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Holiday Gift Guide 2018: The best 4K and Blu-ray DVDs

Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema

First, the bad news: Criterion’s most ambitious project to date – a massive Blu-ray box set celebrating the Swedish master’s centenary by assembling 39 of his features, two obscure documentary shorts and scores of contextual extras, all presented in high-definition – has already sold out its run. Now the good news: a second printing has been announced for February 26, 2019, and you can pre-order one at Criterion’s website right now. Do that, tell whomever you’re giving it to, and maybe take them to one of TIFF’s final Bergman screenings to cushion the blow.

$320 from Criterion (which, for a 30-disc Blu-ray set, ain’t bad)

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Dietrich & Von Sternberg In Hollywood

If you’re thinking slightly smaller, Criterion’s Dietrich & Von Sternberg In Hollywood is a Golden Age fan’s dream, presenting Marlene and Josef’s six features for Paramount – among them Shanghai Express, Blonde Venus and The Devil Is A Woman – in new digital restorations with heaps of contextual extras.

$135 Blu-ray or DVD from Criterion (six-disc set)

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Criterion classics on Blu-ray

Criterion’s also been using its licensing deals to produce some lovely new editions of movies your family and friends might already own, so be their favourite person and surprise them with a Blu-ray upgrade of The Princess Bride or Some Like It Hot, both of which support new 4K restorations of their features with vintage extras rescued from Criterion’s original LaserDisc releases. There’s also a knockout package of David Byrne’s oddball musical True Stories –previously available in a bare-bones, full-frame DVD – that restores the film to its place in the 80s indie pantheon, and also includes a first-ever CD of the complete soundtrack.

The Princess Bride $43 Blu-ray/$32 DVD, Criterion

Some Like It Hot $43 Blu-ray/$32 DVD, Criterion

True Stories $54 Blu-ray/$32 DVD, Criterion

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PIONEERS: FIRST WOMEN FILMMAKERS

The future is female, but so was the past, as illustrated in Kino Lorber’s six-disc Blu-ray collection of early cinema directed by women, using recent Library of Congress restorations. There are discs devoted to the shorts of Alice Guy-Blaché and Lois Weber, another highlighting “genre pioneers” Helen Holmes, Grace Cunard and Mabel Normand, two platters of social commentary (including Weber’s Scandal Mongers and Dorothy Davenport Reid’s The Red Kimona) and a disc devoted to early features. Canadian content alert: Nell Shipman’s early adventure films Something New and Back To God’s Country are presented here looking as good as I’ve ever seen them.

$119.95 Blu-ray, $99.95 DVD, Bay Street Video (1172 Bay)

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2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY: 4K EDITION

Warner Bros. caps the 50th anniversary of Stanley Kubrick’s visionary sci-fi film with this pristine home edition, which really is the ultimate gift for anyone with a 4K set-up the newly remastered image (scanned from the 65mm camera negative rather than stepped-down 35mm film elements) and recalibrated sound mix are a major improvement on the HD editions released more than a decade ago. And even if your designated recipient doesn’t have a 4K player yet, the package also includes a remastered Blu-ray that’ll keep them happy for now.

$33.99, Best Buy (various locations)

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GAME OF THRONES: SEASON 1 4K

Speaking of 4K remasters, HBO’s reissuing the previous seasons of Game Of Thrones in ultra high resolution, so if someone in your life is planning to revisit the show before it all wraps up next year, give them the gift of maximum dynamic range for the experience. It turns out Dolby Vision really does make a difference to beheadings!

$44.99 4K, Bay Street Video (1172 Bay)

@normwilner

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