• Witchfinder General Presents: Turkey Day/Black Friday 4K UHD Blu-ray and Blu-ray Disc News Round-up

    Posted Wed Nov 22, 2023 at 10:30 AM PST by
    Witchfinder General

    We here at High-Def Digest hope that you and your loved ones all are having a Happy Thanksgiving.  Being a hectic week, it's time for another bite-sized round-up to make it easier for you to catch On the latest 4K UHD Blu-ray and Blu-ray release news.

    It has been quite the wait, but James Cameron's The Abyss, True Lies, and Aliens will finally be getting Ultimate Collector's Edition 4K UHD Blu-ray releases early next year on March 12. We have also previously reported that Titanic is coming December 5, and Avatar and Avatar: The Way of the Water will be available on home video on December 19 with new editions including a new Blu-ray 3D for the original Avatar. Read the full story here.

    James Cameron 4K Blu-ray and Blu-ray Announcement

    The Criterion Collection has revealed their February 4K UHD Blu-ray and Blu-ray releases. They are: Eric Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons, Nothing But a Man, McCabe & Mrs. Miller - 4K, The Roaring Twenties - 4K as well as a Blu-ray edition, and The Heroic Trio / Executioners - 4K also on Blu-ray.

    Sony will be bringing the action-packed extravaganza The Raid: Redemption to 4K UHD Blu-ray in a limited SteelBook edition on January 19. The studio has also announced another limited collector's set, Columbia Classics 4K Ultra HD Collection: Volume 4 - which will include His Girl Friday, Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, Kramer Vs. Kramer, Starman, Sleepless In Seattle, and Punch-drunk Love - for February 13th.

    Columbia Classics 4K UHD Limited Edition: Volume 4

    Universal in association with Blumhouse will bring the horror flick Five Nights at Freddy's based on the popular video games to 4K UHD Blu-ray and Blu-ray on December 12.

    Paramount has revealed that the cult fave Varsity Blues starring James Van Der Beek and Jon Voight will be getting a 25th Anniversary 4K UHD Blu-ray on January 9. And courtesy of Paramount+, Pet Sematary: Bloodlines - a prequel of sorts loosely based on Stephen King's novel will hit 4K UHD Blu-ray and Blu-ray on December 19.

    Gareth Edwards' The Creator has been announced for a home video release from 20th Century Studios. The film will be available on 4K UHD Blu-ray and Blu-ray on December 12. Check out that article here.

    UK distributor 88 Films has five new upcoming 4K UHD releases up for preorder. The titles include Count Dracula (1970), A Blade in the Dark, The Blood on Satan's Claw, Witchfinder General, and The Amityville Horror.

    And finally, Severin has nine new titles that will be going up for preorder on Black Friday. The 4K UHD Blu-rays include Cemetery Man, The Church, The Sect, and The Spider Labyrinth. And available on Blu-ray are Stir, The Unscarred, Closed Circuit, Raiders of the Living Dead, and The Dead One. Be sure to keep an eye on Severin's website so that you can grab these and anything else interesting during the sale.

    Continue Reading
  • The Criterion Collection Reveals February 2024 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray and Blu-ray Titles

    Posted Wed Nov 15, 2023 at 05:42 PM PST by
    The Roaring Twenties - The Criterion Collection

    Look forward to a 4K UHD Blu-ray upgrade of Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller; Blu-rays of Michael Roemer's Nothing But a Man and Eric Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons; and Raoul Walsh's The Roaring Twenties as well as Johnnie To and action choreographer Ching Siu-tung's double-feature The Heroic Trio / Executioners on both formats.

    Leading the charge on February 6 is a 4K UHD Blu-ray + Blu-ray of Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie.

    McCabe & Mrs. Miller - The Criterion Collection 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 

    McCabe & Mrs. Miller - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray - The Criterion Collection 

    This unorthodox dream western by Robert Altman may be the most radically beautiful film to come out of the New American Cinema. It stars Warren Beatty and Julie Christie as two newcomers to the raw Pacific Northwest mining town of Presbyterian Church, who join forces to provide the miners with a superior kind of whorehouse experience. The appearance of representatives for a powerful mining company with interests of its own, however, threatens to be the undoing of their plans. With its fascinating, flawed characters, evocative cinematography by the great Vilmos Zsigmond, innovative overlapping dialogue, and haunting use of Leonard Cohen songs, McCabe & Mrs. Miller brilliantly deglamorized and revitalized the most American of genres.

    4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
    • One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
    • Audio commentary from 2002 featuring director Robert Altman and producer David Foster
    • Making-of documentary, featuring members of the cast and crew
    • Conversation about the film and Altman’s career between film historians Cari Beauchamp and Rick Jewell
    • Featurette from the film’s 1970 production
    • Art Directors Guild Film Society Q&A from 1999 with production designer Leon Ericksen
    • Excerpts from archival interviews with cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond
    • Gallery of stills from the set by photographer Steve Schapiro
    • Excerpts from two 1971 episodes of The Dick Cavett Show featuring Altman and film critic Pauline Kael
    • Trailer
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    • PLUS: An essay by novelist and critic Nathaniel Rich

      Cover by Jon Contino

    Next on February 13 comes Eric Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons containing four films on Blu-ray.

    Eric Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons - The Criterion Collection 

    Eric Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons - The Criterion Collection 

    The seasons may change, but the follies of the heart are constant in this ineffably lovely quartet of films by Eric Rohmer, one of cinema’s most perceptive chroniclers of the pangs and perils of romance. Set throughout France, Tales of the Four Seasons is a cycle to stand alongside the director’s two earlier acclaimed film series, Six Moral Tales and Comedies and Proverbs. By turns comic and melancholic, breezy and richly philosophical, these bittersweet tales of love, longing, and the inevitable misunderstandings that shape human relationships probe the most complex of emotions with the utmost grace.

    FOUR-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 2K digital restorations, supervised by cinematographer Diane Baratier and Laurent Schérer, director Eric Rohmer’s son, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks
    • New interview program recorded at Rohmer’s house in Tulle, France, featuring Baratier, producer Françoise Etchegaray, sound engineer Pascal Ribier, and editor Mary Stephen
    • Excerpts of radio interviews with Rohmer conducted by film critics Michel Ciment and Serge Daney
    • Documentary from 2005 on the making of A Tale of Summer, by Etchegaray and Jean-André Fieschi
    • Two short films directed by Rohmer: A Farmer in Montfaucon (1968) and The Kreutzer Sonata (1956)
    • Trailer
    • New English subtitle translations
    • PLUS: An essay by film critic Imogen Sara Smith

      New cover by Polly Dedman

    On February 20, Michael Roemer's Nothing But a Man will arrive on Blu-ray.

    Nothing But a Man - The Criterion Collection 

    Nothing But a Man - The Criterion Collection 

    Michael Roemer’s groundbreaking first feature, sensitively shot by his close collaborator Robert M. Young, is a still-resonant expression of humanity in the face of virulent prejudice. Made at the height of the civil rights movement, Nothing but a Man reveals the toll of systemic racism through its honest portrait of a southern Black railroad worker (Ivan Dixon) confronting the daily challenges of discrimination and economic precarity, as he attempts to settle down with his new wife (jazz great Abbey Lincoln) and track down his father (Julius Harris). Admired by Malcolm X and now recognized as a landmark of American cinema, this tender film grounds its social critique in characters of unforgettable complexity and truth.

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New, restored 4K digital master, approved by director Michael Roemer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
    • An Introduction to Michael Roemer, a new interview program featuring Roemer
    • Conversation from 2004 between Roemer and coproducer and cinematographer Robert M. Young
    • Program featuring archival interviews with actors Ivan Dixon, Abbey Lincoln, and Julius Harris
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    • PLUS: An essay by critic Gene Seymour

      New cover by Katya Mezhibovskaya

    Also on February 20, Johnnie To and action choreographer Ching Siu-tung's The Heroic Trio / Executioners will be available on 4K UHD Blu-ray and Blu-ray.

    The Heroic Trio / Executioners - The Criterion Collection 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

    The Heroic Trio / Executioners - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray - The Criterion Collection 

    The star power of cinema icons Maggie Cheung, Anita Mui, and Michelle Yeoh fuels these gloriously unrestrained action joyrides from auteur Johnnie To and action choreographer Ching Siu-tung. The Heroic Trio and its sequel, Executioners, follow a new kind of justice league: a team of blade-throwing, shotgun-toting, kung fu–fighting heroines who join forces to battle evildoers in a dystopian, noirish city. Blending dazzling martial-arts mayhem with exhilarating blasts of comic-book lunacy, these beloved superhero movies reimagine the genre through the giddy genius of the Hong Kong film industry at its height.

    SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • 4K digital restorations of The Heroic Trio and Executioners, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks
    • In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the films and two Blu-rays with the films and special features
    • Alternate 5.1 surround Cantonese and English-dubbed soundtracks
    • New interview with actor Anthony Wong
    • New interview with film critic Samm Deighan (cohost of the podcast Twitch of the Death Nerve)
    • Trailers
    • New English subtitle translations
    • PLUS: An essay by critic Beatrice Loayza

      New cover by Alice X. Zhang

    And closing the month on February 27 is Raoul Walsh's The Roaring Twenties arriving on 4K UHD Blu-ray. A Blu-ray edition will be also be available.

    The Roaring Twenties - The Criterion Collection 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

    The Roaring Twenties - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray - The Criterion Collection 

    Ripped from the headlines of the turbulent era between the Great War and the Great Depression, this dynamic, nostalgia-tinged crime drama balances tommy-gun action with epic historical sweep. Legends James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart star as army buddies whose fortunes rise and fall as their fates intersect, first in a foxhole on the front lines of World War I, then in Manhattan’s Prohibition-era underworld. Directed by Hollywood master Raoul Walsh, and based on a story by prolific journalist turned screenwriter and producer Mark Hellinger, The Roaring Twenties brought to a close the celebrated Warner Bros. gangster cycle of the 1930s, and it remains one of the greatest and most influential crime films of all time.

    4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
    • One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
    • Audio commentary with film historian Lincoln Hurst
    • New interview with critic Gary Giddins
    • Excerpt from a 1973 interview with director Raoul Walsh
    • Trailer
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    • PLUS: An essay by film critic Mark Asch

      New cover by Jennifer Dionisio

    Pre-orders should be available any day now, until then - Happy Collecting!

    Continue Reading
  • Criterion's December Releases Announced Including Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray and Blu-ray

    Posted Mon Sep 18, 2023 at 10:27 AM PDT by
    Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

    December is a quiet month for The Criterion Collection with Allen Baron's Blast of Silence and The Red Balloon and Other Stories: Five Films by Albert Lamorisse hitting Blu-ray, as well as Guillermo Del Toro's Oscar-winning Pinocchio on both 4K and Blu-ray formats.

    On December 5, Allen Baron's 1961 crime noir Blast of Silence will arrive on Blu-ray.

    Blast of Silence - The Criterion Collection 

    Blast of Silence - The Criterion Collection 

    Swift, brutal, and blackhearted, Allen Baron’s New York City noir Blast of Silence is a sensational surprise. This low-budget, carefully crafted portrait of a hit man on assignment in Manhattan during Christmastime follows its stripped-down narrative with mechanical precision, yet also with an eye and ear for the oddball details of urban living and the imposing beauty of the city. At once visually ragged and artfully composed, and featuring rough, poetic narration performed by Lionel Stander and written by Waldo Salt (both uncredited), Blast of Silence is a stylish triumph.

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 4K digital restoration presented in two aspect ratios, 1.85:1 (widescreen) and 1.33:1 (full-screen), with uncompressed monaural soundtrack

    • Requiem for a Killer: The Making of “Blast of Silence”

    • Rare on-set Polaroids

    • Photos of locations from the film in 2008

    • Trailer

    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

    • PLUS: An essay by film critic Terrence Rafferty and a graphic-novel adaptation of the film by acclaimed artist Sean Phillips (Criminal, Reckless, Fatale)

      Cover by Sean Phillips

    After that on December 12 comes The Red Balloon and Other Stories: Five Films by Albert Lamorisse to the Blu-ray format.

    The Red Balloon and Other Stories: Five Films by Albert Lamorisse - The Criterion Collection 

    The Red Balloon and Other Stories: Five Films by Albert Lamorisse - The Criterion Collection 

    Everyday life becomes an adventure in the wide-eyed fables and fantasies of Albert Lamorisse. Balancing imaginative whimsy with documentary-like authenticity, his beloved short films Bim, the Little Donkey; White Mane; and the Academy Award–winning The Red Balloon find unforgettable emotional, spiritual, and moral resonance in the realms of children and animals, while his captivating but now rarely seen features Stowaway in the Sky and Circus Angel exult in the glories of two of his greatest loves: nature and flight. With their astonishing cinematography and purity of spirit, these five enchanting works invite viewers of all ages to experience the wonder, mystery, and poignancy of the world anew.

    SPECIAL FEATURES

    • New 4K digital restorations of The Red Balloon and White Mane and new 2K digital restorations of Bim, the Little Donkey; Stowaway in the Sky; and Circus Angel, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-rays

    • U.S. English-language version of Bim, the Little Donkey

    • New interview with actor Pascal Lamorisse, director Albert Lamorisse’s son

    • My Father Was a Red Balloon, a 2008 documentary featuring Pascal Lamorisse and his daughter Lysa

    • French television interviews with Albert Lamorisse from 1957 and 1959

    • English narrations for White Mane, by Peter Strauss, and Stowaway in the Sky, by Jack Lemmon

    • English-dubbed track for Circus Angel

    • New English subtitle translation and English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

    • PLUS: An essay by critic David Cairns

      New cover by F. Ron Miller

    After that on the same date Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio arrives on 4K UHD Blu-ray and Blu-ray.

    Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio - The Criterion Collection 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 

    Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio - The Criterion Collection - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 

    A classic tale is reborn through the inspired imagination of cinematic dream-weaver Guillermo del Toro, directing alongside Mark Gustafson. Realized through boundary-pushing, breathtakingly intricate stop-motion animation, this dark rendering of the fable of the puppet boy and his maker—which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature—daringly transfers the story to Fascist Italy, where the irrepressible Pinocchio gradually learns what it means to be human through his experiences of war, death, and sacrifice. Featuring the voices of Ewan McGregor, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, and Christoph Waltz, this Pinocchio imbues the oft-told tale with a bold new resonance about living with courage and compassion.

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • 4K digital master, supervised by directors Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson, with Dolby Atmos

    • One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features

    • Handcarved Cinema, a new documentary featuring del Toro, Gustafson, and cast and crew, including the film’s puppet creators, production designers, and animation supervisor

    • Directing Stop-Motion, a new program featuring del Toro and Gustafson

    • New conversation between del Toro and film critic Farran Smith Nehme

    • New interview with curator Ron Magliozzi on The Museum of Modern Art’s 2022 exhibition devoted to the film

    • New program on the eight rules of animation that informed the film's production

    • Panel discussion featuring del Toro, Gustafson, production designer Guy Davis, composer Alexandre Desplat, and sound designer Scott Martin Gershin, moderated by filmmaker James Cameron

    • Conversation among del Toro, Gustafson, and author Neil Gaiman

    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing and English descriptive audio

    • PLUS: Essays by film critic Matt Zoller Seitz and author Cornelia Funke

      Cover by James Jean

    Pre-orders for The Criterion Collection's December releases should be available soon!

    Continue Reading
  • Janus Contemporaries November Blu-ray Wave Announced

    Posted Thu Aug 24, 2023 at 01:03 PM PDT by
    Janus Contemporaries

    The Criterion Collection has announced their next three Janus Contemporaries Blu-ray releases coming in November: Hlynur Pálmason's Godland, two-time Palme d’Or winners Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's Tori and Lokita, and The Eight Mountains directed by Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch. All three titles will be available on November 21.

    Godland - Janus Contemporaries 

    Godland - Janus Contemporaries 

    The struggle between the strictures of religion and humankind’s brute animal nature plays out amid the beautifully forbidding landscapes of remote Iceland in this stunning psychological epic from director Hlynur Pálmason. In the late nineteenth century, Danish priest Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove) makes the perilous trek to Iceland’s southeastern coast with the intention of establishing a church. There, the arrogant man of God finds his resolve tested as he confronts the harsh terrain, temptations of the flesh, and the reality of being an intruder in an unforgiving land. What unfolds is a transfixing journey into the heart of colonial darkness—one that’s attuned to both the majesty and the terrifying power of the natural world.

    SPECIAL FEATURES

    • Meet the Filmmakers, a new interview with director Hlynur Pálmason
    • A Painter, a 2013 short film by Pálmason
    • Trailer

    Tori and Lokita - Janus Contemporaries 

    Tori and Lokita - Janus Contemporaries 

    From two-time Palme d’Or winners Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne comes the story of seventeen-year-old Lokita and twelve-year-old Tori, two immigrants to Belgium—from Cameroon and Benin, respectively—whose siblinglike bond is the only resource they can depend on in their struggle for survival on the margins of European society. The pair work as performers in a cheap trattoria, dealing drugs on the side, while balancing the demands of an indifferent bureaucracy. When Lokita is held captive in a marijuana grow house, events spiral out of control. Winner of the Seventh-Fifth Anniversary Prize at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, the latest humanist drama from the Dardenne brothers is a heart-stopping thriller that casts an unflinching eye on the trials of the young and dispossessed.

    SPECIAL FEATURES

    • Meet the Filmmakers, a new interview with directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
    • Trailer

    The Eight Mountains - Janus Contemporaries 

    The Eight Mountains - Janus Contemporaries 

    An epic journey of friendship and self-discovery set in the Italian Alps, The Eight Mountains is a cinematic experience as intimate as it is monumental. Adapting an award-winning novel by Paolo Cognetti, Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch portray, through observant detail and stunning landscape photography, the profound relationship between Pietro (Luca Marinelli) and Bruno (Alessandro Borghi), who first meet as children in an Alpine village. Years later, the estranged friends reunite, after the passing of Pietro’s father (Filippo Timi), in order to realize his dream of rebuilding a ruined cabin on a mountain slope. This emotional project, and their subsequent explorations of the mountains, create a strong bond between the two—yet individual dreams, and the demands of society, ultimately drive them to pursue irrevocably divergent paths.

    SPECIAL FEATURES

    • Meet the Filmmakers, a new interview with directors Charlotte Vandermeersch and Felix van Groeningen
    • The Making of “The Eight Mountains,” a new documentary featuring cast and crew
    • Trailer

    We will update these listings as soon as the preorder links become available and all three titles will be available on Blu-ray on November 21.

    Continue Reading
  • The Criterion Collection Announces November 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray and Blu-ray Line-Up

    Posted Tue Aug 15, 2023 at 07:37 PM PDT by
    The Last Picture Show

    The titles include Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show, Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, and Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets each on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray and Blu-ray. Plus Claude Chabrol's La cérémonie as well as the boxed set Jackie Chan: Emergence of a Superstar on Blu-ray.

    Leading the charge on November 7 is Jackie Chan: Emergence of a Superstar - a boxed set of six of martial arts legend Jackie Chan's films.

    Jackie Chan: Emergence of a Superstar - The Criterion Collection 

    Jackie Chan: Emergence of a Superstar (Criterion) 

    Originally tapped as a potential successor to Bruce Lee, Hong Kong martial-arts phenom Jackie Chan soon established his own unique screen persona, blending goofball slapstick and bone-crunching kung fu into intricate feats of supercharged athleticism. Tracing his rise from breakout star to full-fledged auteur, these six unabashedly silly, unstoppably entertaining early-career highlights find Chan refining the lovably mischievous image that would make him a global icon, while also assuming greater creative control over his projects—first as his own martial-arts choreographer, and later as a writer-director who set a thrilling new standard for daredevil action comedy.

    The films included are Half a Loaf of Kung Fu (1978), Spiritual Kung Fu (1978), The Fearless Hyena (1979), Fearless Hyena II (1983), The Young Master (1980), and My Lucky Stars (1985).

    FOUR-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • 2K digital restorations of Spiritual Kung Fu, The Fearless Hyena, Fearless Hyena II, The Young Master, and My Lucky Stars and high-definition digital restoration of Half a Loaf of Kung Fu, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks 
    • Alternate stereo and 5.1 surround Cantonese soundtracks
    • New audio commentaries for The Fearless Hyena and The Young Master featuring Hong Kong cinema expert and producer Frank Djeng (Enter the Clones of Bruce)
    • Interview with author Grady Hendrix (These Fists Break Bricks) about actor-director Jackie Chan
    • Archival interviews with Chan, actor-director Sammo Hung, actors Michiko Nishiwaki and Hwang In-shik, and more
    • The Young Master promo reel from the 1980 Cannes Film Festival and deleted scenes from the film 
    • Interview from 2005 with Hong Kong cinema critic Paul Fonoroff about producer-director Lo Wei
    • NG shots from The Young Master and My Lucky Stars 
    • Trailers
    • New English subtitle translations
    • PLUS: An essay by critic Alex Pappademas

    Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show will arrive on 4K UHD Blu-ray as well as Blu-ray on November 14.

    The Last Picture Show - The Criterion Collection 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 

    The Last Picture Show (Criterion) - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 

    One of the key films of the American seventies cinema renaissance, The Last Picture Show is set in the early fifties, in the loneliest Texas nowheresville to ever dust up a movie screen. This aching portrait of a dying West, adapted from Larry McMurtry’s novel, focuses on the daily shuffles of three futureless teens—enigmatic Sonny (Timothy Bottoms), wayward jock Duane (Jeff Bridges), and desperate-to-be-adored rich girl Jacy (Cybill Shepherd)—and the aging lost souls who bump up against them in the night like drifting tumbleweeds, including Cloris Leachman’s lonely housewife and Ben Johnson’s grizzled movie-house proprietor. Featuring evocative black-and-white imagery and profoundly felt performances, this hushed depiction of crumbling American values remains the pivotal work in the career of invaluable film historian and director Peter Bogdanovich.

    4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • 4K digital restoration of the director’s cut, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
    • One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays with the film and special features
    • Texasville (1990), the sequel to The Last Picture Show, presented in both the original theatrical version and a black-and-white version of Peter Bogdanovich’s director’s cut, produced in collaboration with cinematographer Nicholas von Sternberg
    • Two audio commentaries, featuring Bogdanovich and actors Cybill Shepherd, Randy Quaid, Cloris Leachman, and Frank Marshall
    • Three documentaries about the making of the film
    • Q&A with Bogdanovich from 2009
    • Screen tests and location footage
    • Introduction to Texasville featuring Bogdanovich, Shepherd, and actor Jeff Bridges
    • Excerpts from a 1972 television interview with filmmaker François Truffaut about the New Hollywood
    • Trailers
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    • PLUS: An essay by film critic Graham Fuller and excerpts from an interview with Bogdanovich about Texasville, with a new introduction by Bogdanovich biographer Peter Tonguette

      Cover by F. Ron Miller

    Also on November 14 comes Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven on 4K UHD Blu-ray with what looks like a new Blu-ray version, too.

    Days of Heaven - The Criterion Collection 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 

    Days of Heaven (Criterion) - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 

    One-of-a-kind filmmaker-philosopher Terrence Malick has created some of the most visually arresting films of the twentieth century, and his glorious period tragedy Days of Heaven, featuring Oscar-winning cinematography by Nestor Almendros, stands out among them. In 1910, a Chicago steelworker (Richard Gere) accidentally kills his supervisor, and flees with his girlfriend (Brooke Adams) and his little sister (Linda Manz) to the Texas panhandle, where they find work harvesting wheat in the fields of a stoic farmer (Sam Shepard). A love triangle, a swarm of locusts, a hellish fire—Malick captures it all with dreamlike authenticity, creating a timeless American idyll that is also a gritty evocation of turn-of-the-century labor.

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Terrence Malick, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
    • One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
    • Audio commentary featuring editor Billy Weber, art director Jack Fisk, costume designer Patricia Norris, and casting director Dianne Crittenden
    • Audio interview with actor Richard Gere
    • Interviews with camera operator John Bailey, cinematographer Haskell Wexler, and actor Sam Shepard
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    • PLUS: An essay by critic Adrian Martin and a chapter from director of photography Nestor Almendros’s autobiography
    • Cover by Lucien S. Y. Yang

    On November 21, Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets will hit 4K UHD Blu-ray. The release will also be available on Blu-ray.

    Mean Streets - The Criterion Collection 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 

    Mean Streets (Criterion) - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 

    Martin Scorsese emerged as a generation-defining filmmaker with this gritty portrait of 1970s New York City, one of the most influential works of American independent cinema. Set in the insular Little Italy neighborhood of Scorsese’s youth, Mean Streets follows guilt-ridden small-time ringleader Charlie (Harvey Keitel) as he deals with the debts owed by his dangerously volatile best pal, Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro), and pressure from his headstrong girlfriend, Teresa (Amy Robinson). As their intertwined lives spiral out of control, Scorsese showcases his precocious mastery of film style—evident in everything from his propulsive editing rhythms to the lovingly curated soundtrack—to create an electrifying vision of sin and redemption.

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 4K digital restoration, approved by director Martin Scorsese and editor Thelma Schoonmaker, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
    • One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
    • Excerpted conversation between Scorsese and filmmaker Richard Linklater from a 2011 Directors Guild of America event
    • Selected-scene audio commentary featuring Scorsese and actor Amy Robinson
    • New video essay by author Imogen Sara Smith about the film’s physicality and portrayal of brotherhood
    • Interview with director of photography Kent Wakeford
    • Excerpt from the documentary Mardik: Baghdad to Hollywood (2008) featuring Mean Streets cowriter Mardik Martin as well as Scorsese, journalist Peter Biskind, and filmmaker Amy Heckerling
    • Martin Scorsese: Back on the Block (1973), a promotional video featuring Scorsese on the streets of New York City’s Little Italy neighborhood
    • Trailer
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    • PLUS: An essay by critic Lucy Sante
    • New cover by Drusilla Adeline/Sister Hyde Design

    And lastly also on November 21 is Claude Chabrol's La cérémonie on Blu-ray.

    La cérémonie - The Criterion Collection 

    La cérémonie (Criterion) 

    Claude Chabrol’s forty-ninth feature stands as the crowning achievement of his prolific career—a coolly riveting study of class dynamics, the psychology of crime, and the sordid secrets lurking beneath the veneer of everyday life. A fascinatingly enigmatic, César Award–winning Isabelle Huppert is the chaotic yin to Sandrine Bonnaire’s tightly coiled yang. They are, respectively, a small-town postal worker and a maid to a wealthy family, a pair of outsiders who form a mysterious alliance that gradually, almost imperceptibly, goes haywire. With a master’s control of sound, editing, and suspense, Chabrol constructs a tour de force of sustained tension that delivers each brilliant shock with ice-pick precision.

    BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 4K digital restoration, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
    • Selected-scene commentary featuring Claude Chabrol
    • New introduction by filmmaker Bong Joon Ho
    • Making-of program
    • Archival interviews with Chabrol, actor Sandrine Bonnaire, and cowriter Caroline Eliacheff
    • Episode of the Criterion Channel series Observations on Film Art about the use of offscreen sound
    • Trailer
    • New English subtitle translation
    • PLUS: An essay by crime-fiction and true-crime authority Sarah Weinman
    • New cover by Eric Skillman

    Pre-orders should be available sometime in the next week or two and we'll be sure to update the website as soon as they are.


    Continue Reading
  • First Three Titles in Criterion's Janus Contemporaries Lineup Announced

    Posted Thu Jul 27, 2023 at 10:57 AM PDT by
    Janus Contemporaries

    As previously reported, The Criterion Collection and Janus Films are teaming up to produce a new series of Blu-rays. The first three are coming this October are all from 2022: Jerzy Skolimowski's EO, Jafar Panahi's No Bears, and Louis Garrel' The Innocent.

    EO - Janus Contemporaries 

    EO - Janus Contemporaries 

    Legendary director Jerzy Skolimowski created one of his freest and most visually inventive films yet with this story of a gray donkey named EO. After being removed from an itinerant circus, EO begins a trek across the countryside, experiencing cruelty and kindness from a cast of characters including an Italian countess (Isabelle Huppert) and a Polish soccer team. Nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature, and featuring stunning cinematography by Michał Dymek coupled with Paweł Mykietyn’s resonant score, EO presents the follies and triumphs of humankind from the perspective of its four-legged protagonist on a quest for freedom.

    SPECIAL FEATURES

    • The Making of “EO,” a new conversation with writer-director Jerzy Skolimowski and writer-producer Ewa Piaskowska
    • PLUS: All the Donkeys, an introduction to the six Sardinian donkeys who play EO
    • Trailer

    No Bears - Janus Contemporaries 

    No Bears - Janus Contemporaries 

    One of the world’s great cinema artists, Jafar Panahi has been carefully crafting self-reflexive works about artistic, personal, and political freedom for the past three decades, despite being banned from filmmaking by the Iranian government since 2010. In No Bears—completed shortly before his imprisonment in 2022—Panahi plays a fictionalized version of himself, a dissident filmmaker who relocates to a rural border town to direct a film remotely in nearby Turkey and finds himself embroiled in a local scandal. As he struggles to complete his feature, Panahi must confront the opposing pulls of tradition and progress, city and country, belief and evidence, as well as the universal desire to reject oppression.

    SPECIAL FEATURES

    • On Panahi’s Films, a new interview with filmmaker Ramin Bahrani about director Jafar Panahi’s work
    • PLUS: Panahi Speaks from Prison
    • Trailer

    The Innocent - Janus Contemporaries 

    The Innocent - Janus Contemporaries 

    Part crime thriller, part romantic comedy, Louis Garrel’s The Innocent shows the dangerous and outlandish lengths two men go to for the women they love. Garrel stars as Abel, an aquarium educator whose mother, Sylvie (Anouk Grinberg), marries one of her drama pupils in the local penitentiary, Michel (Roschdy Zem). Once on parole, Michel attempts to start a legitimate life but soon reverts to his old ways, eventually roping Abel into one of his schemes. Complicating matters is Clémence (Noémie Merlant), Abel’s brazen coworker, who convinces him to take part in the heist. Directing from a screenplay he cowrote (with Tanguy Viel and Naïla Guiguet), Garrel explores the comedic results of playacting’s intrusion into reality, as well as reality’s comedic tendency to transform us into what we never thought we could be.

    SPECIAL FEATURES

    • Meet the Filmmaker, a new interview with director Louis Garrel
    • Trailer

    We will update with preorder links as soon as they become available and all three titles will be available on Blu-ray on October 17th.

    Continue Reading
  • Disc News Round-up: We All Go A Little Mad Sometimes...

    Posted Tue Jul 18, 2023 at 09:03 AM PDT by
    The Flash Warner Brothers

    We've gathered some of the latest title announcement highlights and have digested (pun intended) them for you into a quick read for you here. 

    What are your favorites?

    The biggest recent news as of late is The Criterion Collection has announced and detailed a creepy quintet of 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray and Blu-ray releases for the month of October. They are Nikyatu Jusu's Nanny and Freaks / The Unknown / The Mystic: Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers (both on Blu-ray), David Cronenberg's Videodrome on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, as well and Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now and Alejandro Amenábar's The Others on both formats. For more details, check out our full coverage on those here.

    Warner Brothers has announced The Flash starring Ezra Miller and Michael Keaton (bringing his 1989 Batman back out of retirement) on 4K UHD Blu-ray and Blu-ray on August 29.

    Warner Archive has also revealed their August Blu-ray slate: Wichita (1955), Spinout (1966), Little Women (1933), The Life of Emile Zola (1937), Gay Purr-ee (1962) and Father's Little Dividend (1951). All six Blu-ray releases arrive at the end of August.

    Disney's live-action The Little Mermaid will be swimming to Blu-ray and 4K UHD Blu-ray on September 19. The fantasy/musical starring Halle Bailey as Ariel and Melissa McCarthy as Ursula is from director Rob Marshall. Wal-Mart will be carrying an exclusive edition, and Best Buy will also have an exclusive 4K UHD Blu-ray SteelBook.

    Speaking of SteelBooks, Best Buy is set to release Lionsgate's The Expendables, The Expendables 2, and The Expendables 3 in matching 4K UHD Blu-ray SteelBooks on September 5. 

    The Expendables 4K SteelBook The Expendables 2 4K SteelBookThe Expendables 2 4K SteelBook

    Lionsgate and Tim Story's The Blackening will slaughter home video on 4K UHD Blu-ray as well as Blu-ray on August 22.

    Arrow has a few more limited edition releases coming soon that have been added to our release calendar. They are: Ringu - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray (Arrow Limited Edition), Carlito's Way - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray (Arrow Limited Edition), Borsalino (Arrow Limited Edition), Blood and Black Lace - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray (Arrow UK Limited Edition), The Prodigal Son (Arrow Limited Edition) and The Psycho Collection - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray (Arrow UK Limited Edition). The latter will be a boxed set containing four films starring Anthony Perkins.  Check out the box art below: 

    The Psycho Collection 4K

    Although there is no official release date yet, Kino is preparing M. Night Shyamalan's The Visit for 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray later this year.

    Paramount is working on a 70th anniversary 4K UHD Blu-ray release of William Wyler's classic Roman Holiday starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck on August 15. The studio is also prepping Transformers: Rise of the Beasts for Blu-ray and 4K UHD Blu-ray on October 10.

    For diehard fans of the Oscar-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once, A24 has a Collector's Edition 4K UHD Blu-ray and Blu-ray up for sale the on their website for $50 and $45, respectively. Both come loaded with features and some swag and they are shipping August 7.

    Of course, we didn't cover everything here so be sure to check out our release calendars for the full list of upcoming 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray and Blu-ray releases.

    Continue Reading
  • Criterion Unveils a Spook-Tacular October 4K and Blu-ray Slate

    Posted Mon Jul 17, 2023 at 07:55 PM PDT by
    The Others Nicole Kidman

    This October, The Criterion Collection is set to release Nikyatu Jusu's Nanny and Freaks / The Unknown / The Mystic: Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers on Blu-ray, a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray upgrade of David Cronenberg's Videodrome, plus Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now as well as Alejandro Amenábar's The Others on both formats.

    You can usually count on Criterion to punch out one or two horror gems for the spooky season but in recent memory Criterion's October 2023 horror-drenched slate has to be one of their most aggressively committed to the genre. There's a lot coming in so let's dive right in.

    Arriving on October 3 on 4K UHD Blu-ray (and returning to Blu-ray) is Nicolas Roeg's classic Don't Look Now.

    Don't Look Now - The Criterion Collection 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 

    Don't Look Now - The Criterion Collection - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 

    Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie mesmerize as a married couple on an extended trip to Venice following a family tragedy. While in that elegantly decaying city, they have a series of inexplicable, terrifying, and increasingly dangerous experiences. A masterpiece from Nicolas Roeg, Don’t Look Now, adapted from a story by Daphne du Maurier, is a brilliantly disturbing tale of the supernatural, as renowned for its innovative editing and haunting cinematography as for its naturalistic eroticism and its unforgettable climax and denouement—one of the great endings in horror history.

    4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • 4K digital restoration, supervised by director of photography Anthony Richmond, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
    • One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
    • Conversation between editor Graeme Clifford and film writer and historian Bobbie O’Steen
    • “Don't Look Now”: Looking Back, a short documentary from 2002 featuring Clifford, Richmond, and director Nicolas Roeg
    • “Don't Look Now”: Death in Venice, a 2006 interview with composer Pino Donaggio
    • Program on the writing and making of the film, featuring interviews with Richmond, actors Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, and coscreenwriter Allan Scott
    • Program on Roeg’s style, featuring interviews with filmmakers Danny Boyle and Steven Soderbergh
    • Q&A with Roeg from 2003 at London’s Ciné Lumière
    • Trailer
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    • PLUS: An essay by film critic David Thompson

    Cover by Fred Davis

    Next on October 10, David Cronenberg's Videodrome starring James Woods and Deborah Harry will be getting a 4K UHD Blu-ray.

    Videodrome - The Criterion Collection 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 

    Videodrome - The Criterion Collection - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 

    When Max Renn goes looking for edgy new material for his sleazy cable TV station, he stumbles across the pirate broadcast of a hyperviolent torture show called “Videodrome.” His attempts to unearth the program’s origins send him on a hallucinatory journey into a shadow world of right-wing conspiracies, sadomasochistic sex games, and bodily transformation. Starring James Woods and Deborah Harry, Videodrome is one of the most original and provocative works from writer-director David Cronenberg, and features groundbreaking makeup effects by Academy Award winner Rick Baker.

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • 4K digital restoration of the unrated version, approved by director David Cronenberg, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
    • One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
    • Two audio commentaries, one featuring Cronenberg and director of photography Mark Irwin, the other actors James Woods and Deborah Harry
    • Camera (2000), a short film by Cronenberg
    • Forging the New Flesh, a short documentary by filmmaker Michael Lennick about the creation of Videodrome’s video and prosthetic makeup effects
    • Effects Men, an audio interview with special makeup effects creator Rick Baker and video effects supervisor Lennick
    • Bootleg Video: the complete footage of Samurai Dreams and seven minutes of transmissions from “Videodrome,” presented in their original, unedited form, with filmmaker commentary
    • Fear on Film, a roundtable discussion from 1982 with Cronenberg and filmmakers John Carpenter, John Landis, and Mick Garris
    • Original theatrical trailers and promotional featurette
    • Stills gallery featuring rare behind-the-scenes production photos and posters
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    • PLUS: Essays by writers Carrie Rickey, Tim Lucas, and Gary Indiana

      Cover by Eva Wah

    Freaks / The Unknown / The Mystic: Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers - a trio of freaky silent-era features will arrive on Blu-ray on October 17.

    Freaks / The Unknown / The Mystic:
    Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers - The Criterion Collection 

    Freaks / The Unknown / The Mystic: Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers - The Criterion Collection 

    The world is a carnival of criminality, corruption, and psychosexual strangeness in the twisted pre-Code shockers of Tod Browning. Early Hollywood’s edgiest auteur, Browning drew on his experiences as a circus performer to create subversive pulp entertainments set amid the world of traveling sideshows, which, with their air of the exotic and the disreputable, provided a pungent backdrop for his sordid tales of outcasts, cons, villains, and vagabonds. Bringing together two of his defining works (The Unknown and Freaks) and a long-unavailable rarity (The Mystic), this cabinet of pre-Code curiosities reveals a master of the morbid whose ability to unsettle is matched only by his daring compassion for society’s most downtrodden.

    Freaks (1932)
    The most transgressive film produced by a major American studio in the 1930s, Tod Browning’s crowning achievement has haunted the margins of cinema for nearly one hundred years. An unforgettable cast of real-life sideshow performers portray the entertainers in a traveling circus who, shunned by mainstream society, live according to their own code—one of radical acceptance for the fellow oppressed and, as the show’s beautiful but cruel trapeze artist learns, of terrifying retribution for those who cross them. Received with revulsion by viewers upon its initial release, Freaks effectively ended Browning’s career but can now be seen for what it is: an audacious cry for understanding and a singular experience of nightmarish, almost avant-garde power. 

    The Unknown (1927) 
    The most celebrated and exquisitely perverse of the many collaborations between Tod Browning and his legendary leading man Lon Chaney, The Unknown features a wrenchingly physical performance from “the Man of a Thousand Faces” as the armless Spanish knife thrower Alonzo (he flings daggers with his feet) whose dastardly infatuation with his beautiful assistant (Joan Crawford)—a woman, it just so happens, who cannot bear to be touched by the hands of any man—drives him to unspeakable extremes. Sadomasochistic obsession, deception, murder, disfigurement, and a spectacular Grand Guignol climax—Browning wrings every last frisson from the lurid premise.

    The Mystic (1925)
    A fantastically atmospheric but rarely seen missing link in the development of Tod Browning’s artistry, set amid his favored milieu of shadowy sideshows and clever criminals, The Mystic provides a striking showcase for silent-era diva Aileen Pringle, who sports a series of memorably outré looks (courtesy of art-deco designer Erté) as Zara, a phony psychic in a Hungarian carnival who, under the guidance of a Svengali-like con man (Conway Tearle), crashes—and proceeds to swindle—American high society. Browning’s fascination with the weird is on full display in the eerie séance sequences, while his subversive moral ambiguity extends surprising sympathy to even the most seemingly irredeemable of antiheroes.

    • New 2K digital restoration of Freaks, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
    • New 2K digital reconstruction and restoration of The Unknown by the George Eastman Museum, with a new score by composer Philip Carli
    • New 2K digital restoration of The Mystic, with a new score by composer Dean Hurley
    • Audio commentaries on Freaks and The Unknown and an introduction to The Mystic by film scholar David J. Skal
    • New interview with author Megan Abbott about director Tod Browning and pre-Code horror
    • Archival documentary on Freaks
    • Reading of “Spurs,” the short story by Tod Robbins on which Freaks is based
    • Prologue to Freaks, which was added to the film in 1947 
    • Program on the alternate endings to Freaks
    • Video gallery of portraits from Freaks
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    • PLUS: An essay by film critic Farran Smith Nehme

    Hitting stores on October 24 on both Blu-ray and 4K UHD Blu-ray is the chilling 2001 film The Others starring Nicole Kidman.

    The Others - The Criterion Collection 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 

    The Others - The Criterion Collection - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 

    A remote manor; hushed, candlelit atmosphere; and shivery, supernatural menace. With his first English-language feature, Chilean Spanish writer-director-composer Alejandro Amenábar resurrected the classic gothic chiller to create a ghost story of uncommon emotional resonance. Nicole Kidman stars as a World War II–era mother whose imperiousness masks a terrifying pain, as she keeps her light-sensitive children enshrouded in darkness on her country estate. The arrival of three new servants punctures her insular world—and seems to disturb the balance between the living and the dead. With each stunning twist and turn, Amenábar immerses us more deeply in a realm haunted not only by spirits but also by guilt, trauma, and repression.

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 4K digital restoration, approved by director Alejandro Amenábar, with Dolby Atmos soundtrack
    • One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
    • Audio commentary featuring Amenábar
    • New conversation between Amenábar and film critic Pau Gómez
    • New making-of program featuring Amenábar, actors Nicole Kidman and Christopher Eccleston, and producer Fernando Bovaira
    • Archival programs about the film’s production, costume design, soundtrack, and visual effects, featuring interviews and footage recorded on the set
    • Audition footage of actors Alakina Mann and James Bentley and photography from the “Book of the Dead”
    • Seven deleted scenes
    • Trailer
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    • PLUS: An essay by scholar Philip Horne

      New cover by Greg Ruth

    And finally on October 31st, Nanny - the debut feature film from Nikyatu Jusu will join The Criterion Collection on Blu-ray.

    Nanny (2022) - The Criterion Collection 

    Nanny (2022) - The Criterion Collection 

    A spellbinding blend of social observation and artful shocks, the debut feature from Nikyatu Jusu plunges into the increasingly fractured consciousness of Aisha (Anna Diop), a Senegalese immigrant who takes a job as a nanny for a wealthy white family in New York City. Separated from her own son and casually exploited by her employers, Aisha finds herself consumed by unsettling visions and a growing rage—one that could either destroy or empower her. This visually captivating tour de force—the first horror movie to win the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival—distills complex ideas about motherhood, inequality, and cultural dislocation into a work of dreamlike dread.

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 4K digital master, approved by director Nikyatu Jusu, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio and uncompressed stereo soundtracks
    • New program featuring Jusu, actors Anna Diop and Michelle Monaghan, and director of photography Rina Yang
    • Trailer
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing and English descriptive audio
    • PLUS: An essay by critic Angelica Jade Bastién

      New cover by Jeremy Enecio

    Pre-order links will be updated as soon as they go live.


    Continue Reading
  • Criterion Unveils New Home Video Line - Janus Contemporaries - Coming This Fall

    Posted Thu May 11, 2023 at 10:49 AM PDT by

    The first announced titles include Jerzy Skolimowski's Cannes Jury Prize winner and Academy Award nominee EO, Jafar Panahi's No Bears, Louis Garrel's The Innocent, Hlynur Pálmason's Godland, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's Tori and Lokita, and Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch's The Eight Mountains.

    The Criterion Collection and Janus Films' Janus Contemporaries home video library will feature first-run theatrical films on Blu-ray and DVD following their streaming premieres on The Criterion Channel.

    As the premier U.S. distributor of international art house cinema, Janus is widely known for some of the greatest movies of all-time -- from legends such as Chantal Akerman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman, Jean Cocteau, the Coen brothers, Jean-Luc Godard, Akira Kurosawa, David Lynch, Yasujiro Ozu, Satyajit Ray, Ousmane Sembène, François Truffaut, Melvin Van Peebles, Agnès Varda, Wim Wenders, and Wong Kar.

    "It's an exciting moment for Janus Films," said Peter Becker, president of Criterion and a partner in Janus Films. "With a more robust first-run lineup than it has had since the 1960s and powerful partnerships with theatrical specialists Sideshow and the Criterion Channel streaming service, Janus is uniquely well positioned to bring the best films from around the world to theaters and homes across North America. The launch of Janus Contemporaries completes that picture."

    Janus Contemporaries Blu-ray titles will retail for $29.95 and DVDs will have a MSRP of $24.95 and it has been revealed that these titles will include new interviews from The Criterion Channel's Meet the Filmmakers series.

    More to follow soon as autumn approaches, but you can check out the the full press release: in the meantime below:


     

     

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

     

    Criterion announces Janus Contemporaries,

    a new home video line of first-run theatrical releases

     

    The initial slate includes Jerzy Skolimowski's EO, Jafar Panahi's No Bears, Louis Garrel's The Innocent, Hlynur Pálmason's Godland, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's Tori and Lokita, and Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch's The Eight Mountains 

     

    (New York, NY - May 11, 2023) - Starting this fall, Criterion will proudly join with Janus Films in presenting Janus Contemporaries, a new line of home-video editions of first-run theatrical releases, fresh from theaters, following their streaming premieres on the Criterion Channel. 

     

    Kicking off with Jerzy Skolimowski's Cannes Jury Prize winner and Academy Award nominee EO, the 2023 slate of the Janus Contemporaries line will feature Jafar Panahi's No Bears, writer/director Louis Garrel's The Innocent, Hlynur Pálmason's Godland, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's Tori and Lokita, and Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch's The Eight Mountains.

     

    The Blu-ray and DVD editions will feature new interviews with the filmmakers produced by Criterion as a part of the Criterion Channel series Meet the Filmmakers, and will retail for $29.95 (Blu-ray) and $24.95 (DVD).

     

    Known for more than sixty-five years as the premier U.S. distributor of international art-house cinema, Janus is home to many of the greatest movies ever made, from such vaunted masters as Chantal Akerman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman, Jean Cocteau, the Coen brothers, Jean-Luc Godard, Akira Kurosawa, David Lynch, Yasujiro Ozu, Satyajit Ray, Ousmane Sembène, François Truffaut, Melvin Van Peebles, Agnès Varda, Wim Wenders, and Wong Kar Wai. Last year, when Sight and Sound revealed the results of its once-a-decade poll, the critics’ and directors’ lists of the top hundred films of all time each included more than fifty entries from the Janus library.

     

    Over the past decade, Janus has released a steady stream of celebrated art-house hits, including Academy Award winners like Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty and Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car, which marked the start of Janus’s landmark partnership with bespoke theatrical specialist Sideshow.

     

    "It's an exciting moment for Janus Films," said Peter Becker, president of Criterion and a partner in Janus Films. "With a more robust first-run lineup than it has had since the 1960s and powerful partnerships with theatrical specialists Sideshow and the Criterion Channel streaming service, Janus is uniquely well positioned to bring the best films from around the world to theaters and homes across North America. The launch of Janus Contemporaries completes that picture."

     

    This news was announced today on The Current.

    Continue Reading
  • The Criterion Collection Announces and Details July 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray and Blu-ray Releases

    Posted Fri Apr 14, 2023 at 12:31 PM PDT by

    Titles include The Watermelon Woman (Blu-ray), Breathless (4K UHD), After Hours (4K UHD and Blu-ray), One False Move (4K UHD and Blu-ray) and The Ranown Westerns: Five Films Directed by Budd Boetticher (4K UHD).

    The month's Blu-ray-only title is the romantic comedy The Watermelon Woman by Cheryl Dunye arriving on July 11.

    The wry, incisive debut feature by Cheryl Dunye gave cinema something bracingly new and groundbreaking: a vibrant representation of Black lesbian identity by a Black lesbian filmmaker. Dunye stars as Cheryl, a video-store clerk and aspiring director whose interest in forgotten Black actresses leads her to investigate an obscure 1930s performer known as the Watermelon Woman, whose story proves to have surprising resonances with Cheryl’s own life as she navigates a new relationship with a white girlfriend (Guinevere Turner). Balancing breezy romantic comedy with a serious inquiry into the history of Black and queer women in Hollywood, The Watermelon Woman slyly rewrites long-standing constructions of race and sexuality on-screen, introducing an important voice in American cinema.

    1996 • 84 minutes • Color • 3.0 surround • 1.33:1 aspect ratio 

    The Watermelon Woman
    The Watermelon Woman
     

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • 2K digital restoration, supervised by director Cheryl Dunye, cinematographer Michelle Crenshaw, and producer Alexandra Juhasz, in collaboration with the Outfest UCLA Legacy Project, with 3.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
    • New interview with Dunye
    • New conversation between Dunye and artist-filmmaker Martine Syms
    • New conversation between Juhasz and filmmaker and film scholar Thomas Allen Harris
    • Six early short films by Dunye
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    • PLUS: An essay by critic Cassie da Costa

      New cover by Eric Skillman

    On the same date comes Martin Scorsese's 1985 dark comedy After Hours also available on Blu-ray.

    Desperate to escape his mind-numbing routine, uptown Manhattan office worker Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) ventures downtown for a hookup with a mystery woman (Rosanna Arquette). So begins the wildest night of his life, as bizarre occurrences—involving underground-art punks, a distressed waitress, a crazed Mister Softee truck driver, and a bagel-and-cream-cheese paperweight—pile up with anxiety-inducing relentlessness and thwart his attempts to get home. With this Kafkaesque cult classic, Martin Scorsese—abetted by Michael Ballhaus’s kinetic cinematography and scene-stealing supporting turns by Linda Fiorentino, Teri Garr, Catherine O’Hara, and John Heard—directed a darkly comic tale of mistaken identity, turning the desolate night world of 1980s SoHo into a bohemian wonderland of surreal menace.

    1985 • 97 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

    After Hours - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray (Criterion)
    After Hours - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray (Criterion)
     

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 4K digital restoration, approved by editor Thelma Schoonmaker, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
    • In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
    • New program featuring director Martin Scorsese interviewed by writer Fran Lebowitz
    • Audio commentary from 2004 featuring Scorsese, Schoonmaker, director of photography Michael Ballhaus, actor and producer Griffin Dunne, and producer Amy Robinson, with additional comments recorded in 2023
    • Documentary about the making of the film featuring Dunne, Robinson, Schoonmaker, and Scorsese
    • New program on the look of the film featuring costume designer Rita Ryack and production designer Jeffrey Townsend
    • Deleted scenes
    • Trailer
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    • PLUS: An essay by critic Sheila O’Malley

      New cover by Drusilla Adeline/Sister Hyde

    Arriving on July 18 is a 4K UHD upgrade of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless.

    There was before Breathless, and there was after Breathless. Jean-Luc Godard burst onto the film scene in 1960 with this jazzy, free-form, and sexy homage to the American film genres that inspired him as a writer for Cahiers du cinéma. With its lack of polish, surplus of attitude, anything-goes crime narrative, and effervescent young stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, Breathless helped launch the French New Wave and ensured that cinema would never be the same.

    1960 • 90 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In French with English subtitles • 1.37:1 aspect ratio 

    Breathless - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
    Breathless
     

    4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • 4K restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
    • One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
    • Interviews with director Jean-Luc Godard; actors Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, and Jean-Pierre Melville; director of photography Raoul Coutard; assistant director Pierre Rissient; and filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker
    • Two video essays: filmmaker Mark Rappaport’s Jean Seberg and critic Jonathan Rosenbaum’s “Breathless” as Criticism
    • Chambre 12, Hôtel de Suède, a 1993 French documentary about the making of Breathless, featuring members of the cast and crew
    • Charlotte et son Jules, a 1959 short film by Godard featuring Belmondo
    • Trailer
    • PLUS: An essay by scholar Dudley Andrew, writings by Godard, François Truffaut’s original treatment, and Godard’s scenario

      Cover by Rodrigo Corral

    Also on July 18 is The Ranown Westerns: Five Films Directed by Budd Boetticher on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray.

    The five briskly entertaining, vividly performed westerns made by director Budd Boetticher and strapping star Randolph Scott in the second half of the 1950s transcend their B-movie origins to become rich, unexpectedly profound explorations of loyalty, greed, honor, and revenge. Often grouped under the name Ranown (after producer Harry Joe Brown and Scott’s production company) and colorfully scripted by Burt Kennedy and Charles Lang, these films seem to unfold in a world unto themselves, staking a claim between traditional westerns and the subversive genre revisionism of the 1960s—and representing the crowning achievement of the underappreciated auteur Boetticher.

    The Ranown Westerns: Five Films Directed by Budd Boetticher - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray - The Criterion Collection
    The Ranown Westerns: Five Films Directed by Budd Boetticher - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray - The Criterion Collection
     

     

     

     

    THE TALL T

    Based on a story by Elmore Leonard, this collaboration between director Budd Boetticher, actor Randolph Scott, and screenwriter Burt Kennedy is a model of elegantly economical storytelling charged with psychological tension. Here, Scott is the easygoing rancher who, along with the newlywed daughter (Maureen O’Sullivan) of a wealthy mining baron, must use his wits to stay alive when he is taken hostage by a band of ruthless stagecoach robbers. He is memorably matched by Richard Boone’s dangerously charming, nearly sympathetic villain in a performance that exemplifies the fine moral shading that distinguishes the Ranown westerns.

    1957 • 78 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

     

    DECISION AT SUNDOWN

    Randolph Scott boldly subverts his upstanding image in this stark, often startlingly bleak tale of revenge and a man’s misguided quest for redemption. He plays the mysterious stranger who, consumed by hatred for the man he blames for his wife’s suicide, rides into the corrupt town of Sundown hell-bent on vengeance. There, both he and the townspeople face a reckoning that forces them to confront disturbing truths about themselves. All but annihilating the myth of the righteous western hero, Decision at Sundown edges the Ranown films into increasingly dark, despairing territory.

    1957 • 77 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

     

    BUCHANAN RIDES ALONE

    Welcome to Agry Town, a corrupt border outpost presided over by a pair of rival brothers whose bottomless greed corrupts everything in their orbit. Into this moral cesspool rides drifter Tom Buchanan (Randolph Scott), who soon finds himself railroaded for murder and, alongside a vengeful young Mexican vaquero, forced to take a stand for justice. The noir-tinged narrative—replete with twists, double crosses, and the kind of richly drawn villains who are hallmarks of the Ranown westerns—moves with entertaining economy toward a memorably ironic climax.

    1958 • 79 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

    RIDE LONESOME

    Mysterious motivations drive taciturn bounty hunter Ben Brigade (Randolph Scott) to capture a wanted murderer—but his quest is complicated when he is accosted by a pair of outlaws who have their own inscrutable reasons for riding along. Masterfully scripted by Burt Kennedy, who weaves a complex web of ambiguous loyalties and motives, and featuring supporting turns by genre icons James Coburn (in his film debut) and Lee Van Cleef, the first of the Ranown westerns to be shot in CinemaScope makes striking use of the enlarged frame—with a final shot that stands as perhaps the single most unforgettable image in the series.

    1959 • 73 minutes • Color • Monaural • 2.35:1 aspect ratio 

     

    COMANCHE STATION

     

    The last collaboration between Budd Boetticher and Randolph Scott brings the Ranown westerns full circle, reexamining many of the films’ key themes and tropes: greed, loyalty, hidden motivations, and the fine moral line that separates heroes from villains. Scott stars as the enigmatic Jefferson Cody, who rescues a woman kidnapped by Comanches for reasons that may have nothing to do with the bounty offered for her return. But before he can bring her to safety, he’ll have to contend with the dangers of the Comanche warpath and a trio of bounty hunters who have designs on the reward.

    1960 • 73 minutes • Color • Monaural • 2.35:1 aspect ratio 

    SIX-DISC 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

     

    • Five feature films: The Tall TDecision at SundownBuchanan Rides AloneRide Lonesome, and Comanche Station.

    • New 4K digital restorations by Sony Pictures Entertainment, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks

    • Three 4K UHD discs of the films presented in Dolby Vision HDR and three Blu-rays with the films and special features

    • Introductions to the films by filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Taylor Hackford 

    • New introduction by film critic Farran Smith Nehme on actor Randolph Scott

    • Three audio commentaries, featuring film scholar Jeanine Basinger on The Tall T, film critic Jeremy Arnold on Ride Lonesome, and Hackford on Comanche Station

    • Archival programs featuring interviews with director Budd Boetticher

    • Audio conversation with Boetticher and film scholar Jim Kitses

    • Super 8 home-movie version of Comanche Station

    • Trailers

    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

    PLUS: An essay by film scholar Tom Gunning

    And finally on July 25 is Carl Franklin's One False Move on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray as well as Blu-ray.

    A small-town police chief (Bill Paxton) concealing an explosive secret. A pair of ruthless drug dealers (coscreenwriter Billy Bob Thornton and Michael Beach) who leave a bloody trail in their wake as they make their way from Los Angeles to Arkansas. And an enigmatic woman (Cynda Williams) caught in the middle. The way these desperate lives converge becomes a masterclass in slow-burn tension thanks to the nuanced direction of Carl Franklin, whose haunting debut feature travels a crooked road across America’s most fraught divisions—urban and rural, Black and white—while imbuing noir conventions with a wrenching emotional depth.

    1992 • 105 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

    One False Move - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray - The Criterion Collection
    One False Move - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray - The Criterion Collection
     

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 4K digital restoration, approved by director Carl Franklin, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
    • In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
    • Audio commentary from 1999 featuring Franklin
    • New conversation between Franklin and cowriter-actor Billy Bob Thornton
    • Trailer
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    • PLUS: An essay by author William Boyle

      New cover by Vlad Rodriguez

    Preorders should be available in the next week or so.


    Continue Reading
  • The Criterion Collection Announces June 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray and Blu-ray Slate

    Posted Wed Mar 15, 2023 at 11:38 AM PDT by

    Coming this summer are The Rules of the Game and Time Bandits on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, as well as The Servant, Medicine for Melancholy, and Pasolini 101 on Blu-ray.

    Coming in June: Medicine for Melancholy, the sublime San Francisco–set feature debut of love and connection by Barry Jenkins, rubs shoulders with The Servant, Joseph Losey's savagely witty British class-war classic, while two favorites—The Rules of the Game, Jean Renoir's merciless critique of French society, and Time Bandits, Terry Gilliam's fantastic odyssey to the limits of the imagination—arrive on 4K UHD. Plus, our recently announced nine-film box set Pasolini 101!

    First up on June 6 is a 4K UHD upgrade of Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game coming June 6th

    The Rules of the Game - The Criterion Collection 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

    The Rules of the Game - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray - The Criterion Collection 

    Considered one of the greatest films ever made, Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game is a scathing critique of corrupt French society cloaked in a comedy of manners in which a weekend at a marquis’s country château lays bare some ugly truths about a group of haut bourgeois acquaintances. The film has had a tumultuous history: it was subjected to cuts after the violent response of the audience at its 1939 premiere, and the original negative was destroyed during World War II; it wasn’t reconstructed until 1959. That version, which has stunned viewers for decades, is presented here.

    1939 • 106 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In French with English subtitles • 1.37:1 aspect ratio

    4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 4K restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
    • One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray of the film with special features
    • Introduction to the film by director Jean Renoir
    • Audio commentary written by film scholar Alexander Sesonske and read by filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich
    • Comparison of the film’s two endings
    • Selected-scene analysis by Renoir historian Chris Faulkner
    • Excerpts from a 1966 French television program by filmmaker Jacques Rivette
    • Part one of Jean Renoir, a two-part 1993 documentary by film critic David Thompson
    • Video essay about the film’s production, release, and 1959 reconstruction
    • Interview with film critic Olivier Curchod
    • Interview from a 1965 episode of the French television series Les écrans de la ville with Jean Gaborit and Jacques Durand
    • Interviews with set designer Max Douy; Renoir’s son, Alain; and actor Mila Parély
    • PLUS: An essay by Sesonske; writings by Jean Renoir, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bertrand Tavernier, and François Truffaut; and tributes to the film by J. Hoberman, Kent Jones, Paul Schrader, Wim Wenders, Robert Altman, and others
    4K UHD + BLU-RAY COMBO EDITION
    SRP $49.95
    PREBOOK: 5/2/23
    STREET: 6/6/23
    CAT #: CC3463UHDBD
    ISBN: 979-8-88607-039-2
    UPC: 7-15515-28451-6 


    Following that is a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray edition of Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits on June 13.

    Time Bandits - The Criterion Collection
    4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 

    Time Bandits - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray - The Criterion Collection 

    In this fantastic voyage through time and space from Terry Gilliam, a boy named Kevin (Craig Warnock) escapes his gadget-obsessed parents to join a band of time travelers. Armed with a map stolen from the Supreme Being (Ralph Richardson), they plunder treasure from Napoleon (Ian Holm) and Agamemnon (Sean Connery)—but the Evil Genius (David Warner) is watching their every move. Featuring a darkly playful script by Gilliam and his Monty Python cohort Michael Palin (who also appears in the film), Time Bandits is at once a giddy fairy tale, a revisionist history lesson, and a satire of technology gone awry.

    1981 • 116 minutes • Color • Stereo • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 4K restoration, supervised by director Terry Gilliam, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack
    • One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray of the film with special features
    • Audio commentary featuring Gilliam, cowriter-actor Michael Palin, and actors John Cleese, David Warner, and Craig Warnock
    • Program on the creation of the film’s various historical periods and fantasy worlds, narrated by film writer David Morgan and featuring production designer Milly Burns and costume designer James Acheson
    • Conversation between Gilliam and film scholar Peter von Bagh, recorded at the 1998 Midnight Sun Film Festival
    • Appearance by actor Shelley Duvall on Tom Snyder’s Tomorrow show from 1981
    • Gallery of rare photographs from the set
    • Trailer
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    • PLUS: An essay by critic David Sterritt

    4K UHD + BLU-RAY COMBO EDITION
    SRP: $49.95
    PREBOOK: 5/9/23
    STREET: 6/13/23
    CAT #: CC3464UHDBD
    ISBN: 979-8-88607-040-8
    UPC: 7-15515-28461-5 


    On June 20 is a Blu-ray release of Joseph Losey's The Servant.

    The Servant - The Criterion Collection

    The Servant - The Criterion Collection 

    The prolific, ever provocative Joseph Losey, blacklisted from Hollywood and living in England, delivered a coolly modernist shock to the system of that nation’s cinema with this mesmerizing dissection of class, sexuality, and power. A dissolute scion of the upper crust (James Fox) finds the seemingly perfect manservant (a diabolical Dirk Bogarde, during his transition from matinee idol to art-house icon) to oversee his new London town house. But not all is as it seems, as traditional social hierarchies are gradually, disturbingly destabilized. Lustrously disorienting cinematography and a masterful script by playwright Harold Pinter merge in The Servant, a tour de force of mounting psychosexual menace.

    1963 • 115 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • 1.66:1 aspect ratio

    BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
    • New program on director Joseph Losey by film critic Imogen Sara Smith
    • Rare interview from 1976 with Losey by critic Michel Ciment
    • Interview from 1996 with screenwriter Harold Pinter
    • Interviews with actors Dirk Bogarde, James Fox, Sarah Miles, and Wendy Craig
    • Trailer
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    • PLUS: An essay by author Colm Tóibín

    BLU-RAY EDITION
    SRP: $39.95
    PREBOOK: 5/16/23
    STREET: 6/20/23
    CAT #: CC3465BD
    ISBN: 979-8-88607-041-5
    UPC: 7-15515-28471-4  


    Also on June 20 comes Medicine for Melancholy from filmmaker Barry Jenkins on Blu-ray.

    Medicine for Melancholy - The Criterion Collection

    Medicine for Melancholy - The Criterion Collection 

    One of the great debut features of the twenty-first century, Barry Jenkins’s captivating, lo-fi romance Medicine for Melancholy unfolds against the backdrop of a rapidly gentrifying San Francisco, where a one-night stand between two young bohemians, Micah (Wyatt Cenac) and Jo’ (Tracey Heggins), spins off into a woozy daylong affair marked by moments of tenderness, friction, joy, and intellectual sparring as they explore their relationships to each other, the city, and their own Blackness. Shooting on desaturated video, Jenkins crafts an intimate exploration of alienation and connection graced with the evocative visual palette and empathetic emotional charge that has come to define his work.

    2008 • 88 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • 1.78:1 aspect ratio

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New high-definition digital master, approved by director Barry Jenkins and director of photography James Laxton, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
    • New audio commentary featuring Jenkins
    • Audio commentary from 2008 featuring Jenkins, producers Justin Barber and Cherie Saulter, and editor Nat Sanders
    • New program about the making of the film, featuring Sanders and actor Wyatt Cenac
    • Camera test footage and blooper reel
    • Trailer
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    • PLUS: An essay by critic Danielle Amir Jackson

    BLU-RAY EDITION
    SRP: $39.95
    PREBOOK: 5/16/23
    STREET: 6/20/23
    CAT #: CC3466BD
    ISBN: 979-8-88607-042-2
    UPC: 7-15515-28481-3 


    And finally at the end of the month on June 27 arrives the Blu-ray boxed set, Pasolini 101, in celebration of the 101th anniversary of Pier Paolo Pasolini's birth.  

    Pasolini 101 - The Criterion Collection

    Pasolini 101 - The Criterion Collection 

    We've already covered Pasolini 101 in this article and as always, we will update with preorder links as soon as they are available.


    .

    Continue Reading
  • Criterion Announces the 9-Film Pasolini 101 Blu-ray Collection on June 27

    Posted Thu Mar 9, 2023 at 11:07 AM PST by

    Nine films from controversial Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini will be available in a Blu-ray boxed set from the Criterion Collection on June 27.

    One of the most original and controversial thinkers of the twentieth century, Italian polymath Pier Paolo Pasolini embodied a multitude of often seemingly contradictory ideologies and identities—and he expressed them all in his provocative, lyrical, and indelible films. Relentlessly concerned with society’s downtrodden and marginalized, he elevated pimps, hustlers, sex workers, and vagabonds to the realm of saints, while depicting actual saints with a radical earthiness. Traversing the sacred and the profane, the ancient and the modern, the mythic and the personal, the nine uncompromising, often scandal-inciting features he made in the 1960s still stand—on this, the 101st anniversary of his birth—as a monument to his daring vision of cinema as a form of resistance.

    Pasolini 101 - Criterion Collection Blu-ray

    Pasolini 101

    Featuring

    Accatone, 1961

    Mamma Roma, 1962

    Love Meetings, 1964

    The Gospel According to Matthew, 1964

    The Hawks and the Sparrows, 1966

    Oedipus Rex, 1967

    Teorema, 1968*

    Porcile, 1969

    Madea, 1969

     

    *All discs are new to Blu-Ray with the exception of this title

    NINE-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION COLLECTOR’S SET FEATURES

    • New 4K digital restorations of seven films and 2K digital restorations of Teorema and Medea, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks 
    • Two shorts made by director Pier Paolo Pasolini for anthology films: La ricotta (1963) and The Sequence of the Paper Flower (1969) 
    • Two documentaries made by Pasolini during his travels
    • New program on Pasolini’s visual style as told through his personal writing, narrated by actor Tilda Swinton and writer Rachel Kushner
    • Audio commentaries on Accattone and Teorema
    • Documentaries on Pasolini’s life and career featuring archival interviews with the director and his close collaborators
    • Episode from 1966 of the French television program Cinéastes de notre temps
    • Interviews with filmmakers and scholars
    • Trailers
    • New English subtitle translations
    • PLUS: Deluxe packaging, including a 100-page book featuring an essay and notes on the films by critic James Quandt, and writings and drawings by Pasolini

    ACCATTONE

     

    Poet and painter turned filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini courted controversy with his very first feature by using Catholic iconography and liturgical music to render a plaintive, brutally beautiful portrait of a shiftless Roman pimp and thief (then-nonprofessional Franco Citti, in a revelatory performance) whose life of petty crime turns increasingly desperate when the woman who supports him is imprisoned. Melding a hardscrabble neorealist milieu with classical influences, Pasolini offers a vision of underclass struggle as a kind of modern sainthood.

    1961 • 117 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In Italian with English subtitles • 1.37:1 aspect ratio

     

    MAMMA ROMA

     

    Anna Magnani is Mamma Roma, a middle-aged prostitute who attempts to extricate herself from her sordid past for the sake of her son. Highlighting director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s lifelong fascination with the marginalized and dispossessed, Mamma Roma offers an unflinching, neorealistic look at the struggle for survival in postwar Italy. Though initially banned in the country for obscenity, today the film remains a classic, featuring a powerhouse performance by one of cinema’s greatest actors and offering a glimpse at Pasolini in the process of finding his style.

    1962 • 106 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In Italian with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

     

    LOVE MEETINGS

     

    Let’s talk about sex. In this radically engaged and engaging documentary, Pier Paolo Pasolini takes to the streets, town squares, beaches, factories, and universities of 1960s Italy to solicit everyday citizens’ thoughts on a host of hot-button subjects, including sex work, gender equality, homosexuality, and divorce (then illegal in Italy). What emerges is both a kaleidoscopic cross section of faces and places—from the industrialized cities of the North to the rural villages of the South—and an incisive portrait of a society where, despite the rapid modernization brought on by the postwar “economic miracle,” hypocrisy, repression, and conformism still hold sway.

    1964 • 92 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In Italian with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

    THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW

     

    A biblical epic that only the Marxist dissident Pier Paolo Pasolini could make, this intensely faithful adaptation of Saint Matthew’s Gospel depicts the life and teachings of Jesus Christ (Enrique Irazoqui, a Spanish economics student and Communist activist), whose unwavering compassion for the poor and defiant condemnation of moral hypocrisy make him a perhaps unexpected embodiment of the director’s own worldview. Stunningly shot amid the timeless landscapes of southern Italy and set to a soundtrack that encompasses everything from Bach to Black spirituals, The Gospel According to Matthew cuts past dogma and straight to the core of Jesus’s radical humanism.

    1964 • 137 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In Italian with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

     

    THE HAWKS AND THE SPARROWS

     

    While wandering the countryside, a pair of father-and-son vagabonds (played respectively by Italian cinema legend Totò, in his final major film role, and Ninetto Davoli) happen upon a talking crow who spouts philosophy and launches them on a freewheeling picaresque through time, space, and the margins of a rapidly modernizing Italy. A comic Marxist fable that balances heady ideas about religion, poverty, and class struggle with irreverent slapstick sight gags, The Hawks and the Sparrows finds Pasolini at his lightest yet as stingingly subversive as ever.

    1966 • 89 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In Italian with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

     

    OEDIPUS REX

     

    Pier Paolo Pasolini’s powerfully iconoclastic take on Sophocles’s tragedy blends eras and cultures to create a searing exploration of fate, free will, and the things we fear most in ourselves. Shot amid the stark, elemental landscapes of the Moroccan desert, and set in an indefinable ancient past, this bold reimagining casts the filmmaker’s frequent collaborator Franco Citti as the eponymous foundling, whose willful blindness to his own nature unleashes a cataclysmic reckoning. With a prologue and epilogue set in twentieth-century Italy, Pasolini connects the story to his own upbringing, daring to bare his soul on-screen.

    1967 • 104 minutes • Color • Monaural • In Italian with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

    TEOREMA

     

    With Teorema, a coolly cryptic exploration of bourgeois spiritual emptiness, Pier Paolo Pasolini moved beyond the poetic, proletarian earthiness that first won him renown. Terence Stamp stars as the mysterious stranger—perhaps an angel, perhaps a devil—who, one by one, seduces the members of a wealthy Milanese family (including European cinema icons Silvana Mangano, Massimo Girotti, Laura Betti, and Anne Wiazemsky), precipitating an existential crisis in each of their lives. Unfolding nearly wordlessly, this tantalizing metaphysical riddle—blocked from exhibition by the Catholic Church for degeneracy—is at once a blistering Marxist treatise on sex, religion, and art and a primal scream into the void.

    1968 • 98 minutes • Color • Monaural • In Italian with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

     

    PORCILE

     

    “I killed my father. I ate human flesh. I quiver with joy.” Provocateur Pier Paolo Pasolini is at his most incendiary in this double-edged allegory on fascism, consumerism, and resistance. In one story, a defiant man (Pierre Clémenti) perpetrates increasingly barbaric acts while wandering a mythic, volcanic landscape. In the other, the scion (Jean-Pierre Léaud) of a wealthy, ex-Nazi industrial family conceals a shocking proclivity. Taken together, these stories of transgression form a scathing commentary on postwar European moral rot and the meaning of rebellion in the face of a corrupt world.

    1969 • 98 minutes • Color • Monaural • In Italian with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

     

    MEDEA

     

    In this hypnotic adaptation of Euripides’s immortal tragedy, Pier Paolo Pasolini casts opera diva Maria Callas (utterly arresting in her only film role) as the sorceress of Greek legend, whose separation from her homeland of Colchis and betrayal by her lover, Jason, lead her down a path of shocking vengeance. Melding Western myth with aesthetic and musical influences from numerous world cultures, Pasolini fashions a mesmerizing cinematic pageant that gathers in force until it explodes in rage and a stunningly nihilistic condemnation of injustice.

    1969 • 110 minutes • Color • Monaural • In Italian with English subtitles • 1:85:1 aspect ratio

    SRP for this Special Edition Collector's Set is $249.95.

     

    Preorders should be available in the coming days

    Continue Reading
  • Criterion's May Releases Are Driven by Thelma & Louise, Wings of Desire and more in 4K & Blu-ray

    Posted Wed Feb 15, 2023 at 11:56 AM PST by

        Ridley Scott's Thelma & Louise hits the Criterion road in May with a Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release. The month's slate also includes Targets as well as Petite Mama on Blu-ray and 4K releases of both Wings of Desire and Branded to Kill.

    Once again The Criterion Collection expands its content with a mix of old and new titles seeing some extra TLC on physical media. With Wings of Desire already getting an excellent EU 4K release it was only a matter of time before Criterion would update theirs, but there are some other pleasant surprises for their May slate. Lets take a look at what's getting added to our shelves:


    Up first on May 2 is Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

    Wings of Desire - The Criterion Collection
    4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

    Wings of Desire - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray (Criterion)

    Wings of Desire is one of cinema’s loveliest city symphonies. Bruno Ganz is Damiel, an angel perched atop buildings high over Berlin who can hear the thoughts—fears, hopes, dreams—of all the people living below. But when he falls in love with a beautiful trapeze artist, he is willing to give up his immortality and come back to earth to be with her. Made not long before the fall of the Berlin Wall, this stunning tapestry of sounds and images, shot in black and white and color by the legendary Henri Alekan, forever made the name of director Wim Wenders' synonymous with film art.

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • 4K restoration, supervised and approved by director Wim Wenders, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
    • One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
    • Audio commentary featuring Wenders and actor Peter Falk
    • The Angels Among Us (2003), a documentary featuring interviews with Wenders, Falk, actors Bruno Ganz and Otto Sander, writer Peter Handke, and composer Jürgen Knieper
    • Episode of Cinéma cinémas from 1987, featuring on-set footage
    • Interview with director of photography Henri Alekan
    • Deleted scenes and outtakes
    • Excerpts from the film Alekan la lumière (1985) and from Ganz and Sander’s 1982 film about actor Curt Bois
    • Notes and photos by art directors Heidi and Toni Lüdi
    • Trailers
    • PLUS: An essay by critic Michael Atkinson and writings by Handke and Wenders
    • Cover by Michael Boland

    Seijun Suzuki's 1967 New Wave Branded to Kill will also be available on 4K UHD on May 9

    Branded to Kill - The Criterion Collection
    4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

    Branded to Kill - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray (Criterion)

    When Japanese New Wave bad boy Seijun Suzuki delivered this brutal, hilarious, and visually inspired masterpiece to the executives at his studio, he was promptly fired. Branded to Kill tells the ecstatically bent story of a yakuza assassin with a fetish for sniffing steamed rice (the chipmunk-cheeked superstar Joe Shishido) who botches a job and ends up a target himself. This is Suzuki at his most extreme—the flabbergasting pinnacle of his sixties pop-art aesthetic.

    4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
    • One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
    • Interviews with director Seijun Suzuki and assistant director Masami Kuzuu
    • Interview with Suzuki from 1997
    • Interview with actor Joe Shishido
    • Trailer
    • PLUS: An essay by critic and historian Tony Rayns
    • Cover by Eric Skillman

    Peter Bogdanovich's Targets starring the legendary Boris Karloff arrives on Blu-ray on May 16 

    Targets - The Criterion Collection

    Targets

    Old Hollywood collides with New Hollywood, and screen horror with real-life horror, in the startling debut feature from Peter Bogdanovich. Produced by Roger Corman, this chillingly prescient vision of American-made carnage casts Boris Karloff as a version of himself: an aging horror-movie icon whose fate intersects with that of a seemingly ordinary young man (Tim O’Kelly) on a psychotic shooting spree around Los Angeles. Charged with provocative ideas about the relationship between mass media and mass violence, Targets is a model of maximally effective filmmaking on a minimal budget and a potent first statement from one of the defining voices of the American New Wave.

    BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 2K digital restoration, supervised by director Peter Bogdanovich, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
    • Audio commentary from 2003 featuring Bogdanovich
    • New interview with filmmaker Richard Linklater
    • Introduction to the film from 2003 by Bogdanovich
    • Excerpts from a 1983 interview with production designer Polly Platt
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    • PLUS: An essay by critic Adam Nayman and excerpts from an interview with Bogdanovich from Eric Sherman and Martin Rubin’s 1969 book The Director’s Event: Interviews with Five American Film-Maker
    • New cover by Drusilla Adeline/Sister Hyde

    Céline Sciamma’s 2021 film Petite Maman is due on Blu-ray on May 23 

    Petite Maman - The Criterion Collection

    Petite Maman

    Céline Sciamma’s follow-up to Portrait of a Lady on Fire transcends time and space to weave a delicately emotional fable about grief, family, and connection across generations. In the wake of her grandmother’s death, eight-year-old Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) accompanies her distraught mother (Nina Meurisse) to her childhood home. There, Nelly’s encounter with another young girl (Gabrielle Sanz) brings mother and daughter together in a way neither could have ever imagined. Evoking childhood’s perpetual state of wonder through luminous, richly textured images, Petite maman takes viewers on a journey inward for a quietly miraculous tale of emotional time travel.

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • 4K digital master, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
    • New conversation between director Céline Sciamma and filmmaker Joachim Trier
    • Trailers
    • PLUS: An essay by author So Mayer
    • New cover by Carson Ellis

     Lastly on May 29 is Ridley Scott's Thelma & Louise on Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray.

    Thelma & Louise - The Criterion Collection
    4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

    Thelma & Louise - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

    Two women, a turquoise Thunderbird, the ride of a lifetime. With this pop-culture landmark, screenwriter Callie Khouri and action auteur Ridley Scott rewrote the rules of the road movie, telling the story of two best friends who find themselves transformed into accidental fugitives during a weekend getaway gone wrong—leading them on a high-speed Southwest odyssey as they elude police and discover freedom on their own terms. Propelled by irresistible performances from Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis (plus Brad Pitt in a sexy, star-making turn)—and nominated for six Academy Awards, winning one for Khouri—the exhilaratingly cathartic Thelma & Louise stands as cinema’s ultimate ode to ride-or-die female friendship.

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director Ridley Scott, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
    • One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays with the film and special features
    • Two audio commentaries, featuring Scott, screenwriter Callie Khouri, and actors Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon
    • New interviews with Scott and Khouri
    • Documentary featuring Davis, Khouri, Sarandon, Scott, actors Michael Madsen, Christopher McDonald, and Stephen Tobolowsky, and other members of the cast and crew
    • Boy and Bicycle (1965), Scott’s first short film
    • Original theatrical featurette
    • Storyboards and deleted and extended scenes, including an extended ending with director’s commentary
    • Music video for Glenn Frey’s “Part of Me, Part of You,” from the film’s soundtrack
    • Trailers
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    • PLUS: Essays by critics Jessica Kiang and Rachel Syme and journalist Rebecca Traister
    • New cover by Sam Hadley

    Preorders for Criterion's May releases should be available soon!

    Continue Reading
  • No Fools - The Criterion Collection Dates & Details their April 2023 Release Slate

    Posted Tue Jan 17, 2023 at 12:09 PM PST by

    It's not an April Fool's joke - Criterion's April releases include three 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray of titles. The titles include: The Fisher King (4K UHD Blu-ray), The Seventh Seal (4K UHD), Small Axe - Five Films by Steve McQueen (Blu-ray), and Triangle of Sadness (both 4K UHD and Blu-ray).

    Up first on April 11 comes Terry Gilliam's The Fisher King starring Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams. 

    The Fisher King - The Criterion Collection 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

    The Fisher King - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray (Criterion)

    A fairy tale grounded in poignant reality, Terry Gilliam’s magnificent, Manhattan-set The Fisher King features Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams in two of their most brilliant roles. Bridges plays a former radio shock jock reconstructing his life after a scandal, and Williams a homeless man on a quest for the Holy Grail—which he believes to be hidden somewhere on the Upper East Side. Unknowingly linked by their pasts, the two men aid each other on a fanciful journey toward their own humanity. This singular American odyssey features a witty script by Richard LaGravenese, evocative cinematography by Roger Pratt, and superb supporting performances by Amanda Plummer and an Oscar-winning Mercedes Ruehl, all harnessed by Gilliam into a compassionate, funny modern-day myth.

     1991 • 138 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

     

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 4K digital restoration, approved by director Terry Gilliam, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack

    • One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features

    • Audio commentary featuring Gilliam

    • Interviews with Gilliam, producer Lynda Obst, screenwriter Richard LaGravenese, and actors Jeff Bridges, Amanda Plummer, and Mercedes Ruehl

    • Interviews with artists Keith Greco and Vincent Jefferds on the creation of the film’s Red Knight

    • Interview from 2006 with actor Robin Williams

    • Video essay featuring Bridges’s on-set photographs

    • Footage from 1991 of Bridges training as a radio personality with acting coach Stephen W. Bridgewater

    • Deleted scenes, with audio commentary by Gilliam

    • Costume tests

    • Trailers

    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

    • PLUS: An essay by critic Bilge Ebiri


     Next on April 18, Ingmar Bergman's classic tale The Seventh Seal starring Max von Sydow gets a 4K upgrade as well. 

    The Seventh Seal - The Criterion Collection 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 

    The Seventh Seal - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray (Criterion)

    Returning exhausted from the Crusades to find medieval Sweden gripped by the Plague, a knight (Max von Sydow) suddenly comes face-to-face with the hooded figure of Death, and challenges him to a game of chess. As the fateful game progresses, and the knight and his squire encounter a gallery of outcasts from a society in despair, Ingmar Bergman mounts a profound inquiry into the nature of faith and the torment of mortality. One of the most influential films of its time, The Seventh Seal is a stunning allegory of man’s search for meaning and a work of stark visual poetry.

     1957 • 97 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In Swedish with English subtitles • 1.37:1 aspect ratio

     

    4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack 

    • One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features

    • Introduction from 2003 by director Ingmar Bergman

    • Audio commentary and video afterword by Bergman expert Peter Cowie

    • Bergman Island (2006), a feature-length documentary on Bergman by Marie Nyreröd

    • Audio interview from 1998 with actor Max von Sydow

    • Tribute to Bergman from 1989 by filmmaker Woody Allen

     Bergman 101, a selected video filmography tracing Bergman’s career, narrated by Cowie 

    • Trailer

    • Optional English-dubbed soundtrack

    • PLUS: An essay by critic Gary Giddins


     Arriving on April 25 comes Small Axe - a collection of five films by Steve McQueen only on Blu-ray. 

    Small Axe - Five Films by Steve McQueen 

    Small Axe - Five Films by Steve McQueen

    With the five films that make up his Small Axe anthology, director Steve McQueen offers a richly evocative panorama of West Indian life in London from the 1960s through the ’80s—a time defined for the community by the terror of police violence, the empowering awakening of political consciousness, and the ecstatic escape of a vibrant reggae scene. Ranging in tone from the tenderly impressionistic to the devastatingly clear-eyed, these powerfully performed portraits of Black resistance, joy, creativity, and collective action—all sumptuously shot by Shabier Kirchner—form a revolutionary counterhistory of mid-twentieth-century Britain at a transformational moment.

     

     

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED THREE-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New high-definition masters of all five films, approved by director Steve McQueen, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks

    • New conversation between McQueen and writer and professor Paul Gilroy

    • Behind-the-scenes featurettes including interviews with McQueen, executive producer Tracey Scoffield, writing consultant Alex Wheatle, and members of the Small Axe cast

    • Uprising (2021), a three-part documentary codirected by McQueen and James Rogan about the tragic 1981 New Cross house fire

    • Audio conversation among McQueen, music producer Dennis Bovell, and Beastie Boys member Mike D

    • Trailers

    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

    • PLUS: An essay by film programmer and critic Ashley Clark

     MANGROVE

     Steve McQueen’s multistrand anthology of West Indian immigrant life in London opens in the late 1960s with this stirring ensemble film. In a Caribbean restaurant, a group of Black activists, intellectuals, and ordinary people converge and unite in struggle against incessant police harassment, leading to an explosive showdown on the streets and a courtroom drama that challenges the racist power structures of British society. Based on real events, this is a passionate vision of community as a form of resistance, performed by a dynamic cast (led by Shaun Parkes, Letitia Wright, and Malachi Kirby) and bolstered by McQueen’s eye for vivid sensory detail.

    2020 • 133 minutes • Color/B&W • 5.1 surround • 2.39:1 aspect ratio

     

    LOVERS ROCK 

    Suffused with the intoxicating sounds of reggae, dub, and lovers rock, the second installment in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series unfolds over the course of one rapturous night into dawn in early-1980s West London, as a young woman (the luminous Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn) sneaks out to attend a house party. As the alternately languorous and ecstatic rhythms pulse from a homemade sound system, romance sparks on the dance floor, small human dramas play out, and, for a moment, this gathering is a safe haven from the outside world. Aided by the sensuous cinematography of Shabier Kirchner, McQueen captures an exhilarating expression of Black joy in a society often intent on stifling it.

    2020 • 73 minutes • Color/B&W • 5.1 surround • 1.78:1 aspect ratio

     

    RED, WHITE AND BLUE

    Both a hard-hitting indictment of structural injustice and a penetrating portrait of a complex man, Red, White and Blueboasts a passionate, multilayered performance from John Boyega as Leroy Logan, a Black research scientist whose decision to join the notoriously racist London police force, in hopes of reforming it from the inside, brings him into conflict with his family, community, and very sense of self. Based on a true story, this nuanced exploration of Margaret Thatcher–era racial tensions powerfully portrays the psychic struggle of a lone man going up against a system designed to crush him.

    2020 • 84 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

      

    ALEX WHEATLE

    An intimate account of a decisive moment in British history unfolds via the true story of one man’s awakening Black consciousness. Raised in cold, oppressive children’s homes that have left him estranged from his West Indian roots, the eponymous orphan Alex Wheatle (Sheyi Cole) gradually finds his voice as an artist, activist, and writer on the streets of Brixton—a transformation that intersects with the 1981 uprising in which the neighborhood’s mainly Black youth erupt in protest against police violence. Interwoven with the vibrant reggae that inspired its subject’s journey, Alex Wheatlecrackles with the heady political and cultural energy of a singular time and place.

    2020 • 69 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • 2.00:1 aspect ratio

     

    EDUCATION

    A Black boy’s journey through an ineffectual public school system reveals the racial inequities built into everyday British life. Young Kingsley Smith (Kenyah Sandy) is a spirited aspiring astronaut with a love of drawing whose life is turned upside down when he is thrust into a new school for the “educationally subnormal”—a harrowing experience that gradually awakens his mother (Sharlene Whyte) to the institutional mistreatment of the children of West Indian immigrants. Shot on Super 16 mm to evoke BBC television dramas from the 1970s, the final Small Axe film concludes the pentalogy with a hopeful vision of the power of Black-led collective action.

    2020 • 66 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • 1.66:1 aspect ratio


     And finally, also due on April 25 comes Ruben Östlund's Palme d’Or–winner Triangle of Sadness on Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray. 

    Triangle of Sadness - The Criterion Collection 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 

    Triangle of Sadness - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray (Criterion)

    Master of social discomfort Ruben Östlund trains his unsparing lens on the world of wealth, beauty, and privilege in this audacious, Palme d’Or–winning satire of our status-obsessed culture. A model-influencer couple (Harris Dickinson and Charlbi Dean) get a ticket to the luxe life when they’re invited aboard an all-expenses-paid cruise alongside a coterie of the rich and ghoulish—but an act of fate turns their Insta-perfect world upside down. Pushing each provocative set piece to its outré extreme, Östlund maps the shifting social hierarchies with the irreverence of a modern-day Luis Buñuel and the incisiveness of a cinematic anthropologist.

    2022 • 147 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • 2.35:1 aspect ratio

     

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 4K digital master, approved by director Ruben Östlund, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack

    • In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features

    • New interview with Östlund and filmmaker and actor Johan Jonason

    • Two new programs: one about the film’s special effects and one about a challenging day on set 

    • Trailer

    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing 

    As usual with The Criterion Collection, preorders should be available within the next few days - Happy Collecting!

    Continue Reading
  • Criterion's March 2023 Releases include Mildred Pierce (1945) on 4K UHD Blu-ray

    Posted Thu Dec 15, 2022 at 10:38 AM PST by

    Joining the upgrade of Michael Curtiz' Mildred Pierce to 4K Ultra HD is John Woo's Last Hurrah for Chivalry, David Lynch's Inland Empire, and Joan Micklin Silver's Chilly Scenes of Winter on Blu-ray. 

    First out of the gate is the 1945 classic Mildred Pierce on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray starring Joan Crawford on March 7th.

    Mildred Pierce - The Criterion Collection 

    Mildred Pierce - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray - The Criterion Collection

    Melodrama casts noirish shadows in this portrait of maternal sacrifice from Hollywood master Michael Curtiz. Joan Crawford’s iconic performance as Mildred, a single mother hell-bent on freeing her children from the stigma of economic hardship, solidified Crawford’s career comeback and gave the actor her only Oscar. But as Mildred pulls herself up by her bootstraps, first as an unflappable waitress and eventually as the well-heeled owner of a successful restaurant chain, the ingratitude of her materialistic firstborn (a diabolical Ann Blyth) becomes a venomous serpent’s tooth, setting in motion an endless cycle of desperate overtures and heartless recriminations. Recasting James M. Cain’s rich psychological novel as a murder mystery, this bitter cocktail of blind parental love and all-American ambition is both unremittingly hard-boiled and sumptuously emotional.

    4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack

    • One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features

    • Conversation with critics Molly Haskell and Robert Polito

    • Excerpt from a 1970 episode of The David Frost Show featuring actor Joan Crawford

    Joan Craw­ford: The Ultimate Movie Star, a 2002 feature-length documentary

    • Q&A with actor Ann Blyth from 2006, presented by filmmaker Marc Huestis and conducted by film historian Eddie Muller

    • Segment from a 1969 episode of the Today show featuring Mildred Pierce novelist James M. Cain

    • Trailer

    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

    • PLUS: An essay by critic Imogen Sara Smith

    1945 • 111 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • 1.37:1 aspect ratio


    Next on March 14th comes John Woo's Last Hurrah For Chivalry on Blu-ray. 

    Last Hurrah for Chivalry - The Criterion Collection 

    Last Hurrah for Chivalry - The Criterion Collection

    Before he became known as the master of the bullet-riddled heroic tragedy, John Woo sharpened his trademark themes and kinetic action choreography with this whirlwind wuxia spectacle. Unaware they are caught in a deadly game of deception, a pair of rambunctious swordsmen (Wai Pak and Damian Lau) join forces to help a nobleman (Lau Kong) in his quest for vengeance. Paying thrilling homage to his mentor, martial-arts innovator Chang Cheh, Woo delivers both bravura swordplay set pieces and a bloodstained interrogation of the meaning of brotherhood and honor in a world in which loyalty is bought and sold.

    BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • 2K digital restoration, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio and uncompressed monaural soundtracks

    • Alternate English-dubbed tracks

    • Audio interview with director John Woo

    • New interview with Grady Hendrix, author of These Fists Break Bricks

    • Trailer

    • New English subtitle translation

    • PLUS: An essay by scholar Aaron Han Joon Magnan-Park

    1979 • 106 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • In Cantonese with English subtitles • 2.39:1 aspect ratio


     Fans of David Lynch will be pleased that Inland Empire will be joining the Criterion Collection on Blu-ray on March 21st.  

    Inland Empire - The Criterion Collection

    Inland Empire - The Criterion Collection

    “Strange, what love does.” The role of a lifetime, a Hollywood mystery, a woman in trouble . . . David Lynch’s first digitally shot feature makes visionary use of the medium to weave a vast meditation on the enigmas of time, identity, and cinema itself. Featuring a tour de force performance from Laura Dern as an actor on the edge, this labyrinthine Dream Factory nightmare tumbles down an endless series of unfathomably interconnected rabbit holes as it takes viewers on a hallucinatory odyssey into the deepest realms of the unconscious mind.

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED TWO-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New HD digital master, made from the 4K restoration supervised by director David Lynch, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio and uncompressed stereo soundtracks, newly remastered by Lynch and original rerecording mixers Dean Hurley and Ron Eng

    • Two films from 2007, LYNCH (one) and LYNCH2, by blackANDwhite, the makers of David Lynch: The Art Life

    • New conversation between actors Laura Dern and Kyle MacLachlan

    More Things That Happened, seventy-five minutes of extra scenes

    Ballerina, a 2007 short film by Lynch

    • Reading by Lynch of excerpts from Room to Dream, his 2018 book with critic Kristine McKenna

    • Trailer

    • New English subtitle translation and English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

    • PLUS: Excerpts from Richard A. Barney’s book David Lynch: Interviews

    2006 • 180 minutes • Color/Black & White • 5.1 surround • 1.85:1 aspect ratio


     And finally, on March 28th we have Joan Micklin Silver's Chilly Scenes of Winter starring John Heard and Mary Beth Hurt on Blu-ray. 

    Chilly Scenes of Winter - The Criterion Collection

    Chilly Scenes of Winter - The Criterion Collection

    The trailblazing Joan Micklin Silver—one of only five women to direct a film for a Hollywood studio in the 1970s—digs fearlessly into the psychology of a thorny relationship in this anti–romantic comedy, based on Ann Beattie’s best-selling novel, about lovelorn civil servant Charles (John Heard) and his married-but-separated coworker Laura (Mary Beth Hurt). Months after their affair has ended, Charles is haunted by memories as he desperately attempts to rekindle a love that perhaps never was. Switching deftly between past and present, Micklin Silver guides this piercing deconstruction of male wish-fulfillment fantasy beyond standard movie-romance tropes into something more complicated and cuttingly truthful.

    BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New, restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack

    • New program featuring producers Griffin Dunne, Mark Metcalf, and Amy Robinson

    • Documentary from 1983 by Katja Raganelli about director Joan Micklin Silver

    • Excerpts of a 2005 interview with Micklin Silver

    • Original ending of the film, cut by Micklin Silver for its rerelease in 1982

    • Trailer

    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

    • PLUS: An essay by scholar Shonni Enelow

    1979 • 95 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

    Pre-order info has yet to be published but as always we'll be sure to update as soon as they become available. 

    Continue Reading
  • The Criterion Collection Announces Its February 2023 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray Slate

    Posted Tue Nov 15, 2022 at 02:48 PM PST by

    Criterion isn't taking any time off in 2023 with five releases oncluding Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused and Krzysztof Kielowski's Three Colors trilogy on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Two Films By Marguerit wth Duras, Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet (1967) and Robert Townsend's Hollywood Shuffle. 

    Starting things off on February 7, is a trio of films in Kieślowski's Three Colors  on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray.

    Three Colors - Criterion Collection 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 

    This boldly cinematic trio of stories about love and loss, from Krzysztof Kieślowski, was a defining event of the art-house boom of the 1990s. The films are named for the colors of the French flag and stand for the tenets of the French Revolution—liberty, equality, and fraternity—but that hardly begins to explain their enigmatic beauty and rich humanity. Set in Paris, Warsaw, and Geneva, and ranging from tragedy to comedy, Blue, White, and Red (Kieślowski’s final film) examine with artistic clarity a group of ambiguously interconnected people experiencing profound personal disruptions. Marked by intoxicating cinematography and stirring performances by Juliette Binoche, Julie Delpy, Irène Jacob, and Jean-Louis Trintignant, Kieślowski’s Three Colors is a benchmark of contemporary cinema.

    BLUE
    In the devastating first film of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colors trilogy, Juliette Binoche gives a tour de force performance as Julie, a woman reeling from the tragic death of her husband and young daughter. But Blue is more than just a blistering study of grief; it’s also a tale of liberation, as Julie attempts to free herself from the past while confronting truths about the life of her late husband, a composer. Shot in sapphire tones by Sławomir Idziak, and set to an extraordinary operatic score by Zbigniew Preisner, Blue is an overwhelming sensory experience.

    1993 • 98 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • In French with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

     

    WHITE

    The most playful and also the grittiest of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colors films follows the adventures of Karol Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski), a Polish immigrant living in France. The hapless hairdresser opts to leave Paris for his native Warsaw when his wife (Julie Delpy) sues him for divorce (her reason: their marriage was never consummated) and then frames him for arson after setting her own salon ablaze. White, which goes on to chronicle Karol’s elaborate revenge plot, manages to be both a ticklish dark comedy about the economic inequalities of Eastern and Western Europe and a sublime reverie on twisted love.

    1994 • 91 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • In French and Polish with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

    RED

    Krzysztof Kieślowski closes his Three Colors trilogy in grand fashion, with an incandescent meditation on fate and chance, starring Irène Jacob as a sweet-souled yet somber runway model in Geneva whose life dramatically intersects with that of a bitter retired judge, played by Jean-Louis Trintignant. Meanwhile, just down the street, a seemingly unrelated story of jealousy and betrayal unfolds. Red is an intimate look at forged connections and a splendid final statement from a remarkable filmmaker at the height of his powers.

    1994 • 99 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • In French with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

    4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 4K digital restorations, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks
    • One 4K UHD disc of each film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray of each film with special features
    • Three cinema lessons with director Krzysztof Kieślowski
    • Interviews with cowriter Krzysztof Piesiewicz, composer Zbigniew Preisner, and actors Julie Delpy, Irène Jacob, and Zbigniew Zamachowski
    • Selected-scene commentary featuring actor Juliette Binoche
    • Video essays by film critics Annette Insdorf, Tony Rayns, and Dennis Lim
    • Documentary from 1995 featuring Kieślowski
    • Three short films by Kieślowski—The Tram (1966), Seven Women of Different Ages (1978), and Talking Heads (1980)—plus the short film The Face (1966), starring Kieślowski
    • Interview programs on Kieślowski’s life and work, featuring Binoche, Insdorf, Jacob, film critic Geoff Andrew, filmmaker Agnieszka Holland, cinematographer Sławomir Idziak, producer Marin Karmitz, and editor Jacques Witta
    • Behind-the-scenes programs for White and Red, and a short documentary on Red’s world premiere
    • Trailers
    • PLUS: Essays by film critics Colin MacCabe, Nick James, Stuart Klawans, and Georgina Evans; an excerpt from Kieślowski on Kieślowski; and reprinted interviews with cinematographers Idziak, Edward Kłosiński, and Piotr Sobociński 

    Next hitting stores on the 14th is the 1968 adaptation of  Romeo and Juliet  from Franco Zeffirelli.

    Romeo and Juliet - Criterion Collection 

    One of the great Shakespeare adaptations, this sublime take on the Bard’s immortal romantic tragedy by Franco Zeffirelli breathed new life into the oft-told tale by casting actual teenagers in the title roles. As the young lovers whose affair threatens to inflame the tensions between their feuding families in Renaissance Verona, Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting vividly capture the mix of adolescent ardor and turmoil that fuels their destiny-driven liaison. A sensory banquet thanks to Nino Rota’s delicate score and the exquisite, Oscar-winning costumes and cinematography, Romeo and Juliet is Shakespeare at its most deeply felt and passionately alive.

    SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
    • Excerpt from the 2018 documentary Franco Zeffirelli: Directing from Life
    • Interviews with actors Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting from 1967 and 2016
    • Trailer
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    • PLUS: An essay by scholar Ramona Wray

     

    1968 • 138 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio


    A week later on the 21st comes  Dazed and Confused  on the 4K UHD Blu-ray format.

    Dazed and Confused - Criterion Collection 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 

    America, 1976. The last day of school. Bongs blaze, bell bottoms ring, and rock and roll rocks. Among the best teen films ever made, Dazed and Confused eavesdrops on a group of seniors-to-be and incoming freshmen. A launching pad for a number of future stars, the first studio effort by Richard Linklater also features endlessly quotable dialogue and a blasting, stadium-ready soundtrack. Sidestepping nostalgia, Dazed and Confused is less about “the best years of our lives” than the boredom, angst, and excitement of teenagers waiting . . . for something to happen.

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES 

    • New 4K digital restoration of the director’s cut, supervised and approved by director Richard Linklater and cinematographer Lee Daniel, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
    • One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray of the film with special features
    • Audio commentary by Linklater
    • Making “Dazed,” a documentary by Kahane Cooperman
    • Rare on-set interviews and behind-the-scenes footage
    • Footage from the ten-year-anniversary celebration
    • Audition footage and deleted scenes
    • Trailer
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    • PLUS: Essays by critics Kent Jones, Jim DeRogatis, and Chuck Klosterman; reprinted recollections of the filming from cast and crew; and character profiles from the Dazed and Confused companion book; as well as the original film poster by Frank Kozik

     

    1993 • 102 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • 1.85:1 aspect ratio


     Two Films By Marguerite Duras  will be available on Blu-ray on the 24th.

    Two Films By Marguerite Duras - Criterion Collection 

    Marguerite Duras had already established herself as one of the major figures of postwar French literature when she launched an equally fascinating and unclassifiable career in cinema, translating her elliptical, experimental style to the screen through an unprecedented fusion of hypnotic, highly stylized imagery and radically disjunctive sound. Boldly reimagining the possibilities of dialogue, music, silence, and architectural space, the tantalizing, sphinxlike evocations of soul-deep female malaise India Song and Baxter, Vera Baxter embody Duras’s singular multisensory approach, with each opening up new spaces for the expression of women’s interior worlds.

    INDIA SONG
    Marguerite Duras’s most celebrated work is a mesmerizing, almost incantatory experience with few stylistic precedents in the history of cinema. Within the insular walls of a lavish, decaying embassy in 1930s India, the French ambassador’s wife (Delphine Seyrig) staves off ennui through affairs with multiple men—with the overpowering torpor broken only by a startling eruption of madness. Setting her evocatively decadent visuals to a desynchronized chorus of disembodied voices that comment on and counterpoint the action, with India Song Duras creates a haunted-house movie unlike any other.

     

    1975 • 119 minutes • Color • Monaural • In French with English subtitles • 1.37:1 aspect ratio

     

    BAXTER, VERA BAXTER
    Marguerite Duras reunited with India Song collaborators Delphine Seyrig and composer Carlos d’Alessio for Baxter, Vera Baxter, a hypnotically unsettling journey into one woman’s existential emptiness. Ensconced in a sprawling rental villa, the world-weary Vera Baxter (Claudine Gabay) receives visits from two women, including a mysterious stranger (Seyrig) to whom she recounts a shocking story about her marriage, the way she lives, and the reasons for her malaise. Setting her languid images to d’Alessio’s incongruously breezy, endlessly looping score, Duras fashions a quietly shattering portrait of marriage as a kind of prison.

    1977 • 95 minutes • Color • Monaural • In French with English subtitles • 1.66:1 aspect ratio

    SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 2K digital restorations, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-rays
    • Marguerite as She Was, a 2003 portrait of director Marguerite Duras
    • Interview from 1977 with Duras
    • Excerpt from a 1977 documentary on actor Delphine Seyrig
    • New English subtitle translation
    • PLUS: An essay by film scholar Ivone Margulies

    Finally and also on the 28th is the satire  Hollywood Shuffle  on Blu-ray.

    Hollywood Shuffle - Criterion Collection 

    This debut feature by Robert Townsend is an ingenious guerrilla satire that takes riotous aim at the typecasting of Black actors in 1980s Hollywood. The writer-director-star’s megawatt charisma propels Hollywood Shuffle, the hilarious tale of a struggling actor attempting to break into an industry where the only roles available to Black performers seem to be hustlers, butlers, slaves, and “Eddie Murphy types”—forcing him to choose between selling out and maintaining his self-respect. Lampooning everything from film noir to zombie flicks to Siskel and Ebert, Townsend and cowriter Keenen Ivory Wayans cannily turn the frustrations of the Black artist into a subversively funny pop-culture critique.

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New, restored 4K digital transfer, approved by writer-director-actor Robert Townsend, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
    • New audio commentary featuring Townsend 
    • New interviews with actors Rusty Cundieff, Anne-Marie Johnson, and Bobby McGee
    • Radio program featuring Townsend in conversation with film critic Elvis Mitchell
    • Trailer
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    • PLUS: An essay by critic Aisha Harris

     

    1987 • 81 minutes • Color/Black & White • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio


    We will update links on the site as soon as pre-orders become available or if there are any release date changes.

    Continue Reading
  • Criterion Starts Off 2023 with Five Blu-ray Titles (with Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen Getting Both a Blu-ray and a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray)

    Posted Mon Oct 17, 2022 at 05:20 PM PDT by

    Besides Gilliam's comedy classic, this assortment of films include Bergman Island, This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection, Imitation of Life, and Lars von Trier's Europe Trilogy. 

    Leading the charge on January 3 is The Adventures of Baron Munchausen  on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray and Blu-ray.

    The Adventures of Baron Munchausen - Criterion Collection 

    The boundless imagination of Terry Gilliam yields a dazzling fantasy of epic proportions. Inspired by the extravagant exploits of the fabled Baron Munchausen, this spectacle—born of a famously turbulent production—follows the whimsical eighteenth-century nobleman (John Neville) as he embarks on an outlandish quest that takes him from faraway lands to the moon to the belly of a sea monster and beyond, meanwhile waging battle against a vengeful sultan and the tyranny of logic. Packed frame to frame with special effects, mischievous wit, and colorful performances—including a young Sarah Polley as the Baron’s no-nonsense sidekick—the Oscar-nominated The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a lavish celebration of the triumph of make-believe over reality.

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 4K digital restoration, approved by writer-director Terry Gilliam, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
    • For the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays with the film and special features
    • Audio commentary featuring Gilliam and his coscreenwriter, Charles McKeown
    • Documentary on the making of the film
    • New video essay by critic and filmmaker David Cairns about the history of the Baron Munchausen character
    • Behind-the-scenes footage of the film’s special effects, narrated by Gilliam
    • Deleted scenes with commentary by Gilliam
    • Storyboards for unfilmed scenes, narrated by Gilliam and McKeown
    • Original marketing materials including a trailer and electronic-press-kit featurettes, as well as preview cards and advertising proposals read by Gilliam
    • Miracle of Flight (1974), an animated short film by Gilliam
    • Episode of The South Bank Show from 1991 on Gilliam
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    • PLUS: An essay by critic and author Michael Koresky

    1988 • 126 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • 1.85:1 aspect ratio


    On the 10th comes the 1934 melodrama  Imitation of Life  from Director John M. Stahl.

    Imitation of Life - Criterion Collection 

    Melodrama master John M. Stahl brings his exquisite restraint and almost spiritually pure visual style to this devastating, enduringly relevant story of mothers and daughters. Imitation of Life explores the friendship between two struggling single mothers: one (Claudette Colbert) a working-class white woman who ascends to the top of the business world, the other (Louise Beavers) her Black housekeeper, whose life is shattered by the rejection of her rebellious, white-passing daughter (Fredi Washington). It is this latter relationship—attuned to America’s bitter racial realities and heartbreakingly enacted by trailblazing Black performers Beavers and Washington—that lends the film its transcendent emotional power. This first adaptation of Fannie Hurst’s best-selling novel boldly confronts the complexities and contradictions of racial identity, economic exploitation, and the limits of the American dream.

    SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES 

    • 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
    • New interview with Miriam J. Petty, author of Stealing the Show: African American Performers and Audiences in 1930s Hollywood, about the resonance of Louise Beavers’s and Fredi Washington’s performances
    • New interview with Imogen Sara Smith, contributor to The Call of the Heart: John M. Stahl and Hollywood Melodrama, about director John M. Stahl and his work with actor Claudette Colbert and others
    • Trailer
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    • PLUS: An essay by Petty

    1934 • 110 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • 1.33:1 aspect ratio


    A three-film set arrives on the 17th -  Lars von Trier’s Europe Trilogy .

    Lars von Trier’s Europe Trilogy - Criterion Collection 

    With his dazzling first three features, Lars von Trier sought nothing less than to map the soul of Europe—its troubled past, anxious present, and uncertain future. Linked by a fascination with hypnotic states and the mesmeric possibilities of cinema, the films that make up the Europe Trilogy—The Element of Crime, Epidemic, and Europa—filter the continent’s turbulent history, guilt, and traumas through the Danish provocateur’s audacious deconstructions of genres including film noir, melodrama, horror, and science fiction. Above all, they are bravura showcases for von Trier’s hallucinatory visuals, with each shot a tour de force of technical invention and dark imagination.

    THREE-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES 

    • 4K digital restoration of Europa, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack, and 3K digital restorations of The Element of Crime and Epidemic, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks
    • Audio commentaries featuring director Lars von Trier and others
    • Tranceformer: A Portrait of Lars von Trier (1997), a documentary by Stig Björkman
    • Interview from 2005 with von Trier about the Europe Trilogy 
    • Making-of documentaries for all three films
    • Programs on the films featuring interviews with many of von Trier’s collaborators
    • Two short student films by von Trier: Nocturne (1980) and Images of Liberation (1982)
    • Danish television interview with von Trier from 1994
    • Trailers 
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    • PLUS: An essay by critic Howard Hampton

    THE ELEMENT OF CRIME

    1984 • 103 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.89:1 aspect ratio

     

    Lars von Trier’s stunning debut feature is a grungily expressionistic hallucination—a trancelike trawl through fractured memories, a murder mystery, and the psychic limbo of cultural displacement. From his exile in Cairo, a former police investigator (Michael Elphick) undergoes hypnosis in order to relive his memories of Europe and his last case, for which he went to dangerous lengths to enter into the mind of and catch a serial killer targeting children. Bathed in a sulfurous yellow glow pierced only by startling flashes of electric blue and red, The Element of Crime combines hard-boiled noir, dystopian science fiction, and dazzling operatic flourishes to yield a celluloid nightmare of terrifying beauty.

     

    EPIDEMIC

    1987 • 106 minutes • Color/Black & White • Monaural • In English and Danish with English subtitles • 1.66:1 aspect ratio

     

    A jet-black comedy of contagion, a subversive medical-horror freak-out, and a sly metacinematic prank, Lars von Trier’s sophomore feature—born from a bet that he couldn’t make a film for less than $150,000—finds the director channeling his singular thematic obsessions into an evocatively lo-fi, perversely self-reflexive provocation. The filmmaker himself stars as a harried screenwriter whose efforts to complete a script about the outbreak of a deadly disease coincide with a grisly real-life plague. A twisted reflection on Europe’s haunted past—from the Black Death to World War II—and its scarred present, Epidemic is von Trier at his most idiosyncratic and audaciously experimental.

    EUROPA

    1991 • 112 minutes • Color/Black & White • Stereo • In English and German with English subtitles • 2.39:1 aspect ratio

     

    “You will now listen to my voice . . . On the count of ten you will be in Europa.” The ominous, hypnotic induction by Max von Sydow inaugurates the entrancing final installment of Lars von Trier’s Europe Trilogy. An idealistic American (Jean-Marc Barr) travels to postwar Germany to take a job as a sleeping-car conductor for the Zentropa railways—and finds himself plunged into a murky, Kafkaesque world of intrigue and betrayal where the shadow of Nazism hovers menacingly over everything. With its ravishing cinematography (in black and white, color, and at times a stunning mix of both), dreamlike use of rear projections, and lush fusion of melodrama and noir conventions, Europa is a sublimely stylized cinematic fugue.  


     This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection  will be available on the 24th.

    This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection - Criterion Collection 

    With a poet’s eye for place, light, and the spiritual dimensions of everyday existence, Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese crafts a meditation on the concept of homeland and a transcendent elegy for what is lost in the name of progress. Grieving and alone following the deaths of her husband and children, elderly Mantoa (Mary Twala Mhlongo, in a soul-shaking end-of-life performance) prepares for her own death and to be buried alongside her ancestors. When plans for a new dam near her village in the landlocked kingdom of Lesotho threaten to literally wash away all she holds dear, Mantoa takes a last stand, mobilizing her neighbors to fight for their land and their way of life. The experience of watching Mosese’s visionary, much-lauded This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection is as timeless and elemental as the land itself.

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES 

    • 2K digital master, approved by director Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
    • New audio commentary featuring Mosese and producer Cait Pansegrouw
    • Mosese’s short films Mosonngoa (2014) and Behemoth: Or the Game of God (2016), along with his 2019 essay film Mother, I Am Suffocating. This Is My Last Film About You., with a new introduction by Mosese
    • Trailer
    • PLUS: An essay by novelist and playwright Zakes Mda

    2019 • 122 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • In Sesotho with English subtitles • 1.40:1 aspect ratio


    And finally on the 31st arrives  Bergman Island  on Blu-ray.

    Bergman Island - Criterion Collection 

    Writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve embarks on a luminous summertime odyssey to the home of Ingmar Bergman for her seventh feature, a graceful, shape-shifting tale about the interplay of life and art and the ways in which stories are born. In search of inspiration for their current filmmaking projects, Chris (Vicky Krieps) and her partner (Tim Roth) travel to the remote island of Fårö, Sweden, where Bergman lived and worked for decades. There, the spirit of the cinema master looms as Chris confronts her complicated relationships to work, men, motherhood, and her artistic influences. Also featuring radiant performances from Mia Wasikowska and Anders Danielsen Lie, Bergman Island is a rich deconstruction of the mysteries of the creative process and the journey that every film takes from thought to page to screen.

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL FEATURES 

    • 2K digital master, approved by director Mia Hansen-Løve, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
    • New interview with Hansen-Løve
    • New interview with actor Vicky Krieps
    • Bergman’s Ghosts (2021), a short film made during the filming of Bergman Island by actor Gabe Klinger
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    • PLUS: An essay by critic Devika Girish

     2021 • 113 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • 2.35:1 aspect ratio


    As soon as pre-orders become available we'll be sure to update the links on the site.

    Continue Reading
  • Pixar's WALL•E Joins The Criterion Collection on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray November 22

    Posted Thu Sep 8, 2022 at 10:19 AM PDT by

    The big news of the day is Andrew Stanton's Oscar-winning animated feature film is getting an upgraded 4K UHD release courtesy of The Criterion Collection on November 22nd.

    WALL•E - The Criterion Collection - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
    WALL•E - The Criterion Collection - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
     

    A high-water mark of digital animation, this prescient vision of a dystopian future is packaged within a dazzling pop-science-fiction love story, making for an urgent fable for our troubled millennium. It’s the twenty-ninth century, and humans have long since fled Earth for outer space, leaving WALL•E, the last functioning trash-compacting robot, to go about the work of cleaning up a pollution-choked planet, one piece of garbage at a time. When he meets EVE, a fellow automaton sent to detect plant life, the pair are launched on an intergalactic quest to return humanity to Earth. Transporting us simultaneously back to cinema’s silent origins and forward light-years into the future, WALL•E is a soaring ode to the power of love and art to heal a dying world.

    The release features a 4K master approved by Director Andrew Stanton and will include Dolby Vision/HDR10+ as well as a Dolby Atmos soundtrack. The 4K UHD/Blu-ray combo pack will also come packed with supplements:

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • 4K digital master, approved by director Andrew Stanton, with Dolby Atmos soundtrack
    • One 4K UHD disc of the film, presented in both Dolby Vision HDR and HDR10+, and two Blu-rays with the film and special features
    • Alternate 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio and stereo soundtracks
    • Two audio commentaries: one featuring Stanton and the other, character supervisor Bill Wise, coproducer Lindsey Collins, story artist Derek Thompson, and lead animator Angus MacLane
    • New programs on Stanton’s cinematic influences and production designer Ralph Eggleston’s color scripts
    • Tour of the Pixar Living Archive with Stanton
    • Behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film, including segments from early animation reels
    • The Pixar Story (2007), a documentary by Leslie Iwerks
    • More than a dozen documentaries exploring the film’s production and robots
    • Anatomy of a Scene: The Plant, a masterclass with Stanton
    • “WALL•E”: A to Z, a new program featuring Stanton and coscreenwriter Jim Reardon
    • Deleted scenes featuring commentary by Stanton
    • A Story (1987), a student film by Stanton
    • BURN•E (2008), a short film by MacLane
    • Trailers
    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    • English descriptive audio
    • PLUS: An essay by author Sam Wasson; selections from Stanton’s sketchbooks, script notes, and drawings; and artwork from the WALL•E team
    New cover by Jason Raish

    We will keep you posted as soon as we know more and when pre-orders go live. 

    Happy collecting!

    Continue Reading
  • Can Ya Dig It? Criterion Announces June Releases With Shaft on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

    Posted Fri Mar 18, 2022 at 11:21 AM PDT by

    The Criterion Collection has announced their June release slate that includes Gordon Parks blaxploitation classic starring Richard Roundtree on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray. 

    Leading the way is Shaft, which will be getting a 4K UHD and Blu-ray release on June 21.

    Shaft - Criterion Collection 4K UHD 

    While the Black Power movement was reshaping America, trailblazing director Gordon Parks made this groundbreaking blockbuster, which helped launch the blaxploitation era and gave the screen a new kind of badder-than-bad action hero in John Shaft (Richard Roundtree, in a career-defining role), a streetwise New York City private eye who is as tough with criminals as he is tender with his lovers. After Shaft is recruited to rescue the kidnapped daughter of a Harlem mob boss (Moses Gunn) from Italian gangsters, he finds himself in the middle of a rapidly escalating uptown vs. downtown turf war. A vivid time capsule of seventies Manhattan in all its gritty glory that has inspired sequels and multimedia reboots galore, the original Shaft is studded with indelible elements—from Roundtree’s sleek leather fashions to the iconic funk and soul score by Isaac Hayes.

    4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack

    • Alternate uncompressed stereo soundtrack remastered with creative input from Isaac Hayes III

    • In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays with the film and special features

    Shaft’s Big Score!, the 1972 follow-up to Shaft by director Gordon Parks

    • New documentary on the making of Shaft featuring curator Rhea L. Combs, film scholar Racquel J. Gates, filmmaker Nelson George, and music scholar Shana L. Redmond

    • Behind-the-scenes program featuring Parks, actor Richard Roundtree, and musician Isaac Hayes

    • Archival interviews with Hayes, Parks, and Roundtree

    • New interview with costume designer Joseph G. Aulisi

    • New program on the Black detective and the legacy of John Shaft, featuring scholar Kinohi Nishikawa and novelist Walter Mosley

    A Complicated Man: The “Shaft” Legacy (2019)

    • Behind-the-scenes footage from Shaft’s Big Score!

    • Trailers

    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

    • PLUS: An essay by film scholar Amy Abugo Ongiri

     1971 • 100 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio


    Arriving on June 7 on Blu-ray is The Tales of Hoffmann, the fantasy opera by Jacques Offenbach.

    The Tales of Hoffmann 

    Michael Powell And Emeric Pressburger create a phantasmagoric marriage of cinema and opera in this one-of-a-kind take on a classic story. In Jacques Offenbach’s fantasy opera The Tales of Hoffmann, a poet dreams of three women—a mechanical performing doll, a bejeweled siren, and the consumptive daughter of a famous composer—all of whom break his heart in different ways. Powell and Pressburger’s feverishly romantic adaptation is a feast of music, dance, and visual effects, and one of the most exhilarating opera films ever produced.

    BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

     

    Michael Powell And Emeric Pressburger create a phantasmagoric marriage of cinema and opera in this one-of-a-kind take on a classic story. In Jacques Offenbach’s fantasy opera The Tales of Hoffmann, a poet dreams of three women—a mechanical performing doll, a bejeweled siren, and the consumptive daughter of a famous composer—all of whom break his heart in different ways. Powell and Pressburger’s feverishly romantic adaptation is a feast of music, dance, and visual effects, and one of the most exhilarating opera films ever produced.

     

    BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • 4K digital restoration by The Film Foundation and the BFI National Archive, in association with STUDIOCANAL, featuring newly rediscovered footage and with uncompressed monaural soundtrack

    • Audio commentary from 1992 by filmmaker Martin Scorsese and critic Bruce Eder, newly updated by Eder

    • Interview with filmmaker George A. Romero from 2005

    The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (1956), a short musical film based on the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe story and directed by Michael Powell 

    • Collection of production designer Hein Heckroth’s design sketches and paintings

    • Gallery of production and publicity photographs

    • Trailer

    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

    • Plus: An essay by film historian Ian Christie

     1951 • 133 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.37:1 aspect ratio


    Available on June 14th Farewell Amor from Alain Delon.

    Farewell Amor 

    In her luminous feature debut, filmmaker Ekwa Msangi chronicles a broken family’s journey to wholeness with empathy and insight. Seventeen years after his family was separated by the civil war in Angola, a New York taxi driver (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine) is reunited with his now devoutly religious wife (Zainab Jah) and teenage daughter (Jayme Lawson) when they are finally able to follow him to America. But after living thousands of miles apart for so long, the three find they must discover one another’s strengths, forgive one another’s weaknesses, and bridge cultural and generational divides in order to build a life together. Told in three perspective-shifting chapters that honor the multitude of struggles and emotions that make up the immigrant experience, Farewell Amor is a bittersweet, compassionate evocation of how it feels when your heart and your home are in different places.

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 2K master, approved by director Ekwa Msangi, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray

    • New audio commentary featuring Msangi and cinematographer Bruce Francis Cole

    • Three short films by Msangi: Suspense (2011); The Market King (2014); and Farewell Meu Amor (2016), a prequel to Farewell Amor 

    • New interviews with actors Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, Zainab Jah, and Jayme Lawson

    • Deleted scenes

    • Trailer

    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

    • PLUS: An essay by scholar Tiana Reid

     2020 • 102 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • 2.39:1 aspect ratio


    On the 21st comes Stanley Kwan's Rouge on Blu-ray.

    Rouge 

    Cantopop superstars Anita Mui and Leslie Cheung display the androgynous magnetism that made them icons as doomed lovers in this emblematic film of Hong Kong’s Second New Wave, directed by pioneering queer melodrama master Stanley Kwan. Rouge bridges past and present in its tragic romance between a humble courtesan and the wayward scion of a wealthy family, who embrace death by suicide pact amid the opulent teahouses of 1930s Hong Kong. Fifty years later, she returns to the city-state to find him, drawing a young contemporary couple (Alex Man and Emily Chu) into her quest to rekindle a passion that may be as illusory as time itself. With its lush mise-en-scène and transcendently melancholy mood, this sensuous ghost story is an exquisite, enduringly resonant elegy for both lost love and vanishing history.

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 4K digital restoration, approved by director Stanley Kwan, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray

    • Alternate 5.1 surround soundtrack, presented in DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray

    • New conversation between Kwan and filmmaker Sasha Chuk

    Yang ± Yin: Gender in Chinese Cinema, a 1997 documentary by Kwan exploring the representation of queerness and LGBT identity in Chinese film

    Still Love You After All These, a 1997 memoir film by Kwan about his Hong Kong identity

    • Trailer

    • New English subtitle translation 

    • PLUS: An essay by film programmer and critic Dennis Lim 

    1987 • 96 minutes • Color • Monaural • In Cantonese with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio


    John Waters' totally outlandish Pink Flamingos starring Divine, Mink Stole, and David Lochary will arrive on Blu-ray on June 28.

    Pink Flamingos 

    John Waters made bad taste perversely transcendent with the forever shocking counterculture sensation Pink Flamingos, his most infamous and daring cinematic transgression. Outré diva Divine is iconic as the wanted criminal hiding out with her family of degenerates in a trailer outside Baltimore while reveling in her tabloid notoriety as the “Filthiest Person Alive.” When a pair of sociopaths (Mink Stole And David Lochary) with a habit of kidnapping women in order to impregnate them attempt to challenge her title, Divine resolves to show them and the world the true meaning of the word filthy. Incest, cannibalism, shrimping, and film history’s most legendary gross-out ending—Waters and his merry band of Dreamlanders leave no taboo unsmashed in this gleefully subversive ode to outsiderhood, in which camp spectacle and pitch-black satire are wielded in an all-out assault on respectability.

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY FEATURES

     

    • New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director John Waters, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack 

    • Two audio commentaries featuring Waters, from the 1997 Criterion laserdisc and the 2001 DVD release

    • New conversation between Waters and filmmaker Jim Jarmusch

    • Tour of the film’s Baltimore locations, led by Waters

    • Deleted scenes, alternate takes, and on-set footage

    • Trailer

    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

    • And more!

    • PLUS: An essay by critic Howard Hampton and a piece by actor and author Cookie Mueller about the making of the film, from her 1990 book Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black

     1972 • 92 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.66:1 aspect ratio


    Finally and also on the 28th comes Joachim Trier Academy Award-nominated romantic comedy The Worst Person in the World on Blu-ray.

    The Worst Person in the World 

    Renate Reinsve won the Best Actress prize at Cannes for the revelatory, complex performance that anchors this sprawlingly novelistic film by Norwegian auteur Joachim Trier, an emotionally intricate and exhilarating character study of a woman entering her thirties. Amid the seemingly endless possibilities of the modern world, Julie (Reinsve) vacillates between artistic passions and professions, the question of motherhood, and relationships with two very different men: a successful comic-book artist (Trier regular Anders Danielsen Lie) and a charismatic barista (Herbert Nordrum). Working with a team of longtime collaborators, Trier and his perennial cowriter Eskil Vogt construct in The Worst Person in the World, the Oscar-nominated third entry in their unofficial Oslo Trilogy, a liberating portrait of self-discovery and a bracingly contemporary spin on the romantic comedy.

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 2K digital master, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray

    • New interviews with director Joachim Trier; coscreenwriter Eskil Vogt; actors Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie, and Herbert Nordrum; cinematographer Kasper Tuxen; and sound designer Gisle Tveito 

    • On-set footage from the creation of the film’s time-freezing sequence 

    • Deleted scenes 

    • PLUS: An essay by critic Sheila O’Malley

     2021 • 127 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • In Norwegian with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio


    All of these titles will likely be up for pre-order shortly and the website will be updated when they are available.

    Continue Reading
  • Criterion Announces May Releases With Double Indemnity on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

    Posted Tue Feb 15, 2022 at 07:17 PM PST by

    The Criterion Collection has revealed their May home video release slate that includes Billy Wilder's film-noir classic on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray. 

    Of course, the headliner is Double Indemnity which will be getting the 4K/Blu-ray combo treatment on May 31st.

    Double Indemnity - Criterion Collection 4K UHD 

    Has dialogue ever been more perfectly hard-boiled? Has a femme fatale ever been as deliciously evil as Barbara Stanwyck? And has 1940s Los Angeles ever looked so seductively sordid? Working with cowriter Raymond Chandler, director Billy Wilder launched himself onto the Hollywood A-list with this paragon of film-noir fatalism from James M. Cain’s pulp novel. When slick salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) walks into the swank home of dissatisfied housewife Phyllis Dietrichson (Stanwyck), he intends to sell her insurance, but he winds up becoming entangled with her in a far more sinister way. Featuring scene-stealing supporting work from Edward G. Robinson and the chiaroscuro of cinematographer John F. Seitz, Double Indemnity is one of the most wickedly perverse stories ever told and the cynical standard by which all noir must be measured.

    4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack 

    • In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays with the film and special features 

    • Audio commentary featuring film critic Richard Schickel

    • New interview with film scholar Noah Isenberg, editor of Billy Wilder on Assignment

    • New conversation between film historians Eddie Muller and Imogen Sara Smith

    Billy, How Did You Do It?, a 1992 film by Volker Schlöndorff and Gisela Grischow featuring interviews with director Billy Wilder

    Shadows of Suspense, a 2006 documentary on the making of Double Indemnity

    • Audio excerpts from 1971 and 1972 interviews with cinematographer John F. Seitz

    • Radio adaptations from 1945 and 1950

    • Trailer 

    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

    1944 • 108 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • 1.37:1 aspect ratio


    Also with a street date on the 31st is Wayne Wang's murder mystery Chan is Missing.

    Chan is Missing 

    A mystery man, a murder, and a wad of missing cash—in his wryly offbeat breakthrough, Wayne Wang updates the ingredients of classic film noir for the streets of contemporary San Francisco’s Chinatown. When their business partner disappears with the money they had planned to use for a cab license, driver Jo (Wood Moy) and his nephew Steve (Marc Hayashi) scour the city’s back alleys, waterfronts, and Chinese restaurants to track him down. But what begins as a search for a missing man gradually turns into a far deeper and more elusive investigation into the complexities and contradictions of Chinese American identity. The first feature by an Asian American filmmaker to play widely and get mainstream critical appreciation, Chan Is Missing is a continuously fresh and surprising landmark of indie invention that playfully flips decades of cinematic stereotypes on their heads.

     

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • High-definition digital master, approved by director Wayne Wang, with an uncompressed monaural soundtrack 

    Is Chan Still Missing?, a making-of documentary directed by Debbie Lum

    • New conversations between Wang and critic Hua Hsu and Wang and filmmaker Ang Lee

    • Conversation between Wang and film programmer Dennis Lim

    • Trailer

    • New English subtitle translation and English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

    • PLUS: An essay by critic Oliver Wang

     1982 • 75 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In English, Cantonese, and Mandarin with English subtitles • 1.33:1 aspect ratio


    Earlier in the month on the 10th comes the 1976 French thriller Mr. Klein from Alain Delon.

    Mr. Klein 

    One of the crowning achievements of blacklisted Hollywood director Joseph Losey’s European exile, the spellbinding modernist mystery Mr. Klein puts a chilling twist on the wrong-man thriller. Alain Delon delivers a standout performance as Robert Klein, a decadent art dealer in Paris during World War II who makes a tidy profit buying up paintings from his desperate Jewish clients. As Klein searches for a Jewish man with the same name for whom he has been mistaken, he finds himself plunged into a Kafkaesque nightmare in which his identity seems to dissolve and the forces of history to close in on him. Met with considerable controversy on its release for its portrayal of the real-life wrongdoings of the Vichy government, this haunting, disturbingly beautiful film shivers with existential dread as it traces a society’s descent into fascistic fear and inhumanity.

    BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack 

    • Interviews with critic Michel Ciment and editor Henri Lanoë

    • Interviews from 1976 with director Joseph Losey and actor Alain Delon

    Story of a Day, a 1986 documentary on the real-life Vél d’Hiv Roundup, a central historical element of Mr. Klein

    • Trailer

    • New English subtitle translation

    • PLUS: An essay by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau

     1976 • 123 minutes • Color • Monaural • In French with English subtitles • 1.66:1 aspect ratio


    On the 17th comes writer-director Juzo Itami's The Funeral on Blu-ray.

    The Funeral 

    It’s death, Japanese style, in the rollicking and wistful first feature from maverick writer-director Juzo Itami. In the wake of her father’s sudden passing, a successful actor (Itami’s wife and frequent collaborator, Nobuko Miyamoto) and her lascivious husband (Tsutomu Yamazaki) leave Tokyo and return to her family home to oversee a traditional funeral. Over the course of three days of mourning that bring illicit escapades in the woods, a surprisingly materialistic priest (Chishu Ryu), and cinema’s most epic sandwich handoff, the tensions between public propriety and private hypocrisy are laid bare. Deftly weaving dark comedy with poignant family drama, The Funeral is a fearless satire of the clash between old and new in Japanese society in which nothing, not even the finality of death, is off-limits.

    SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • High-definition restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray

    • New interviews with actors Nobuko Miyamoto and Manpei Ikeuchi

    Creative Marriages: Juzo Itami & Nobuko Miyamoto, a short program produced by the Criterion Channel 

    • Commercials for Ichiroku Tart by director Juzo Itami 

    • Trailers

    • New English subtitle translation 

    • PLUS: An essay by author Pico Iyer and, for the Blu-ray, excerpts from Itami’s 1985 book Diary of “The Funeral” and from a 2007 remembrance of Itami by actor Tsutomu Yamazaki

     1984 • 124 minutes • Color • Monaural • In Japanese with English subtitles • 1.33:1 aspect ratio


    Finally on the 24th, Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala starring Sarita Choudhury and Denzel Washington will arrive on Blu-ray format.

    Mississippi Masala 

    The vibrant cultures of India, Uganda, and the American South come together in Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala, a luminous look at the complexities of love in the modern melting pot. Years after her Indian family was forced to flee their home in Uganda by the dictatorship of Idi Amin, twentysomething Mina (Sarita Choudhury) spends her days cleaning rooms in an Indian-run motel in Mississippi. When she falls for the charming Black carpet cleaner Demetrius (Denzel Washington), their passionate romance challenges the prejudices of both of their families and exposes the rifts between the region’s Indian and African American communities. Tackling thorny issues of racism, colorism, culture clash, and displacement with bighearted humor and keen insight, Nair serves up a sweet, sexy, and deeply satisfying celebration of love’s power.

     

    DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director Mira Nair and director of photography Ed Lachman, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray

    • New audio commentary featuring Nair

    • New conversation between actor Sarita Choudhury and film critic Devika Girish

    • New interviews with Lachman, screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala, and production designer and photographer Mitch Epstein

    • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing 

    • PLUS: An essay by critic Bilal Qureshi and, for the Blu-ray, excerpts from Nair’s production journal

     1991 • 117 minutes • Color • 2.0 surround • In English and Swahili with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio


    All of these titles should be up for pre-order soon and will be updated on the site here as soon as that information becomes available.  

    Continue Reading

LATEST NEWS BLU-RAY

No Rest For The Wicked (Or the Good) - HDD's 4K UHD & Blu-ray Shopping Guide, Mar 17, 2024

View All

ULTRA HD

Let's Get Together and Watch 'Bob Marley: One Love' - Arriving on 4K UHD and Blu-ray on May 28

View All

HD GEAR

Got A Spare Grand? Hot Toys Reissues 1989 Batman 1/6 Figure and Batmobile

View All

THE BONUS VIEW

Sorry, We’re Closed

View All