Building a DVD Library--the MGM way: Oscar winners, drama, comedy, westerns, and a handful of British films combine to delight movie buffs.

• Author: Rothenberg, Robert S.
• Position: Entertainment - Bibliography

CONTINUING THE SERIES that began with "Building a DVD Library--the Warner Way" (USA TODAY, March 2003), let's move on to the venerable Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio, now just one year short of its 80th anniversary. The combination of almost eight decades of moviemaking and the DVD format that is allowing access to film buffs of many of the great motion pictures of the past is a marriage made in cinematic heaven.

MGM Home Entertainment's vaults are bursting at the seams with Academy Award winners. Many of its illustrious triumphs were saluted in "You Can't Spell Oscar without DVD" (USA TODAY, September 2001) and won't be repeated here. These included 22 movies that captured major Academy Awards--best picture, director, actor, actress, supporting actor or actress, and/or screenplay. Two more--"The Silence of the Lambs" and "Rocky"--were cited in "Sets Appeal" (USA TODAY, November 2001). Further, 11 of those pictures were included among the American Film Institute's 100 greatest films, ranging from "The Graduate" (number 7) through "Raging Bull" (24), "Annie Hall" (31), "Midnight Cowboy" (36), "The Best Years of Our Lives" (37), "West Side Story" (41), "The Silence of the Lambs" (65), "Rocky" (78), "Platoon" (83), and "Fargo" (84) to "The Apartment" (93).

If those are not sufficient to stock your video library, let us offer another 28 that, in our opinion, for one reason or another, merit inclusion as well.

MORE OSCAR WINNERS

Dances with Wolves (236 minutes, $29.98) waltzed off with 1990's best picture award, Kevin Costner capturing best director (although he lost best actor to Jeremy Irons in "Reversal of Fortune"), Michael Blake winning for best adapted screenplay, and it garnered other Academy Awards for cinematography, editing, score, and sound, while Mary McDonnell lost best supporting actress to Whoopi Goldberg ("Ghost"). Costner's monumental tribute to Native Americans being forced from their lands by the U.S.'s drive for Manifest Destiny, number 75 on the AFT list, is swelled even further by the inclusion of never-before-seen additional scenes, meaning that the film now stretches just shy of four full hours in this special edition two-disc version. Add on a documentary, "The Creation of an Epic"; a "Making of ..." featurette; audio commentary by Costner and the producer, editor, and director of photography; a music video; and assorted other lesser special features, and you'd better have plenty of popcom handy and a weekend to spare!

The Barefoot Contessa (130 minutes, $14.95) earned Edmond O'Brien the 1954 best supporting actor award as a harried press agent for a self-destructive actress (Ava Gardner). Humphrey Bogart weighs in as a cynical director in another of Hollywood's oft-repeated attacks on itself, writer/director Joseph L. Mankiewicz deftly dissecting the movie industry in much the same way he did the Broadway theater in "All About Eve" four years earlier. There are no special features.

The Fortune Cookie (126 minutes, $14.95) is, if possible, even more cynical, thanks to the rapier-like, mordant wit of director/cowriter Billy Wilder. Walter Matthau steals the picture--and captured the 1966 best supporting actor prize--with his portrayal of crooked lawyer Whiplash Willie Gingrich, out to bilk the insurance company and anyone else he can think to sue after brother-in-law Jack Lemmon, a TV cameraman, is accidentally run over by a football player during the course of a game. There are no special features.

City Slickers (114 minutes, $14.95), the comic tale of three pals trying to fight encroaching middle age through a series of annual adventures, takes them on a cattle drive as part of a fantasy vacation package, with much ensuing hilarity. Although Billy Crystal stars, Jack Palance walked away with the Oscar for best supporting actor as the crusty, often-scary boss herder, deftly parodying the numerous tough guys he portrayed in a plethora of past westerns. This, in turn, culminated in one of the classic moments of Academy Award presentations at the 1991 ceremony (coincidentally hosted by Crystal), when Palance dropped to the stage clutching his golden statuette and began to do one-armed pushups to show how macho he still was. There are no special features.

Topkapi (119 minutes, $19.98), a deliciously wicked caper movie, is played to the tongue-in-cheek hilt by Melina Mercouri (the wife of director Jules Dassin), Maximilian Schell, Robert Morley, Akim Tamiroff, and Peter Ustinov, the latter taking the 1964 best supporting actor award as the bumbling petty crook forced by circumstances to play a key role in the theft of a jewel-encrusted dagger from Istanbul's Topkapi Museum. The actual robbery is a deft combination of tension and slapstick humor that typifies the spirit of this thoroughly delightful picture. There are no special features.

The Defiant Ones (96 minutes, $14.95), producer/director Stanley Kramer's scathing examination of race relations in the South, is personified by a pair of escapees from a chain gang, forced to cooperate even though they hate each other, since they are connected by leg irons. The 1958 film earned nine Academy Award nominations, but won only for Nedrick Young and Harold Jacob Smith's original screenplay and for black-and-white cinematography. The...