Criterion News and Discussion

[jenkins]

http://criterionforum.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=2

btw larry. for the hint answer

[wilder]

Monte Hellman's The Shooting to Enter The Criterion Collection
via blu-ray.com

Maverick director Monte Hellman (Two-Lane Blacktop) has revealed that The Criterion Collection is working on a Blu-ray release of his early western The Shooting (1966), starring Warren Oates, Millie Perkins, Jack Nicholson, Will Hutchins, and Brandon Carroll. A preliminary street date for this upcoming release has not yet been revealed.

Recently, director Hellman left the following comments on Facebook:

"Spent the day working on the color correction on the Criterion Blu-ray of THE SHOOTING. Working from a scan of the original negative. What a revelation! Saw it side by side with the IP. At least twice the information. It's not possible for any print to be as good as a blu ray made from a 4K transfer. A DCP would be even better.

I will tell you now, you've never seen this movie before. I've never seen this movie before. Warren in one scene has tears in his eyes which were never visible in any print, video cassette or DVD. I'm only sad that Greg Sandor isn't here to see it. It's the way it looked when he shot it."

Official synopsis: Willett Gashade is a former bounty hunter who decides to trade in his crime-fighting ways to tend to his family's mining business. He returns home to find his brother missing and ends up on an adventure through the Utah desert with a beautiful mystery woman and a ruthless gunfighter (Nicholson) who may or may not be responsible for his brother's disappearance and the murder of one of his old friends. The mystery builds to the film's enigmatic conclusion.

[wilder]

life is sweet is one of leigh's very best.

samsong you just cost me another 20

you can thank me later.

Way late on this, but thank-you-samsong. What a discovery.

[MacGuffin]

Criterion Announces August Titles, Almodóvar and Cuarón Films Included


Criterion Collection has just got its hands on some awesome titles that will be released come August. Gravity director Alfonso Cuarón's sexy coming of age road trip drama, "Y tu mamá también" and Pedro Almodovar's "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!" are among the mix. Check out the full list with some of the perks being offered below (Descriptions provided by Criterion Collection).

"Love Streams" (1984)
Director: John Cassavetes
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.

Special Features to look forward to: New audio commentary featuring writer Michael Ventura, New video essay on actor Gena Rowlands by film critic Sheila O'Malley, Interview from 2008 with actor Seymour Cassel


Almodovar's "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!"
"Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!" (1990)
Director: Pedro Almodóvar

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").

Special Features to look forward to: 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, Conversation from 2003 between Almodóvar and Banderas

"Y tu mamá también" (2001)
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
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.

Special Features to look forward to: 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, On-set documentary from 2001

"All That Jazz" (1979)
Director: Bob Fosse
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.

Special Features to look forward to: 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, New interview with Heim

"Vengeance is Mine" (1979)
Director: Shohei Imamura
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.

Special Features to look forward to: 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

[Fernando]

what is this?

[wilder]

People are saying it's the Monte Hellman westerns.

[jenkins]

what is this?

People are saying it's the Monte Hellman westerns.

it's for sure those because
hellman has talked about his movies coming to criterion
and
http://www.clippergirl.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Hellmanns-Mayonnaise.png

[samsong]

the shooting and ride the whirlwind have been near the top of my "must see" list for a very long time.  exciting news, even if it's been in the pipeline for some time now.

[MacGuffin]

what is this?

Cinco De Mayo

[03]

Captain Mayonnaise's Hat

[samsong]

barnes and noble's 50% off criterion sale will run for 3 days shy of the entirety of next month starting on the 1st.  curious about judex and picnic at hanging rock... worth blind buying for $20?

[MacGuffin]

September Criterion Releases Include Lynch's 'Eraserhead,' Polanski's 'Macbeth' & Horror Classic 'The Innocents'


It's the middle of the month, and we know what that means. Well, for us, it means realizing we have $70 to last us until payday, but for the more frugal cinephiles among you, it means that it's time for Criterion to announce what they've got coming up three months down the line. And once more, there are some treats in store.

Kicking things off, and certainly the headliner, is David Lynch's seminal 1977 first feature "Eraserhead," the first of the director's features to make the collection. The film will be displayed on a new 4K digital restoration, along with new restorations of six Lynch shorts (1966's "Six Figures Getting Sick," 1968's 'The Alphabet," 1970's "The Grandmother," 1974's "The Amputee Part 1 and 2," and 1996's "Premonitions Following An Evil Deed," plus interviews and a 2001 documentary by Lynch called "Eraserhead Stories." So yeah, pretty much a must buy when it lands on September 16th. 

Unlike Lynch, Polanski's a regular in the Collection, but his 1971 take on "Macbeth" will be hitting just in time for the upcoming Michael Fassbender/Marion Cotillard take on Shakespeare's classic. Again with a 4k restoration, it'll be accompanied by both a 1971 documentary, and a brand new one about the making of the film, plus an essay by critic Terence Rafferty. That hits 23rd of September.

The same day also brings Jack Clayton's superb ghost story "The Innocents." A 1961 version of Henry James' "The Turn Of The Screw," a favorite of Martin Scorsese, gets the 4k restoration, an audio commentary from historian Christopher Frayling, a new interview about the cinematography by Freddie Francis, and archive interviews with other crew members. The film's not as well known in the States as in the UK, but it's absolutely brilliant, and as definitive as the earlier two pictures.

Finally, the month closes out with Serge Bourgignon's "Sundays And Cybele." Not necessarily as sexy as some of the others, the film, which won the foreign-language Oscar in 1962, is somewhat overshadowed now, but could get a boost in its reputation. The release gets a 2k restoration, new interviews with the director and actress Patricia Gozzi, and "La sourire," the 1960 short that won Bourguignon the Palme D'Or. That lands on September 30th, the same day that Fassbinder's "Ali: Fear Eats The Soul" gets an overdue upgrade to blu.

Speaking of, it was announced last week that Criterion will no longer be doing dual-format releases — supposedly, a surprisingly small number of customers have made the upgrade to Blu, and the experiment didn't pay off. What do you think about the decision? Are you pleased, or unhappy? Talk it out below in the comments.

[jenkins]

where i'm at now is i'm considering what i'll buy during the b&n sale. $60 is mega spending for me, that's my roof. my idea was to post cover pics and pretend this was me in a store making a buying decision, but already my list is long, and anyway it's only june 19

i'll keep this first part textual:

The Essential Jacques Demy
i'll want this, it'll be released toward the end of july, and it'd be the only one i could buy. oooh that's tricky

All That Heaven Allows
if i don't go for demy, this is guaranteed. 2 remain

Badlands
one day i gotta, right. i'll pick it up and want it, but i won't buy it because i have so many parts of it memorized already. my guess

The Big City
previously i've considered this until the end, and i wonder if not choosing it before will tarnish its potential future. i still want this

Children of Paradise
i'll think about this one but i bet i won't buy it, and i might

Les Cousins/Le beau Serge
i keep thinking about both but i don't know which one to get so i end up getting neither

Gate of Hell
i bet it's so pretty and i bet i'd watch it one time. i bet i'll pick this up and want it and not buy it, and i should work out a hulu situation for this

Last Days of Disco
oh i love it and it'd be an essential for me, if i could think of a good reason it needs to be on blu-ray

The Long Day Closes
adore it. i'd call it a top contender. is it really? time, time will tell

Master of the House
this one's tricky. dreyer, an essential. silents, essentials. but 1925, and i think they really get going a couple years later. of course, dreyer went into the passion next, so this must be great, and i'm probably underestimating

Il sorpasso
this looks adorable. this is why i'm not sure what i'm most likely to purchase

Summer with Monika
what i said about badlands and children of paradise

La vie de bohème
shadows in paradise is one of my favorite movies, and please notice how i haven't called other movies my favorite, how i don't go around calling any movie i see my favorite. but i'm not sold on this yet, for some reason

[samsong]

all that heaven allows + badlands + the long day closes seems to be the way to go.  well, since your inclination is probably to do the opposite of what i suggest, those are probably your worst choices...

what, no love for ace in the hole?  pickpocket?  hearts and minds?  l'eclisse? 

[Axolotl]

If I could only buy two out of those I'd take The Long Day Closes and Badlands.
Because really are you seriously not going to buy a Terrence Malick movie on Blu Ray?