Criterion makes very nice DVD sets. They’re beautiful packages, and usually include insightful commentaries and interesting supplemental material. I already own several, and would own more if they weren’t so expensive. But now they’re tempting me — no, daring me — to buy their latest, an all-new edition of Kurosawa’s masterpiece The Seven Samurai. Including, in addition to one of the greatest films ever made:
- All-new, restored high-definition digital transfer
- Two audio commentaries: one by film scholars David Desser, Joan Mellen, Stephen Prince, Tony Rayns, and Donald Richie; the other by Japanese-film expert Michael Jeck
- A 50-minute documentary on the making of Seven Samurai, part of the Toho Masterworks series Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create
- My Life in Cinema, a two-hour video conversation between Akira Kurosawa and Nagisa Oshima produced by the Directors Guild of Japan
- Seven Samurai: Origins and Influences, a new documentary lookimg at the samurai traditions and films that impacted Kurosawa’s masterpiece
- Gallery of rare posters and behind-the scenes and production stills
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- A booklet featuring essays by Peter Cowie, Philip Kemp, Peggy Chiao, Alain Silver, Kenneth Turan, Stuart Galbraith, Arthur Penn, and Sidney Lumet and an interview with Toshiro Mifune
What’s all the more depressing/amazing about this is that I already own Criterion’s Seven Samurai, one of the first discs they put out. And while it’s an okay package (featuring a nice commentary which points out the guy being run over by a horse in the final battle), this new one is too good to resist. It’ll probably be a rental initially, but I’ll need to own it within a few months. (which would be, say, Christmas!)