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DVD Breakdown Awards - Best of 2001 (Region 1)
   
   
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2001 will be the year to beat as far as DVD releases are concerned. With last fall alone bringing us one amazing two-disc release of long-awaited favorites after another and sales of players and titles both skyrocketing, it has truly been the year in which the medium came into its own. Not only did great classics like Ben-Hur, Lawrence of Arabia, Citizen Kane and On the Waterfront see the light of day, plenty of enjoyable popcorn movies also graced our home theater screens and showed us how quality extras and reference-level audio and video can add to the movie experience. It was difficult enough narrowing down our shortlist to five titles for specific categories and ten for Best Release, but your votes have continued to pour in during the past weeks, and they have all been counted, weighed and re-counted; now here are the final results:


Best DVD release: The Godfather DVD Collection
After topping nearly every Most Wanted list year after year, Paramount finally brought us what every DVD lover wanted: a magnificently packaged five-disc release of the Godfather movies, with an awesome simultaneous international release last October. With audio commentary for all three films (which seriously makes the third instalment much more watchable!) and a disc full of documentaries, deleted scenes and other great extras, this was truly the release of the year with 32% of the vote.

runners-up:

Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace (16%)
Lawrence of Arabia (15%)
Citizen Kane (12%)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (10%)
Spartacus (Criterion) / The Terminator SE (5%)
The French Connection (3%)

editor's choice:

The Godfather DVD Collection

 

Best movie: The Godfather Trilogy
The weaker third leg in Coppola's gangster trilogy was still boosted enough by the two flawless first movies, making it a convincing winner in the Best Movie (premiering on DVD) category with 42% of the reader vote.

runners-up:

Citizen Kane (28%)
Memento (18%)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (8%)
The French Connection (3%)

editor's choice:

The Godfather Trilogy

 

Best image quality: Shrek
Pixar had previously set the standard for flawless digital-to-digital transfer with last year's release of Toy Story 2, but this year they're being beaten at their own game with the breathtaking transfer on DreamWorks' computer-animated smash hit Shrek. The extras in this two-disc set may not have been as great as the box would have us believe, but the fabulous textures flawlessly presented in this gorgeous transfer were everything we could have hoped for, bringing the big green man no less than 43% of the vote.

runners-up:

Citizen Kane (23%)
2001: A Space Odyssey [remastered] (15%)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (11%)
Traffic (8%)

editor's choice:

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Best sound: Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace
Some annoying use of edge enhancement made the video transfer of the first Star Wars movie to appear on DVD a disappointment to many fans, but the astonishing Dolby Digital 5.1 EX audio mix may be the best to appear on DVD yet, and makes the absence of a DTS track forgivable. Easily beating out all the competition, Star Wars I walked away with an astounding 64% of the vote.

runners-up:

The Terminator - SE (25%)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs / Citizen Kane (3%)
Shrek (1%)

editor's choice:

Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace

Best menu design: Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace
George Lucas's sci-fi prequel got some serious competition in the Best Menu Design category from fellow nominees The Terminator SE and Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but the beautifully animated, planet-themed Star Wars menus, this title still walked away with a convincing 36% of the vote.

runners-up:

The Terminator - SE (26%)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (21%)
Shrek (12%)
The Simpsons: The Complete First Season (8%)

editor's choice:

The Simpsons: The Complete First Season

Best extras: Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace
In a year so richly loaded with great two-disc special editions, it came as no surprise that votes were closes in the Best Extras category, but Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace finally did beat out the other nominees by a very slim margin, ending up with 28% of the vote.

runners-up:

The Godfather DVD Collection (25%)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (21%)
Spartacus - Criterion Collection (18%)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (7%)

editor's choice:

Spartacus - Criterion Collection

 


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