Give the Gift of a Truckload of Great Movies

Posted on October 17, 2006

Gift-giving season is approaching fast, and if you’ve got a movie lover on your list who you want to do something nice for, you could do a lot worse than to pick up Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films for them.

It’s a box set of 50 (!) classic movies on DVD, including Alexander Nevsky, L’Avventura, The 400 Blows, Grand Illusion, Jules and Jim, Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Lady Vanishes, Rashomon, The Rules of the Game, Seven Samurai, The Seventh Seal, The Third Man, The 39 Steps, and Wild Strawberries. List price is $650, which isn’t unreasonable if your movie lover is, say, a spouse you cheated on this year or something. (DVDs are cheaper than diamonds!)

In seriousness, that breaks down to $13 per DVD, which isn’t bad; especially considering that you’re getting a huge chunk of the Criterion Collection in one fell swoop, plus a nice box and book. (Two years ago, Criterion actually offered their entire collection in a single gift pack, for the princely sum of $5,000! $650 is a steal in comparison.)

And no, this isn’t a hint for anyone to buy this for me.  Though if you WANTED to…