Rolling Stone Magazine's Best DVDs of 2005
 

The latest Rolling Stone magazine (and their website ) features Peter Travers' list of the best DVDs of 2005 and why they made the list. What do you think?

1. Star Wars III Revenge of the Sith

Hot Bonus: A unique documentary, "Within a Minute," details every element it took to produce a mere forty-nine seconds from the light-saber duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) on the lava planet Mustafar.

Killer Scene: As Anakin nearly melts in lava, only to be put back together, Frankenstein style, by the Emperor, Lucas intercuts Padme giving birth to the twins Luke and Leia. It's a link to genuine feeling at last.


2. War of the Worlds

Hot Bonus: The inside dish about the creation of the Tripods is film-geek nirvana. Cruise keeps jawing about how he and Spielberg are buddies, but one off-camera moment shows the director looking clearly annoyed as his playful brat of a star punches him in the arm while he's trying to set up a shot.

Killer Scene: For state-of-the-art FX and digital rumble, you can't beat the Tripods busting out from the ground, not from the air, where the cliche would put them.


3. King Kong

Hot Bonus: The "lost" spider-pit sequence is restored and serves as another tribute to the stop-motion animation genius of Willis O'Brien.

Killer Scene: Kong atop the Empire State Building, putting down Wray after one last romantic sniff and swinging at fighter planes that shoot him down. Or did they? As the last line insists, "It was beauty killed the beast."


4. Batman Begins

Hot Bonus: The ninety minutes of bonus materials on the Deluxe Edition is heaven for comic-book geeks, even if you have to suffer through a lame Jimmy Fallon parody from the MTV Movie Awards.

Killer Scene: The birth of the Batmobile. Bruce asks if it comes in black, and whoosh, we're off.


5. Sin City: Recut and Extended

Hot Bonus: I loved being able to access the three tales separately.

Killer Scene: Rourke waking up next to a dead hooker and vowing to send a soul "screaming into hell."


6. Cinderella Man

Hot Bonus: Fascinating material on the real Braddock.

Killer Scene: Braddock going a punishing fifteen rounds against the brain-crushing heavyweight champ Max Baer (Craig Bierko).


7. The Big Lebowski (Achiever's Edition)

Hot Bonus: The Coens speak. As usual, the info they offer is useless. As usual, it's hilarious.

Killer Scene: A hood pees on the Dude's rug, forcing its removal and saddening the Dude: "That rug really tied the room together."


8. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Hot Bonus: A segment on how Burton turned actor Deep Roy into dozens of Oompa-Loompas.

Killer Scene: The nut-sorting.


9. Saw: Uncut Edition

Hot Bonus: There's an Easter Egg hidden in the "Dissection" bonus feature starring the evil puppet.

Killer Scene: The surprise ending holds up to repeat viewings.


10. Oldboy

Hot Bonus: Director's commentary that is fierce and funny. It seems all the suspects on Oh Dae-su's list are the names of the director's filmmaking colleagues.

Killer Scene: At a sushi bar, Oh Dae-su chomps down on some live, wiggling squid. Yuck.


11. Crash

Hot Bonus: Potent commentary from Haggis and Cheadle.

Killer Scene: Newton and Howard being shaken down by cops Dillon and Ryan Phillippe.


12. The Val Lewton Horror Collection

Hot Bonus: A doc on Lewton's legacy, Shadows in the Dark.

Killer Scene: The deserted indoor pool in Cat People.


13. Astaire and Rogers: The Collection Vol. 1

Hot Bonus: Commentary by Astaire's daughter, Ava, adds just the right personal touch.

Killer Scene: "Never Gonna Dance," from Swing Time, is the most erotic dance number in which the team ever participated.


14. Titanic

Hot Bonus: They are all hot -- especially if seeing a deleted scene of Leo and Kate playing tonsil hockey under a shooting star turns you on -- but I could have done without the nine-minute alternate ending.

Killer Scene: The ship goes down. Rank out the love story all you want, but the film's technical achievement is monumental. And the sequence with the drowned bodies floating like ghosts in the night is truly haunting.


15. Airplane!

Hot Bonus: Deleted scenes crack up the film's three directors.

Killer Scene: Peter Graves is a riot as a pederast pilot. ("Joey, do you like gladiator movies?")


16. The Wizard of Oz

Hot Bonus: A newly restored transfer of the 1925 silent version of Oz starring Oliver Hardy.

Killer Scene: The simplest. Garland by a haystack -- in glorious black-and-white -- singing "Over the Rainbow" to Toto.


17. Office Space

Hot Bonus: Judge leads the cast down memory lane in a documentary retrospective.

Killer Scene: Can anyone forget Milton and the Swingline stapler or the way the boss (Gary Cole at his smarmiest) asks his employees, "So, what happening?"


18. Rize

Hot Bonus: Extended dance numbers that really kick in.

Killer Scene: The Battlezone krump competition.


19. The 40-Year-Old Virgin

Hot Bonus: Know how I know the deleted scenes on this disc are funny? I can't stop watching them. Proof positive that Carell and director Judd Apatow are top writers. It's one joke stretched hard, but it doesn't break.

Killer Scene: Carell getting the hair yanked off his chest with hot wax. He did it for real. Yikes.


20. The Devil's Rejects

Hot Bonus: Zombie gives good audio commentary, but the second disc on this set is a two-and-a-half-hour documentary, 30 Days in Hell, that could serve as a course in indie filmmaking.

Killer Scene: Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" playing over the blood-soaked finale.


21. 7 Men From Now

Hot Bonus: The Special Collector's Edition is the first Boetticher Western ever on DVD.

Killer Scene: Scott's first kill is as chilling as any in Unforgiven.


22. No Direction Home: Bob Dylan

Hot Bonus: A feature that allows you to go directly to the musical moments in the film.

Killer Scene: With 1965's "Like a Rolling Stone," Dylan goes electric and shocks his fans.


23. Pickpocket

Hot Bonus: The cast and crew are interviewed about Bresson, whose comment ("I'd rather that people felt a film before understanding it") cuts to the heart of his unsparing directing style.

Killer Scene: It's impossible not to think of Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver as LaSalle practices putting on the faces he will wear when attempting to commit a crime.


24. Gladiator (3 disc extended)

Hot Bonus: Ridley Scott remains a model for how to do director's commentary. And this time he's joined by Crowe. Plus, the "making of" doc is a lulu.

Killer Scene: Crowe in the ring with the tigers is the kind of moment that makes your home-theater system sit up and roar.



25. March of the Penguins

Hot Bonus: A look at how they got all those amazing shots. Cinematographers Jerome Maison and Laurent Chalet really earned their pay.

Killer Scene: After the penguins hatch their eggs, they watch their chicks confront the perils of starvation and attack birds, and then face death from leopard seals. That's what I call uplifting family entertainment.

You can read more about it on their website

WOW! So Travers puts ROTS first, even though he hated the film. Interesting!

Can't comment on the one's that haven't been released yet, but I watched 2 of their top 3 yesterday & they definitely belong. WOTW may have the best DTS soundtrack ever, spectacular. And Kong was a revelation, like I've never seen it before... easily my #1 of the year, WOW!

40 year old virgin's not even out for another month!? Looking forward to it though.

This guy is pulling the list out of his ass. Oldboy, although amazing film, is one of the worst DVDs. The transfer is horrible. Titanic has that horrible glitch and it didn't include all the extras other regions have. The Big Lebowski is just another useless double dip by Universal since it only adds very little that the previous release didn't have. And he has 6 DVDs that haven't come out yet and even though he probably has early copies of each, he didn't tell me anything that the press releases already had said. I hate when people make list for the hell of it.

The part abotu this review that annoys me the most is this comment: "The "lost" spider-pit sequence is restored and serves as another tribute to the stop-motion animation genius of Willis O'Brien."

He's acting as if this is real. The footage is fake tho...Peter Jackson created it. (Or am I completely off my rocker?)

Yeah, like most mainstream lists these days, it's a truly laughable assembly of mostly recent (and therefore, highly promotable) releases. Entertainment Weekly does the same thing.

I am trying not to think...Oldboy has one of the most obvious PAL-NTSC "ghosting" schemes. And not even a note about the spectacular Greta Garbo boxset (pick any film) that WB delivered....

Ciao,
Pro-B

This guy never watched TV on DVD? ;)

Forgive me. Not a big fan of the Travers, even though I must admit... seeing him include stuff like Saw, Airplane! and Virgin is impressive.

Typical. I knew this fantastic collection would be shoved under the rug. I fondle mine every other day it seems.:lol:

While I mainly agree with your post, I thought that The Big Lebowski CE wasn't a useless release, due to the superior transfer. Since I held off on buying the original in anticipation of a better version coming along, the new release was perfect for my situation.

To be fair, dx23's original post called THE BIG LEBOWSKI CE a "useless double dip" and not a "useless release." The difference is noteworthy in that the transfer was such a minor improvement and the extras so insignificantly enhanced (if you can even call them that), that it wasn't really worth a double dip -- especially considering how the film has gone on to become quite the cult favorite, thanks in no small part to Lebowski Fest. For instance, Jeff Bridges' surprise appearance and performance at the last Lebowski Fest West should have been an extra on this disc. There sure were more than enough Mini-DV cameras taping the event that night.

So while, yes, it's technically an improvement and certainly a worthy release (after all, the film's the thing), it could have been so much, much, MUCH more, rendering it a largely unworthy double dip. (And yeah, I know...that's just like my opinion, man.)

What about the Harold Loyd Box set??

Every review I've read says it's one of the best releases of 2005..except for Peter Travers of course

Our top dvd list, once it's finalized, will be better and more accurate than this one.

I agree with alot of those titles though. However, I wouldn't put Star Wars #1. Everything on it is top notch, except I thought the audio mix should have been more aggressive. Batman Begins and War of the Worlds have better mixes. I thought I read on here somewhere that they purposely mixed the track a tad lower than on the previous 2 Star Wars movies. Or maybe I'm completely wrong.

Even in the movie theater, I thought it wasn't as strong as Batman Begins or War of the Worlds. I saw Land of the Dead at the same theater and the bass on its track was stronger than Star Wars.

He listed the movies instead of the DVDs. A worthless list.

Office Space? It's only 1 disc!

I don't take any "best of" DVD list seriously if only includes one Criterion.

In the magazine he lists the top tv on dvd sets of the year (Lost was his choice for #1).

http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/...on=6.0.12.1040

His number one DVD's theatrical review. Here's an interesting quote:

"To hail Revenge of the Sith as a satisfying bridge to a classic is not just playing a game of the Emperor's New Clothes, it's an insult to what the original accomplished. To paraphrase Padme: This is how truth dies -- to thunderous applause."

I agree with that

What about The Twilight Zone: The Definitive Editions? *sigh* if only all TV shows on DVD were put out with that kind of care...

Has the extended Sin City even been released yet?

also for his best of tv on dvd, there is a lovely spoiler for 24 season 4 that happens late in the season.

So, a 40-Year-Old Virgin could knock out a Raging Bull.

Not to mention the fact that he's rating DVDs that the public doesn't have access to and won't for weeks and as long as a month from now. Makes the list seem worthless and a bit elitist to us guys on the street.

Sorry, folks, but why even discuss a Peter Travers article? He was/is a notorious "quote whore" (a critic who sends his reviews to the studios so he can be quoted in their ads*) and, considering his journalistic intregity, I wouldn't put it past him (and other magazine critics with "early" publication dates, for that matter) to use studio press releases for his write-ups on unreleased (and, dare we say, unseen) DVDs.

*I don't know if was Travers, but one such critic got caught sending his/her reviews to the studios before they were given to his/her boss; he/she was discovered by their publication when a studio ad quoted material edited from the published review.