With Father’s Day just around the corner, here are some top-notch gift suggestions from the awesome selection of Blu-Rays and DVDs available from 20th Century Fox and MGM Home Entertainment.

The Ultimate Westerns Collection is a magnificently packaged box set, including some of the finest westerns put forth from Clint Eastwood, Sergio Leone, and John Wayne.  Put together in a sort of spiral bound book, this is a nicely organized way of putting together the 20 discs.  The 13 classics included are The Magnificent Seven, Dances With Wolves (Best Picture winner – 1990), A Fistful Of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, Hang ‘Em High, Red River, The Westerner, The Missouri Breaks, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Big Trail, The Comancheros, and Broken Arrow (1950).

The Anthology of War on Film Collection is packaged in a stylish box, fastened with belted straps to keep it closed.  Enclosed in the set are 20 discs.  The 10 classics included are The Battle Of Britain, A Bridge Too Far, The Great Escape, Platoon (Best Picture winner – 1986), Patton (Best Picture winner – 1970), The Longest Day, Tora! Tora! Tora!, The Sand Pebbles, Twelve O’Clock High, and Von Ryan’s Express.

There are also 4 Blu-Ray sets of James Bond films, with 3 to each set.  That’s 12 Bond films on Blu, plus Quantum of Solace, which is sold separately.  They are also releasing a 3-disc Marvel collection of both Fantastic 4 films as well as Daredevil – only one of many great 3-title Blu-Ray collections.  TV watchers may like the 8th volume of the popular animated-sitcom Family Guy.  But fans of classic films may be more in tune with something like The Jack Lemmon Star Collection including The Apartment, Avanti, How to Murder Your Wife, and Some Like it Hot.  Or, perhaps, a DVD of the classic Frank Sinatra musical Guys and Dolls.

They are also releasing Blu-Rays of a bounty of their catalogue classics, including Best Picture winners Rocky (1976) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991).  Other titles include the sci-fi classic Planet of the Apes, the basketball classic Hoosiers, Kathryn Bigelow’s 1991 action-thriller Point Break, Bryan Singer’s 1995 intriguing puzzler The Usual Suspects, the Denzel Washington-directed Antwone Fisher, and the Best Picture-nominated Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.

-John C.