After much speculation, the Criterion Collection has posted their full roster of Blu-ray releases for June 2012.
Titles include Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush, Danny Boyle's Shallow Grave, Steven Soderbergh's Gray's Anatomy & And Everything Is Going Fine, Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, and Hiroshi Inagaki's Samurai Trilogy.
Also included in the June slate: Hal Ashby's Harold and Maude. This Blu-ray initially had an April 17th street date, but this past week Criterion pushed the release back to June. The distributor's website no longer lists the "booklet featuring an essay by critic Michael Wood; a 1971 New York Times profile of star Ruth Gordon; and excerpted transcripts of two interviews, one from 1997 with star Bud Cort and director of photography John Alonzo and one from 2001 with executive producer Mildred Lewis" under the disc's bonus supplements.
Of those seven films, The 39 Steps and The Samurai Trilogy are the only previously available Criterion entries receiving Blu-ray upgrades; the rest are new to the Criterion Collection.
Furthermore, the Ashby, Chaplin, Boyle, and Soderbergh films are making their respective debuts onto the North American Blu-ray format.
Quoted below are Criterion's release date and disc specifications for each film.
The Gold Rush (June 12th, 2012) —
New high-definition digital restoration of the 1942 sound version - 1942 version has an uncompressed monaural soundtrack
New 2K digital transfer of the reconstructed original 1925 silent film, restored in collaboration with the Cineteca di Bologna - Restored 1925 version has a newly recorded version of director Charlie Chaplin's score, presented in 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio
New audio commentary for the 1925 version by Chaplin biographer and archivist Jeffrey Vance
Three behind-the-scenes programs: - Presenting The Gold Rush, which traces the film's history from original release to rerelease to 2003 reconstruction and features film historian Kevin Brownlow and Vance
- Music by Charles Chaplin, featuring conductor and composer Timothy Brock
- Visual Effects in The Gold Rush, featuring effects specialist Craig Barron and Chaplin cinematographer Roland Totheroh
Chaplin Today: The Gold Rush (2002), a short documentary featuring filmmaker Idrissa Ouedraogo
Four theatrical trailers
A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Luc Sante and James Agee's review of the 1942 version
Harold and Maude (June 12th, 2012) —
New high-definition digital restoration
Uncompressed monaural soundtrack
Optional remastered stereo soundtrack
Audio commentary by Hal Ashby biographer Nick Dawson and producer Charles B. Mulvehill
Illustrated audio excerpts of seminars by Ashby and writer-producer Colin Higgins
New interview with songwriter Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens)
Shallow Grave (June 12th, 2012) —
New, restored digital transfer, supervised by director of photography Brian Tufano
2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
Two audio commentaries: - Director Danny Boyle
- Screenwriter John Hodge and producer Andrew Macdonald
New interviews with stars Christopher Eccleston, Kerry Fox, and Ewan McGregor
Digging Your Own Grave, a 1993 documentary by Kevin Macdonald on the making of the film
Andrew Macdonald and Kevin Macdonald's video diary from the 1992 Edinburgh Film Festival, where they shopped around the script for Shallow Grave
Shallow Grave trailer
Trainspotting teaser trailer
A booklet featuring an essay by critic Philip Kemp
Gray's Anatomy (June 19th, 2012) —
New high definition digital transfer, supervised by director Steven Soderbergh
5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
New interviews with Soderbergh and cowriter Renée Shafransky
A Personal History of the American Theater monologue by Spalding Gray, filmed in 1982
Theatrical trailer
A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Amy Taubin
And Everything is Going Fine (June 19th, 2012) —
New high-definition digital restoration
Uncompressed monaural soundtrack
Making of And Everything Is Going Fine, featuring director Steven Soderbergh, producer Kathie Russo, and editor Susan Littenberg
Sex and Death to the Age 14, Spalding Gray's first monologue, created in 1979 and filmed in 1982
Trailer
A booklet featuring an essay by writer Nell Casey, editor of The Journals of Spalding Gray
The 39 Steps (June 26th, 2012) —
New high-definition digital restoration
Uncompressed monaural soundtrack
Audio commentary by Alfred Hitchcock scholar Marian Keane
Hitchcock: The Early Years (2000), a British documentary covering Hitchcock's prewar career
Original footage from British broadcaster Mike Scott's 1966 television interview with Hitchcock
Complete broadcast of the 1937 Lux Radio Theatre adaptation, performed by Ida Lupino and Robert Montgomery
Visual essay by Hitchcock scholar Leonard Leff
Excerpts from François Truffaut's 1962 audio interview with Hitchcock
Original production design drawings
A booklet featuring an essay by film critic David Cairns
The Samurai Trilogy (June 26th, 2012) —
New high-definition digital restorations of all three films
Uncompressed monaural soundtracks
New English subtitle translations
New interviews with translator and historian William Scott Wilson about the real-life Musashi Miyamoto, the inspiration for the hero of the films
Trailers
A booklet featuring essays by film historian Stephen Prince and Wilson
These Blu-rays will be available for pre-order on Amazon shortly.
http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=8388
Criterion New Releases
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John Johnson
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- Joined: Tue Apr 19, 2005 3:28 pm
Criterion New Releases
Last edited by John Johnson on Sat Nov 17, 2012 2:14 pm, edited 2 times in total.
London. Greatest City in the world.
Re: Criterion Releases for June.
The Samurai Trilogy is incredibly entertaining with an amazing climax. Toshiro Mifune was truly one of Japan's greatest actors. I am also looking forward to the BR of LATE SPRING, one of Ozu's masterpieces that has more of an impact on me every time I watch it.
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John Johnson
- Posts: 6091
- Joined: Tue Apr 19, 2005 3:28 pm
Re: Criterion Releases for June.
I'm looking forward to The 39 Steps on Blu Ray.
London. Greatest City in the world.
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Monterey Jack
- Posts: 9748
- Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 12:14 am
- Location: Walpole, MA
Re: Criterion Releases for June.
39 Steps and Shallow Grave for me. 
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John Johnson
- Posts: 6091
- Joined: Tue Apr 19, 2005 3:28 pm
Re: Criterion New Releases
The Criterion Collection has announced five titles for Blu-ray release in February. On February 5, the studio will release The Ballad of Narayama (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1958). A week later, it will release The Kid With A Bike (Dardenne Brothers, 2011). On February 19, it will release On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954). On February 26, it will release Chronicle of a Summer (Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, 1961) and Sansho the Bailiff (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954).
Technical specs and special features include:
The Ballad of Narayama
This haunting, kabuki-inflected version of a Japanese folk legend is set in a remote mountain village, where food is scarce and tradition dictates that citizens who have reached their seventieth year must be carried to the summit of Mount Narayama and left there to die. The sacrificial elder at the center of the tale is Orin (Kinuyo Tanaka), a dignified and dutiful woman who spends her dwindling days securing the happiness of her loyal widowed son with a respectable new wife. Filmed almost entirely on cunningly designed studio sets, in brilliant color and widescreen, The Ballad of Narayama is a stylish and vividly formal work from Japan's cinematic golden age, directed by the dynamic Keisuke Kinoshita.
Special Features:
New 4K digital master from the 2011 restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Trailer and teaser
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Philip Kemp
The Kid With a Bike
Twelve-year-old Cyril (Thomas Doret), all coiled anger and furious motion, is living in a group home but refuses to believe he has been rejected by his single father (Jérémie Renier). He spends his days frantically trying to reach the man, over the phone or on his beloved bicycle. It is only the patience and compassion of Samantha (Cécile de France), the stranger who agrees to care for him, that offers the boy the chance to move on. Spare and unsentimental but deeply imbued with a heart-rending tenderness, The Kid with a Bike is an arresting work from the great Belgian directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, masters of the empathetic action film.
Special Features:
New digital transfer, supervised by director of photography Alain Marcoen, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Conversation between film critic Kent Jones and directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Interviews with actors Cécile de France and Thomas Doret
Return to Seraing, a half-hour documentary in which the Dardennes revisit five locations from the film
Trailer
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Geoff Andrew
On the Waterfront
Marlon Brando gives the performance of his career as the tough prizefighter-turned-longshoreman Terry Malloy in this masterpiece of urban poetry, a raggedly emotional tale of individual failure and institutional corruption. On the Waterfront charts Terry's deepening moral crisis as he must choose whether to remain loyal to the mob-connected union boss Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) and Johnny's right-hand man, Terry's brother, Charley (Rod Steiger), as the authorities close in on them. Driven by the vivid, naturalistic direction of Elia Kazan and savory, streetwise dialogue by Budd Schulberg, On the Waterfront was an instant sensation, winning eight Oscars, including for best picture, director, actor, supporting actress (Eva Marie Saint), and screenplay.
Special Features:
New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Alternate presentations of the restoration in two additional aspect ratios: 1.85:1 (widescreen) and 1.33:1 (full-screen)
Alternate 5.1 surround soundtrack, presented in DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray edition
Commentary featuring authors Richard Schickel and Jeff Young
Conversation between filmmaker Martin Scorsese and critic Kent Jones
Elia Kazan: Outsider (1982), an hour-long documentary
New documentary on the making of the film, featuring interviews with scholar Leo Braudy, critic David Thomson, and others
New interview with actress Eva Marie Saint
Interview with director Elia Kazan from 2001
Contender, a 2001 documentary on the film's most famous scene
New interview with longshoreman Thomas Hanley, an actor in the film
New interview with author James T. Fisher (On the Irish Waterfront) about the real-life people and places behind the film
Visual essay on Leonard Bernstein's score
Visual essay on the aspect ratio
Trailer
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Michael Almereyda and reprints of Kazan's 1952 ad in the New York Times defending his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee, one of the 1948 New York Sun articles by Malcolm Johnson on which the film was based, and a 1953 Commonweal piece by screenwriter Budd Schulberg
Chronicle of a Summer
Few films can claim to be as influential to the course of cinema history as Chronicle of a Summer. The fascinating result of a collaboration between filmmaker-anthropologist Jean Rouch and sociologist Edgar Morin, this vanguard work of what Morin would term cinéma verité is a brilliantly conceived and realized sociopolitical diagnosis of the early sixties in France. By simply interviewing a group of Paris residents in the summer of 1960—beginning with the provocative and eternal question "Are you happy?" and expanding to political issues, including the ongoing Algerian War—Rouch and Morin reveal the hopes and dreams of a wide array of people, from artists to factory workers, from an Italian émigré to an African student. Chronicle of a Summer's penetrative approach gives us a document of a time and place with extraordinary emotional depth.
Special Features:
New high-definition digital transfer of the Cineteca di Bologna restoration of the film, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Un été + 50 (2011), a seventy-three-minute documentary featuring outtakes and new interviews with codirector Edgar Morin and some of the film's subjects
Archival interviews with codirector Jean Rouch and Marceline Loridan, one of the film's subjects
New interview with anthropology professor Faye Ginsburg, organizer of several Rouch retrospectives
New and improved English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by scholar Sam Di Iorio
Sansho the Bailiff
When an idealistic governor disobeys the reigning feudal lord, he is cast into exile, his wife and children left to fend for themselves and eventually separated by vicious slave traders. Under the dazzling direction of Kenji Mizoguchi, this classic Japanese story became one of cinema's greatest masterpieces, a monumental, empathetic expression of human resilience in the face of evil.
Special Features:
Restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Audio commentary by Japanese-literature professor Jeffrey Angles
Video interviews with critic Tadao Sato, assistant director Tokuzo Tanaka, and legendary actress Kyoko Kagawa, on the making of the film and its lasting importance
PLUS: A book featuring an essay by film writer Mark Le Fanu and two versions of the story on which the film was based: Ogai Mori's 1915 "Sansho Dayu" and a written form of an earlier oral variation
http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=9946
Technical specs and special features include:
The Ballad of Narayama
This haunting, kabuki-inflected version of a Japanese folk legend is set in a remote mountain village, where food is scarce and tradition dictates that citizens who have reached their seventieth year must be carried to the summit of Mount Narayama and left there to die. The sacrificial elder at the center of the tale is Orin (Kinuyo Tanaka), a dignified and dutiful woman who spends her dwindling days securing the happiness of her loyal widowed son with a respectable new wife. Filmed almost entirely on cunningly designed studio sets, in brilliant color and widescreen, The Ballad of Narayama is a stylish and vividly formal work from Japan's cinematic golden age, directed by the dynamic Keisuke Kinoshita.
Special Features:
New 4K digital master from the 2011 restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Trailer and teaser
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Philip Kemp
The Kid With a Bike
Twelve-year-old Cyril (Thomas Doret), all coiled anger and furious motion, is living in a group home but refuses to believe he has been rejected by his single father (Jérémie Renier). He spends his days frantically trying to reach the man, over the phone or on his beloved bicycle. It is only the patience and compassion of Samantha (Cécile de France), the stranger who agrees to care for him, that offers the boy the chance to move on. Spare and unsentimental but deeply imbued with a heart-rending tenderness, The Kid with a Bike is an arresting work from the great Belgian directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, masters of the empathetic action film.
Special Features:
New digital transfer, supervised by director of photography Alain Marcoen, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Conversation between film critic Kent Jones and directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Interviews with actors Cécile de France and Thomas Doret
Return to Seraing, a half-hour documentary in which the Dardennes revisit five locations from the film
Trailer
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Geoff Andrew
On the Waterfront
Marlon Brando gives the performance of his career as the tough prizefighter-turned-longshoreman Terry Malloy in this masterpiece of urban poetry, a raggedly emotional tale of individual failure and institutional corruption. On the Waterfront charts Terry's deepening moral crisis as he must choose whether to remain loyal to the mob-connected union boss Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) and Johnny's right-hand man, Terry's brother, Charley (Rod Steiger), as the authorities close in on them. Driven by the vivid, naturalistic direction of Elia Kazan and savory, streetwise dialogue by Budd Schulberg, On the Waterfront was an instant sensation, winning eight Oscars, including for best picture, director, actor, supporting actress (Eva Marie Saint), and screenplay.
Special Features:
New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Alternate presentations of the restoration in two additional aspect ratios: 1.85:1 (widescreen) and 1.33:1 (full-screen)
Alternate 5.1 surround soundtrack, presented in DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray edition
Commentary featuring authors Richard Schickel and Jeff Young
Conversation between filmmaker Martin Scorsese and critic Kent Jones
Elia Kazan: Outsider (1982), an hour-long documentary
New documentary on the making of the film, featuring interviews with scholar Leo Braudy, critic David Thomson, and others
New interview with actress Eva Marie Saint
Interview with director Elia Kazan from 2001
Contender, a 2001 documentary on the film's most famous scene
New interview with longshoreman Thomas Hanley, an actor in the film
New interview with author James T. Fisher (On the Irish Waterfront) about the real-life people and places behind the film
Visual essay on Leonard Bernstein's score
Visual essay on the aspect ratio
Trailer
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Michael Almereyda and reprints of Kazan's 1952 ad in the New York Times defending his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee, one of the 1948 New York Sun articles by Malcolm Johnson on which the film was based, and a 1953 Commonweal piece by screenwriter Budd Schulberg
Chronicle of a Summer
Few films can claim to be as influential to the course of cinema history as Chronicle of a Summer. The fascinating result of a collaboration between filmmaker-anthropologist Jean Rouch and sociologist Edgar Morin, this vanguard work of what Morin would term cinéma verité is a brilliantly conceived and realized sociopolitical diagnosis of the early sixties in France. By simply interviewing a group of Paris residents in the summer of 1960—beginning with the provocative and eternal question "Are you happy?" and expanding to political issues, including the ongoing Algerian War—Rouch and Morin reveal the hopes and dreams of a wide array of people, from artists to factory workers, from an Italian émigré to an African student. Chronicle of a Summer's penetrative approach gives us a document of a time and place with extraordinary emotional depth.
Special Features:
New high-definition digital transfer of the Cineteca di Bologna restoration of the film, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Un été + 50 (2011), a seventy-three-minute documentary featuring outtakes and new interviews with codirector Edgar Morin and some of the film's subjects
Archival interviews with codirector Jean Rouch and Marceline Loridan, one of the film's subjects
New interview with anthropology professor Faye Ginsburg, organizer of several Rouch retrospectives
New and improved English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by scholar Sam Di Iorio
Sansho the Bailiff
When an idealistic governor disobeys the reigning feudal lord, he is cast into exile, his wife and children left to fend for themselves and eventually separated by vicious slave traders. Under the dazzling direction of Kenji Mizoguchi, this classic Japanese story became one of cinema's greatest masterpieces, a monumental, empathetic expression of human resilience in the face of evil.
Special Features:
Restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Audio commentary by Japanese-literature professor Jeffrey Angles
Video interviews with critic Tadao Sato, assistant director Tokuzo Tanaka, and legendary actress Kyoko Kagawa, on the making of the film and its lasting importance
PLUS: A book featuring an essay by film writer Mark Le Fanu and two versions of the story on which the film was based: Ogai Mori's 1915 "Sansho Dayu" and a written form of an earlier oral variation
http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=9946
London. Greatest City in the world.
-
John Johnson
- Posts: 6091
- Joined: Tue Apr 19, 2005 3:28 pm
Re: Criterion New Releases
The Criterion Collection has announced six titles for Blu-ray release in March. On March 12th, the studio will release Ministry of Fear (Fritz Lang, 1944) and The Blob (Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr., 1958). A week later, it will release Badlands (Terrence Malick, 1973) and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger, 1943). On May 26th, it will release A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson, 1956) and Monsieur Verdoux (Charles Chaplin, 1947).
Technical specs and special features include:
Ministry of Fear
Suffused with dread and paranoia, this Fritz Lang adaptation of a novel by Graham Greene is a plunge into the eerie shadows of a world turned upside down by war. En route to London after being released from a mental institution, Stephen Neale (Ray Milland) stops at a seemingly innocent village fair, after which he finds himself caught in the web of a sinister underworld with possible Nazi connections. Lang was among the most illustrious of the European émigré filmmakers working in Hollywood during World War II, and Ministry of Fear is one of his finest American productions, an unpredictable thriller with style to spare.
Special Features:
New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
New interview with Fritz Lang scholar Joe McElhaney
Trailer
PLUS: An essay by critic Glenn Kenny
The Blob
A cult classic of gooey greatness, The Blob follows the havoc wreaked on a small town by an outer-space monster with neither soul nor vertebrae, with Steve McQueen playing the rebel teen who tries to warn the residents about the jellylike invader. Strong performances and ingenious special effects help The Blob transcend the schlock sci-fi and youth delinquency genres from which it originates. Made outside of Hollywood by a maverick film distributor and a crew whose credits mostly comprised religious and educational shorts, The Blob helped launch the careers of McQueen and composer Burt Bacharach, whose bouncy title song is just one of this film's many unexpected pleasures.
Special Features:
New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Two audio commentaries: one by producer Jack H. Harris and film historian Bruce Eder and the other by director Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr. and actor Robert Fields
Trailer
Blobabilia!, a gallery of collector Wes Shank's rare trove of stills, posters, props (including the blob itself!), and other ephemera
PLUS: An essay by critic Kim Newman
Badlands
Badlands announced the arrival of a major talent: Terrence Malick. His impressionistic take on the notorious Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate killing spree of the late 1950s uses a serial-killer narrative as a springboard for an oblique teenage romance, lovingly and idiosyncratically enacted by Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. The film also introduced many of the elements that would earn Malick his passionate following: the enigmatic approach to narrative and character, the unusual use of voice-over, the juxtaposition of human violence with natural beauty, the poetic investigation of American dreams and nightmares. This debut has spawned countless imitations, but none have equaled its strange sublimity.
Special Features:
New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Making "Badlands," a new documentary featuring actors Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek and production designer Jack Fisk
New interview with editor Billy Weber about director Terrence Malick's unique approach to editing
New interview with producer Edward Pressman
Trailer
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by filmmaker Michael Almereyda
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
Considered by many to be the finest British film ever made, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, is a stirring masterpiece like no other. Roger Livesey dynamically embodies outmoded English militarism as the indelible General Clive Candy, who barely survives four decades of tumultuous British history (1902 to 1942) only to see the world change irrevocably before his eyes. Anton Walbrook and Deborah Kerr provide unforgettable support, he as a German enemy turned lifelong friend of Candy's and she as young women of three consecutive generations—a socially committed governess, a sweet-souled war nurse, and a modern-thinking army driver—who inspire him. Colonel Blimp is both moving and slyly satirical, an incomparable film about war, love, aging, and obsolescence shot in gorgeous Technicolor.
Special Features:
New 4K digital master from the 2012 Film Foundation restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Audio commentary featuring director Michael Powell and filmmaker Martin Scorsese
Video introduction by Scorsese
A Profile of "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp," a twenty-four-minute documentary
Restoration demonstration, hosted by Scorsese
Interview with editor Thelma Schoonmaker Powell, Michael Powell's widow
Gallery featuring rare behind-the-scenes production stills
Gallery tracing the history of David Low's original Colonel Blimp cartoons
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Molly Haskell
A Man Escaped
With the simplest of concepts and sparest of techniques, Robert Bresson made one of the most suspenseful jailbreak films of all time in A Man Escaped. Based on the memoirs of an imprisoned French resistance leader, this unbelievably taut and methodical marvel follows the fictional Fontaine's single-minded pursuit of freedom, detailing the planning and carrying out of his escape with gripping precision. But Bresson's film is not merely process-minded—it's a work of intense spirituality and humanity.
Special Features:
New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Bresson: Without a Trace, a 1965 episode of the television program Cinéastes de notre temps in which the director gives his first on-camera interview
The Essence of Forms, a forty-five-minute documentary from 2010 in which some of Bresson's collaborators and admirers, including actor François Leterrier and director Bruno Dumont, share their thoughts about the director and his work
New visual essay with text by film scholars David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson
Trailer
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Tony Pipolo
Monsieur Verdoux
Charlie Chaplin plays shockingly against type in his most controversial film, a brilliant and bleak black comedy about money, marriage, and murder. Chaplin is a twentieth-century Bluebeard, an enigmatic family man who goes to extreme lengths to support his wife and child, attempting to bump off a series of wealthy widows (including one played by the indefatigable Martha Raye, in a hilarious performance). This deeply philosophical and wildly entertaining film is a work of true sophistication, both for the moral questions it dares to ask and the way it deconstructs its megastar's lovable on-screen persona.
Special Features:
New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Chaplin Today: "Monsieur Verdoux," a 2003 program on the film's production and release, featuring filmmaker Claude Chabrol and actor Norman Lloyd
Charlie Chaplin and the American Press, a new documentary featuring Chaplin specialist Kate Guyonvarch and author Charles Maland
New video essay featuring an audio interview with actress Marilyn Nash
Radio advertisements and trailers
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Ignatiy Vishnevetsky and reprinted pieces by Chaplin and critic André Bazin
http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=10124
Technical specs and special features include:
Ministry of Fear
Suffused with dread and paranoia, this Fritz Lang adaptation of a novel by Graham Greene is a plunge into the eerie shadows of a world turned upside down by war. En route to London after being released from a mental institution, Stephen Neale (Ray Milland) stops at a seemingly innocent village fair, after which he finds himself caught in the web of a sinister underworld with possible Nazi connections. Lang was among the most illustrious of the European émigré filmmakers working in Hollywood during World War II, and Ministry of Fear is one of his finest American productions, an unpredictable thriller with style to spare.
Special Features:
New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
New interview with Fritz Lang scholar Joe McElhaney
Trailer
PLUS: An essay by critic Glenn Kenny
The Blob
A cult classic of gooey greatness, The Blob follows the havoc wreaked on a small town by an outer-space monster with neither soul nor vertebrae, with Steve McQueen playing the rebel teen who tries to warn the residents about the jellylike invader. Strong performances and ingenious special effects help The Blob transcend the schlock sci-fi and youth delinquency genres from which it originates. Made outside of Hollywood by a maverick film distributor and a crew whose credits mostly comprised religious and educational shorts, The Blob helped launch the careers of McQueen and composer Burt Bacharach, whose bouncy title song is just one of this film's many unexpected pleasures.
Special Features:
New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Two audio commentaries: one by producer Jack H. Harris and film historian Bruce Eder and the other by director Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr. and actor Robert Fields
Trailer
Blobabilia!, a gallery of collector Wes Shank's rare trove of stills, posters, props (including the blob itself!), and other ephemera
PLUS: An essay by critic Kim Newman
Badlands
Badlands announced the arrival of a major talent: Terrence Malick. His impressionistic take on the notorious Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate killing spree of the late 1950s uses a serial-killer narrative as a springboard for an oblique teenage romance, lovingly and idiosyncratically enacted by Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. The film also introduced many of the elements that would earn Malick his passionate following: the enigmatic approach to narrative and character, the unusual use of voice-over, the juxtaposition of human violence with natural beauty, the poetic investigation of American dreams and nightmares. This debut has spawned countless imitations, but none have equaled its strange sublimity.
Special Features:
New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Making "Badlands," a new documentary featuring actors Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek and production designer Jack Fisk
New interview with editor Billy Weber about director Terrence Malick's unique approach to editing
New interview with producer Edward Pressman
Trailer
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by filmmaker Michael Almereyda
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
Considered by many to be the finest British film ever made, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, is a stirring masterpiece like no other. Roger Livesey dynamically embodies outmoded English militarism as the indelible General Clive Candy, who barely survives four decades of tumultuous British history (1902 to 1942) only to see the world change irrevocably before his eyes. Anton Walbrook and Deborah Kerr provide unforgettable support, he as a German enemy turned lifelong friend of Candy's and she as young women of three consecutive generations—a socially committed governess, a sweet-souled war nurse, and a modern-thinking army driver—who inspire him. Colonel Blimp is both moving and slyly satirical, an incomparable film about war, love, aging, and obsolescence shot in gorgeous Technicolor.
Special Features:
New 4K digital master from the 2012 Film Foundation restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Audio commentary featuring director Michael Powell and filmmaker Martin Scorsese
Video introduction by Scorsese
A Profile of "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp," a twenty-four-minute documentary
Restoration demonstration, hosted by Scorsese
Interview with editor Thelma Schoonmaker Powell, Michael Powell's widow
Gallery featuring rare behind-the-scenes production stills
Gallery tracing the history of David Low's original Colonel Blimp cartoons
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Molly Haskell
A Man Escaped
With the simplest of concepts and sparest of techniques, Robert Bresson made one of the most suspenseful jailbreak films of all time in A Man Escaped. Based on the memoirs of an imprisoned French resistance leader, this unbelievably taut and methodical marvel follows the fictional Fontaine's single-minded pursuit of freedom, detailing the planning and carrying out of his escape with gripping precision. But Bresson's film is not merely process-minded—it's a work of intense spirituality and humanity.
Special Features:
New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Bresson: Without a Trace, a 1965 episode of the television program Cinéastes de notre temps in which the director gives his first on-camera interview
The Essence of Forms, a forty-five-minute documentary from 2010 in which some of Bresson's collaborators and admirers, including actor François Leterrier and director Bruno Dumont, share their thoughts about the director and his work
New visual essay with text by film scholars David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson
Trailer
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Tony Pipolo
Monsieur Verdoux
Charlie Chaplin plays shockingly against type in his most controversial film, a brilliant and bleak black comedy about money, marriage, and murder. Chaplin is a twentieth-century Bluebeard, an enigmatic family man who goes to extreme lengths to support his wife and child, attempting to bump off a series of wealthy widows (including one played by the indefatigable Martha Raye, in a hilarious performance). This deeply philosophical and wildly entertaining film is a work of true sophistication, both for the moral questions it dares to ask and the way it deconstructs its megastar's lovable on-screen persona.
Special Features:
New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Chaplin Today: "Monsieur Verdoux," a 2003 program on the film's production and release, featuring filmmaker Claude Chabrol and actor Norman Lloyd
Charlie Chaplin and the American Press, a new documentary featuring Chaplin specialist Kate Guyonvarch and author Charles Maland
New video essay featuring an audio interview with actress Marilyn Nash
Radio advertisements and trailers
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Ignatiy Vishnevetsky and reprinted pieces by Chaplin and critic André Bazin
http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=10124
London. Greatest City in the world.
Re: Criterion New Releases
Yay! The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp in a new transfer.
I guess I won't wait for a sale to pick that one up.
I guess I won't wait for a sale to pick that one up.
-
John Johnson
- Posts: 6091
- Joined: Tue Apr 19, 2005 3:28 pm
Re: Criterion New Releases
The Criterion Collection has announced five titles for Blu-ray release in April. On April 9th, the studio will release Richard III (Laurence Olivier, 1955), Gate of Hell (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1953), and Naked Lunch (David Cronenberg, 1991). A week later, it will release Repo Man (Alex Cox, 1984). On April 23rd, it will release a collection of films by director-actor Pierre Etaix.
Technical specs and special features include:
Richard III
With Richard III, director, producer, and star Laurence Olivier brings Shakespeare's masterpiece of Machiavellian villainy to mesmerizing cinematic life. Olivier is diabolically captivating as Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who, through a set of murderous machinations, steals the crown from his brother Edward. The supporting cast—including Ralph Richardson, John Gielgud, and Claire Bloom—is just as impressive. Filmed in VistaVision and Technicolor, Richard III is one of the most visually inspired of all big-screen Bard adaptations.
Special Features:
New high-definition digital master of the Film Foundation's 2012 restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Audio commentary by playwright and stage director Russell Lees and John Wilders, former governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company
Interview with actor Laurence Olivier from a 1966 episode of the BBC series Great Acting, hosted by theater critic Kenneth Tynan
Gallery of behind-the-scenes and production stills and posters, accompanied by excerpts from Olivier's autobiography, On Acting
Twelve-minute television trailer featuring footage of Olivier, producer Alexander Korda, and other cast and crew from the film
Trailer
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Amy Taubin in the Blu-ray edition
Gate of Hell
A winner of Academy Awards for best foreign-language film and best costume design, Gate of Hell is a visually sumptuous, psychologically penetrating work from Teinosuke Kinugasa. In the midst of epic, violent intrigue in twelfth-century Japan, an imperial warrior falls for a lady-in-waiting; even after he discovers she is married, he goes to extreme lengths to win her love. Kinugasa's film is an unforgettable, tragic story of obsession and unrequited passion that was an early triumph of color cinematography in Japan.
Special Features:
New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film historian Stephen Prince
Naked Lunch
In this adaptation of William S. Burroughs's hallucinatory, once-thought unfilmable novel Naked Lunch, directed by David Cronenberg, a part-time exterminator and full-time drug addict named Bill Lee (Robocop's Peter Weller) plunges into the nightmarish Interzone, a netherworld of sinister cabals and giant talking bugs. Alternately humorous and grotesque—and always surreal—the film mingles aspects of Burroughs's novel with incidents from the writer's own life, resulting in an evocative paranoid fantasy and a self-reflexive investigation into the mysteries of the creative process.
Special Features:
High-definition digital transfer, approved by director David Cronenberg, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
Audio commentary featuring Cronenberg and actor Peter Weller
Naked Making Lunch, a 1992 television documentary by Chris Rodley about the making of the film
Special effects gallery, featuring artwork and photos alongside an essay by Cinefex magazine editor Jody Duncan
Collection of original marketing materials
Audio recording of William S. Burroughs reading from his novel Naked Lunch
Gallery of photos taken by poet Allen Ginsberg of Burroughs
PLUS: A booklet featuring reprinted pieces by film critic Janet Maslin, director Chris Rodley, critic and novelist Gary Indiana, and Burroughs
Repo Man
A quintessential cult film of the 1980s, Alex Cox's singular sci-fi comedy stars the always captivating Harry Dean Stanton as a weathered repo man in desolate downtown Los Angeles, and Emilio Estevez as the nihilistic middle-class punk he takes under his wing. The job becomes more than either of them bargained for when they get involved in reclaiming a mysterious—and otherworldly—Chevy Malibu with a hefty reward attached to it. Featuring the ultimate early-eighties L.A. punk soundtrack, this grungily hilarious odyssey is a politically trenchant take on President Reagan's domestic and foreign policy.
Special Features:
New high-definition digital restoration, approved by director Alex Cox, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Audio commentary featuring Cox, executive producer Michael Nesmith, casting director Victoria Thomas, and actors Sy Richardson, Zander Schloss, and Del Zamora
Interviews with Cox, Richardson, and Zamora; producers Peter McCarthy and Jonathan Wacks; actors Olivia Barash, Dick Rude, Miguel Sandoval, and Harry Dean Stanton; musicians Keith Morris and Iggy Pop; and Sam Cohen, the inventor of the neutron bomb
Deleted scenes
The complete "cleaned-up" television version of the film, prepared by Cox
Trailers
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Sam McPheeters; an illustrated production history by Cox, with his original comic and film proposal; and a 1987 interview with real-life repo man Mark Lewis
Pierre Etaix
A French comedy master whose films went unseen for decades as a result of legal tangles, director-actor Pierre Etaix is a treasure the cinematic world has rediscovered and taken up with relish. His work can be placed in the spectrum of classic physical comedy with that of Jacques Tati and Jerry Lewis, but it also stands alone. These films, influenced by Etaix's experiences as a circus acrobat and clown and by the silent film comedies he adored, are elegantly deadpan, but as an on-screen presence, Etaix radiates warmth. This collection includes all of his films, including five features, The Suitor (1962), Yoyo (1965), As Long as You've Got Your Health (1966), Le grand amour (1969), and Land of Milk and Honey (1971)—most of them collaborations with the great screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière—and three shorts, Rupture (1961), the Oscar-winning Happy Anniversary (1962), and Feeling Good (1966). Not one of these is anything less than a bracing and witty delight.
The Suitor - Pierre Etaix's first feature introduces the droll humor and oddball charm of its unique writer-director-star. As a tribute to Buster Keaton, Etaix fashioned this lovable story of a privileged yet sheltered young man (played by Etaix himself, in a nearly silent performance) who, under pressure from his parents, sets out to find a young woman to marry—though he has a hard time tearing his mind away from the famous singer whose face decorates the walls of his bedroom.
Yoyo - This elaborately conceived and brilliantly mounted comedy is Pierre Etaix's most beloved movie, as well as his personal favorite. Beginning as a clever homage to silent film, complete with intertitles, Yoyo blossoms into a poignant family saga (in which Etaix plays both a father and his grown son) and a celebration of the circus Etaix adored. Chock-full of nimble sight gags and ingenious sound effects, Yoyo is very sweet, a little bit melancholy, and wholly imaginative.
As Long as You've Got Your Health - In this endlessly diverting compendium of four short films, Pierre Etaix regards the 1960s from his askew but astute perspective. Each part is as technically impressive as it is riotous: a man attempts to read a novel about vampires beside his sleeping wife but cannot seem to separate reality from fiction; a simple afternoon at the movies becomes a consumer-culture assault; a jarringly noisy urban landscape keeps a city's population on edge; and a day in the country means something different to a picnicking city couple, a hunter, and a farmer.
Le grand amour - Despite having a loving and patient wife at home, a good-natured suit-and-tie man, played by writer-director Pierre Etaix, finds himself hopelessly attracted to his gorgeous new secretary in this gently satirical tale of temptation. From this simple, standard premise, Etaix weaves a constantly surprising web of complexly conceived jokes. Le grand amour is a cutting, nearly Buñuelian takedown of the bourgeoisie that somehow doesn't have a mean bone in its body.
Land of Milk and Honey - Pierre Etaix's most radical film, and perhaps unsurprisingly the one that effectively ended his career in cinema, Land of Milk and Honey is a fascinating investigative documentary about post–May '68 French society. In it, Etaix trains his discerning eye on idle summer vacationers, but the film has bigger fish to fry, asking pertinent questions about the sexualization of culture, class and gender inequality, media and advertising, and even architecture.
Special Features:
New digital restorations of all five features and three short films, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-ray edition
New interview with director Pierre Etaix
New video introductions by Etaix to seven of the films
Pierre Etaix, un destin animé (2010), a portrait of the life and work of the director by his wife, Odile Etaix
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic David Cairns
http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=10273
Technical specs and special features include:
Richard III
With Richard III, director, producer, and star Laurence Olivier brings Shakespeare's masterpiece of Machiavellian villainy to mesmerizing cinematic life. Olivier is diabolically captivating as Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who, through a set of murderous machinations, steals the crown from his brother Edward. The supporting cast—including Ralph Richardson, John Gielgud, and Claire Bloom—is just as impressive. Filmed in VistaVision and Technicolor, Richard III is one of the most visually inspired of all big-screen Bard adaptations.
Special Features:
New high-definition digital master of the Film Foundation's 2012 restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Audio commentary by playwright and stage director Russell Lees and John Wilders, former governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company
Interview with actor Laurence Olivier from a 1966 episode of the BBC series Great Acting, hosted by theater critic Kenneth Tynan
Gallery of behind-the-scenes and production stills and posters, accompanied by excerpts from Olivier's autobiography, On Acting
Twelve-minute television trailer featuring footage of Olivier, producer Alexander Korda, and other cast and crew from the film
Trailer
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Amy Taubin in the Blu-ray edition
Gate of Hell
A winner of Academy Awards for best foreign-language film and best costume design, Gate of Hell is a visually sumptuous, psychologically penetrating work from Teinosuke Kinugasa. In the midst of epic, violent intrigue in twelfth-century Japan, an imperial warrior falls for a lady-in-waiting; even after he discovers she is married, he goes to extreme lengths to win her love. Kinugasa's film is an unforgettable, tragic story of obsession and unrequited passion that was an early triumph of color cinematography in Japan.
Special Features:
New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film historian Stephen Prince
Naked Lunch
In this adaptation of William S. Burroughs's hallucinatory, once-thought unfilmable novel Naked Lunch, directed by David Cronenberg, a part-time exterminator and full-time drug addict named Bill Lee (Robocop's Peter Weller) plunges into the nightmarish Interzone, a netherworld of sinister cabals and giant talking bugs. Alternately humorous and grotesque—and always surreal—the film mingles aspects of Burroughs's novel with incidents from the writer's own life, resulting in an evocative paranoid fantasy and a self-reflexive investigation into the mysteries of the creative process.
Special Features:
High-definition digital transfer, approved by director David Cronenberg, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
Audio commentary featuring Cronenberg and actor Peter Weller
Naked Making Lunch, a 1992 television documentary by Chris Rodley about the making of the film
Special effects gallery, featuring artwork and photos alongside an essay by Cinefex magazine editor Jody Duncan
Collection of original marketing materials
Audio recording of William S. Burroughs reading from his novel Naked Lunch
Gallery of photos taken by poet Allen Ginsberg of Burroughs
PLUS: A booklet featuring reprinted pieces by film critic Janet Maslin, director Chris Rodley, critic and novelist Gary Indiana, and Burroughs
Repo Man
A quintessential cult film of the 1980s, Alex Cox's singular sci-fi comedy stars the always captivating Harry Dean Stanton as a weathered repo man in desolate downtown Los Angeles, and Emilio Estevez as the nihilistic middle-class punk he takes under his wing. The job becomes more than either of them bargained for when they get involved in reclaiming a mysterious—and otherworldly—Chevy Malibu with a hefty reward attached to it. Featuring the ultimate early-eighties L.A. punk soundtrack, this grungily hilarious odyssey is a politically trenchant take on President Reagan's domestic and foreign policy.
Special Features:
New high-definition digital restoration, approved by director Alex Cox, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Audio commentary featuring Cox, executive producer Michael Nesmith, casting director Victoria Thomas, and actors Sy Richardson, Zander Schloss, and Del Zamora
Interviews with Cox, Richardson, and Zamora; producers Peter McCarthy and Jonathan Wacks; actors Olivia Barash, Dick Rude, Miguel Sandoval, and Harry Dean Stanton; musicians Keith Morris and Iggy Pop; and Sam Cohen, the inventor of the neutron bomb
Deleted scenes
The complete "cleaned-up" television version of the film, prepared by Cox
Trailers
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Sam McPheeters; an illustrated production history by Cox, with his original comic and film proposal; and a 1987 interview with real-life repo man Mark Lewis
Pierre Etaix
A French comedy master whose films went unseen for decades as a result of legal tangles, director-actor Pierre Etaix is a treasure the cinematic world has rediscovered and taken up with relish. His work can be placed in the spectrum of classic physical comedy with that of Jacques Tati and Jerry Lewis, but it also stands alone. These films, influenced by Etaix's experiences as a circus acrobat and clown and by the silent film comedies he adored, are elegantly deadpan, but as an on-screen presence, Etaix radiates warmth. This collection includes all of his films, including five features, The Suitor (1962), Yoyo (1965), As Long as You've Got Your Health (1966), Le grand amour (1969), and Land of Milk and Honey (1971)—most of them collaborations with the great screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière—and three shorts, Rupture (1961), the Oscar-winning Happy Anniversary (1962), and Feeling Good (1966). Not one of these is anything less than a bracing and witty delight.
The Suitor - Pierre Etaix's first feature introduces the droll humor and oddball charm of its unique writer-director-star. As a tribute to Buster Keaton, Etaix fashioned this lovable story of a privileged yet sheltered young man (played by Etaix himself, in a nearly silent performance) who, under pressure from his parents, sets out to find a young woman to marry—though he has a hard time tearing his mind away from the famous singer whose face decorates the walls of his bedroom.
Yoyo - This elaborately conceived and brilliantly mounted comedy is Pierre Etaix's most beloved movie, as well as his personal favorite. Beginning as a clever homage to silent film, complete with intertitles, Yoyo blossoms into a poignant family saga (in which Etaix plays both a father and his grown son) and a celebration of the circus Etaix adored. Chock-full of nimble sight gags and ingenious sound effects, Yoyo is very sweet, a little bit melancholy, and wholly imaginative.
As Long as You've Got Your Health - In this endlessly diverting compendium of four short films, Pierre Etaix regards the 1960s from his askew but astute perspective. Each part is as technically impressive as it is riotous: a man attempts to read a novel about vampires beside his sleeping wife but cannot seem to separate reality from fiction; a simple afternoon at the movies becomes a consumer-culture assault; a jarringly noisy urban landscape keeps a city's population on edge; and a day in the country means something different to a picnicking city couple, a hunter, and a farmer.
Le grand amour - Despite having a loving and patient wife at home, a good-natured suit-and-tie man, played by writer-director Pierre Etaix, finds himself hopelessly attracted to his gorgeous new secretary in this gently satirical tale of temptation. From this simple, standard premise, Etaix weaves a constantly surprising web of complexly conceived jokes. Le grand amour is a cutting, nearly Buñuelian takedown of the bourgeoisie that somehow doesn't have a mean bone in its body.
Land of Milk and Honey - Pierre Etaix's most radical film, and perhaps unsurprisingly the one that effectively ended his career in cinema, Land of Milk and Honey is a fascinating investigative documentary about post–May '68 French society. In it, Etaix trains his discerning eye on idle summer vacationers, but the film has bigger fish to fry, asking pertinent questions about the sexualization of culture, class and gender inequality, media and advertising, and even architecture.
Special Features:
New digital restorations of all five features and three short films, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-ray edition
New interview with director Pierre Etaix
New video introductions by Etaix to seven of the films
Pierre Etaix, un destin animé (2010), a portrait of the life and work of the director by his wife, Odile Etaix
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic David Cairns
http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=10273
London. Greatest City in the world.
Re: Criterion New Releases
Lol...I love David Cronenberg, but I have to be honest...NAKED LUNCH and CRASH are two of his all-time worst films IMO. I love the line:
"In this adaptation of William S. Burroughs's hallucinatory, once-thought unfilmable novel Naked Lunch..."
To me, it still is unfilmable!
"In this adaptation of William S. Burroughs's hallucinatory, once-thought unfilmable novel Naked Lunch..."
To me, it still is unfilmable!
-
Monterey Jack
- Posts: 9748
- Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 12:14 am
- Location: Walpole, MA
Re: Criterion New Releases
Every time someone mentons Naked Lunch, I think of Bart and his friends exiting a theater showing it on The Simpsons, and Nelson looking up at the marquee and remarking, "I can think of at least two things wrong with that title". 
Re: Criterion New Releases
HA HA HA!Monterey Jack wrote:Every time someone mentons Naked Lunch, I think of Bart and his friends exiting a theater showing it on The Simpsons, and Nelson looking up at the marquee and remarking, "I can think of at least two things wrong with that title".
Yes, I remember that episode!-
John Johnson
- Posts: 6091
- Joined: Tue Apr 19, 2005 3:28 pm
Re: Criterion New Releases
3:10 TO YUMA – May 14th
In this beautifully shot and acted, psychologically complex western, Van Heflin is a mild-mannered cattle rancher who takes on the task of shepherding a captured outlaw, played with cucumber-cool charisma by Glenn Ford, to the train that will take him to prison. This apparently simple plan turns into a nerve-racking cat-and-mouse game that will test each man’s particular brand of honour. Based on a story by Elmore Leonard, 3:10 to Yuma is a thrilling, humane action movie, directed by the supremely talented studio filmmaker Delmer Daves with intense feeling and precision.
• New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Alternate 5.1 surround soundtrack, presented in DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray edition
• New interviews with author Elmore Leonard and Glenn Ford’s son and biographer, Peter Ford
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Kent Jones
JUBAL – May 14th
A trio of exceptional performances from Glenn Ford, Ernest Borgnine, and Rod Steiger form the centre of Jubal, an overlooked Hollywood treasure from genre master Delmer Daves. In this Shakespearean tale of jealousy and betrayal, Ford is an honourable itinerant cattleman, befriended and hired by Borgnine’s bighearted ranch owner despite his unwillingness to talk about his past. When the new hand becomes the target of the flirtatious attentions of the owner’s bored wife (Valerie French) and is entrusted by the boss with a foreman’s responsibilities, his presence at the ranch starts to rankle his shifty fellow cowhand, played by Steiger. The resulting emotional showdown imparts unparalleled psychology intensity to this western, a vivid melodrama featuring expressive location photography in Technicolor and CinemaScope.
• New high-definition digital restoration, with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Kent Jones
MEDIUM COOL – May 21st
It’s 1968, and the whole world is watching. With the U.S. in social upheaval, famed cinematographer Haskell Wexler decided to make a film about what the hell was going on. His debut feature, Medium Cool, plunges us into that moment. With its mix of scripted fiction and seat-of-the-pants documentary technique, this story of the working world and romantic life of a television cameraman (Robert Forster) is a visceral, lasting cinematic snapshot of the era, climaxing with an extended sequence shot right in the middle of the riots surrounding the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. An inventive commentary on the pleasures and dangers of wielding a camera, Medium Cool is as prescient a political film as Hollywood has ever produced.
• New 4K digital restoration, approved by director Haskell Wexler, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Two audio commentaries, one featuring Wexler, actor Marianna Hill, and editor Paul Golding, the other featuring historian Paul Cronin
• New interview with Wexler
• Look Out Haskell, It’s Real!, a fifty-five-minute documentary about the making of Medium Cool, produced by Cronin and featuring interviews with Wexler, Golding, actors Verna Bloom, Peter Bonerz, and Robert Forster, Chicago historian Studs Terkel, and others
• Excerpts from Sooner or Later, a documentary by Cronin about Harold Blankenship, who plays the adolescent Harold in the film
• Original theatrical trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic and programmer Thomas Beard
LIFE IS SWEET – May 28th
This moving film from Mike Leigh is an intimate, invigorating, and amusing portrait of a working-class family in a suburb just north of London—an irrepressible mum and dad (Alison Steadman and Jim Broadbent) and their night-and-day twins, a bookish good girl and a sneering layabout (Claire Skinner and Jane Horrocks). In it, Leigh and his typically brilliant cast create, with extra¬ordinary sensitivity and craft, a vivid, lived-in story of ordinary existence, in which even modest dreams (such as the father’s desire to open a food truck) carry enormous weight. Perched on the line between humour and melancholy, Life Is Sweet is captivating, and it was Leigh’s first international sensation.
• New high-definition digital restoration, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• New audio commentary featuring director Mike Leigh
• Audio recording of a 1991 interview with Leigh at the National Film Theatre in London
• More!
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic David Sterritt
http://film.thedigitalfix.com/content/i ... up-us.html
In this beautifully shot and acted, psychologically complex western, Van Heflin is a mild-mannered cattle rancher who takes on the task of shepherding a captured outlaw, played with cucumber-cool charisma by Glenn Ford, to the train that will take him to prison. This apparently simple plan turns into a nerve-racking cat-and-mouse game that will test each man’s particular brand of honour. Based on a story by Elmore Leonard, 3:10 to Yuma is a thrilling, humane action movie, directed by the supremely talented studio filmmaker Delmer Daves with intense feeling and precision.
• New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Alternate 5.1 surround soundtrack, presented in DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray edition
• New interviews with author Elmore Leonard and Glenn Ford’s son and biographer, Peter Ford
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Kent Jones
JUBAL – May 14th
A trio of exceptional performances from Glenn Ford, Ernest Borgnine, and Rod Steiger form the centre of Jubal, an overlooked Hollywood treasure from genre master Delmer Daves. In this Shakespearean tale of jealousy and betrayal, Ford is an honourable itinerant cattleman, befriended and hired by Borgnine’s bighearted ranch owner despite his unwillingness to talk about his past. When the new hand becomes the target of the flirtatious attentions of the owner’s bored wife (Valerie French) and is entrusted by the boss with a foreman’s responsibilities, his presence at the ranch starts to rankle his shifty fellow cowhand, played by Steiger. The resulting emotional showdown imparts unparalleled psychology intensity to this western, a vivid melodrama featuring expressive location photography in Technicolor and CinemaScope.
• New high-definition digital restoration, with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Kent Jones
MEDIUM COOL – May 21st
It’s 1968, and the whole world is watching. With the U.S. in social upheaval, famed cinematographer Haskell Wexler decided to make a film about what the hell was going on. His debut feature, Medium Cool, plunges us into that moment. With its mix of scripted fiction and seat-of-the-pants documentary technique, this story of the working world and romantic life of a television cameraman (Robert Forster) is a visceral, lasting cinematic snapshot of the era, climaxing with an extended sequence shot right in the middle of the riots surrounding the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. An inventive commentary on the pleasures and dangers of wielding a camera, Medium Cool is as prescient a political film as Hollywood has ever produced.
• New 4K digital restoration, approved by director Haskell Wexler, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Two audio commentaries, one featuring Wexler, actor Marianna Hill, and editor Paul Golding, the other featuring historian Paul Cronin
• New interview with Wexler
• Look Out Haskell, It’s Real!, a fifty-five-minute documentary about the making of Medium Cool, produced by Cronin and featuring interviews with Wexler, Golding, actors Verna Bloom, Peter Bonerz, and Robert Forster, Chicago historian Studs Terkel, and others
• Excerpts from Sooner or Later, a documentary by Cronin about Harold Blankenship, who plays the adolescent Harold in the film
• Original theatrical trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic and programmer Thomas Beard
LIFE IS SWEET – May 28th
This moving film from Mike Leigh is an intimate, invigorating, and amusing portrait of a working-class family in a suburb just north of London—an irrepressible mum and dad (Alison Steadman and Jim Broadbent) and their night-and-day twins, a bookish good girl and a sneering layabout (Claire Skinner and Jane Horrocks). In it, Leigh and his typically brilliant cast create, with extra¬ordinary sensitivity and craft, a vivid, lived-in story of ordinary existence, in which even modest dreams (such as the father’s desire to open a food truck) carry enormous weight. Perched on the line between humour and melancholy, Life Is Sweet is captivating, and it was Leigh’s first international sensation.
• New high-definition digital restoration, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• New audio commentary featuring director Mike Leigh
• Audio recording of a 1991 interview with Leigh at the National Film Theatre in London
• More!
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic David Sterritt
http://film.thedigitalfix.com/content/i ... up-us.html
London. Greatest City in the world.
-
John Johnson
- Posts: 6091
- Joined: Tue Apr 19, 2005 3:28 pm
Re: Criterion New Releases
Released 18th June.
H.G. Wells' Things To Come.
•New high-definition digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
•Audio commentary featuring film historian and writer David Kalat
•Interview with writer and cultural historian Christopher Frayling on the film’s design
•Film historian Bruce Eder on Arthur Bliss’s musical score
•Audio recording from 1936 of a reading from H. G. Wells’s writing about the “wandering sickness,” the plague in Things to Come
•PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien
•More!
http://www.criterion.com/films/27552-things-to-come
H.G. Wells' Things To Come.
•New high-definition digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
•Audio commentary featuring film historian and writer David Kalat
•Interview with writer and cultural historian Christopher Frayling on the film’s design
•Film historian Bruce Eder on Arthur Bliss’s musical score
•Audio recording from 1936 of a reading from H. G. Wells’s writing about the “wandering sickness,” the plague in Things to Come
•PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien
•More!
http://www.criterion.com/films/27552-things-to-come
London. Greatest City in the world.
-
John Johnson
- Posts: 6091
- Joined: Tue Apr 19, 2005 3:28 pm
Re: Criterion New Releases
The Criterion Collection has announced five titles for Blu-ray release in July. On July 9th, the studio will release Kenji Mizoguchi's The Life of Oharu (1952). On July 16th, it will release Peter Brook's Lord of the Flies (1963). On July 23rd, it will release Gabriel Axel's Babette's Feast (1987) and Ang Lee's The Ice Storm (1997). And on July 30th, it will release Guillermo del Toro's The Devil's Backbone (2001).
The Life of Oharu
A peerless chronicler of the soul who specialized in supremely emotional, visually exquisite films about the circumstances of women in Japanese society throughout its history, Kenji Mizoguchi had already been directing movies for decades when he made The Life of Oharu in 1952. But this epic portrait of an inexorable fall from grace, starring the incredibly talented Kinuyo Tanaka as an imperial lady-in-waiting who gradually descends to street prostitution, was the movie that gained its director international attention, ushering in a new golden period for him.
Special Features:
New high-definition digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Introductory commentary by scholar Dudley Andrew
Mizoguchi's Art and the Demimonde, an illustrated audio essay featuring Andrew
Kinuyo Tanaka's New Departure, a 2009 film by Koko Kajiyama documenting the actor's 1949 goodwill tour of the United States
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Gilberto Perez
Lord of the Flies
In the hands of the renowned experimental theater director Peter Brook, William Golding's legendary novel on the primitivism lurking beneath civilization becomes a film as raw and ragged as the lost boys at its center. Taking an innovative documentary-like approach, Brook shot Lord of the Flies with an off-the-cuff naturalism, seeming to record a spontaneous eruption of its characters' ids. The result is a rattling masterpiece, as provocative as its source material.
Special Features:
New, restored 4K digital film transfer, supervised by cameraman and editor Gerald Feil, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Audio commentary featuring director Peter Brook, producer Lewis Allen, director of photography Tom Hollyman, and Feil
Audio recordings of William Golding reading from his novel Lord of the Flies, accompanied by the corresponding scenes from the film
Deleted scene, with optional commentary and reading by Golding
Interview with Brook from 2008
Collection of behind-the-scenes material, featuring home movies, screen tests, outtakes, and stills
New interview with Feil
Excerpt from Feil's 1972 documentary The Empty Space, showcasing Brook's theater methods
Something Queer in the Warehouse, a piece composed of never-before-seen footage shot by the boy actors during production, with new voice-over by Tom Gaman, who played Simon
Trailer
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Geoffrey Macnab and an excerpt from Brook's book The Shifting Point
Babette's Feast
At once a rousing paean to artistic creation, a delicate evocation of divine grace, and the ultimate film about food, the Oscar-winning Babette's Feast is a deeply beloved cinematic treasure. Directed by Gabriel Axel and adapted from a story by Isak Dinesen, this is the layered tale of a French housekeeper with a mysterious past who brings quiet revolution in the form of one exquisite meal to a circle of starkly pious villagers in late nineteenth-century Denmark. Babette's Feast combines earthiness and reverence in an indescribably moving depiction of pleasure that goes to your head like fine champagne.
Special Features:
New 2K digital film restoration, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
New interview with actor Stéphane Audran
Karen Blixen: Storyteller, a 1995 documentary about the author of the film's source story, who wrote under the pen name Isak Dinesen
New visual essay by filmmaker Michael Almereyda
New interview with sociologist Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson about the significance of cuisine in French culture
Trailer
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Mark Le Fanu and Dinesen's 1950 story
The Ice Storm
Suburban Connecticut, 1973. While Richard Nixon's "I am not a crook" speech drones from the TV, the Hood and Carver families try to navigate a Thanksgiving break simmering with unspoken resentment, sexual tension, and cultural confusion. With clarity, subtlety, and a dose of wicked humor, Academy Award–winning director Ang Lee renders Rick Moody's acclaimed novel of upper-middle-class American malaise as a trenchant, tragic cinematic portrait of lost souls. Featuring a tremendous cast of established actors (Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver) and rising stars (Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, Katie Holmes) The Ice Storm is among the finest films of the 1990s.
Special Features:
Restored high-definition digital film transfer, supervised and approved by director Ang Lee and director of photography Frederick Elmes, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
Audio commentary featuring Lee and producer-screenwriter James Schamus
Documentary featuring interviews with actors Joan Allen, Kevin Kline, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Sigourney Weaver, and Elijah Wood
Interview with novelist Rick Moody
Deleted scenes
Footage from a 2007 event honoring Lee and Schamus at New York's Museum of the Moving Image
Visual essays featuring interviews with the film's cinematographer and production and costume designers
Theatrical trailer
PLUS: An essay by critic Bill Krohn
The Devil's Backbone
The most personal film by Guillermo del Toro is also among his most frightening and emotionally layered. Set during the final week of the Spanish Civil War, The Devil's Backbone tells the tale of a ten-year-old boy who, after his freedom-fighting father is killed, is sent to a haunted rural orphanage full of terrible secrets. Del Toro effectively combines gothic ghost story, murder mystery, and historical melodrama in a stylish concoction that reminds us—as would his later Pan's Labyrinth—that the scariest monsters are often the human ones.
Special Features:
New 2K digital film restoration, approved by director Guillermo del Toro and cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Audio commentary featuring Del Toro
Video introduction by Del Toro from 2010
New interviews with Del Toro about the process of creating the ghost Santi and the drawings and designs made in preparation for the film
¿Que es un fantasma?, a 2004 making-of documentary
Spanish Gothic, a 2010 interview with Del Toro about the genre and its influence on his work
Interactive director's notebook, with Del Toro's drawings and handwritten notes, along with interviews with the filmmaker
Four deleted scenes, with optional commentary
New featurette about the Spanish Civil War as evoked in the film
Program comparing Del Toro's thumbnail sketches and Carlos Giménez's storyboards with the final film
Selected on-screen presentation of Del Toro's thumbnail sketches alongside the sections of the final film they represent (Blu-ray edition only)
Trailer
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Mark Kermode
http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=10911
The Life of Oharu
A peerless chronicler of the soul who specialized in supremely emotional, visually exquisite films about the circumstances of women in Japanese society throughout its history, Kenji Mizoguchi had already been directing movies for decades when he made The Life of Oharu in 1952. But this epic portrait of an inexorable fall from grace, starring the incredibly talented Kinuyo Tanaka as an imperial lady-in-waiting who gradually descends to street prostitution, was the movie that gained its director international attention, ushering in a new golden period for him.
Special Features:
New high-definition digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Introductory commentary by scholar Dudley Andrew
Mizoguchi's Art and the Demimonde, an illustrated audio essay featuring Andrew
Kinuyo Tanaka's New Departure, a 2009 film by Koko Kajiyama documenting the actor's 1949 goodwill tour of the United States
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Gilberto Perez
Lord of the Flies
In the hands of the renowned experimental theater director Peter Brook, William Golding's legendary novel on the primitivism lurking beneath civilization becomes a film as raw and ragged as the lost boys at its center. Taking an innovative documentary-like approach, Brook shot Lord of the Flies with an off-the-cuff naturalism, seeming to record a spontaneous eruption of its characters' ids. The result is a rattling masterpiece, as provocative as its source material.
Special Features:
New, restored 4K digital film transfer, supervised by cameraman and editor Gerald Feil, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Audio commentary featuring director Peter Brook, producer Lewis Allen, director of photography Tom Hollyman, and Feil
Audio recordings of William Golding reading from his novel Lord of the Flies, accompanied by the corresponding scenes from the film
Deleted scene, with optional commentary and reading by Golding
Interview with Brook from 2008
Collection of behind-the-scenes material, featuring home movies, screen tests, outtakes, and stills
New interview with Feil
Excerpt from Feil's 1972 documentary The Empty Space, showcasing Brook's theater methods
Something Queer in the Warehouse, a piece composed of never-before-seen footage shot by the boy actors during production, with new voice-over by Tom Gaman, who played Simon
Trailer
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Geoffrey Macnab and an excerpt from Brook's book The Shifting Point
Babette's Feast
At once a rousing paean to artistic creation, a delicate evocation of divine grace, and the ultimate film about food, the Oscar-winning Babette's Feast is a deeply beloved cinematic treasure. Directed by Gabriel Axel and adapted from a story by Isak Dinesen, this is the layered tale of a French housekeeper with a mysterious past who brings quiet revolution in the form of one exquisite meal to a circle of starkly pious villagers in late nineteenth-century Denmark. Babette's Feast combines earthiness and reverence in an indescribably moving depiction of pleasure that goes to your head like fine champagne.
Special Features:
New 2K digital film restoration, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
New interview with actor Stéphane Audran
Karen Blixen: Storyteller, a 1995 documentary about the author of the film's source story, who wrote under the pen name Isak Dinesen
New visual essay by filmmaker Michael Almereyda
New interview with sociologist Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson about the significance of cuisine in French culture
Trailer
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Mark Le Fanu and Dinesen's 1950 story
The Ice Storm
Suburban Connecticut, 1973. While Richard Nixon's "I am not a crook" speech drones from the TV, the Hood and Carver families try to navigate a Thanksgiving break simmering with unspoken resentment, sexual tension, and cultural confusion. With clarity, subtlety, and a dose of wicked humor, Academy Award–winning director Ang Lee renders Rick Moody's acclaimed novel of upper-middle-class American malaise as a trenchant, tragic cinematic portrait of lost souls. Featuring a tremendous cast of established actors (Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver) and rising stars (Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, Katie Holmes) The Ice Storm is among the finest films of the 1990s.
Special Features:
Restored high-definition digital film transfer, supervised and approved by director Ang Lee and director of photography Frederick Elmes, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
Audio commentary featuring Lee and producer-screenwriter James Schamus
Documentary featuring interviews with actors Joan Allen, Kevin Kline, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Sigourney Weaver, and Elijah Wood
Interview with novelist Rick Moody
Deleted scenes
Footage from a 2007 event honoring Lee and Schamus at New York's Museum of the Moving Image
Visual essays featuring interviews with the film's cinematographer and production and costume designers
Theatrical trailer
PLUS: An essay by critic Bill Krohn
The Devil's Backbone
The most personal film by Guillermo del Toro is also among his most frightening and emotionally layered. Set during the final week of the Spanish Civil War, The Devil's Backbone tells the tale of a ten-year-old boy who, after his freedom-fighting father is killed, is sent to a haunted rural orphanage full of terrible secrets. Del Toro effectively combines gothic ghost story, murder mystery, and historical melodrama in a stylish concoction that reminds us—as would his later Pan's Labyrinth—that the scariest monsters are often the human ones.
Special Features:
New 2K digital film restoration, approved by director Guillermo del Toro and cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Audio commentary featuring Del Toro
Video introduction by Del Toro from 2010
New interviews with Del Toro about the process of creating the ghost Santi and the drawings and designs made in preparation for the film
¿Que es un fantasma?, a 2004 making-of documentary
Spanish Gothic, a 2010 interview with Del Toro about the genre and its influence on his work
Interactive director's notebook, with Del Toro's drawings and handwritten notes, along with interviews with the filmmaker
Four deleted scenes, with optional commentary
New featurette about the Spanish Civil War as evoked in the film
Program comparing Del Toro's thumbnail sketches and Carlos Giménez's storyboards with the final film
Selected on-screen presentation of Del Toro's thumbnail sketches alongside the sections of the final film they represent (Blu-ray edition only)
Trailer
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Mark Kermode
http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=10911
London. Greatest City in the world.
Re: Criterion New Releases
Love Mizoguchi - have to pick that one up. May also pick up Gate of Hell as a result of Andy's review.