Released three months after a two-disc set, this extended edition of Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is without question the DVD of 2002. It's not easy to know where to begin. The picture on this disc, framed at 2.35:1 and anamorphic is brilliant, just as the original release was. Colors are vivid, blacks are solid, and detail is perfect. There are no signs of grain, scratches, shimming...it is a joy to view. The film, at three and a half hours, is split over two of the four discs. Yes, switching the discs midway through the film is necessary, but with the additional compression space, it's no wonder it looks so good. The sound, in both Dolby Digital EX and DTS ES tracks is equally amazing. Dialogue and sound effects are clear as a bell, while the surrounds are aggressive at just the right moments. But where this disc stands out more than any other are the supplements. On the first two discs are four commentary tracks. These include "The Director and Writers," with Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens; "The Design Team," including production designer Grant Major, costume designer Ngila Dickson, creative supervisor Richard Taylor, conceptual designers Alan Lee and John Howe, supervising art director Dan Hennah, art department manager Chris Hennah, and workshop manager Tania Rodger; "The Production/Post-Production Team," which has producer Barrie Osborne, executive producer Mark Ordesky, director of photography Andrew Lesnie, editor John Gilbert, co-producer Rick Porras, composer Howard Shore, visual effects supervisor Jim Rygiel, supervising sound editors Ethan van der Ryn and Mike Hopkins, animation designer Randy Cook, VFX art director Christian Rivers, VFX cinematographer Brian Vant Hul, and miniatures director of photography Alex Funke; and if that was not enough, there is "The Cast," with Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Liv Tyler, Sean Astin, John Rhys-Davies, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Orlando Bloom, Christopher Lee, and Sean Bean. And that is just the first two discs! The third and fourth discs are an amazing revelation into the entire filmmaking process. These discs are called the Appendices. Disc three, "From Book to Vision," covers the process of adapting the book to film form; three and a half hours of documentaries trace the original published work of J.R.R. Tolkien through the vast pre-production journey of the film. Included are lengthy detailed pieces on the costumes, pre-visualizations, storyboards, and more artwork than you are likely to see anywhere else. The fourth disc, "From Vision to Reality," looks at everything regarding the actual filmmaking activity. Everything from casting, visual effects, sound, editing, and so much more are covered here in two and half hours of more documentaries. Both supplement discs are heavy with interviews and behind-the-scenes footage, and the inclusion of some 2,000 paintings and photographs, some with additional commentary, brings the total supplements to around 30 hours. A real plus is the lack of too much repetition, which could have greatly cut the enjoyment of perusing the wealth of information. Lord of the Rings fans, and those new to this marvelous work, will be swept away by the caliber of what is offered here. When you get right down to it, there simply aren't enough superlatives for this DVD release. New Line and the filmmakers involved have gone out of their way to make this a DVD release that shines above all others.

MGM/UA first released a special edition of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in 2003, but it apparently took a little while longer for the company to recognize that the two earlier installments of Sergio Leone's Clint Eastwood trilogy were equally ripe for that kind of treatment. A Fistful of Dollars is present here in a gorgeous film-to-video transfer, one that was probably more expensive to do than the original movie (which was done on an extremely low budget) was to shoot. Every shot now shows the clarity and detail rivaling a still photograph, with the letterboxed (2.35:1) Techniscope image starting to crowd in on Cinemascope-level resolution. The chaptering is generous, as it was on the old low-priced DVD; and the sound is now good and loud and detailed, in ways it wasn't possible to achieve with DVDs in the late '90s. (Unlike the old single-disc DVD, there is no full-screen transfer on this disc, only the letterboxed version -- not that anyone with any sense would want the full-screen version; as the commentary by Christopher Frayling correctly points out, the widescreen image is used to frame most of the key scenes in this movie, and breaking that up destroys the intended compositions.) But the real treat -- beyond the best presentation that the movie has ever had in a home-viewing format -- lies with the extras. There's a glorious commentary track by scholar Christopher Frayling in which he delves into the historical background of the production -- we find out the reason why just about every shot and every scene was done the way it was (and it usually had to do with the low budget that director Sergio Leone was working with), as much about any of the actors as we've ever known, and we are walked through the reasons behind the special appeal of Italian-made Westerns, and Leone's movies in particular. Frayling ranges from cinema to art to literature, with detours into theology, popular culture, and a half-dozen other fields, and gives us the equivalent of a month's worth of film discussion in 101 minutes. And then, to top it off, he appears in one of the three background featurettes on the bonus disc, going into more detail. The other two featurettes put Eastwood on camera reminiscing about meeting Leone for the first time, and friends and colleagues recalling the director; and we get director Monte Hellman discussing his momentary career intersection with the movie, when he was hired to shoot a introduction for the film for its first telecast on ABC, a well-meaning but idiotic effort by the network to cast the Eastwood character's actions in a moral context. (Harry Dean Stanton is in the scene, but Eastwood was not, and an actor about a head shorter than he is can be seen in a similar outfit, his face obscured by shadow.) We also get trailers and radio spots for the movie. What we don't get, amazingly enough, is the original U.S. trailer for the movie, which was on the old single-disc DVD of the film. Instead, there's a double-feature trailer for the re-release of A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More. This may seem like an oversight, but that original trailer was superb, and is good enough that this reviewer is saving the old DVD just because it is on it. The oversight is astonishing, given the thoroughness of the rest of the disc, and it also raises another question -- did the producers ever consider getting some of the European trailers for the movie, so we could see how it was marketed in Italy, Spain, France, Germany, etc., to compare how United Artists presented the picture here? That one flaw aside, it's impossible to complain about this set -- it's a beautiful total-immersion experience in the movie and the genre. The discs each open to an easy-to-use multi-layered menu, with the special features on each accessible quickly and simply, with the menu underscored by Ennio Morricone's music.