onhometheater.com's 2002 DVD
Gift-Giving Guide
(All prices in US dollars.)
No shortage of candidates here! You
could give The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Platinum Series Extended
Edition Collector's Gift Set), with its added half-hour of film, four days of extras,
and Argonath bookends, or you could get really creative and offer one of the following.
A Hard Day's Night ($29.99): You've probably
never seen the film like this. The transfer is marvelous on this two-DVD set and the sound
matches it. The extras are legitimately worthwhile for a change (although neither
surviving Beatle participated in the reissue).
What's wonderful is how fresh the film seems. Rather than
creating a contrived story (à la Gerry and the Pacemakers' Ferry Across the Mersey
or Herman's Hermits' Mrs. Brown You Have a Lovely Daughter), Alun Owen riffed off
the rising Beatlemania that had the band fleeing their fans and then cooling their heels
in boredom at the tedium of touring. Grizzled Wilfrid Brambell and a charismatically
deadpan Ringo Starr steal the film -- although the two are so ingratiating, it's more like
a gift. Good stuff and probably not at all what you remember.
Akira Kurosawa: Four Samurai Classics: Seven Samurai;
The Hidden Fortress; Yojimbo; Sanjuro ($99.95): This Criterion Collection four-DVD
set includes four immensely influential films -- Seven Samurai is frequently listed
among the greatest cinematic masterpieces of all time; The Hidden Fortress is
considered the cinematic and philosophical precursor to Star Wars; Yojimbo,
based on Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest, was remade in the West several times (once
as A Fistful of Dollars and again as Last Man Standing). Sanjuro is
widely felt to be an inferior sequel to Yojimbo, but I think that undervalues its
comedic charm -- Yojimbo was about comeuppance; Sanjuro is a comic Zen koan
about learning to see beyond appearances.
If you haven't seen these films at all (or if you know the
recipient hasn't), the surprise is in how engrossing and exciting they are. Action movies
don't get better than Seven Samurai nor heroes craftier than
"thirty-something" (the literal meaning of Yojimbo). As for The Hidden
Fortress, it doesn't take an appreciation by George Lucas to hammer home the point
that Fortress's yammering dolts are the godparents to the annoying C3P0 and R2D2 in
that tale of a kidnapped princess. Archetypal inspiration or not, this set is the real
deal.
The Complete Monterey Pop Festival ($79.95):
This three-DVD set from Criterion adds almost a disc's worth of material to the film
(stuff never shown in the original, like performances by the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield,
Quicksilver Messenger Service, as well as previously excised performances from groups like
the Who, Simon and Garfunkel, and the Mamas and the Papas). Jimi Hendrix and Otis Redding
are featured on their own disc in new digital transfers of Jimi Plays Monterey and Shake!
(Redding). Shake! features two audio commentaries by writer/music historian
Peter Guralnick -- a song-by-song analysis of Redding's performance and a rumination on
Redding's career path before and after the festival.
The set also includes interviews with Lou Adler and
filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker, as well as John Phillips (the festival's promoter), publicist
Derek Taylor, and musicians (Mama) Cass Elliot and David Crosby. Additional extra features
encompass a photo essay by Elaine Mayes, the original theatrical trailers for Jimi
Plays Monterey and Monterey Pop, and a video excerpt of a Pete Townshend
interview where he discusses the Monterey festival and preceding Jimi Hendrix on stage.
And if you absolutely can't think of anything they'd like,
there's always:
Aquaria: The Freshwater Aquarium ($8.99): I'm
not kidding! Everybody loves this one -- and why not? It has it all: color, motion, and at
least as much plot as Survivor. Plus, its participants won’t be turning up on
any talk shows no matter how popular the DVD gets. Strangely soothing and its ability to
hypnotize turkey-stuffed three-year-olds is a genuine gift to tired parents who have been
entertaining all day.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhometheater.com
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