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Criterion thread

Postby Samuel_Scott » 11 Apr 2014 16:13

They just announced they are releasing Monte Hellman's The Shooting (no date yet).
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Re: Criterion thread

Postby Nigel_Badnell » 16 Apr 2014 21:26

http://www.criterion.com/films/28603-bl ... mest-color
A full special edition treatment of this film will follow at a later date.

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Re: Criterion thread

Postby Samuel_Scott » 16 Apr 2014 21:57

They've announced Scanners also. It'll be interesting to see what they add to the current available releases.
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Re: Criterion thread

Postby Noor_Razzak » 17 Apr 2014 02:31

Criterion sends me press releases since we review their titles. Here's the July release:

Hello- In July, The Criterion Collection will present major films from some of the world’s great directors. Movie lovers will marvel over the gorgeous, jam-packed collector’s set The Essential Jacques Demy, which features six films by the adored French New Wave master, including the candy-colored musical dazzlers The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort, both starring a gorgeous young Catherine Deneuve. On the other end of the movie spectrum is David Cronenberg’s 1981 explosive cult classic Scanners, featuring some of horror cinema’s most shocking special effects. Then, revisit a very different eighties hit, Lawrence Kasdan’s best picture Oscar nominee The Big Chill, with its all-star ensemble and legendary soundtrack. Criterion is also pleased to announce two updated dual-format Blu-ray and DVD editions of favorites: Erik Skjoldbjærg’s Scandinavian chiller Insomnia and Robert Bresson’s essential tale of crime and punishment Pickpocket. All this plus new DVDs of Howard Hawks’s Red River and Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, also available in recently announced dual-format editions.


PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK (2-DVD EDITION) STREET: 7/8/14
This sensual and striking chronicle of a disappearance and its aftermath put director Peter Weir (The Truman Show) on the map and helped usher in a new era of Australian cinema. Set at the turn of the twentieth century, Picnic at Hanging Rock concerns a small group of students from an all-female college and a chaperone, who vanish while on a St. Valentine’s Day outing. Less a mystery than a journey into the mystic, as well as an inquiry into issues of class and sexual repression in Australian society, Weir’s gorgeous, disquieting film is a work of poetic horror whose secrets haunt viewers to this day.

1975 • 107 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • 1.78:1 aspect ratio

TWO-DVD SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• Remastered high-definition digital film transfer, supervised and approved by director Peter Weir
• Extended interview with Weir
• New piece on the making of the film, featuring interviews from 2003 with executive producer Patricia Lovell, producers Hal McElroy and Jim McElroy, and cast members
• New introduction by film scholar David Thomson, author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film
• A Recollection . . . Hanging Rock 1900 (1975), an on-set documentary hosted by Lovell and featuring interviews with Weir, actor Rachel Roberts, and source novel author Joan Lindsay
• Homesdale (1971), an award-winning black comedy by Weir
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by author Megan Abbott


RED RIVER (2-DVD EDITION) STREET: 7/8/14
No matter what genre he worked in, Howard Hawks (His Girl Friday) played by his own rules, and never was this more evident than in his first western, the rowdy and whip-smart Red River. In it, John Wayne (Stagecoach) found one of his greatest roles, as an embittered, tyrannical Texas rancher whose tensions with his independent-minded adopted son—played by Montgomery Clift (From Here to Eternity), in a breakout performance—reach epic proportions during a cattle drive to Missouri. The film is based on a novel that dramatizes the real-life late nineteenth-century expeditions along the Chisholm Trail, but Hawks is less interested in historical accuracy than in tweaking the codes of masculinity that propel the myths of the American West. The unerringly macho Wayne and the neurotic, boyish Clift make for an improbably perfect pair, held aloft by a quick-witted, multilayered screenplay and Hawks’s formidable direction.

1948 • 127 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • 1.37:1 aspect ratio

TWO-DVD SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New 2K digital restoration of the rarely presented original theatrical release version, the preferred cut of director Howard Hawks
• New 2K digital restoration of the longer, prerelease version of Red River
• New interview with filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich about Red River and the two versions
• New interview with critic Molly Haskell about Hawks and Red River
• New interview with film scholar Lee Clark Mitchell about the western genre
• Audio excerpts from a 1972 conversation between Hawks and Bogdanovich
• Audio excerpts from a 1970 interview with novelist and screenwriter Borden Chase
• Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of Red River from 1949, featuring John Wayne, Joanne Dru, and Walter Brennan
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien


PICKPOCKET (DUAL-FORMAT 1-BLU-RAY AND 1-DVD EDITION) STREET: 7/15/14

This incomparable story of crime and redemption from French master Robert Bresson (A Man Escaped) follows Michel, a young pickpocket who spends his days working the streets, subway cars, and train stations of Paris. As his compulsive pursuit of the thrill of stealing grows, however, so does his fear that his luck is about to run out. A cornerstone in the career of this most economical and profoundly spiritual of filmmakers, Pickpocket is an elegantly crafted, tautly choreographed study of humanity in all its mischief and grace, the work of a director at the height of his powers.

1959 • 75 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In French with English subtitles • 1.33:1 aspect ratio

DUAL-FORMAT BLU-RAY AND DVD SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New, 2K digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Audio commentary by film scholar James Quandt
• Introduction by writer-director Paul Schrader
• The Models of “Pickpocket,” a 2003 documentary by Babette Mangolte that features actors from the film
• Interview from 1960 with director Robert Bresson, from the French television program Cinépanorama
• Q&A on Pickpocket from 2000 with actor Marika Green and filmmakers Paul Vecchiali and Jean-Pierre Améris
• Footage of the sleight-of-hand artist and Pickpocket consultant Kassagi from a 1962 episode of the French television show La piste aux étoiles
• Trailer
• One Blu-ray and one DVD, with all content available in both formats
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by novelist and critic Gary Indiana


SCANNERS (DUAL-FORMAT 1-BLU-RAY AND 2-DVD EDITION) STREET: 7/15/14

With Scanners, David Cronenberg (Videodrome) plunges us into one of his most terrifying and thrilling sci-fi worlds. After a man with extraordinary—and frighteningly destructive—telepathic abilities is nabbed by agents from a mysterious rogue corporation, he discovers he is far from the only possessor of such strange powers, and that some of the other “scanners” have their minds set on world domination, while others are trying to stop them. A trademark Cronenberg combination of the visceral and the cerebral, this phenomenally gruesome and provocative film about the expanses and limits of the human brain was the Canadian director’s breakout hit in the United States.

1981 • 103 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.78:1 aspect ratio

DIRECTOR-APPROVED DUAL-FORMAT BLU-RAY AND DVD SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New, restored 2K digital film transfer, supervised by director David Cronenberg, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• The “Scanners” Way, a new documentary on the film’s special effects
• New interview with actor Michael Ironside
• The Ephemerol Diaries, a 2012 interview with actor and artist Stephen Lack
• Excerpt from a 1981 interview with Cronenberg on the CBC’s The Bob McLean Show
• Stereo (1969), Cronenberg’s first feature film
• Trailer
• One Blu-ray and two DVDs, with all content available in both formats
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Kim Newman


THE ESSENTIAL JACQUES DEMY (6-BLU-RAY/7-DVD DUAL-FORMAT EDITION) STREET: 7/22/14

French director Jacques Demy didn’t just make movies—he created an entire cinematic world. Demy launched his glorious feature filmmaking career in the sixties, a decade of astonishing invention in his national cinema. He stood out from the crowd of his fellow New Wavers, however, by filtering his self-conscious formalism through deeply emotional storytelling. Fate and coincidence, doomed love, and storybook romance surface throughout his films, many of which are further united by the intersecting lives of characters who either appear or are referenced across titles. Demy’s films—which range from musical to melodrama to fantasia—are triumphs of visual and sound design, camera work, and music, and they are galvanized by the great stars of French cinema at their centers, including Anouk Aimée, Catherine Deneuve, and Jeanne Moreau. The works collected here, made from the sixties to the eighties, touch the heart and mind in equal measure.

LOLA
Jacques Demy’s crystalline debut gave birth to the fictional universe in which so many of his characters would live, play, and love. It’s among his most profoundly felt films, a tale of crisscrossing lives in Nantes (Demy’s hometown) that floats on waves of longing and desire. Heading the film’s ensemble is the enchanting Anouk Aimeé (81Ž2) as the title character, a cabaret chanteuse; she’s awaiting the return of a long-lost lover and unwilling to entertain the adoration of another love-struck soul, the wanderer Roland (Le trou’s Marc Michel). Humane, wistful, and witty, Lola is a testament to the resilience of the heartbroken.

1961 • 88 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In French with English subtitles • 2.35:1 aspect ratio

BAY OF ANGELS
This precisely wrought, emotionally penetrating romantic drama from Jacques Demy, set largely in the casinos of Nice, is a visually lovely but darkly pragmatic investigation into love and obsession. A bottle-blonde Jeanne Moreau (Jules and Jim) is at her blithe best as a gorgeous gambling addict, and Claude Mann (Army of Shadows) is the bank clerk drawn into her risky world. Featuring a glittering score by Michel Legrand, Bay of Angels is among Demy’s most somber works.

1963 • 84 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In French with English subtitles • 1.66:1 aspect ratio

THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG
An angelically beautiful Catherine Deneuve (Belle de jour) was launched into stardom by this glorious musical heart tugger from Jacques Demy. She plays an umbrella-shop owner’s delicate daughter, glowing with first love for a handsome garage mechanic, played by Nino Castelnuovo (The English Patient). When the boy is shipped off to fight in Algeria, the two lovers must grow up quickly. Exquisitely designed in a kaleidoscope of colors, and told entirely through the lilting songs of the great composer Michel Legrand, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is one of the most revered and unorthodox movie musicals of all time.

1964 • 92 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • In French with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT
Jacques Demy followed up The Umbrellas of Cherbourg with another musical about missed connections and second chances, this one a more effervescent confection. Twins Delphine and Solange, a dance instructor and a music teacher (played by real-life sisters Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac), dream of big-city life; when a fair comes through their quiet port town, so does the possibility of escape. With its jazzy Michel Legrand score, pastel paradise of costumes, and divine supporting cast (George Chakiris, Grover Dale, Danielle Darrieux, Michel Piccoli, and Gene Kelly), The Young Girls of Rochefort is a tribute to Hollywood optimism from sixties French cinema’s preeminent dreamer.

1967 • 126 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • In French with English subtitles • 2.35:1 aspect ratio

DONKEY SKIN
In this lovingly crafted, wildly quirky adaptation of a classic French fairy tale, Jacques Demy casts Catherine Deneuve as a princess who must go into hiding as a scullery maid in order to fend off an unwanted marriage proposal—from her own father, the king (Orpheus’s Jean Marais)! A topsy-turvy riches-to-rags fable featuring songs by Michel Legrand, Donkey Skin creates a tactile fantasy world that’s perched on the border between the earnest and the satiric, and features Delphine Seyrig (Last Year at Marienbad) in a delicious supporting role as a fashionable fairy godmother.

1970 • 90 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • In French with English subtitles • 1.66:1 aspect ratio

UNE CHAMBRE EN VILLE
In this musical melodrama set against the backdrop of a workers’ strike in Nantes, Dominique Sanda (The Conformist) plays a young woman who wishes to leave her brutish fiancé (Contempt's Michel Piccoli) for an earthy steelworker (The Valet’s Richard Berry), though he is engaged to another. Unbeknownst to the girl, the object of her affection boards with her no-nonsense baroness mother (The Earrings of Madame de . . .’s Danielle Darrieux). A late-career triumph from Jacques Demy, Une chambre en ville received nine César Award nominations and features a rich, operatic score by Michel Colombier (Purple Rain).

1982 • 93 minutes • Color • 2.0 surround • In French with English subtitles • 1.66:1 aspect ratio

DUAL-FORMAT SPECIAL EDITION COLLECTOR’S SET FEATURES
• New 2K digital restorations of all six films, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-rays of Lola and Bay of Angels and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and 2.0 surround soundtracks on the Blu-rays of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The Young Girls of Rochefort, Donkey Skin, and Une chambre en ville
• Two documentaries by filmmaker Agnès Varda: The World of Jacques Demy (1995) and The Young Girls Turn 25 (1993)
• Four short films by director Jacques Demy: Les horizons morts (1951), Le sabotier du Val de Loire (1956), Ars (1959), and La luxure (1962)
• Jacques Demy A to Z, a new visual essay by film critic James Quandt
• Two archival interviews from French television with Demy and composer Michel Legrand, one on The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and the other on The Young Girls of Rochefort
• French television interview from 1962 with actor Jeanne Moreau on the set of Bay of Angels
• Once Upon a Time . . . “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” a 2008 documentary
• French television program about the making of Donkey Skin
• “Donkey Skin” Illustrated, a video program on the many versions of Charles Perrault’s fairy tale
• “Donkey Skin” and the Thinkers, a video program on the themes of the film, featuring critic Camille Tabouley
• New video conversation with Demy biographer Jean-Pierre Berthomé and costume designer Jacqueline Moreau
• New interviews with author Marie Colmant and film scholar Rodney Hill
• Q&A with Demy from the 1987 Midnight Sun Film Festival, as well as an audio Q&A with him from the American Film Institute in 1971
• Archival audio recordings of interviews with Demy, Legrand, and actor Catherine Deneuve at the National Film Theatre in London
• Interview with actor Anouk Aimée conducted by Varda in 2012
• Interview from 2012 with Varda on the origin of Lola’s song
• Video programs on the restorations of Lola, Bay of Angels, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and Une chambre en ville
• Trailers
• New English subtitle translations
• Six Blu-rays and seven DVDs, with all content available in both formats
• PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by critics Ginette Vincendeau, Terrence Rafferty, Jim Ridley, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Anne Duggan, and Geoff Andrew, and a postscript by Berthomé


INSOMNIA (DUAL-FORMAT BLU-RAY AND DVD EDITION) STREET: 7/22/14

In this elegantly unsettling murder mystery, Stellan Skarsgård (Breaking the Waves) plays an engimatic Swedish detective with a checkered past who arrives in a small town in northern Norway to investigate the death of a teenage girl. As he digs deeper into the heinous killing, his own demons and the tyrannical midnight sun begin to take a toll. Erik Skjoldbjærg’s chilling procedural anticipated the international hunger for Scandinavian noirs and serial killer fictions, and features one of Skarsgård’s greatest performances.

1997 • 97 minutes • Color • 2.0 surround • In Norwegian and Swedish with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

DIRECTOR-APPROVED DUAL-FORMAT BLU-RAY AND DVD SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New 4K digital restoration, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New conversation between director Erik Skjoldbjærg and actor Stellan Skarsgård
• Trailer and TV spot
• One Blu-ray and one DVD, with all content available in both formats
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Jonathan Romney


THE BIG CHILL (DUAL-FORMAT 1-BLU-RAY AND 2-DVD EDITION) STREET 7/29/14
After the shocking suicide of their friend, a group of thirtysomethings reunite for his funeral and end up spending a weekend together, reminiscing about their shared pasts as children of the sixties and confronting the uncertainty of their lives as adults of the eighties. Poignant and warmly humorous in equal measure, this 1983 baby boomer milestone made a star of writer-director Lawrence Kasdan (Body Heat) and is perhaps the decade’s defining ensemble film, featuring memorable performances by Tom Berenger (Platoon), Glenn Close (Fatal Attraction), Jeff Goldblum (The Fly), William Hurt (Broadcast News), Kevin Kline (The Ice Storm), Mary Kay Place (Being John Malkovich), Meg Tilly (Agnes of God), and JoBeth Williams (Poltergeist). And with its playlist of hit songs from the sixties, The Big Chill all but invented the consummately curated soundtrack.

1983 • 105 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

DIRECTOR-APPROVED DUAL-FORMAT BLU-RAY AND DVD SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New, restored 4K digital film transfer, supervised by cinematographer John Bailey and approved by director Lawrence Kasdan, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Alternate remastered 5.1 surround soundtrack, presented in DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray
• Reunion with cast and crew, including Kasdan, actors Tom Berenger, Glenn Close, Kevin Kline, Mary Kay Place, Meg Tilly, and JoBeth Williams, from the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival
• Documentary from 1998 on the making of the film
• Deleted scenes
• Trailer
• One Blu-ray and two DVDs, with all content available in both formats
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by writer, director, and actor Lena Dunham
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Re: Criterion thread

Postby Noor_Razzak » 19 May 2014 16:56

This August, Criterion presents an array of contemporary classics from around the world, in exciting special editions. They include two by directors new to the collection: the iconic Bob Fosse, with his Oscar-winning autobiographical musical drama All That Jazz; and the beloved Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar, with his provocative and sensual Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!. August will also bring two long-requested titles: John Cassavetes’s raw and emotional Love Streams, never before on DVD or Blu-ray in the U.S.; and Y tu mamá también, the sexy smash hit from Oscar-winning Gravity director Alfonso Cuarón. All that plus a new Blu-ray edition of Shohei Imamura’s intense serial killer thriller Vengeance Is Mine.

Full info on these exciting August releases is below.


LOVE STREAMS – Dual Format Blu-ray/DVD Edition & DVD Only Edition
The electric filmmaking genius John Cassavetes (Shadows) and his brilliant wife and collaborator Gena Rowlands (A Woman Under the Influence) give luminous, fragile performances as two closely bound, emotionally wounded characters who reunite after years apart. Exhilarating and risky, mixing sober realism with surreal flourishes, Love Streams is a remarkable film that comes at the viewer in a torrent of beautiful, erratic feeling. This inquiry into the nature of love in all its forms was Cassavetes’s last truly personal work.

1984 • 141 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

DUAL-FORMAT 1-BLU-RAY/2-DVD SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New audio commentary featuring writer Michael Ventura
• New video essay on actor Gena Rowlands by film critic Sheila O’Malley
• New interviews with executive producer and director of photography Al Ruban and actor Diahnne Abbott
• Interview from 2008 with actor Seymour Cassel
• “I’m Almost Not Crazy . . .”—John Cassavetes: The Man and His Work (1984), a sixty-minute documentary by Ventura on the making of Love Streams
• Trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Dennis Lim and a 1984 piece by Cassavetes on the film from the New York Times

STREET: 8/12/14

TIE ME UP! TIE ME DOWN! - Dual Format Blu-ray/DVD Edition & DVD Only Edition
Pedro Almodóvar’s colorful and controversial tribute to the pleasures and perils of Stockholm syndrome, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! is a rambunctious dark comedy starring Antonio Banderas (Philadelphia) as an unbalanced but alluring former mental patient and Victoria Abril (Kika) as the B-movie and porn star he takes prisoner in the hopes of convincing her to marry him. A highly unconventional romance that came on the spike heels of Almodóvar’s international sensation Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, this is a splashy, sexy central work in the career of one of the world’s most beloved and provocative auteurs, radiantly shot by the director’s great cinematographer José Luis Alcaine (Volver).

1990 • 101 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • In Spanish with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

DIRECTOR-APPROVED DUAL-FORMAT 1-BLU-RAY/2-DVD SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New 2K digital restoration, supervised by director Pedro Almodóvar and executive producer Agustín Almodóvar, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New documentary on the making of the film including interviews with Pedro and Agustín Almodóvar; actors Antonio Banderas, Victoria Abril, Loles Léon, Rossy de Palma, and Penélope Cruz; production manager Esther García; editor José Salcedo; and cinematographer José Luis Alcaine
• New interview with Almodóvar collaborator and Sony Pictures Classics copresident Michael Barker
• Conversation from 2003 between Almodóvar and Banderas
• Footage from the film’s 1990 premieres in Madrid and New York
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring a 1990 piece about the film by Almodóvar, a conversation between filmmaker Wes Anderson and critic Kent Jones, and an interview with Almodóvar from 1989

STREET: 8/19/14

Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN - Dual Format Blu-ray/DVD Edition & DVD Only Edition
The smash road comedy from the Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity) is that rare movie to combine raunchy subject matter and emotional warmth. Gael García Bernal (Amores perros) and Diego Luna (Milk) shot to international stardom as a pair of horny Mexico City teenagers from different classes who, after their girlfriends jet off to Italy for the summer, are bewitched by a gorgeous older Spanish woman (Belle époque’s Maribel Verdú) they meet at a wedding. When she agrees to accompany them on a trip to a faraway beach, the three form an increasingly intense and sensual alliance that ultimately strips them both physically and emotionally bare. Shot with elegance and dexterity by the great Emmanuel Lubezki (The Tree of Life), Y tu mamá también is a funny and moving look at human desire.

2001 • 106 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • In Spanish with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

DIRECTOR-APPROVED DUAL-FORMAT 1-BLU-RAY/2-DVD SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New 2K digital restoration, supervised by director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki and approved by director Alfonso Cuarón, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• On “Y tu mamá también”: Then and On “Y tu mamá también”: Now, two new pieces on the making of the film, featuring interviews with actors Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna, and Maribel Verdú; Cuarón; cowriter Carlos Cuarón; and Lubezki
• New interview with philosopher Slavoj Žižek about the film
• On-set documentary from 2001
• Deleted scenes
• You Owe Me One (2002), a short film by Carlos Cuarón
• Trailers
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Charles Taylor and character biographies by Carlos Cuarón

STREET: 8/19/14

ALL THAT JAZZ - Dual Format Blu-ray/DVD Edition & DVD Only Edition
The preternaturally gifted director and choreographer Bob Fosse (Cabaret) turned the camera on his own life for this madly imaginative, self-excoriating musical masterpiece. Roy Scheider (Jaws) gives the performance of his career as Joe Gideon, whose exhausting work schedule—mounting a Broadway production by day and editing his latest movie at night—and routine of amphetamines, booze, and sex are putting his health at serious risk. Fosse burrows into Gideon’s (and his own) mind, rendering his interior world as phantasmagoric spectacle. Assembled with visionary editing that makes dance come alive on-screen as never before, and overflowing with sublime footwork by the likes of Ben Vereen, Leland Palmer, and the awesomely leggy Ann Reinking, All That Jazz pushes the musical genre to personal depths and virtuosic aesthetic heights.

1979 • 123 minutes • Color • 3.0 surround • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

DUAL-FORMAT 1-BLU-RAY/2-DVD SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed 3.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Two audio commentaries: a feature-length one with editor Alan Heim and a scene-specific one with actor Roy Scheider
• Razzle-Dazzle, a new video essay on the film by critic Matt Zoller Seitz
• Episode from 1980 of the television talk show Tomorrow, featuring director Bob Fosse and choreographer Agnes de Mille
• New interview with Heim
• New interview with Fosse biographer Sam Wasson
• Interview excerpts and footage from the set, featuring Fosse and Scheider
• Portrait of a Choreographer, a 2007 documentary on Fosse
• The Soundtrack: Perverting the Standards, a 2007 documentary about the music in the film
• Interview from 2007 with George Benson about his song “On Broadway,” which opens the film
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by theater critic Hilton Als
• More!

STREET 8/26/14

VENGEANCE IS MINE - Blu–ray Edition
A thief, a murderer, and a charming lady-killer, Iwao Enokizu (Mishima’s Ken Ogata) is on the run from the police. Director Shohei Imamura (The Pornographers) turns this fact-based story—about the seventy-eight-day killing spree of a remorseless man from a devoutly Catholic family—into a cold, perverse, and at times diabolically funny examination of the primitive coexisting with the modern. More than just a true-crime tale, Vengeance Is Mine bares humanity’s snarling id.

1979 • 140 minutes • Color • Monaural • In Japanese with English subtitles • 1.66:1 aspect ratio

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• Restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• Audio commentary from 2005 featuring critic Tony Rayns
• Excerpts from a 1999 interview with director Shohei Imamura, produced by the Directors Guild of Japan
• Trailer and teaser
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Michael Atkinson, a 1994 interview with Imamura by writer Toichi Nakata, and writings by Imamura on Vengeance Is Mine and his approach to filmmaking

STREET: 8/26/14
Samir: You know there's nothing wrong with that name.
Michael Bolton: There was nothing wrong with it... until I was about 12 years old and that no-talent ass clown became famous and started winning Grammys. (Office Space)
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Re: Criterion thread

Postby Noor_Razzak » 17 Jun 2014 02:29

September releases announced:

ERASERHEAD - Blu–ray & DVD Editions
David Lynch’s 1977 debut feature, Eraserhead, is both a lasting cult sensation and a work of extraordinary craft and beauty. With its mesmerizing black-and-white photography by Frederick Elmes, evocative sound design, and unforgettably enigmatic performance by Jack Nance, this visionary nocturnal odyssey remains one of American cinema’s darkest dreams.

1977 • 85 minutes • Black & White • Stereo • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• “Eraserhead” Stories, a 2001 documentary by David Lynch on the making of the film
• New high-definition restorations of six short films by Lynch: Six Figures Getting Sick (1966), The Alphabet (1968), The Grandmother (1970), The Amputee, Part 1 and Part 2 (1974), and Premonitions Following an Evil Deed (1996), all with video introductions by Lynch
• New and archival interviews with cast and crew
• Trailer


THE INNOCENTS – Blu-ray & DVD Editions
This genuinely frightening, exquisitely made supernatural gothic stars Deborah Kerr (Black Narcissus) as an emotionally fragile governess who comes to suspect that there is something very, very wrong with her precocious new charges. A psychosexually intensified adaptation of Henry James’s classic The Turn of the Screw, cowritten by Truman Capote (In Cold Blood) and directed by Jack Clayton (Room at the Top), The Innocents is a triumph of narrative economy and technical expressiveness, from its chilling sound design to the stygian depths of its widescreen cinematography by Freddie Francis (The Elephant Man).

1961 • 100 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • 2.35:1 aspect ratio

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Audio commentary featuring cultural historian Christopher Frayling
• New interview with cinematographer John Bailey on director of photography Freddie Francis and the look of the film
• Archival interviews with editor James Clark, Francis, and script supervisor Pamela Francis
• Trailer
• More!
• PLUS: An essay by critic Maitland McDonagh


MACBETH - Blu–ray & DVD Editions
Roman Polanski (Rosemary’s Baby) imbues his unflinchingly violent adaptation of William Shakespeare’s tragedy of ruthless ambition and murder in medieval Scotland with grit and dramatic intensity. Jon Finch (Frenzy) and Francesca Annis (Dune) are charged with fury and sex appeal as a decorated warrior rising in the ranks and his driven wife, scheming together to take the throne by any means. Coadapted by Polanski and the great theater critic and dramaturge Kenneth Tynan, and shot against a series of stunning, stark British Isle landscapes, this version of Macbeth is among the most atmospheric and authentic of all Shakespeare films.

1971 • 140 minutes • Color • Stereo • 2.35:1 aspect ratio

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New documentary about the making of the film, featuring interviews with director Roman Polanski, producer Andrew Braunsberg, assistant executive producer Victor Lownes, and stars Francesca Annis and Martin Shaw
• Polanski Meets Macbeth, a 1971 documentary by Frank Simon featuring rare footage of the film’s cast and crew at work
• Theatrical trailers
• More!
• PLUS: An essay by critic Terrence Rafferty


ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL - Blu–ray Edition
The wildly prolific German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder (World on a Wire) paid homage to his cinematic hero Douglas Sirk with this update of that filmmaker’s 1955 All That Heaven Allows. A lonely widow (Brigitte Mira) meets a much younger Arab worker (El Hedi ben Salem) in a bar during a rainstorm. They fall in love, to their own surprise—and to the outright shock of their families, colleagues, and drinking buddies. In Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, Fassbinder expertly uses the emotional power of classic Hollywood melodrama to expose the racial tensions underlying contemporary German culture.

1974 • 93 minutes • Color • Monaural • In German with English subtitles • 1.33:1 aspect ratio

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• Introduction from 2003 by filmmaker Todd Haynes
• Interviews from 2003 with actor Brigitte Mira and editor Thea Eymèsz
• Shahbaz Noshir’s 2002 short Angst isst Seele auf, which reunites Mira, Eymèsz, and cinematographer Jürgen Jürges to tell the story, based on real events, of an attack by neo-Nazis on a foreign actor while on his way to a stage performance of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s screenplay
• Signs of Vigorous Life: New German Cinema, a 1976 BBC program about the national film movement of which Fassbinder was a part
• Scene from Fassbinder’s 1970 film The American Soldier that inspired Ali
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by critic Chris Fujiwara


SUNDAYS AND CYBÈLE - Blu–Ray & DVD Editions
In this provocative Academy Award winner from French director Serge Bourgignon, a psychologically damaged war veteran and a neglected child begin a startlingly intimate friendship—one that ultimately ignites the suspicion and anger of his friends and neighbors in suburban Paris. Bourguignon’s film makes thoughtful, humane drama out of potentially incendiary subject matter, and with the help of the sensitive cinematography of Henri Decaë (The 400 Blows) and a delicate score by Maurice Jarre (Lawrence of Arabia), Sundays and Cybèle becomes a stirring contemplation of an alliance between two troubled souls.

1962 • 110 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In French with English subtitles • 2.35:1 aspect ratio

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New interviews with director Serge Bourguignon and actor Patricia Gozzi
• Le sourire (1960), Bourguignon’s Palme d’Or–winning short documentary
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by critic Ginette Vincendeau
Samir: You know there's nothing wrong with that name.
Michael Bolton: There was nothing wrong with it... until I was about 12 years old and that no-talent ass clown became famous and started winning Grammys. (Office Space)
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Re: Criterion thread

Postby Davy_Lee » 06 Oct 2014 00:57

Criterion is offering a disc-replacement program for its defective batch of pressings.

Official announcement:

"We have confirmed that certain Blu-ray discs pressed at a replication facility that we used for a period in 2010 have become defective, showing a noticeable bronze discoloration on the underside and developing playback problems. We have confirmed the problem on seven titles, though not on all copies of those titles. All of these titles have since been re-pressed at a different pressing plant, and the vast majority of discs in circulation should not be affected.

The potentially affected Blu-ray titles are:

Howards End
M
Paris, Texas
Pierrot le fou
The Seventh Seal
Summer Hours
Walkabout

If you have found that your Blu-ray copy of one of these titles does not play, please send your disc to the following address for a replacement:

Jon Mulvaney
The Criterion Collection
215 Park Avenue South
5th floor
New York, NY 10003

Please include only your disc—no packaging—along with the address to which you'd like us to mail your replacement. We will not be replacing or exchanging packaging. There is no need to email us in addition.

If we learn that other titles are similarly defective, we will add them to this list and continue to replace them as well.

Thank you for your patience and understanding
."

Are your discs affected?

Luckily, I only have few Criterion BDs.
*N=New to collection :-D, U=Upgrade :), DD=Double Dipping :wink:, R=Replacement for damaged disc :-?



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Re: Criterion thread

Postby Jim_Mcdonaugh » 06 Oct 2014 10:28

Luckily, I only have few Criterion BDs.


Me too. Never liked Criterion DVDs/BR. Their choices of films are beyond my understanding.
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Re: Criterion thread

Postby James-Masaki_Ryan » 06 Oct 2014 13:00

My "Walkabout" disc is rotting away. The other titles above I have look ok, with no discoloration on the disc itself. I played back Seventh Seal and there was no problem. My copy of "Stagecoach" looks a little weird on the surface, but it played back ok today. Although I'm worried that in the future, it might become unplayable.
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Re: Criterion thread

Postby Davy_Lee » 08 Oct 2014 02:33

James-Masaki_Ryan wrote:My "Walkabout" disc is rotting away. The other titles above I have look ok, with no discoloration on the disc itself. I played back Seventh Seal and there was no problem. My copy of "Stagecoach" looks a little weird on the surface, but it played back ok today. Although I'm worried that in the future, it might become unplayable.


The inherent issue of disc rot has started since the laser disc era and is now affecting blu-ray discs.

Initially, this gave me a discouraging blow as I have got hundreds of DVDs in my collection. But then, I could accept it as a risk that I should bear believing that the issue is an isolated one.

Physical discs are prone to become defective due to some uncontrollable external factors, not to mention the process in which they are manufactured.

I've got few DVDs in my collection which look pristine on the data surface but have been rendered unplayable due to sub-par disc authoring process and manufacture.
*N=New to collection :-D, U=Upgrade :), DD=Double Dipping :wink:, R=Replacement for damaged disc :-?



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Re: Criterion thread

Postby Jim_Mcdonaugh » 08 Oct 2014 10:53

The inherent issue of disc rot has started since the laser disc era and is now affecting blu-ray discs.

Initially, this gave me a discouraging blow as I have got hundreds of DVDs in my collection. But then, I could accept it as a risk that I should bear believing that the issue is an isolated one.

Physical discs are prone to become defective due to some uncontrollable external factors, not to mention the process in which they are manufactured.

I've got few DVDs in my collection which look pristine on the data surface but have been rendered unplayable due to sub-par disc authoring process and manufacture.


Not every DVD will "rot" as you say. It depends on many factors. I personally never had such problem.

Blu-ray discs aren't affected by degradation as time passes, as their technology is different, and quality itself is way higher. Ofcourse, if the conditions are extremely poor, then yes, you my have issues reading from them. But if you keep them at normal room temperature, then I doubt you gonna experience any trouble.
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Re: Criterion thread

Postby Jari_Kovalainen » 08 Oct 2014 12:56

Davy_Lee wrote:The inherent issue of disc rot has started since the laser disc era and is now affecting blu-ray discs.


It's probably just a bad patch (BD) from the factory with selected titles. It can be annoying of course, but I doubt this is widespread.
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Re: Criterion thread

Postby Markus_Lang » 15 Dec 2014 17:41

Image

I can confirm that the new transfer of Play Time has been made from 65 mm film (6.5K resolution). The booklet states:

“The digital transfer was created in 6.5K resolution from the original 65 mm negative, a 1967 internegative, and a 2002 interpositive at Arane-Gulliver in Clichy, France; the film was restored 4K resolution at L’Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna, Italy. The 2013 restoration was undertaken by Les Films de Mon Oncle with the support of the Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée.”

Also, the new blu-ray has a 3.0-channel audio track.

Here’s a very small comparison between three releases: Future Film DVD (2003), the old Criterion BD (2009), and the new Criterion BD (2014). The differences are noticeable.

Future Film DVD:
Image

Criterion Collection No. 112:
Image

Criterion Collection No. 729:
Image


Future Film DVD:
Image

Criterion Collection No. 112:
Image

Criterion Collection No. 729:
Image


Future Film DVD:
Image

Criterion Collection No. 112:
Image

Criterion Collection No. 729:
Image
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Re: Criterion thread

Postby Davy_Lee » 05 Mar 2016 13:51

Criterion to Begin Releasing on Blu-ray in the UK

Image

Now Eureka will meet a heavyweight contender!
*N=New to collection :-D, U=Upgrade :), DD=Double Dipping :wink:, R=Replacement for damaged disc :-?



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Re: Criterion thread

Postby James-Masaki_Ryan » 13 Mar 2016 14:51

I don't see this as being a competitor to Eureka for the most part.

Sony International has been reluctant to license their titles to third parties, with only Sony US having third party agreements with companies such as Mill Creek, Twilight Time, and of course Criterion.
For the titles being confirmed as Criterion UK, they are for the most part Sony owned films that didn't have a UK BD previously. (Tootsie, MacBeth, etc), though there are some surprises, such as "Speedy" which Studio Canal previously owned the UK rights (but expired), and "Grey Gardens" which Eureka previously owned the UK rights (but expired).

I see this Criterion UK label as more concentrating on Sony releases mostly and not exactly stealing business from Eureka, Arrow, BFI, or other indies. I just hope Criterion (US and UK) would hurry up and announce "John Carpenter's Starman" sometime soon though...
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