This Week On DVD and Blu-ray: April 14, 2009

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Wow, what a horrible week for DVD and Blu-ray releases. Sure, some people will be interested in picking up The Reader after it was nominated for Best Picture, beating out poor ol’ Dark Knight. I had it at #10 on my Best of 2008 list and I would love to own a Blu-ray version for reasons I will soon tell you, but I think that is a film I will remain in the minority and I would never recommend anyone pick it up on a blind buy. So what does that leave you with? The Spirit? I know a few people will probably be interested in the Blu-ray edition of Pride and Prejudice and the other half might think about buying 8 Mile on Blu-ray, but all-in-all there is really nothing to suggest here.

So, while you can still read my mini-capsules below I would like to steer you in another direction. This past Sunday I purchased three DVDs, one of them I suggest anyone that says they actually like movies should just stop right now and buy, and the other two being yet two more Akira Kurosawa films I didn’t already have in my collection.

First, the Kurosawa films include The Hidden Fortress and Ran. Both editions are from Criterion, The Hidden Fortress stars Toshiro Mifune and is best known as the primary influence on Star Wars and comes with a video interview with Lucas about Kurosawa. I still don’t own Kagemusha, which was helped greatly by Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola who helped convince 20th Century Fox to foot part of the bill on the film as the original producers, Toho Studios, could not afford to complete it.

As for Ran, I was very upset to learn Criterion had to withdraw the upcoming Blu-ray release of the Kurosawa classic due to a rights issue. I have seen Ran only once, but when I saw it I saw it via Netflix with a non-anamorphic version with an awful picture and subtitling. To say watching a thumbnail version of a 2 hour and 40 minute film affected my viewing would be an understatement. So, considering the Blu-ray release is in limbo and Criterion’s DVD release is out of print, when I saw it I just had to pick it up. You can watch the trailer for Ran right here.

I don’t want to go too deep into my personal thoughts on the film just yet, although I am obviously enamored with it, but I plan on watching the Richard Gere 1983 remake this week prior to doing my write-up and also want to digest some of the features on this disc first. Breathless was the first Godard film I have seen outside of the short he created with Francois Truffaut, which is available on Criterion’s The Last Metro. I hope to be able to bring more than just empty adjectives when I write it up, but if you want a very well written piece check out Ebert’s 2003 review in which I was very happy to see he mentioned Bonnie and Clyde more than once.

If you are interested in any of the above titles just click here and take your pick. Obviously I recommend Breathless above and beyond any DVD or Blu-ray listed in this today’s report, but you can’t go wrong with the other two either.