Posted Tue Aug 21, 2012 at 06:00 AM PDT by Tom Landy
Three 1970s films from the great Italian poet, philosopher, and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini are bound for Blu-ray in November.
In an early announcement to retailers, Criterion says 'Trilogy of Life' is coming to Blu-ray on November 13.
Pasolini weaves together stories from Giovanni Boccaccio’s fourteenth-century moral tales in this picturesque free-for-all. 'The Decameron' explores the delectations and dark corners of an earlier and, as the filmmaker saw it, less compromised time.
Eight of Geoffrey Chaucer’s lusty tales come to life on-screen in Pasolini’s gutsy and delirious 'The Canterbury Tales,' which was shot in England and offers a remarkably earthy re-creation of the medieval era.
Pasolini traveled to Africa, India, and the Middle East to realize this ambitious cinematic treatment of a handful of the stories from the legendary The Thousand and One Nights. Full of lustrous sets and costumes and stunning location photography, 'Arabian Nights' is a fierce and joyous exploration of human sensuality.
The 3-Disc Blu-ray set will feature a 1080p digital transfer, a uncompressed mono soundtrack, and supplements include: New visual essays by film scholars Patrick Rumble and Tony Rayns on The Decameron and Arabian Nights, respectively; New interviews with art director Dante Ferretti and composer Ennio Morricone about their work with Pasolini, and with film scholar Sam Rohdie on The Canterbury Tales; The Lost Body of Alibech (2005), a forty-five-minute documentary by Roberto Chiesi about a lost sequence from The Decameron; The Secret Humiliation of Chaucer (2006), a forty-seven-minute documentary by Chiesi about The Canterbury Tales; Via Pasolini, a documentary in which Pasolini discusses his views on language, film, and modern society; Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Form of the City (1974), a sixteen-minute documentary by Pasolini and Paolo Burnatto about the ancient Italian cities Orte and Sabaudia; Deleted scenes from Arabian Nights, with transcriptions of pages from the original script; Pasolini-approved English-dubbed track for The Canterbury Tales; Trailers; and a booklet featuring essays by critic Colin MacCabe; Pasolini's 1975 article "Trilogy of Life Rejected"; excerpts from Pasolini's Berlin Film Festival press conference for The Canterbury Tales; and a report from the set of Arabian Nights by critic Gideon Bachmann.
Suggested list price for the Blu-ray is $79.95.
You can find the latest specs for 'Trilogy of Life' linked from our Blu-ray Release Schedule, where it's indexed under November 13.
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