What is perhaps the best of a sorry lot, Kino International’s Dersu Uzala DVD (Region 1) will be re-released on December 9 as part of a “Great Directors” box set. Amazon.com takes pre-orders.

I have confirmed from Kino that this is, indeed, just a repackaging of their original release, so don’t expect anything new in terms of the disc’s content or transfer.

The other films included in the box set are Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Mirror, Claude Chabrol’s Les Bonnes Femmes, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Il Grido and Volker Schlondorff’s Circle of Deceit. At least Kurosawa is in fine company, here.