EW ’s
gift guide 2007
“Miss Brown to You” and “No Regrets.” By
the fourth disc, Holiday’s transformation
from happy-go-lucky jazz singer to sorrow-
ful blues vocalist is complete. From pop to
emo, Holiday’s voice resonates throughout.
EXTRAS: Track-by-track expositions and
a contextual essay by Village Voice critic
Gary Giddins. TARGET MARKET:
Octogenarians; Depression-era fetishists;
lovers with soul power.
Twin Peaks: Definitive Gold Box
Edition (Paramount, $99.98)
Lady Day: The Master Takes and
Singles (Columbia, $49.98)
What’s the difference between this box
set and 2001’s ten-disc Lady Day: The
Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia 1933-
1944? Three words: more concise; cheaper.
While the latter collects every song Billie
Holiday recorded for Columbia Records, the
former is more like a curated trip through the
Billie Holiday Museum, if there were one.
Over four discs, The Master Takes follows
the first fresh steps of the young diva as she
learned to spread her wings on tracks like
More than simply the entire two-season
run of Twin Peaks on DVD, this “definitive”
collection of all 29 episodes plus two ver-
sions of the original pilot is an immersion in
a subculture populated by a gang of
Lynchian backwoods folkies. When FBI
special agent Dale Cooper (Kyle
MacLachlan) is sent
to investigate the
murder
of
all-
American girl Laura
Palmer (Sheryl Lee),
the worms come out
of the woodwork, so
to speak. Think of the
series as the precur-
sor to the more com-
mercially
main-
stream The X Files.
EXTRAS: Four-part
documentary,
“A
Slice of Lynch” fea-
turette, interactive
map of Twin Peaks, collectable postcards!
TARGET MARKET: David Lynch fans;
people who stopped watching TV in 1998;
conspiracy theorists.
MacGyver: The Complete Series
(Paramount, $179.98)
I seem to be on a late ’80s, early ’90s
tear here, but no matter; this was when net-
work TV actually put forth any shred of
effort. And it shows in the brilliant
action/adventure MacGyver, in
which Richard Dean Anderson
manages to squeeze himself out
of sticky situations with all the
finesse of a crazy middle school
science teacher. Brandishing a
stick of dynamite made from a
roll of duct tape and some
crushed cold tablets, MacGyver
was the geek’s — er, thinking
man’s — hero. EXTRAS: The
episodes where Teri Hatcher
guest stars. TARGET MAR-
KET: Geeks and freaks; people
who sport jean jackets; plumbers;
double agents.
■
Eugene Weekly’s Gift Guide 2007
•
5