The final silent work of Fritz Lang, Woman in the Moon [Frau im Mond] is now available on Blu-Ray from Masters of Cinema. Among the first sci-fi films to seriously consider space travel, it’s also a space melodrama involving spies, blackmail, and moon gold. Yeah, it doesn’t have a patch on Metropolis or the Mabuse movies, but it’s a damn good time, all things considered. MoC has proven itself to be the top studio for releasing silent films anywhere in the world (just look at their discs for City Girl and The Passion of Joan of Arc, the latter Criterion is going to have a devil of a time trying to top), and this release proves why yet again. The transfer here is amazingly good, clear of much of any damage and stunningly sharp, and you wouldn’t be faulted for thinking the movie was 20-30 years younger than it is just looking at the work here. Only feature, a 15-minute documentary on the film, though we do get a typically excellent MoC booklet as well. Highly recommended.

Several directors are getting their work released on Blu-Ray in the UK this week. The big one is The Werner Herzog Collection from BFI. It has slightly less features than the Shout! Factory set of Herzog’s work, but the transfers are better (as much as I like what SF is doing, their transfers have never been their strong suit). If you reside in the UK, this is a no-brainer purchase, otherwise, eh, decide for yourself.

From Artificial Eye, we get the two middle installments in Francois Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel saga on Blu-Ray, St0len Kisses and Bed and Board. These come highly recommended for UK and US residents, or at least until Criterion finally upgrades their Antoine Doinel set.

And from Soda Pictures we get a set collecting the works of director Kelly Reichardt. The set contains Old Joy, Meek’s Cutoff, Wendy and Lucy, and her first feature River of Grass, with all but the last one presented in HD (in the US, only Cutoff is available on Blu-Ray). And to sweeten the deal, this set is region-free, so you can play it on both sides of the pond. Very highly recommended.