BEST RELEASE Numbered in order from 1-5. Must vote for five titles to have your ballot counted. Boxed sets can also be voted on in this category
1. To Sleep With Anger
2. The Koker Trilogy
3. L’humanite
4. Wanda
5. Until The End of the World
And just because it was too good a year to leave it at that:
6. Japon
7. Hedwig And The Angry Inch
8. Diamonds of the Night
9. Europa, Europa
10. Detour
BEST BOXED SET
The Koker Trilogy
BEST MODERN FILM "New" (within the last five years) films released by Criterion
24 Frames
BEST COMMENTARY New commentaries only, not ports of existing discs from other labels/studios (see list below)
The Daytrippers
BEST "BONUS" FILM See list below
One Hundred a Day on My Brilliant Career
BEST BOOKLET
1984, which doubles as a great propaganda poster to hang on the wall and unnerve visitors!
BEST ON-DISC NON-COMMENTARY EXTRA
The discussion between Amat Escalante and Carlos Reygadas on Japon
BEST REISSUE
Do The Right Thing
BEST UPGRADE Former DVD titles upgraded without new features
3 Silent Classics by Josef von Sternberg
BEST COVER
So many strong covers this year. I know only one counts but I have to throw out a top five anyway:
1. Death In Venice
2. L’humanite
3. To Sleep With Anger
4. The Daytrippers
5. Until The End of the World
Any one of those could have been top (and many others: for instance the cover for Shame and The Magic Flute seriously made me crazily consider picking up the discs just for them, despite having the Bergman boxset! But relatively calmer heads prevailed on that one. And I love the way that the style of the Old Joy cover pairs with Certain Women), but I just keep coming back to the sickly looking beauty of the bust in Death In Venice.
CLUNY BROWNIEST COVER
Cluny Brown
BEST PACKAGING
Godzilla: The Showa-Era Films 1954-1975 (though I’m keeping my earlier copy of Godzilla for the pop up packaging!)
BEST DISCOVERY For the film that is, as the NBC commercials used to say, new to you
Matewan – I missed a rare television screening of it in the mid 90s and had been kicking myself over it ever since. More John Sayles please! (Eight Men Out? Limbo? City of Joy? Return of the Seacaucus Seven?)
MOST UNNECESSARY RELEASE For the film that didn’t need to join the Collection, either for personal reasons (you hate it) or because Criterion’s additions added little to already available editions
Nothing really stood out to me this year as unnecessary so I will cheat and just say Shame, since we already have the boxset, and nothing was done to take advantage of a standalone release (see 'Flawed Release' below)
MOST FLAWED RELEASE For Criterion's treatment, not the film itself
Probably Shame again for the issues over not taking the opportunity to do a stand alone release to increase the bit rate on the disc and make it a worthwhile standalone purchase in its own right, no matter how enticing that cover looks!
BEST THREAD For the discussion that yielded the most interesting insights or entertainment this year
I will second the Michel Deville thread, where domino really made an enormous contribution in championing a filmmaker’s work. As with zedz’s posts on Alexander Kluge years ago there is nothing really that I could contribute to the discussion but those posts are going to be invaluable to return to over and over again, and compare my reactions against when I do get to see more of this director’s work for myself.
MEMBER OF THE YEAR For the member with the best contributions to the forum this year
It really has to be therewillbeblus, as I have found their posts always interesting and willing to dive into a discussion of the themes of whatever film is capturing their attention.
But I want to have an honourable mention to Minkin too, for their sterling work in collating the Criterion rumours list, which has taken the forum’s monthly speculation over new titles and guesses from the yearly picture clue from something that I had just a passing interest in to an essential round up that I always look forward to. And the Exploring the World Through Cinema thread, which although I really did not feel I was in the position to really meaningfully contribute to, I think was a wonderful addition to the forum.
RICHARD CRANIUM AWARD For the member with the worst contributions to the forum this year
I’m not sure really. I mean even Kino Insider provided some press releases that brought titles that would otherwise have passed me by to my attention, so I cannot really even vote for them with a clear conscience!
____
Here's an overall top ten releases of the year, whatever region:
1. The Ring Trilogy (Arrow Films) - the epicentre of the whole Japanese horror cycle of the late 90s gets its due in a wonderfully comprehensive set. Indispensible.
2. The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On (Second Run) - I was too young to have seen this on its one and only UK television showing in the late 1980s, and I never thought that this would get a release, but Second Run comes through again (the five hour version of Until The End of the World is the Criterion equivalent pleasant surprise of the year)
3. Akio Jissôji: The Buddhist Trilogy (Arrow Films) - Arrow again manages to make a trilogy box set contain four films. Not that I am complaining in the slightest!
4. Demonlover (Arrow), and I'll double it up with getting to discover Terra Formars through the Arrow disc as well
5. The Hong Sang-soo corner: The Day After (Cinema Guild) / Hotel By The River (Cinema Guild), which nicely complement Cinema Guild's previous Blu-ray releases of On The Beach At Night Alone and Claire's Camera from previous years.
6. 80s anime space warfare: The US editions of Space Runaway Ideon: The Complete Series and Movies (Maiden Japan), but also an honourable mention to the three separate releases that together made up a comprehensive set of the Armored Trooper Votoms show: one set of the TV Series, and then two covering the OVA films. (I'm still waiting on a way to obtain Legend of the Galactic Heroes however. Maybe next year?). I'm going to triple this up with the Anime Limited release of Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade on Blu-ray in the UK.
7. The Vinegar Syndrome corner: Taking Tiger Mountain (an early role for Bill Paxton in a black and white film set in rural Wales that remained unfinished for decades. The most fasincating release of the year), and 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy (otherwise known as Abel Ferrara's first feature film before The Driller Killer)
8. Romance (Second Sight) - Catherine Breillat's most infamous film got a 20th anniversary edition. Will any enterprising label rescue the even better Anatomy of Hell (previously released by Tartan Video on DVD in the UK) for a Blu-ray release in the future?
9. All About Lily Chou-Chou (Film Movement)
10. Of Flesh and Blood: The Cinema of Hirokazu Kore-eda (BFI) and Shoplifters (Thunderbird)
I do not feel that it would be proper to vote for them since I contributed to their Indiegogo and Kickstarter campaigns respectively, but I'm absolutely besotted with the Blu-ray boxset collecting all of Jan Švankmajer features, and had the wonderful early Christmas present just on Monday of receiving a package containing the beautiful new edition of the early 90s Gunsmith Cats series from AnimEigo (
Here's a video of another backer opening their edition). At the same time as backing Gunsmith Cats I picked up the series kickstarted in previous years,
Riding Bean (which Gunsmith Cats kind of spun off out of) and the amazing animation crossed with documentary film
Otaku no Video (I particularly like the VHS packaging styling on this one, which will sit nicely against Videodrome!), which came with all the patches and chipboard boxes, and Bubblegum Crisis in its standard Blu-ray edition.
So it has been a very Japanese year all around! The following are the US "honorable" mentions that are the rest of the releases that caught my eye this year. If you want the UK hono(u)rable mentions, I focused on them specifically
here:
Kino had a great year (off social media!) with
Four Times That Night, letting Mario Bava's sex comedy take on Rashomon finally get its Blu-ray due. Also the Cattet and Forzani film Let The Corpses Tan and Godard's The Image Book. I was also particularly glad to get a widescreen edition of Fred Schepisi's film Iceman (making it a kind of Schepisi year with the Masters of Cinema release of The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith).
The other Kino release that caught my attention was the three separate disc releases of Emmanuelle, Emmanuelle 2 and Goodbye Emmanuelle. This was kind of a Just Jaeckin year too with the career-bookending releases of Kino's Emmanuelle and Severin's edition of
Gwendoline (NSFW), or The Perils of Gwendoline In The Land of the Yik-Yak (aka the T&A version of an Indiana Jones or Romancing The Stone-style romp, with extra S&M). Hopefully we might get some editions of Girls or particularly the eye-popping The Story of O at some point in future years!
On Severin, they had an excellent year with the four hour giallo trailer compilation set All The Colors Of Giallo. Ecco & The Forbidden were two separate releases of Mondo film rarities. Joe D'Amato's Emanuelle and Fancoise added to the Em(m)anuelle deluge of the year. And it was great to finally see the 1996 Wax Mask film, that ended up being much more entertaining than I thought it would be!
Arrow did some great US only editions with Killer Nun and Who Saw Her Die? It is a bit too late for me to add their edition of Slaughterhouse Five to my list though!
And a lot of the smaller indie labels released valuable titles this year. The Film Movement edition of All About Lily Chou-Chou is my stand in for this trend on my top ten, but it was fantastic to also see: Bisbee '17 (Grasshopper Film), Knife + Heart (Altered Innocence), The Tough Ones (Grindhouse), Gebo and the Shadow (Cinema Guild), as well as the Cinema Guild edition of The Wild Pear Tree with its over six hour 'making of' documentary.
Also Blue Underground released an enormously deluxe edition of The New York Ripper and Two Evil Eyes, each with lenticular covers. What a world that we live in!
In US release terms, it was good to see Greta get a Blu-ray release, as that remains a DVD only release in the UK.
The other Vinegar Syndrome corner:
In The Cold Of The Night
Decoder, with added William S. Burroughs!
The weird world of Mondo Macabro :
The Killer of Dolls
Woman Chasing The Butterfly of Death, the wacky film from Kim Ki-young, better known for the 1960 arthouse classic The Housemaid. On this evidence we really need to see more of his films to see how he developed from one place to the other!
Then there is Shout! who had a very impressive year with:
The Harder They Come and the first release for Henzell's follow up film No Place Like Home
8mm
Quatermass 2 and Quatermass and the Pit (and The Abominable Snowman is due to have come out this month)
The Blob (1988) - finally I can see it outside of the limited Twilight Time edition
The Fly Collection - an amazing set collecting the three original films of the series along with the the remake and its sequel. That's almost the final word on all those films, at least until UHD!
And last but not least the ongoing Nikkatsu Roman Porno series continued on DVD, revealing new dimensions with eye-popping titles such as Lolita: Vibrator Torture, Flight Attendant: Scandal, Zoom Up: Seiko's Thigh, Woman In A Box: Virgin Sacrifice, Nun's Diary: Confession, Women In Prison and Nurse Girls' Dorm: Shamed Angel, and which all got released this year. Even Jasper Sharp appears to have thrown in the towel at this point, as his liner notes that the first twenty or so releases came with have stopped, although his Behind The Pink Curtain book on the films has been an invaluable research aid. In particular I am even more nervous to watch the sex-horror themed Woman In A Box film now that it seems that a lot of the action is pretty much unfaked hardcore (albeit still obscured with the required censorship blocks) from Sharp's write up of it.
It feels like another great year and this is without being able to find room to champion all the great UK releases more, from mentioning The Possessed, Donbass, the Oldboy set, A Case For A Rookie Hangman, Black Joy, the Flipside series continuing by the BFI, the American Horror Project Volume 2 (and associated releases of Toys Are Not For Children and Hitch Hike To Hell), Aniara, Bloody Terror, Scum, Track 29, The Andromeda Strain, Schramm, 90 Degrees In The Shade, The Fate of Lee Khan, The Legacy, Yakuza Law, In The Aftermath, etc, etc. But that is for another list...!
