A classic film from the Coen brothers, Raising Arizona features an excellent DVD transfer but not much more. Top cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld, who later directed Get Shorty and Wild Wild West, photographed this film and its transfer would make him proud. The widescreen 1:85 sparkles with color saturation and even the smallest background detail stands out to enhance the humor. Joel and Ethan Coen are known for making great quirky films and for never including commentary or interviews on their discs. They stay true to form here. Extras-wise, the disc doesn't offer much, except for a theatrical trailer, three TV spots, and trailers for their other films, Miller's Crossing and Barton Fink. Dolby Surround is available in English and French languages. Since the film has such a fanatical following, even without extras the awesome transfer will be enough for many fans to add this to their collection.

Streets of Fire [DVD]

The first film version of the Titanic disaster is given a diligent transfer by The Criterion Collection. It is presented in black-and-white widescreen non-anamorphic letterbox with an aspect ratio of 1.66:1. The image quality is near perfect with the only major flaw being a vertical line that appears at regular intervals throughout the print. The audio is presented in Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono and there is a commentary track featuring Don Lynch and Ken Marschall, the author and illustrator respectively of Titanic -- An Illustrated History. They offer intriguing historical details that add immeasurably to the viewing. An hour-long documentary "The Making of A Night to Remember" is mainly comprised of black-and-white, silent, behind-the-scenes footage narrated by the producer of the film William MacQuinty and the author of the book on which the film was based, Walter Lords. The footage and comments are priceless. The final feature is a theatrical trailer. Overall, a sterling presentation.

The triple-disc collector's edition of The Wizard of Oz is one of the two editions of the 1939 Victor Fleming film released in October of 2005. The other is the two-disc special edition, and both were preceded by the MGM/UA DVD at the end of the '90s and the first Warner Bros. DVD edition a couple of years earlier. The latter, in particular, was very good in its time, in terms of the transfer and the bonus materials, but this triple-desk version does indeed outclass it and all rival versions. It contains everything that's on the double-disc set: a stunningly crisp transfer that reveals more detail in the image -- elements of the picture that are blurred or barely seen in the older Warner transfer, such as the details in the bricks on the Yellow Brick Road, can be seen in the new edition. The chaptering is close to what was used in the older Warner disc, but fine-tuned in some of the locations and breaks, and the sound is improved somewhat as well. The commentary by John Fricke and surviving cast and crew -- at least the third full-length commentary ever done on Oz, counting the one done by Ron Haver for The Criterion Collection laserdisc (which, itself, set a new standard for transfers of the movie) -- has been updated anew. There are featurettes on the cast and crew, the restoration of the movie, and a free-standing music-and-effects track on the first disc in the package, in tandem with the full-length movie. Disc two is loaded up with the Angela Lansbury-hosted making-of feature, which holds up extremely well, as well as the "Memories of Oz" television special -- but it's mostly filled with the new features "The Art of Imagination: A Tribute to Oz" and "Because of the Wonderful Things It Does: The Legacy of Oz," plus composer Harold Arlen's home movies, outtakes and test footage of the tornado sequences, galleries of stills and trailers, and six hours of audio bonus features, including raw session recordings of the music and radio adaptations and promotional materials. The third disc is for those who genuinely love not only the movie and its origins but the man behind Oz; the centerpiece of the third platter is a full-length documentary on Wizard of Oz author L. Frank Baum that does about as good a job of telling his life as has ever been brought before the public. L. Frank Baum: The Man Behind the Curtain is lively and entertaining as well as informative and lavishly produced. It is supported by complete editions of the earlier attempts at bringing the world of Oz to the screen, from 1910 through 1933. The silent Oz features have also been issued by some public domain DVD companies, but here they've been restored and re-scored, and each with a different kind of music score, from solo keyboard to orchestra, so that the experience of each film is distinct and different from its companion features. The 1933 cartoon Wizard of Oz is in rougher shape than one would wish, but it is also one of the rarer manifestations of the early Oz films, as its distribution was complicated by legal disputes. The disc opens automatically to an easy-to-use multi-layered menu. The other major features of the triple-disc slipcased set are reproductions of the 1939 publicity art and promotional screening invitational materials.