“The Collected Works of Hayao Miyazaki”
Japanese auteur Hayao Miyazaki is maybe the most influential animator in cinema history. His classics include “Princess Mononoke,” “Spirited Away,” “My Neighbour Totoro” and “Howl’s Moving Castle.” Those four titles are part of “The Collected Works of Hayao Miyazaki,” a collection of 11 Miyazaki classics fully remastered and restored so you can take in the sumptuous hand-drawn visuals that have made him the legend that he is.
Olive Films Releases
Criterion tends to overshadow everyone and arguably, we’re not helping, but there are other boutique DVD labels that reissue vintage films with lots of similar love, attention and care. Olive Films is one of them. While not all of them are 2017 releases, may we suggest a care package with Orson Welles’ finally available and often overlooked and tautly-paced drama, “The Stranger,” which is just a step removed from his classic films, Arthur Penn’s “The Miracle Worker” starring Anne Bancroft (“The Graduate”) and Patty Duke (“Valley of the Dolls”) and centering on the story of Helen Keller and Bob Rafelson’s (“Five Easy Pieces”) dramatic comedy “Stay Hungry” featuring the bizarre cast of Jeff Bridges, Sally Field and Arnold Schwarzenegger who would take home a Golden Globe for “Best Acting Debut in a Motion Picture” in 1977. While you’re at it, you could throw in Elaine May’s “A New Leaf,” the awful, but amusing kitschy and campy, cult classic, “Savage Innocents” by Nicholas Ray, and the Western classic “High Noon” with Gary Cooper.
Seijun Suzuki: The Early Years. Vol. 1 Seijun Rising: The Youth Movies
Like Olive Films, Arrow Video releases many great cinephile classics and forgotten gems too. What we want on our Christmas list is this killer box set of the work of gonzo B-movie Japanese filmmaker Seijun Suzuki, a favorite of filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch. Up until now, Criterion’s lorded over Suzuki’s career on home video with some riotous gangster films, but Arrow—who already owns rights to The Taisho Trilogy— throws down the gauntlet too with many early works including “The Boy Who Came Back” (1958) marks the first appearances of Nikkatsu Diamond Guys and regular Suzuki collaborators Akira Kobayashi and Jo Shishido, “The Wind-of-Youth Group Crosses the Mountain Pass” (1961), “Teenage Yakuza” (1962), “The Incorrigible” (1963) (also known as ”The Bastard”) and “Born Under Crossed Stars” (1965).”
Fritz Lang: The Silent Films (12 Blu-ray Set)
Absolutely for the budding cinephile or veteran cineaste is the the complete silent films of German cinema’s supreme stylist Fritz Lang. A twelve-disc blu-ray collection including “Metropolis” (1927), “Die Nibelungen” (1924), “Spies” (1928), “Dr. Mabuse the Gambler” (1922), “Destiny” (1921), “The Spiders” (1919), “Woman in the Moon” (1929), “Four Around the Woman” (1921), “Harakiri” (1919), “The Wandering Shadow” (1920), “The Plague of Florence” (1919), this is a film school in a box and could keep you busy for all of 2018. Just imagine how many film professors are going to go ape for this one.
