Wannabe

I just saw this and was wondering what the case was made out of. Cardboard, leather, wood?

Also, I've never seen "A Passage to India." Would that be a good blind buy?


http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000AGQ72

Walter Neff

I think the box is just cardboard -- not quite as fancy as it looks.

Ambassador

Go for the individual releases. As I recall, this collection consists entirely of the single-disc releases. (Can you imagine cramming all of Lawrence onto one disc!) The extras for Lawrence and Kwai are worthwhile, so go for the two-disc editions of those.

And yes, Passage to India is an excellent film. It's not quite as impressive as Lean's earlier epics, but it's an extremely intelligent and tasteful adaptation of an important novel. Savant gave it a good review several years ago on this very site.

Jackson_Browne

If you're really into extras, then go for the individual releases, but frankly I'm not sure if the extras are necessarily worth the price. The 2 disc release for Bridge on the River Kwai is almost $30 on Deep Discount DVD, while the single disc is significantly lower at $19. Personally, I would rather buy another film entirely than pay $11 for some behind the scenes features.

Superdaddy

I don't own it (have the two-disc version), but I believe the single-disc LOA is a flipper. That's how they solved the compression issue. The extras of the two-disc are, as others have said, not on this release.

Also want to throw in another recommendation for A Passage to India. Saw it on its original theatrical release, and I have the DVD. (It's a nice transfer, but essentially bare-bones; they didn't do an SE for this one, as they did for Kwai and LOA).

Wannabe

Even though I already have "Lawrence of Arabia", the box set seems like a decent value considering "A Passage to India" is $22 and "A Bridge Over the River Kwai" is $17.

Ambassador

Well, if you have the non-Superbit two-disc LoA, then you'll have a pretty good sense of the sort of extras that are on Kwai, since they were made around the same time and by the same producer (Laurent Bouzereau, I think). Personally, I think Lean's epics have fascinating back-stories, so I found the extras interesting. (And I grabbed the two-discers during a DDD sale several years ago, so the price didn't seem too high.)

But if the extras aren't appealing and you already have LoA, then the Collection may be a better deal in the long run. You'll end up with the same edition of Passage to India either way -- because there was only ever one single-disc release of that title..