Ordinary People has finally been given a U.S. release on Blu-ray by Paramount. One of the most emotionally charged Oscar winners ever, it still seems odd to me that Kramer vs. Kramer and Terms of Endearment, two other emotionally charged films from the same era, are more often referred to by film lovers as the films that they remember best from the era.

1979’s Kramer vs. Kramer was about a mother who leaves her husband and young son to fend for themselves. 1983’s Terms of Endearment was about the love-hate relationship of a mother and daughter. 1980’s Ordinary People was about the survival of a young man who tried to commit suicide after the drowning death of his brother. Timothy Hutton at 20 justly became the youngest actor to win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, a record that still stands, for that role. Mary Tyler Moore, who from all accounts was the bubbly nice girl she played on TV was his equal as the boy’s emotionally cold mother with Donald Sutherland as his perplexed father, Judd Hirsch as his psychiatrist, and Elizabeth McGovern and Dinah Manoff as potential girlfriends also excellent in their roles. First-time director Robert Redford also won an Oscar as did Alvin Sargent for his screenplay based on Judith Guest’s novel. Moore and Hirsch were nominated for their performances.

Extras on the Paramount release include on-camera interviews with Hutton and Guest.

Another film newly released on Blu-ray by Paramount from the same era is 1988’s The Accused starring former child star Jodie Foster in the comeback role that won her the first of her two Oscars. Having seen a preview of the film in which she plays a rape victim, the actress thought her performance was so bad that she decided to give up acting until she started receiving awards recognition for the role.

Kelly McGillis, a hot property thanks to the success of Top Gun two years earlier, was originally cast in the role but turned it down due to the fact that she had herself been brutally raped in 1982. She fought for and won the role of the prosecuting attorney originally intended for Jane Fonda, suggesting Foster for the role of the victim.

The brutal rape scene was such a traumatic event for the actors playing the rapists that Foster had to console them during the filming. It was based on a real-life incident; the victim having died in an unrelated car accident two years before the film was made.

It was written by Tom Topor (Nuts) and directed by Jonathan Kaplan (Heart Like a Wheel). The only extra on the Blu-ray is the film’s trailer.

Warner Archive has released the definitive Blu-ray edition of writer-director William A. Wellman’s 1937 version of A Star Is Born, the first and arguably the best, of the four versions of the story for which the prolific Wellman (Wings, The High and the Mighty) won his only Oscar for Original Story. Nominated for seven Oscars, the film also won an honorary award for W. Howard Greene for his color cinematography.

Nominated for Best Picture, Actor (Fredric March), Actress (Janet Gaynor), and more, it’s the story, the star performances, and the cinematography that made it an instant classic. A previous Blu-ray release of the film from Kino Lorber restored from an original technicolor print was impressive but this release from the original technicolor negatives is beyond compare. The most impressive thing about it is the flesh tones which are so lifelike it looks more like a live TV show than a film made 85 years ago. Gaynor and March had already won Oscars when the film was made, Gaynor having won hers ten years earlier for 7th Heaven, Street Angel, and Sunrise, and March five years earlier for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He would win a second nine years later for The Best Years of Our Lives.

The superb supporting cast includes former Oscar nominees Adolphe Menjou (The Front Page and May Robson (Lady for a Day), as well as future nominee Peggy Wood (The Sound of Music).

Extras include two radio broadcasts, one form 1937 with Gaynor and Robert Montgomery, and one from 1942 with Judy Garland and Waler Pidgeon. Garland would of course play Gaynor’s role in the 1954 remake opposite James Mason, for which both would also receive Oscar nominations.

Henry Levin and George Pal’s 1962 film The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm has finally been given a Blu-ray release by Warner Archive as well. The first narrative film in Cinerama, it has been given a release in both widescreen and smile box, the format Warner Bros. previously released How the West Was Won in, which the three-screen Cinerama process is seamlessly pieced together. Levin (April Love) directed the main story line while Pal (The Time Machine) directed the fairy-tale sequences.

Laurence Harvey and Karl Boehm play the brothers, Claire Bloom and Barbara Eden their wives, while Russ Tamblyn and Yvette Mimieux are the standouts in the fairy-tale sequences. Blu-ray extras include new audio interviews with Tamblyn and Mimieux, the latter having since passed away in January.

Criterion has released a 2K restoration of Robert Aldrich’s 1965 film The Flight of the Phoenix on Blu-ray.

James Stewart, fresh from his late career success of Shenandoah, played the veteran pilot whose Benghazi-bound plane is downed in the Sahara. He and fellow survivors Richard Attenborough, Ernest Borgnine, Ian Bannen, Dan Duryea, Peter Finch, and George Kennedy must rely on coldly logical engineer Hardy Kruger’s self-described crazy plan to work – it will either get them out or get them killed.

Kruger (Sundays and Cybele), who like The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm’s Yvette Mimieux, died in January, was the film’s most valuable player next to Stewart. He was virtually assured of an Oscar nomination but his refusal to accept a Golden Globe nomination soured Oscar voters who gave the film’s only acting nod to Ian Bannen in a lesser role.

Blu-ray extras include a new conversation with filmmaker Walter Hill and film scholar Alain Silver on the film and a new interview with biographer Donald Dewey on Stewart and his service as a bomber pilot.

This week’s new releases include Parallel Mothers and Jockey.