Criterion News and Discussion

Started by Gold Trumpet, January 16, 2003, 06:18:19 PM

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Ravi

Quote from: The Gold Trumpet
Great news considering for me, he is one of the only reasons actually to listen to any commentary. I've never actually fully listened to any commentary besides his two (Dark City, Citizen Kane) because I'm not very good in attention span on listening to someone talk about a movie when I rather just be watching it. And usually, what they say is never that interesting and revealing in more bad ways than anything else to the movie. And yes, that does mean I've never listened to an entire PTA commentary. Actually, I've never gotten past 20 minutes on one of his.

~rougerum

I'm just the opposite.  Even if I rent a movie that turns out not to be very good, I listen to the commentary if I have time.  Some commentaries, of course, are crap, but I turn those off pretty quickly.

Listen to the Bogdanovich commentary on CK.  It's pretty good.  Didn't he personally know Orson Welles?

russiasusha

QuoteRoger Ebert Commentary to Appear on Floating Weeds

He just came here, colorado University in Boulder, last week doing his commentary of floating weeds.  It was pretty cool, but he let other people comment on it which was absolutly worthless.  I ended up leaving only after the first five minutes because those people were just annoying.
Guess that means i'm back on zigzag!
Movies before 1930 suck

Camel Lights

Quote from: Ravi
Listen to the Bogdanovich commentary on CK.  It's pretty good.  Didn't he personally know Orson Welles?

Yes. Buy this book. It's great.

Gold Trumpet

I listened to 10 minutes of Bogdonavich's commentary and shut if off after he took so long between talking so I felt like I was watching the movie more than him and when he talked, he just interrupted my viewing experience.

~rougerum

EL__SCORCHO

[/quote]


Listen to the Bogdanovich commentary on CK.  It's pretty good.  Didn't he personally know Orson Welles?[/quote]


Welles lived on and off in Bogdanovich's house on and off for a few years of his life. Bogdanovich even has a few  unproduced shooting scripts that Welles just left in his house.

dufresne

the Bogdonovich commentary on Citizen Kane is pretty good.  

and i'm glad to see all the other Ebert fans here.  he is by far my favorite.
There are shadows in life, baby.

Gold Trumpet

Criterion is turning out likely have a great year. First, comes the official news that Criterion will be releasing Ikiru this year. Here is the news report, courtesy of DVDFile:

More Kurosawa - 12:01am

Home Vision Entertainment, one of the leading distributors of foreign and classic films on DVD, announced at the 38th Chicago International Film Festival Critic's Choice on October 10th that they will be releasing Akira Kurosawa's classic Ikiru in 2003. Roger Ebert hosted a screening of the acclaimed drama at the festival, and remarked "I first saw Ikiru in 1960 or 1961... Over the years I have seen Ikiru every five years or so, and each time it has moved me, and made me think."

"Criterion has not yet announced any definitive specs or a street date for the release, but based on their past Kurosawa DVD releases, this should be another winner. Watch this space in the coming weeks for more..."


And now the hints from Sphinx's fav man, Jon Mulvaney, who gave them in a recent interview to other titles that will be hitting shelves this year. This is courtesy and an excerpt of a recent interview he did with a fan site of Criterion:

"We have high hopes that the second half of the year will see the release of a number of long-awaited, long labored over titles, as well as a box of Swedes, three German women, two American psychos, an old man, a devil, and a club-footed hunchback king."

Now, the people at the fansite then went down the possibilities of what those hints could be exactly referring to, some are obvious but some mysterious. Here is what they got:

A box of Swedes = Ingmar Bergman's Faith Trilogy ("Through a Glass Darkly", "Winter Light", & "The Silence")

Three German women =  the Fassbinder films Lola, The Marriage of Maria Bruan, and Veronika Voss.

Two American psychos = The Honeymoon Killers? F for Fake?

Club-footed hunchback king = Richard III.

a devil = The Devil and Daniel Webster? Equinox?

old man = Ikiru (confirmed)

ones with question marks seem more toss ups while ones without have been suspected for a while and likely are correct.

~rougerum

sphinx

where are those two soderbergh titles!  gimme gimme gimme

Gold Trumpet

Looks like some releases for July were momentarily announced over the Home Vision site then promptly removed. The three movies are as follow:

Shohei Imamura's "The Pornographers"
"The Honeymoon Killers"
"Umberto D"

Umberto D really is the classic one of these three and the others, especially The Pornographers, are fairly unkown. With the release of the Japanese film release of The Pornographers, Criterion may be delving even more into older Japanese cinema considering many Ozu movies are getting released this year too. The Honeymoon Killers is a confirmation to a titled already believed to be coming anytime soon.

~rougerum

Ghostboy

Van Sant's 'Gerry' is gonna be Criterion. Hooray!

MacGuffin

The Los Angeles Times reviewed the Truffaut "Antoine Doinel" box set:

Inside the mind of a master
With 'The 400 Blows,' director François Truffaut and his screen alter ego were off and running. Now they're together again in a new five-disc package.

Criterion's remarkable new five-disc "The Adventures of Antoine Doinel" DVD set offers indelible insight into the psyche of the late French director François Truffaut. The set features all five of Truffaut's films that explore the life and loves of his semiautobiographical character, Antoine Doinel, whom he introduced in his landmark first feature, "The 400 Blows," in 1959 and bid farewell to in his 1979 comedy "Love on the Run."

However, during the two decades between the first and last films, Truffaut matured and evolved, whereas Doinel remained the ultimate Peter Pan, a charming child-man who refused to grow up. Even in an interview conducted shortly after the release of "Love on the Run," Truffaut confessed he was dissatisfied with the film and Doinel's evolution. His alter ego, Truffaut acknowledged, had turned into a portrait of a failure. And Jean-Pierre Léaud, who played Doinel, is so linked to the role that he ran into typecasting problems.

Truffaut, who was born in 1932, had a rough childhood. Unloved by his parents, Truffaut found solace in the cinema and would spend more time at film clubs and Parisian movie theaters than at school. Though an avid reader, he quit school at 14, and the following year began his own film club and met his mentor, critic André Bazin. The older man even came to Truffaut's aid when he was jailed for deserting the army. Shortly after his release from prison in 1953, Truffaut began writing for the landmark publication Cahiers du Cinema. Truffaut, along with such future filmmakers as Jean-Luc Godard, extolled the virtues of directors whom they considered auteurs — Alfred Hitchcock, Nicholas Ray and John Ford, for example — who put their personal stamp on their films.

At age 27, he made his first feature-length film, "The 400 Blows," which put Truffaut on the international map. The haunting, humanistic drama revolved around 14-year-old Antoine — virtually ignored by his parents and misunderstood by his teachers — who enters into petty crime and eventually is sent to a bleak reform school. Antoine's oblique gaze into the camera in the final freeze-frame of the film is just one reason he has intrigued and fascinated audiences and critics for the past 44 years.

The first disc of the DVD set, which retails for $100, includes a new digital transfer of "The 400 Blows" and two audio commentaries: an overanalytic discussion with cinema professor Brian Stonehill and a far more satisfying one with Truffaut's lifelong friend Robert Lachenay. There's also terrific, rare audition footage with Léaud and his co-stars Patrick Auffay and Richard Kanayan and newsreel footage of Léaud at the Cannes screening of "The 400 Blows."

The disc also includes an interview from a French TV program with Truffaut discussing the origins of Antoine and another TV interview in which he talks about the box office in America for "The 400 Blows" and gives his own critical impression of the film.

Rounding out the disc is a new transfer of "Antoine and Colette," the second chapter in the saga — a short film that appeared in the 1962 omnibus film "Love at Twenty." This time around, teenage Doinel is out of reform school, living on his own and falling in love for the first time with a beautiful young woman (Marie-France Pisier), who sees him more as a friend.

By the time Truffaut made his third Antoine Doinel film, the enchanting 1968 "Stolen Kisses," he was 35, the father of two daughters and one of the top international directors. Unlike the first two Antoine films, "Stolen Kisses" is far sunnier and funnier. It is also the first shot in color. In this outing, the sweet but clueless Antoine is dishonorably discharged from the army, back in Paris and looking for work. He ends up at a detective agency, where he proves to be one of the most inept shamuses in the City of Light.

The DVD of "Stolen Kisses" features a crisp new digital transfer and an introduction by film historian Serge Toubiana, who discusses the turmoil going on in the film community in France in 1968. Henri Langlois was fired as director of the Cinematheque Français that year, which caused several filmmakers and actors — including Truffaut and Léaud — to protest. There's newsreel footage of one of the protests that turned violent and promotional spots and newsreel footage from that tumultuous year in France.

Two years later, Truffaut revisited Antoine in the bittersweet comedy "Bed and Board." This time, the perplexed Antoine is married, expecting his first child and still attempting to find gainful employment. But his life threatens to unravel when he becomes involved with a beautiful Japanese woman.

Besides a new digital transfer, the disc features behind-the-scenes footage of Truffaut directing a comedic scene with Léaud, as well as an interview with the director and co-star Claude Jade. Truffaut and co-writer Bernard Revon appear in a documentary in which they illustrate how they get their ideas for their scripts and the soft-spoken Léaud appears in a rare TV interview, discussing Truffaut and Antoine.

When "Bed and Board" was released, both Truffaut and Léaud said the book was finished on Antoine Doinel. But Truffaut admitted it was difficult to give him up, and nine years later he unfortunately decided to resurrect Antoine for "Love on the Run." The final chapter finds Antoine divorced, a semi-successful novelist and an incurable romantic. As he pursues a new woman, a young record store sales clerk, he encounters previous loves and examines his life via flashbacks of the other films. "Love on the Run," however, plays more like a clip episode of a TV reunion special, and Léaud, who seems tired and bloated, lacks the charm and passion of the previous four films.

Like the others, "Love on the Run" features a new digital transfer, a TV interview with Truffaut and the film's co-star and co-writer Marie-France Pisier and an excerpt from a 1980 French TV show in which Truffaut talks about his disappointment with the film.

The fifth disc of the collection includes a lovely new transfer of "Les Mistons," Truffaut's acclaimed 1957 short film about adolescent boys, with informative commentary by then-assistant director and future writing collaborator Claude de Givray and an early TV interview with Truffaut.

Truffaut died of a brain tumor in 1984 at age 52. Léaud, who turns 59 today, suffered a nervous breakdown after the death of his mentor. The actor, though, seems to have recovered from his personal problems and continues to work, most notably in the acclaimed 1996 film "Irma Vep." But to the international film world, he will always be known as Antoine Doinel.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

cowboykurtis

...your excuses are your own...

Gold Trumpet

Two new ones officially announced, including a classic major work:

UMBERTO D
http://www.criterionco.com/asp/release.asp?id=201

THE HONEYMOON KILLERS
http://www.criterionco.com/asp/release.asp?id=200

and yes, #200 does belong to the Honeymoon Killers. The important release though is Umberto D, which not only has one of the best covers by Criterion ever imo, but also has a great extra feature with an essay by my favorite writer, Umberto Eco, on the film. This is a definite buy for me.

~rougerum

SoNowThen

GT, I hadn't really heard about Umberto D until today (I mean, I've heard the title mentioned, but never knew anything about the movie). I just went to the Criterion website & read the synopsis. Sounds great! Now, I love to buy flicks I've never seen before, but this disc will probably cost. Would you recommend getting it, or should I preview a shitty VHS copy first?
Those who say that the totalitarian state of the Soviet Union was not "real" Marxism also cannot admit that one simple feature of Marxism makes totalitarianism necessary:  the rejection of civil society. Since civil society is the sphere of private activity, its abolition and replacement by political society means that nothing private remains. That is already the essence of totalitarianism; and the moralistic practice of the trendy Left, which regards everything as political and sometimes reveals its hostility to free speech, does nothing to contradict this implication.

When those who hated capital and consumption (and Jews) in the 20th century murdered some hundred million people, and the poster children for the struggle against international capitalism and America are now fanatical Islamic terrorists, this puts recent enthusiasts in an awkward position. Most of them are too dense and shameless to appreciate it, and far too many are taken in by the moralistic and paternalistic rhetoric of the Left.

Gold Trumpet

Honestly buy it. It really is a must have kind of movie and even if you aren't use to it on first viewing and/or put off by the pure simplicity of Italian Neo Realism at first, it is nice to have to watch on future times and be able to let the story grow on you. And if you buy it from a website like www.deepdiscountdvd.com you can get a good deal like it being a little over $20. Take a chance and buy it!

~rougerum