Last November, Criterion released Essential Fellini, a fifteen Blu-ray Special Edition Collector’s Set of fourteen of the maestro’s films plus numerous documentaries in honor of the centennial of his birth.

As noted in the film’s merchandising, Fellini still stands apart as a giant of the cinema. He is defined by his dualities: the sacred and the profane, the masculine and the feminine, the provincial and the urbane, all of which is on display in these fourteen films.

Eleven of the fourteen films have been given much needed 4K restorations. These include his greatest film, 1963’s 8 1/2, in which Marcello Mastroianni plays a thinly disguised version of the director; and all three of the films he made with and for his wife, Giulietta Masina, 1954’s La Strada, in which she played a waif in the circus, 1957’s Nights of Cabiria in which she played a prostitute, and 1965’s Juliet of the Spirits in which she played a woman with a cheating husband and is Fellini’s first film in color. The set marks the Blu-ray debut of the latter two. The Fellini-directed segment of Spirits of the Dead with Terence Stamp called Toby Dammit, also in color, is included as an extra on the Juliet of the Spirits Blu-ray.

Fellini’s most popular film, 1960’s La Dolce Vita starring Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg, is one of the three that did not require restoration. The disc does, however, include two new documentaries. In fact, most if not all the discs contain a mix of previously released and new extras.

Other films in the collection are 1950’s Variety Lights, 1952’s The White Sheik, 1953’s I Vitelloni, 1955’s Il Bidone, 1969’s Fellini Satyricon, 1972’s Roma, and 1987’s Intervista. The fifteenth disc contains 1997’s Marcello Mastroianni: I Remember, made four years after Fellini’s death, by Anna Maria Tato.

Fellini was nominated for Oscars twelve times without winning. Three of his films, La Strada, Nights of Cabiria, and 8 1/2, won Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film, which were awarded to their country of origin, Italy. Fellini himself was finally awarded an honorary Oscar in 1993, shortly before his death.

John Hughes, the man behind the “brat pack” films of the 1980s was a prolific writer and producer, but his directorial output was surprisingly limited to just eight films.

The first three that Hughes directed, 1984’s Sixteen Candles and 1985’s The Breakfast Club and Weird Science, were previously packaged together for John Hughes Yearbook Collection. Now Paramount has packaged three more, 1986’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, 1987’s Planes, Trains & Automobiles, and 1988’s She’s Having a Baby, along with 1986’s Pretty in Pink and 1987’s Some Kind of Wonderful, which were directed by Howard Deutch, as John Hughes 5-Movie Collection. His last two he directed, 1989’s Uncle Buck and 1991’s Curly Sue, were released by Universal and Warner Bros., respectively. Later works, including Home Alone and Beethoven, which Hughes wrote and produced but did not direct, were released by 20th Century-Fox.

All five films in the new collection feature both previously released and newly made documentaries.

Planes, Trains & Automobiles differs from all the other Hughes films in the new collection in that it is not about teenagers, but about two middle-aged men, both of whom act like teenagers at times as they meet in New York and suffer through a series of misadventures on their way home to Chicago for Thanksgiving. Steve Martin and John Candy play the two. Candy was nominated for an American Comedy Award for his performance. He lost to Robin Williams in Good Morning Vietnam,

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is about a high school wise guy (Matthew Broderick) who plays sick and spends a school day with friends getting into all sorts of trouble riding around Chicago in his father’s Ferrari. Broderick was nominated for a Golden Globe, losing to Paul Hogan in Crocodile Dundee.

Pretty in Pink is about a lovesick poor girl (Molly Ringwald) who loves a rich boy (Andrew McCarthy) while her poor best male friend (Jon Cryer) has unreciprocated feelings for her. Some Kind of Wonderful is about a lovesick poor boy (Eric Stolz) who loves a rich girl (Lea Thompson) while his poor best female friend (Mary Stuart Masterson) has unreciprocated feelings for him. The original ending of the former had the poor girl ending up with the poor boy to the consternation of preview audiences, so it was changed so that she ended up with the rich boy. They must have done something right the second time around, because the latter had the poor boy ending up with the poor girl to the cheers of everyone.

Michael Gore won a BMI award for his Pretty in Pink score. Mary Stuart Masterson won a Young Actress Award for her performance in Some Kind of Wonderful.

She’s Having a Baby is a tedious film about newlyweds unprepared for their life together. It starred Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth McGovern and earned no awards.

Kino Lorber had released Blu-rays of two of the best westerns of the 1960s.

1966’s Texas Across the River is a fun film that skewers everything about western lore that you can think of from the U.S. Cavalry to American Indians, both good and bad, to early western settlers to the introduction of Texas longhorns and oil wells. It begins with an interrupted wedding between a Louisiana belle (Rosemary Forsyth) and a Spanish nobleman (Alain Delon) and ends with Forsyth falling for weathered cowboy Dean Martin and Delon falling for Indian maiden Tina Aumont. It was a rare English language film for both Delon (Purple Noon) and Aumont (Modesty Blaise). Aumont was the daughter of screen legends Maria Montez (Cobra Woman) and Jean-Pierre Aumont (Day for Night).

Texas Across the River was directed by Michel Gordon (Pillow Talk).

1967’s Rough Night in Jericho is a more traditional western, this one featuring Dean Martin in his only villainous role as a former lawman turned murderous town boss. George Peppard is his nemesis, an honest deputy marshal. Jean Simmons, in her first western since The Big Country, plays the twice widowed owner of a stagecoach line she has sold to Peppard and John McIntire.

Rough Night in Jericho was directed by Arnold Laven (Anna Lucasta)

This week’s U.S. Blu-ray releases include Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and Little Fugitive.