Everyone has a different opinion regarding the greatest films in history. Since half the fun is in the arguing, pity the poor cinephile who thinks they've got it all figured out. A new DVD box set from Criterion and Janus may not claim to have finally compiled the greatest films ever, but they've gotten off to a pretty good start.Janus was a distribution company founded in 1956 by Bryant Haliday and Cyrus Harvey. They had been showing foreign films in their Massachusetts theater for a few years before becoming the premiere distributors of foreign films in the US. Janus has teamed with their sister company Criterion to create Essential Art House: 50 Years Of Janus Film. This whopper of a collection is now available and includes films from directors like Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Luis Bunuel and Akira Kurosawa -- you can read about Criterion's remastered Seven Samurai here. In total, this box set contains 50 different films, numerous extras, and a 240-page book with an introduction written by Martin Scorsese. Most of these films have been available through Criterion for years, but not in one collection.
All of this film history doesn't come cheap though, the set has a retail price of $850. If that seems a little excessive, don't worry; Criterion is also planning on releasing individual discs from the series as well.
[via CNN Entertainment]
1. Deepdiscountdvd.com has the set for $594, which is under $12 apiece for Criterion editions of classic films. That's a steal.
Posted at 6:45PM on Oct 27th 2006 by the chimpanzee