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Re: Best Laurel and Hardy DVD's?
For the silents, there is going to be a mega box released by Image in May 2007. Please see the other L&H thread for details.
For the sound shorts, you'll have to import a set from England, Germany, or the Netherlands. The England set, while not perfect, does have the advantage of being very well packaged, containing multiple foreign language shorts (where L&H made films specifically for foreign markets) and having English written booklets, subtitles etc. The main drawback is that the disc count is unnecessarily inflated by including alternate colorized versions of various shorts. The B&W versions are always included and look great for the most part. One of the films (Blockheads?) is missing a few minutes in the B&W version although the colorized version is complete. Amazon UK will occasionally run this fairly cheap. PAL speedup will be an issue if that bothers you.
Fox in the US has put out two very well done box sets of the 6 films they did for Fox at the end of their careers. In my opinion, these sets have rehabilitated these films' reputation and shown them to be much better than what some reference books claim.
Warners has released a L&H set under the TCM Archives banner that contains Bonnie Scotland and Fra Diavolo plus an excellent documentary short on the history of the short subject at the movies. They also released a double feature disc of Nothing But Trouble and Air Raid Wardens.
Finally Legend Films has released what appears to be a finely restored and legitimately B&W version of "March of the Wooden Soldiers". See other thread for details.
LionsGate which owns the US rights to the sound shorts/Roach features, has shown virtually no interest in exploiting their catalog. If only Warners had the video rights......
Steve
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