Comments: My contributions to Camera Obscura:The Walerian Borowczyk Collection (Arrow) and Withnail and I (Arrow) were my own two personal highlights of the year. Regardless of my input on this project, I feel the Borowczyk set is one of most important releases of the year, for resurrecting so much long-unseen and unavailable work by this incredible but much-neglected filmmaker and artist. At this stage no cinephile really needs convincing of the genius of say, Tati, Herzog or Demy (the other celebrated box sets this year) but Borowczyk was in great danger of being forgotten. Thanks to the efforts of all who contributed directly and indirectly via our Kickstarter campaign that's now very unlikely to happen.

Tied for Second Place with 132 pts is Juraj Jakubisko's Birds, Orphans and Fools from Second Run in the UK – Shot immediately after the Soviet invasion of 1968, Jakubisko's long-repressed feature focuses on the the three-way relationship that develops between two male friends and a female Jewish orphan as they travail a world ravaged by death and destruction, a war-torn landscape of bombed-out churches and wrecked homes occupied, it seems, only by themselves and birds. Their triangular relationship recalls Truffaut's Jules et Jim, but Jakubisko's heroes have no romantic ideals - they are all orphans, products of an absurd world in which their parents killed each.



With references from Shakespeare to Rabelais, key episodes in Slovak history, and recalling the anarchic air of Vera Chytilová's DAISIES, Jakubisko's exhilarating, experimental film is turn playful, surreal and increasingly nightmarish. .

Tied for Second Place with 132 pts is Eclipse Series 41: Kinoshita and World War II – Hugely popular in his home country of Japan, Keisuke Kinoshita worked tirelessly as a director for nearly half a century, making lyrical, sentimental films that often center on the inherent goodness of people, especially in times of distress. He began his directing career during a most challenging time for Japanese cinema: World War II, when the industry’s output was closely monitored by the state and often had to be purely propagandistic. This collection of Kinoshita’s first films—four made while the war was going on and one shortly after Japan’s surrender—demonstrates the way the filmmaker’s humanity and exquisite cinematic technique shone through even in the darkest of times.

Also Tied for Second Place with 132 pts is Karel Zeman's A Jester's Tale – The legendary, visionary Czech filmmaker Karel Zeman has been a profound influence on whole generations of filmmakers from Jan Svankmajer to Tim Burton, the Quay Brothers to Terry Gilliam. His ground-breaking innovations in the use of live-action and animation mark him as one of the great masters of 20th Century fantasy cinema. A JESTER'S TALE is one of his most renowned and celebrated achievments. Described by Zeman as a "pseudo-historical" film, it is a bold anti-war black comedy following the adventures of a plowboy and a mercenary, press-ganged into service on the battlefields of the Thirty Years War of 1618 - 1648.





Fifth Place with 92 pts is Eclipse Series 40: Late Ray – The films directed by the great Satyajit Ray (Charulata) in the last ten years of his life have a unique dignity and drama. Three of them are collected here: the fervent Rabindranath Tagore adaptation The Home and the World; the vital Henrik Ibsen-inspired An Enemy of the People; and the filmmaker's final film, the poignant and philosophical family story The Stranger. Each is a complex, political, and humane portrait of a world both corrupt and indescribably beautiful, constructed with Ray's characteristic elegance and imbued with autumnal profundity. These late-career features are the meditative works of a master. .

In for Sixth Place with 87 points - Show Boat Edna Ferber’s classic tale of life and love among a theatrical troupe on a Mississippi riverboat has received many dramatic treatments since its birth over eighty years ago. But none is more satisfying than this 1936 production, widely accepted as the best and most faithful of three screen versions of the Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein II musical. A splendid, indeed definitive cast features Irene Dunne as the lovely Magnolia, fated to fall for Allan Jones’ dashing riverboat gambler, Gaylord Ravenal. It is their turbulent romance and Magnolia’s growth from a shy guileless girl to a mature star of the stage that form the core of the story. In her last film appearance, Helen Morgan will break your heart as the tragic Julie, with her songs “Bill” and “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man.” And there is perhaps no more memorable performance in musical history than Paul Robeson’s moving rendition of “Ol’ Man River.”.

Tied for 7th Place with 72 pts is Shivendra Singh Dungarpur's Celluloid Man from Second Run. Celluloid Man is a tribute to an extraordinary man called P.K.Nair. Mr Nair's fascination with cinema began as a child. He would collect ticket stubs, lobby cards, posters and finally film cans. He grew up to be a great collector of films - and so the Nation Film Archive of India was born. He built the Archive can by can in a country where film preservation was regarded as unimportant. Thanks to Nair's passion, the Archive has been able to preserve precious pieces of film history that would otherwise be lost and many filmmakers now have a place in history thanks to Nair's efforts. He is a living, breathing museum of cinema and he has influenced generations of filmmakers and shown them new worlds through the prism of cinema.

Tied for 7th Place with 72 pts is Coffret Jean Epstein – Jean Epstein died there at age 60 in April 1953. Poet, filmmaker, philosopher, he leaves considerable work that has, perhaps, never generated as much excitement, yet it remains largely unknown, perhaps because of the diversity of his work disconcerting, unclassifiable, very modern, inexhaustible source of inspiration for many filmmakers who followed him...He was in turn author vanguard, art house films, the "blockbusters" or documented maritime fictions. This DVD set includes 14 films, most of which have been preserved and restored by the French Cinémathèque.

Also tied for 7th Place with 72 pts is Andrzej Wajda's Man of Marble from Second Run DVD in the UK – Often described as 'the Polish CITIZEN KANE', Wajda's MAN OF MARBLE is about the attempts of a determined young woman filmmaker Agnieszka (Krystyna Janda) to make a documentary about the Polish national hero Mateusz Birkut, a labourer who, in the early days of the Communist revolution, was hailed for his productivity feats and became as famous as any film star, only to disappear from the record books in 1952. Through interviews with his former wife, colleagues, friends and enemies who knew him, Birkut emerges as a man who believed in the socialist ideals and the workers revolution. Unlike many of his colleagues and compatriots Birkut refused to forgive and forget. His disappearance became, in effect, the unrelenting conscience of the revolution. However, the young filmmaker's hard-driving style and the content of her film unnerve the authorities, who thinks it's getting too close to a political nerve.

Tied for 7th Place with 72 pts is Out of the Unknown (7-Disc DVD Set) - This classic anthology science fiction series, created by Irene Shubik (The Wednesday Play, Rumpole of the Bailey), was one of the most daring, ambitious and inventive series ever created. Intended to display the genre at its best, as parable or metaphor, whether seriously or satirically, the series drew from writers of the calibre of Frederick Pohl, E.M. Forster, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and John Wyndham. This extensive seven-disc DVD box set collects all 20 surviving episodes from the four original series, along with an extensive and comprehensive collection of extra features including one incomplete episode, four episode reconstructions, 11 audio commentaries, extensive stills galleries, an archival interview with director James Cellan Jones, and a newly-created 42-minute documentary with original cast and crew members and rarely seen fragments from lost episodes. .

BLU-RAYs OF THE YEAR

First Place with a whopping 693 pts is BFI's The Werner Herzog Collection (8-Disc Blu-ray Box Set) – The Werner Herzog Collection is an extensive Blu-ray box set compiling 18 films from the legendary German director. Features digitally remastered High Definition presentations of classics such as Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972); The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974); Nosferatu, the Vampyre (1979) and Fitzcarraldo (1982) plus many of Herzog's hugely acclaimed short films. Extras include Jack Bond's long-unseen South Bank Show on Herzog from 1982 and Les Blank's Burden of Dreams .

Tied For Second Place with 448 pts is Criterion's 25 film boxset of The Complete Jacques Tati – Though he made only a handful of films, director, writer, and actor Jacques Tati ranks among the most beloved of all cinematic geniuses. With a background in music hall and mime performance, Tati steadily built an ever-more-ambitious movie career that ultimately raised sight-gag comedy to the level of high art. In the surrogate character of the sweet and bumbling, eternally umbrella-toting and pipe-smoking Monsieur Hulot, Tati invented a charming symbol of humanity lost in a relentlessly modernizing modern age. This set gathers his six hilarious features—Jour de fete, Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, Mon oncle, PlayTime, Trafic, and Parade—along with seven delightful Tati-related short films. .

Tied For Second Place with 448 pts is Arrow Academy's Camera Obscura: The Walerian Borowczyk Collection This groundbreaking collection brings together Walerian Borowczyk's key films from a twenty-five-year period stretching from 1959 through to 1984. This unique release includes five of Borowczyk's provocative feature films: Theatre de M et Mme Kabal, Goto, l ile d amour, Blanche, Contes Immoraux and La Bete as well as his groundbreaking short films from this period. Not only are many of these films available on Blu-ray and DVD for the first time, but also in new digital high definition restorations approved by the director's widow, Ligia Branice. In addition to exclusive documentaries featuring cast and crew, an hour long portrait of Borowczyk is to be included, featuring the director s musings on painting, animation and sex. Accompanying this seminal release is a book edited by Borowczyk experts Daniel Bird and Michael Brooke featuring newly commissioned essays on Borowczyk s films and art, as well as an account of the meticulous restoration process involved.

Four th Place with 378 pts is Criterion's The Essential Jacques Demy. French director Jacques Demy didn’t just make movies—he created an entire cinematic world. Demy launched his glorious feature filmmaking career in the sixties, a decade of astonishing invention in his national cinema. He stood out from the crowd of his fellow New Wavers, however, by filtering his self-conscious formalism through deeply emotional storytelling. Fate and coincidence, doomed love, and storybook romance surface throughout his films, many of which are further united by the intersecting lives of characters who either appear or are referenced across titles. Demy’s films—which range from musical to melodrama to fantasia—are triumphs of visual and sound design, camera work, and music, and they are galvanized by the great stars of French cinema at their centers, including Anouk Aimée, Catherine Deneuve, and Jeanne Moreau. The works collected here, made from the sixties to the eighties, touch the heart and mind in equal measure.

Fifth Place with 364 pts is The Masters of Cinema's Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari – One of the most iconic masterpieces in cinema history, Robert Wiene's Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari shook filmgoers worldwide and changed the direction of the art form. Now presented in a definitive restoration, the film's chilling, radically expressionist vision is set to grip viewers again. At a local carnival in a small German town, hypnotist Dr. Caligari presents the somnambulist Cesare, who can purportedly predict the future of curious fairgoers. But at night, the doctor wakes Cesare from his sleep to enact his evil bidding... Incalculably influential, the film s nightmarishly jagged sets, sinister atmospheric and psychological emphasis left an immediate impact in its wake (horror, film noir, and gothic cinema would all be shaped directly by it). But this diabolical tale nevertheless stands alone - now more mesmerising than ever in this new Dual-Format special edition.

Sixth Place with 252 pts is Warner Archive's Blu-ray of Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past – Everything you want in a film noir you’ll find in Out of the Past. A Tenacious detective (Robert Mitchum) spinning his wheels to make good. A drop-dead beauty (Jane Greer) up to no good. A moneyed mobster (Kirk Douglas) with a shark’s grin. Plus double-crosses and fall guys. Shadowy rooms and bleak souls. Mitchum solidified his tough- guy persona in this archetypal film noir directed with memorable style by Jacques Tourneur (Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie). He plays Jeff Bailey, a one-time private investigator walking the straight and narrow of small-town life...until an acquaintance from his past pulls him back into the troubles he’d left behind.

Seventh Place with 170 pts is Criterion's Blu-ray of Ingmar Bergman's Persona - "Heavily artistically infused this chamber piece from Bergman lauded numerous international awards for both the film and the performances. It's beautiful imagery from Sven Nykvist's magnificent cinematography, its high level of pretension and its inability to be comprehensible have given it a unique place in cinema history. "Persona" can causes a myriad of personal reactions. Perhaps its greatest triumph is forcing the viewer to allow "it" to penetrate... to open yourself to its deeply felt expressions and perhaps have it touch upon your own. "Persona" is rife with universal emotions; pain, love, desire, regret, longing. This is a film that can be viewed multiple times garnering more from each visit ... or less, depending on how you allow it to brush your subconscious... that part of you filled with emotions which you rarely, if ever, openly discuss."

Eighth Place with 156 pts is Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery - On stunning High Definition Blu-ray, Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery is a comprehensive collection with every episode from the complete television series; both the U.S. and international versions of the series’ Pilot; the North American Blu-ray debut of David Lynch’s follow-up feature Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me; and nearly 90 minutes of deleted and extended scenes from the film. The set also features newly transferred Log Lady introductions for each episode; picture upgrades to many shots in the TV series; a new featurette with series creator Lynch and the actors who portrayed the Palmer family which includes a mesmerizing return to the lives of their characters today; and hours of never-before-released material that dives into the fascinating story behind the celebrated pop culture classic. .

Ninth Place with 145 pts is Criterion's package of Federico Fellini's La dolce vita - The biggest hit from the most popular Italian filmmaker of all time, La dolce vita rocketed Federico Fellini to international mainstream success—ironically, by offering a damning critique of the culture of stardom. A look at the darkness beneath the seductive lifestyles of Rome’s rich and glamorous, the film follows a notorious celebrity journalist (a sublimely cool Marcello Mastroianni) during a hectic week spent on the peripheries of the spotlight. This mordant picture was an incisive commentary on the deepening decadence of contemporary Europe, and it provided a prescient glimpse of just how gossip- and fame-obsessed our society would become.