In recent years it has been argued that physical media – DVDs, CDs, wax cylinders, whatever – were a thing of the past. Streaming ruled. Who needed to walk across to the shelf when a host of movies were available at the touch of a button? Well, the slowness of streaming services to offer their older material provides one rebuttal to that.
Streaming golden oldies
Of the current crop, Paramount+ has, perhaps, the best line-up from the golden age. You can get your loved one a year’s subscription for €79.90. Not only can they watch series such as Yellowstone and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, but they can also catch classic Paramount titles such as Sabrina, The Ten Commandments, Roman Holiday, A Place in the Sun and Sunset Boulevard.
Other streamers are, of course, available. You know what that they are. As ever, we point towards consistently excellent MUBI for a selection of offbeat titles and films not in the English language. Gift subscriptions are available.
Get physical
Over the past year, however, consumers have noticed content vanishing from streaming services. Jane Campion’s Power of the Dog, one of the best films of recent years, emerged as a Netflix release but is now no longer available on that channel. Buy physical media. Give physical media. Nobody (well, nobody but burglars) can take it away from you.
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Few films released theatrically this year had the oomph of Todd Fields’s Tár. Available in an attractive Blu-ray, the sweeping epic stars Cate Blanchett as a conductor dragged down by her own ego. Essential stuff.
More controversial – a good way of starting conversations – is Ari Aster’s enormous allegorical comedy Beau is Afraid. Joaquin Phoenix stars as a disturbed loner driven to hellish depths while travelling to visit his overpowering mother. Something else. Something peculiar.
Barbie world
The big hit of the year is, of course, Barbie. Indeed, Greta Gerwig’s feminist satire – thanks in part to its friendly rivalry with Oppenheimer – passed out Avatar to become the highest-grossing film ever in Ireland. A bare-bones DVD is available in good time for the festive season.
At time of writing, we don’t have a date for the Oppenheimer disc but the BBC has cunningly released its excellent 1980 series of the same name on DVD. Starring Sam Waterstone, it’s necessarily a lower-budget production than the Christopher Nolan film but aficionados will find plenty to digest.
Blómi away
It’s always a risk buying new music as a gift but excellent 2023 albums by the likes of Susanne Sundfør, Laufey, and Kara Jackson may open up new worlds for those as yet unfamiliar.
Sundfør’s Blómi continues her mix of experimentation and lush traditional song craft. Laufey’s Bewitched finds new ways with traditional jazz song. Kara Jackson, former US National US Youth Poet Laureate, brings her erudition to a tricky, often overpowering collection titled Why Does the Earth Give Us People To Love?
There is little question of the year’s most prominent Irish release. Lankum’s drone-folk classic False Lankum propelled the band all the way to the Mercury Awards. They deserved to win.
As ever, however, the big gifts in (we’ll say it again) physical media tend to be the extravagant reissues and restorations. Not for the first time, Dylanologists come into their seasonal own. The Complete Budokan 1978 provides an eye-wateringly comprehensive record of the concerts that generated the Bob Dylan at Budokan album 45 years ago.
The pricey CD set includes “all 58 songs, 36 of which are previously unreleased, in a stunning 12x12″ inch box set with a 60-page book including tons of unseen photography, a copy of the original 20-page tour book, ticket stub replicas, two posters and two facsimile print ads”.
If you can’t stretch to the three-figure sum required, a slimmer vinyl compilation entitled Another Budokan 1978 will still delight the Dylan fan.
You also have a luxury (for beloved dad?) and a more economic (tolerated uncle?) option with the CD sets celebrating 50 years of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. The “deluxe box set” stretches out over – take a breath – two CDS, two vinyl LPs, two audio Blu-rays, an audio DVD, a 160-page book, a 76-page music book and two 7″ singles.
To fair, €225 seems about right for all that. But fret not. For around a tenth of that, you can pick up a nicely presented 50th anniversary remaster with reproductions of the original posters and stickers.
If all that is too pompous for your post-punk rock fan then seek out the fine boxed expansion of The Replacement’s great 1985 album Tim. Titled Tim (Let it Bleed Edition), the collection remixes the original power-pop album and offers alternate takes, demos and a live performance from 1986. The album deserves such refurbishment.
Cult horror
Of the various boxes celebrating films hitting anniversaries in 2023, none is so delightful as the Wicker Man 50th anniversary set. The classic British horror film, set among a mad cult in the Hebrides, is treated to four discs containing differing cuts, documentaries, interviews and unseen footage. There is also a CD featuring music from the film. Al this presented in the most attractive art work. A treat for cultists.
We also ran up against the 50th anniversary of The Exorcist in the year that William Friedkin, director of that horror classic, left us. As stuffed as The Wicker Man set, the Exorcist collection comes in “unique, leather-grain slipcase and clamshell packaging”. You get a copy of Mark Kermode’s book on the flick, A3 poster reproductions, art cards and – of course – the original 1973 Theatrical Version and the 2000 Extended Director’s Cut.
30 from Warner Bros
Rather neatly, The Exorcist was a Warner Bros release and that studio celebrated its centenary in 2023. The Warner Bros. 100th Anniversary Studio Collection will keep the family engrossed throughout the season and well into 2024. Thirty great Warners releases stretching from 1939′s The Wizard of Oz to last year’s Elvis. Buckets of extras. Nice booklets. And no streaming service can take it away from you.
Éanna Hardwicke’s picks
Actor Éanna Hardwicke has had a dizzying year. The Corkonian led the fine film drama Lakelands and won endless plaudits for the BBC’s harrowing TV series The Sixth Commandment. His recommendation for a cultural gift is the boxed set of the Danish mystery series The Investigation.
“It’s not your average cop show,” he says. “It concerns the disappearance and murder of a journalist on a submarine.” Tobias Lindholm’s show does, indeed, follow the intriguing true story of the late Kim Wall. “Brilliantly acted and just a very unusual perspective,” he says. Hardwicke has also been among many enjoying Lankum’s terrific album False Lankum: “You step into a story when you hear that music.”
The Sixth Commandment is available on DVD.
