This past week's Clint Eastwood: 20-Film Collection on Blu-ray includes a very nice cross-section of the director's movies with WB that are on Blu-ray, but it isn't designed for the completionist. The style of packaging and timing of release makes it plain that it's aimed at Father's Day buyers here in the States. That aside, the relative per-movie cost almost makes this a bargain mega-set.
The average $90 price tag breaks out to $4.50 per movie, which is a great deal if you own none or few of these and want them. If you're most interested in just a few of these, or want the entire Dirty Harry series specifically, other sets or individual discs are a better bet.
Packaging
It fits on a shelf just like any standard-height Blu-ray case would. The paper "pages" of the book-style slipcase allow you to pop the discs in and out easily, and I wish all studios would go with something like this for all future 20-ish disc sets. If they want to do a 40-disc thing, then fine, stick two of this in one slipcase. On the slipcase, I'll note that the super-thin plastic has never worked very well, and in my case, the review copy I was sent had a couple of the interior tabs snapped off just from the rigors of shipping and handling. Thicker, sturdier material is the simple solution.
Movies, Gaps, and Value
This set is not every single Warner Bros.-Eastwood movie that's on Blu-ray. Three out of the five Dirty Harry movies are in here (The Enforcer and The Dead Pool are missing), Letters from Iwo Jima is (Flags of Our Fathers is missing), and Eastwood's most iconic prestige pics are as well (Unforgiven, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby). In the Line of Fire , Absolute Power , and various others are missing. All of his most recent directing jobs (except for Changeling , oddly) are included. Here's the list of the included movies:
A Perfect World, Dirty Harry, Every Which Way But Loose, Firefox, Gran Torino, Heartbreak Ridge, Hereafter, Invictus, J. Edgar, Letters from Iwo Jima, Magnum Force, Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River, Pale Rider, Space Cowboys, Sudden Impact, The Gauntlet, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Trouble with the Curve, Unforgiven
In addition to all previous extras being on those discs, the set includes both the previously-available Eastwood Factor doc by Richard Schickel and the brand-new Eastwood Directs: The Untold Story, which is now playing intermittently on TCM.
Welcome to another new recurring feature. Discs in a Box takes its name from the title of The Lonely Island's best song.
Discs in a Box will provide commentary on opulent Blu-ray/DVD box sets that go the extra mile, packing in loads of extra physical goodies in boxes well larger than what is required to just house the discs.
Sometimes they're the shelf-unfriendly chocolate box size (Singin' in the Rain), whereas sometimes they actually fit alongside standard discs albeit taking up a great deal of horizontal real estate (Ultimate Collector's Editions of The Town, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest).
As with other features, I'll be covering recent and upcoming releases in addition to things that have been collecting dust on store shelves for months (or years, in some cases).