Friday, August 04, 2006

Tartan Go Boxset Crazy

UK DVD buyers, Tartan want your money and they'll be calling for it this October and November.

There's The Wong Kar Wai Collection - In The Mood For Love, As Tears Go By and Days of Being Wild for £34.99 RRP. The latter two are presented in the original, correct Cantonese and if that isn't incentive enough, cinematographer Chris Doyle has recorded some commentary spiel.

Then there's The Jim Jarmusch Collection - Permanent Vacation, Stranger Than Paradise and Down By Law. This little lot will set you back a fiver more - £39.99 RRP. And according to Tartan, there's another trio of Jarmusch films coming in 2007 - these ones being Dead Man, Night on Earth and Mystery Train.

Rather more extravagantly, there's also a Complete Ingmar Bergman Collection, coming on 30 discs. This is priced at £299.99 RRP, which after the various online deals you'll find, probably brings the price down to something like £7.50 a disc. No news yet on which version of Fanny and Alexander is included, but I doubt the supreme Criterion edition will be bested.

Want any of these three sets? Remember, remember the 13th of November.

Most excitingly of all, perhaps, is the first release scheduled... Coming in October, Tartan are either finally righting past wrongs or cynically forcing a double dip, depending on how you look at it, with The Chan Wook Park Vengeance Trilogy boxset. Each film - Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance - is presented as a double disc set with a number of new-to-the-UK supplements included, most importantly of all the 'fade-to-black-and-white' version of Lady Vengeance. RRP is £49.99, which is pretty hefty, but this one smells of the January sales to me, so I'll be holding fire.

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