Hello, Santa. It’s me, Burbanked.

I know what you’re thinking. Here I haven’t written to you in roughly 36 years, and all of a sudden I’m going to drop you a line and make a request – just like everyone else does at this time of year. And I’m sorry, Santa, but as I get older the idea of Christmas presents becomes far less exciting, less surprising and spontaneous, and I thought that writing to you might help bring back the magic a bit.

To show you what I mean, take a look on the right at the very very best Christmas gift I’ve ever received. Nothing warms my heart quite like a fancy Lenox mug of a kind used by Victorian dandies, personalized with my name so that I can never, ever get rid of it. I only wish that I had two of these, so that I could bring one to work where all of my colleagues could see me drinking out of it with my pinky properly raised, just so.

So to help me break from my yuletide funk, I figured I’d write and send you a list of all my favorite movies that have only crappy DVDs issued previously, in the hopes that you’ll task your elves with the creation of anniversary special editions, pristinely-restored digital transfers and audio mixes, feature-length director and actor commentaries, making-of documentaries, outtakes and deleted scenes and wildly overblown 3-D zoomy menus.

Just as a suggestion, big guy, you should probably get your legal team working out the rights issues, because these studio types tend to be serious hardasses, if you know what I’m saying. Once you’ve got the details worked out, please bring me some special editions for the following:

3 Days of the Condor, 1975
Its 25th and 30th anniversaries have come and gone without a special edition, and I’ve never read anything indicating that one is in the works. Too bad, because with Redford, Pollack, Von Sydow and Dunaway still available, it’d certainly be possible to put this together, I would imagine in my hopelessly naive and Pollyanna-ish way. The movie shows its age a bit, but it’s also a terrific potboiler, a wonderful paranoid thriller about a guy who simply reads books but who is more than capable of kicking the ass of a hired killer postman.

Fearless, 1993
I’ve talked about this before – probably too much so – but this is among Peter Weir’s finest movies and it’s a damn shame to only have a featureless fullscreen version on DVD available. Come to think of it, Witness doesn’t get any DVD love, either.

The Game, 1997
This came up the other day from Piper, of course, and it led me to remember that its DVD has nothing on it. It’s also a great example of a movie that could easily build a Shawshank-like following with a little more TLC from some savvy marketing and pay-cable programming folks.

Defending Your Life, 1991
Silly? Fluffy? A tossed-off romantic fantasy movie with too-easy answers and a predictable, overly saccharine resolution? These are all valid criticisms, but when you’ve got talent like Brooks, Streep, Torn and Henry all bringing their A-games, it’s hard to not love this movie. Streep especially, clearly luxuriating in such a lightweight, non-weepy, un-accented, fun-to-play role, is a joy to watch.

Midnight Run, 1988
As unfortunate as the career blowback of this movie has proven to be, it also marks De Niro at his most dryly comical, Grodin at his career best, and Joe Pantoliano at his oily smarmiest. Who wouldn’t want to hear a commentary in which director Martin Brest reminisces about what life was like in a post-Beverly Hills Cop, pre-Gigli world?

The World According to Garp, 1982
Regardless of how much Robin Williams may have squandered the patience and goodwill *OBVIOUS MOVIE TITLE JOKE REDACTED HERE* of his critics and fans, one has to admire the guts it took for him to choose this movie as his first post-Mork theatrical vehicle. It’s a startling, spectacular performance, well-supported by Close, Lithgow and Hurt. Although director George Roy Hill passed away in 2002, you’d think that the remainder of the principals could agree to scrape together some archive and featurette material.

Raising Arizona, 1987
If Airplane! could be considered my earliest exposure and influence in terms of cinematic comedy, this is the film that would later pull out all the grenade pins on my burgeoning and twisted sense of humor as an older lad. I’d never seen Blood Simple, so this was my first and true introduction to what would become a long and satisfying relationship with the Coens. Endlessly watchable and eternally quotable, from “Make it quick, I’m in dutch with the wife” to “I don’t know – they were jammies! They had Yodas ‘n’ shit on ‘em!”, Raising Arizona has endured as an absolute to include in any film lover’s collection – yet with a DVD that only includes a trailer, TV spots and the stalwart just-list-it-cause-it’s-all-we’ve-got “interactive menus” (which, I guess, is as opposed to “catatonic menus”), clearly the Coens’ greatest comedy has received no long-term love from 20th Century Fox.

Got all that, Santa? I may be asking a lot, but I’m guessing that you have a few favors you could call in and really, you’d probably be granting the wishes of a lot more movie fans than just me. Happy Christmas and remember to look for your traditional Christmas Eve snack of Clark Bars and Chivas when you stop by my house.

How about you, kiddies? What long-neglected movies would be on your four-star DVD special treatment wish list?