumably to keep them from being even more pricey.
2. Warner's Marx Brothers Collection. Seven titles on five discs; well transferred; tons o' extras.
3. Warner's second Looney Tunes Golden Collection: 60 cartoons on four discs, including Chuck Jones's '50s masterpieces "What's Opera, Doc?" and "One Froggy Evening."
4. Columbia/TriStar's Once Upon a Time in Mexico: I love this 2003 film; even more - relative to the competition - I love the extras on the DVD. This is one of those rare cases where I found it informative and (more importantly) entertaining to watch, or listen to, all the extra features on the package. Kudos to Sony and Robert Rodriguez.
5. Finally, it would be insane to wrap up the year on DVD without mention of the ways in which the format became politically influential (though - as the election made obvious - not influential enough). Fahrenheit 9/11 was the catalyst that got theatrical bookings for an unprecedented number of political documentaries this year, but it was the series of straight-to-video docs from producer (and in most cases director) Robert Greenwald that opened the doors for impassioned, but impecunious, filmmakers to get their work seen.Published: 12/30/2004
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