Gifts from Blade Runner to Batman
Once upon a time, the holiday season was the happiest time of year for the marketers of packaged goods and home entertainment collections, but times are tough all over. This year marks a distinct decline in the number of fancy-pants boxed sets competing for your yuletide dollar as revenues slide across the board and consumers grow more savvy about platforms and delivery choices.
Yes, the days of the ScoobyDoo van and the Planet of the Apes head seem to be behind us, but there are still plenty of solid cinematic gift choices for every person on your list.
FOR YOUR FAVOU R I TE F LAWE D SUPERHERO:
The Dark Knight Trilogy: Easily the best score of the season, this collection features all three of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight films, as well as the separate bonus features original to each release. The one new bonus on the gift set is the inclusion of a 64-page excerpt from the book, The Art and the Making of the Dark Knight Trilogy. It all makes for a rather pretty package that will let you relive the highs, and horrific lows, of this timely and oddly haunted film franchise about an ordinary man who puts himself in harm’s way to avenge the past. The set is affordable for any budget, which explains why it’s sitting atop the weekly sales charts.
FOR THE ORNITHOLOGIST OR SHOWER- INSTALLER:
Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection: Thanks to Sacha Gervasi’s new biopic about the famed Master of Suspense, Hitch is on the tip of the pop culture tongue at the moment — and you get the feeling it’s a place he’d love to be because the director of such modern classics as Psycho, The Birds and North By Northwest went of his way to shock and unseat America’s postwar optimism. Just about every reel in this superb collection could be read as metaphor for foiled ideals, and the corrupting forces of lust and greed. Films included in this nicely packaged boxed set include Psycho, The Birds, Vertigo, Rear Window, North By Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Marnie, Saboteur, Shadow of a Doubt, Rope, The Trouble with Harry, Torn Curtain, Topaz, Frenzy and Family Plot.
FOR THE V I AGRA POPPER:
Bond 50: You’ll have to stay up a very long time to watch all 22 films in this definitive boxed set featuring every single Bond movie made, right up to the most recent, Skyfall. You don’t need a list of all the titles, but there are nine that are new to Blu-ray, including Goldeneye, Octopussy, The Spy Who Loved Me, You Only Live Twice, The Living Daylights, Tomorrow Never Dies, Diamonds are Forever, A View to A Kill and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
FOR THE THINKING ACTION FAN:
Blade Runner 30th Anniversary Collector’s Edition: This movie always earns a spot on my top 10 movies of all time because Ridley Scott’s visionary take on Philip K. Dick’s work was created before computer generated images were the norm. The set and props are all real, which lends this futuristic film noir an entirely gritty, artsy edge. It plays to the film’s core themes of blood and betrayal as Harrison Ford plays a cop looking to kill a group of rebellious Replicants (fake humans created for slave labour), but finds himself falling in love with the femme fatale — played here by a still-sane Sean Young.
FOR THOSE WITH PATI ENC E :
Lawrence of Arabia: It’s a long movie, but it looks prettier than Peter O’Toole himself thanks to the newly restored digital print, which brings David Lean’s masterpiece to the small screen in all its grandeur — and cinemascope width. No more pan and scan, this edition lets the frames speak for themselves as O’Toole crosses the desert in a bid to unite two clans against a common enemy. This take on Lawrence also features interviews with O’Toole, soundtrack CD, coffee table book, numbered mounted 70mm film cell from the film and collector package.
FOR THE HARRY POTTER FAN IN WITHDRAWAL :
Harry Potter Wizard’s Collection: You probably couldn’t pay more for a collection this season, but this gigantic trove of Potter goodies would make some Potterphile extremely happy. An architectural marvel of packaging, this set opens up like a magic box and contains all the Harry Potter movies as well as a 48-page book, a Catalogue of Artefacts, Cloth Map of Hogwarts, Horcrux locket and 31 discs of content.
FOR TH E METROS EXUAL :
Route 66: The Complete Series: Before the term “metrosexual” even existed, TV viewers were given the chance to watch two grown, and rather goodlooking, men drive across the U.S. in a sexy Corvette. They are best friends, but Martin Milner and George Maharis have all kinds of indescribable chemistry as they share the road, and their lives, in this curious piece of Americana that ran from 1960 to 1964. The stories reflect a different time, and a whole other reality, as Robert Redford, Burt Reynolds and Gene Hackman got their foot in the door as bit players in this weekly look at the heart of America.
FOR HUNGRY GAMERS :
Battle Royale: The Complete Collection: Forget Katniss Everdeen and those soft-hearted stories of friendship. The Japanese took the Hunger Games concept to the tatami mat before Jennifer Lawrence picked up a bow. Often called the most violent movie series ever made, Kinji Fukasaku’s franchise was never released in North America because it was just too brutal. And yet, awful as it sounds, it works because it plays on human weakness and the ugliness that lies within us all as we watch a group of high school students forced to hunt and kill each other. More titles worth wrapping: Avengers, Sunset Boulevard Anniversary Edition, The Terminator Anthology, The Tarantino Collection, The Mel Brooks Collection, Cinderella Collector’s Edition, Game of Thrones Complete First Season Collector’s Edition, Universal Anniversary Collection.