What are YOUR top ten DVDs of 2005? (1 Viewer)

[JerryKILL]

The River (Criterion)
Bambi (Disney)
Lifeboat (Fox)
Val Lewton Collection (Warner)
Blind Dead Collection (Blue Underground)
The Candy Snatchers (Subversive)
King Kong (Warner)
Cyclone (Synapse)
The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (MGM/Sony)
Kenny & Co. (Anchor Bay)

 

[Justin Hargis]

 

[CaptDS9E]

In no specific order, and i have a lot more favorites then just these

Sin City Directors Cut
SW:Episode III
Titanic SE
Lost Season 1
King Kong Collectors Tin
Batman Begins
Star Trek Enterprise S3
Incredibles
The Island
Serenity

 

[Steve...O]

My Top 10:

The Thin Man Collection (great set)
King Kong
Wizard of Oz (3 disc)
Warner Gangsters
Warner Classic Comedies
Errol Flynn Signature Collection
Lifeboat
Adventures of Superman Season 1 (TV)

Spots 9 and 10 go to a couple of low profile releases that were excellently done:

Dressed to Kill (Fox Lloyd Nolan film)
Casanova's Big Night (Paramount Bob Hope comedy)

Honorable Mention to all those great Warners Boxes that there wasn't room for in the top 10.

Steve

 

[Harold Wazzu]

Here's mine (in no particular order):

King Kong Collection (Best Buy Exclusive)
Cinderella Man (Collector's Edition)
Star Wars Episode III
Titanic
Kingdom of Heaven
Jaws : 30th Anniversary
The Karate Kid Collection
The Fifth Element : Ultimate Edition
Leon : The Professional (Deluxe Edition)
License to Drive

 

[TimJS]

I am woefully behind in watching recent aquisitions, so this is a list of standout releases that I have not seen on anyone's list:

The Corporation - The best non-vault release of the year. Multiple commentaries, a whole disc of supplemental interviews, and of course, an outstanding feature!

Orwell Rolls In His Grave - Biggest surprise, other than a couple of unfortunate soundtrack decisions, a superb cheapie doc on the media.

The Wire: Season 2 - For my money (& yes HBO wants a lot of it) the best drama ever on TeeVee.

On the vault release side, it was an incredible year of outstanding Warner Bros (the studio of...The Decade?) boxed sets & especially grateful for New Line's Lloyd Collection as well as the trend (?) of releasing Silents with "Features" Ben Hur, Wizard Of Oz, (06) Ten Commandments, as long as it gets the silents to the marketplace. Kudos to Criterion for many great titles and the new edn of Wages Of Fear.

Tim

 

[Zak Hepburn]

The Fly (2 Disc)
King Kong (Metal Tin)
The Devils Rejects (Unrated 2 disc)
The Life Aquatic CC
Revenge of the Sith
Wizard of Oz (3 Disc)
The Frightners DC
John Waters Box Set
Sin City (Extended)
Le Samouraï CC
Major Dundee + all this years Peckinpah stuff
(can't wait for Warners Box)

 

[Steven_M Grimes]

Not in a particular order...

1) King Kong - I got the tin with MIGHTY JOE YOUNG and SON OF KONG
2) The Incredibles
3) Alfred Hitchcock Masterpiece Collection
4) Laura
5) Titanic: Collector's Edition
6) Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith
7) Point Blank
8) Frighteners: CE
9) The War of the Worlds (1953)
10)Jaws 30th Anniversary

 

[Michael T]

1. Batman Begins
2. Lost: Season 1
3. Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith
4. Sin City
5. Titanic CE
6. Jaws: 30th Anniversary Edition
7. The Incredibles
8. Bambi
9. War of the Worlds
10. King Kong Collection

 

[Frank*C]

1. Au hasard Balthazar – (Bresson 1966) Criterion
2. Ugetsu – (Mizoguchi 1953) Criterion
3. Le Samourai – (Melville 1967) Criterion
4. Kagemusha (Kurosawa 1980) Criterion
5. Laura – (Preminger 1944) Fox Home Video
6. Landscape In The Mist – (Angelopoulos 1988) New Yorker
7. Casque d'or (Becker 1952) Criterion
8. Lifeboat – (Hitchcock 1944) Fox Home Video
9. Pickpocket – (Bresson 1959) Criterion
10. The Palm Beach Story (Sturges 1942) Universal

 

[Robert_eb]

In no paticular order:

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Batman Begins
Sin City
Kids In The Hall Season 3
Heat: Special Edition
Bob Dylan - No Direction Home
Sideways
Office Space - Special Edition
Crash
Donnie Darko - The Director's Cut

 

[Jacob McCraw]

I haven't seen/bought everything I would like to...

1) King Kong Collection
2) The Thin Man Collection
3) The Fly (1986) Collector's Edition
4) The Devil's Rejects: Unrated
5) Sin City Recut
6) The Incredibles
7) Batman Begins: Deluxe
8) Star Wars Episode III
9) Profit: The Complete Series
10) The Frighteners: DC


Honorable Mentions: Seinfeld, Simpsons, Alias, Lost, The Life Aquatic, Sideways, WB Gangsters, more I'm forgetting...

I have not yet but plan to buy: Titanic, Wizard of Oz, Ben Hur, Harold Lloyd Collection, Hitchcock Masterpieces, Criterions...

So many discs, so little time (and money)...

 

[Mike D]

Just a reminder that the related links have been updated again. See post #36 [link.

Lots of great reading there if you haven't already checked them out.

 

[JoshB]

My thoughts:

1. To Kill a Mockingbird: Legacy Series
2. Titanic: SCE
3. Sin City: Extended, Uncut, Unrated
4. Ben Hur: CE
5. Ran: CC
6. King Kong
7. Downfall
8. Batman Begins
9. Incredibles
10. Oldboy

 

[Kevin L McCorry]

Had to really strain this year to come up with ten. T'was rather a sparse year in terms of new DVD releases, but here goes.

1) Space: 1999 Series One Special Edition DVD Set; Region 2
At last! A release of Space: 1999 that does justice to the material in terms of picture and sound quality and bonus features. I may quibble that unrestored prints were used for the bonus features documentaries and that some of the extras on prior releases weren't carried over to this one- and I would sure like to be able to watch these DVDs on my TV set with the same stunning quality presented on my computer (as it is, the NTSC converted picture on my
TV set is vastly inferior in resolution, color, even sound, to the episode transfers on the A&E discs), but what Network DVD has served to us is beyond anything we could have hoped for five years ago. I'd like to see the same treatment for Series 2, but that's far too unrealistic.

2) Star Wars Episode III- Revenge of the Sith; Region 1
The extras are rather dull, but the movie itself is a gorgeous transfer as the hands-down best of the Star Wars prequels comes to shiny disc with reference quality video and audio. Not crazy about the bilingual packaging on the Canadian version, though.

3) Doctor Who- "City of Death"; Region 2
2005 was a disappointing year for classic Doctor Who on DVD. No box set (though one is imminent in January next year) and six single-story releases, most of them of IMO rather average Doctor Who fare. It was not a banner year for the Doctor Who range, but the release of "City
of Death" in November was something of a stand-out, chiefly because of the main feature itself, arguably the wittiest, most imaginative Doctor Who adventure of the latter half of Tom Baker's tenure, with a superlative guest cast including Catherine Schell and Julian Glover.
The extras package was on the whole rather disappointing. Julian Glover was great on the commentary, but it's a pity he couldn't have had big Tommy B. with whom to converse. In
fact, Tom had no involvement whatsoever in the release of the stand-out story of his later years as the Doctor. Paris in the Springtime is a documentary in fine form, worthy of comparison to the Doctor Who DVD range's other productions of same nature. But apart from that, the extras were not up to snuff. I don't think the old, severely-tracking-errored, white-noise-infested Shabiden tapes should have been included as the quality was just
attrocious, and the other bonus items were comedy fluff, and not very effective at that. I don't think the extras warranted a second disc. I can see why Region 1 DVD buyers are upset that they have to shell out more dough for a two-disc release of this 4-part Doctor Who story.

4) Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 3; Region 1
I put this release in my top ten with one very precise proviso. I only rate about half of it. Approximately 30 of the 60 cartoon shorts are aesthetically up to scratch in terms of what I think Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies are all about. I deplore the reduction of the post-1948 cartoons to but 1/3rd of the selections offered (which I presume is to be the configuration of the Looney Tune/Merrie Melodie DVD releases henceforth), and even the
bonus features were heavily slanted toward the earlier half of the cartoon studio's output. Plus, even on cartoons I applaud on this set, there is the unpleasant sound of the cocksure voice of John Kricfalusi deifying Bob Clampett and belching matter-of-fact, sweeping put-downs of the post-1948 work of all of the other directors.

5) Kolchak: The Night Stalker; Region 1
Universal did its usual indifferent job in transferring a classic TV series to DVD, utilizing DVD-18 flipper discs crammed to the brim with data and transferring unremastered film prints (in this case old Columbia House VHS source elements). Blacks are crushed, and it's difficult to discern details in the dark night scenes. But I'd never seen the Kolchak TV series before (only the two made-for-TV movies), and for a "blind buy" I must say I found quite a lot of enjoyment in this 1974 television show.

6) The Brady Bunch Seasons 1-4; Region 1
Who would have ever thought we'd see Brady Bunch episodes released on DVD, let alone four whole seasons' worth of them over the course of one year. The elements in places are blurry and soft, and apart from some commentaries on a few Season 1 episodes the extras are non-existent,
but beggars can't be choosers, I guess.

7) The Littlest Hobo Volume 1; Region 1
Even more improbable to see on DVD is the pereginations of the canine hero of Canadian television- and in his black-and-white TV series of the 1960s, yet. Buried in the archives for decades, these episodes from 1963 are rendered onto DVD with amazing clarity, three of them even transferred in color (never having been broadcast that way), and what a treat it is to see the likes of Jim Davis, Harry Townes, and Keenan Wynn (actors I know mostly from later work in their careers) portraying characters of lovable humanity aided by the German shepherd protagonist. I'd not seen any of these episodes in 30 years, and it was a soul-stirring delight to have occasion to experience them again.

8) Star Maidens: Complete Series; Region 2
Space: 1999's Keith Wilson designed this 1975 TV opus about a female-dominated planet being pushed out of orbit around Proxima Centauri by a comet, drifting for years through interstellar space, its civilization nestled underground, and then drifting into Earth's solar
system and coming upon the male-dominated Earth, to which two men from the alien world make a beeline when they learn of Earth's desirable social condition. And the result is a clash of the sexes with the distinctive futuristic flair of imagination of the mid-1970s. Cult TV performers Judy Geeson, Lisa Harrow, and Gareth Thomas lead an Anglo-German cast in a TV show that looks and sounds and feels so Space: 1999-like, it's uncanny. DVD release has fairly sharp transfers and a lengthy interview with Gareth Thomas (best known as the lead actor in Blake's 7).

9) Doctor Who- "Horror of Fang Rock"; Region 2
Aside from "City of Death", the best of a ho-hum group of Doctor Who stories to hit DVD this year. Extra features include an interesting documentary on ace scriptwriter Terrance Dicks.

10) Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry; Region 1
Always remembered laughing myself silly at this car chase movie of the 1970s. Anchor Bay delivered the goods, with a beautiful digital video transfer of the film and an informative documentary on the making of the movie, with Peter Fonda and Susan George providing many amusing anecdotes.

Special mention: Starcrash; Region 1
Have wanted this movie on DVD for quite awhile. The DVD transfer is horrible in terms of video and audio quality, the credits are in French, and the bonus features are sparse, but just having this movie on my shelf is satisfaction enough, I guess.