544-550 America Lost and Found: The BBS Story (Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Last Picture Show, etc.)

[Buttery Jeb]

It looks like we got finalized specs for the set:

Head
* New, restored high-definition digital transfer (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack and newly created, optional DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
* Audio commentary featuring the Monkees
* New video interview with director Bob Rafelson
* New documentary about BBS featuring critic David Thomson and historian Douglas Brinkley
* Screen tests with the Monkees
* Trailers and TV and radio spots
* Ephemera, including behind-the-scenes photos by Henry Diltz
* Rare 1968 television interview with the Monkees

Easy Rider
* New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director of photography László Kovács (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack and optional DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
* Two audio commentaries, one featuring actor-director-writer Dennis Hopper, the other Hopper, actor-writer Peter Fonda, and production manager Paul Lewis
* Born to Be Wild (1995) and “Easy Rider”: Shaking the Cage, (1999), documentaries about the making and history of the film
* Television excerpts showing Hopper and Fonda at the Cannes Film Festival
* New video interview with BBS cofounder Steve Blauner
* Theatrical trailers

Five Easy Pieces
* New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director of photography László Kovács (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
* Audio commentary featuring director Bob Rafelson and interior designer Toby Rafelson
* Soul Searching in “Five Easy Pieces,” a 2009 video piece with Rafelson
* BBStory, a 2009 documentary about the BBS era, with Rafelson, actors Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, and Ellen Burstyn, and directors Peter Bogdanovich and Henry Jaglom, among others
* Audio excerpts from a 1976 AFI interview with Rafelson
* Theatrical trailer and teasers

Drive, He Said
* New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director Jack Nicholson (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
* A Cautionary Tale of Campus Revolution and Sexual Freedom, a 2009 video piece featuring Nicholson
* Theatrical trailer

A Safe Place
* New, restored high-definition digital transfer (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
* Audio commentary featuring director Henry Jaglom
* Henry Jaglom Finds “A Safe Place,” a 2009 video piece in which the director discusses the film
* Notes on the New York Film Festival, a 1971 video interview with Jaglom and director Peter Bogdanovich
* Outtakes and screen tests
* Theatrical trailer

The Last Picture Show
* New, restored high-definition digital transfer of Peter Bogdanovich’s director’s cut, supervised by Bogdanovich (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
* Two audio commentaries, one from 1991, featuring Bogdanovich and actors Cybill Shepherd, Randy Quaid, Cloris Leachman, and Frank Marshall; the other from 2009, featuring Bogdanovich
* “The Last Picture Show”: A Look Back, (1999) and Picture This (1990), documentaries about the making of the film
* A Discussion with Filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich, a 2009 Q&A
* Screen tests and location footage
* Excerpts from a 1972 television interview with director François Truffaut about the New Hollywood
* Theatrical trailers

The King of Marvin Gardens
* New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director of photogaphy László Kovács (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
* Selected-scene commentary featuring director Bob Rafelson
* Reflections of a Philosopher King, a 2009 video piece with Rafelson and actress Ellen Burstyn
* Afterthoughts, a 2002 interview with Rafelson, about the film, produced by Rafelson, Kovács, and actor Bruce Dern
* Theatrical trailer

* PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by critics J. Hoberman, Chuck Stephens, Matt Zoller Seitz, Kent Jones, Graham Fuller, and Mark Le Fanu

[oldsheperd]

It would be nice to get some more of these indie cinema pieces especially from actor/directors. We need a rerelease of Little Murders and hopefully Dennis Hopper's Last Movie gets a release.

[HypnoHelioStaticStasis]

Don't know if this means anything, but on the specs for Head, the posting now states commentary "featuring the Monkees," as opposed to what it was before, "Commentary by Mickey Dolenz, Peter Tork and Davy Jones." Does that mean Mike Nesmith is now on the track? If so, YES!

[Norbie]

I bet you can pick this up for $35 on release date! Too bad the DVD set isn't eligible :P

I bet you can't. This releases two days before Thanksgiving. IF there is a november sale, it will certainly be over before the week of Black Friday.

What is "Black Friday?"

[mfunk9786]

At least in the U.S., it's slang for the day after Thanksgiving. Everyone has the day off work, and it marks, to a lot of them, the first day of Christmas shopping. Retailers deeply discount a lot of products and open in the wee hours of the morning to large crowds.

Thanksgiving is a day of corpulance during which we all cut pieces off of overcooked round meatbirds and coat them in gravy with our families.

[Roger Ryan]

...Thanksgiving is a day of corpulance during which we all cut pieces off of overcooked round meatbirds and coat them in gravy with our families.

It's also a national holiday where we celebrate the arrival of the pilgrims on these shores and their friendship with the Native Americans whose land they would steal and whose tribes they would eventually decimate. The Native Americans get their revenge in the 20th century by making a killing in the casino business.

"Black Friday" is starting to become notorious for people being stampeded to death at superstores by shoppers unhinged by the lure of electronics at half price...and there's usually a shooting or two in the parking lot as well.

Actually, it's seems like the appropriate season to release a box set entitled AMERICA LOST AND FOUND!

[Matt]

Look at you guys being all nice and explaining it instead of just...

I'm so proud.

[Tribe]

Look at you guys being all nice and explaining it instead of just...

I'm so proud.

That is so cool!!! How did you do that?

[cdnchris]

http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=let+me+google+that+for+you" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Murdoch]

Look at you guys being all nice and explaining it instead of just...

I'm so proud.

That is so cool!!! How did you do that?

Here you go

edit: Chris beat me to it

[Matt]

For the Monkees fan for whom a Criterion Blu-ray of Head just isn't quite enough: Rhino Handmade's 3-disc deluxe edition of the soundtrack.

[zedz]

And furthermore. . .

If you're a US resident, you could win both the deluxe soundtrack and the BluRay of the BBS set, plus a lot of other Monkees crap. For the packaging fetishists among us, this also affords a glimpse of the BBS set's big fat spine.

[Max von Mayerling]

And, while it will certainly be somehow possible to get this set for even less, I received a promotional e-mail from RhinoHandmade that says you get an additional 10% off from Criterion.com with the promo code RHINO.

[domino harvey]

The Fiery Furnaces reenact Peter Biskind's Easy Rider revelations

[Tom Hagen]

Ibid.

Brilliant! I look forward to the sequel focusing on Ascot, Bridges, and Bottoms all falling in love with Shepherd on the set of The Last Picture Show.

[Perkins Cobb]

I'll hold out for the scene where everybody snorts some dead hippie chick's ashes at Bert Schneider's pad.

[domino harvey]

UNF

[Mr. Ned]

Wow, the set is absolutely gorgeous. I wasn't sure if this was a blind-buy for me at first, but looks like I'll have to buy Easy Rider for a third time. (first two were used, but still...)

[knives]

Glad that Criterion is fully embracing the MOC styled booklet.

[Mozart]

seems perfect in any way!
(maybe one disc each for Drive, He Said & A Safe Place would be more perfect.... )

so can we assume that the extras are a mixture between historical ones, made by Sony (all 2009), and made by Criterion (all 2010)?
And Video and Audio was done completely by Criterion?

But how could László Kovács have supervised the transfers, when he died in 2007?
Are the (2k?) scans ment?

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Holy fuck, that box looks wonderful. Excellent PQ, great extras - I really look forward to dipping into this one.

[zitherstrings]

Glad that Criterion is fully embracing the MOC styled booklet.

What do you mean?

[knives]

145 page book

[John Hodson]

God bless America (and Criterion). Now, can I wait until the next B&N sale...? Somehow, I think not.

[Ovader]

Manohla Dargis on the boxset and the era.

God bless America (and Criterion). Now, can I wait until the next B&N sale...? Somehow, I think not.

I have the Blu-ray on pre-order since Nov 4 with DVD Empire: $78.68 with 10% off code (1554640-not sure if still valid) so that seems to be the best deal so far.