With this breakout film, Jim Jarmusch established himself as one of the most exciting voices in the burgeoning independent-film scene, a road-movie poet with an affinity for Americana at its most offbeat. Jarmusch follows rootless Hungarian émigré Willie (John Lurie), his pal Eddie (Richard Edson), and his visiting sixteen-year-old cousin Eva (Eszter Balint) as they drift from New York's Lower East Side to the snowy expanses of Lake Erie and the drab beaches of Florida, always managing to make the least of wherever they end up. Structured as a series of master-shot vignettes etched in black and white by cinematographer Tom DiCillo, Stranger Than Paradise is a nonchalant masterpiece of deadpan comedy and perfectly calibrated minimalism.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• High-definition digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Jim Jarmusch, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Permanent Vacation (1980, 75 minutes), Jarmusch's first full-length feature, presented in a high-definition digital restoration supervised by the director
• Kino '84: Jim Jarmusch, a 1984 German television program featuring interviews with cast and crew from Stranger Than Paradise and Permanent Vacation
• Some Days in January, 1984, a behind-the-scenes Super 8 film by Tom Jarmusch
• U.S. and Japanese trailers
• PLUS: A booklet featuring Jarmusch's 1984 "Some Notes on Stranger Than Paradise," critics Geoff Andrew and J. Hoberman on Stranger Than Paradise, and author and critic Luc Sante on Permanent Vacation
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Night on Earth
Five cities. Five taxicabs. A multitude of strangers in the night. Jim Jarmusch assembled an extraordinary international cast of actors (including Gena Rowlands, Winona Ryder, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Beatrice Dalle, and Roberto Benigni) for this quintet of transitory tales of urban displacement and existential angst, all staged as encounters between cabbies and their fares. Spanning time zones, continents, and languages, Night on Earth winds its course through scenes of uproarious comedy, nocturnal poetry, and somber fatalism, set to a moody soundtrack by Tom Waits. Jarmusch's lovingly askew view of humanity from the passenger seat makes for one of his most charming and beloved films, a freewheeling showcase for the cosmopolitan range of his imagination.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• High-definition digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Jim Jarmusch, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Selected-scene commentary from 2007 featuring director of photography Frederick Elmes and location sound mixer Drew Kunin
• Q&A with Jarmusch from 2007, in which he responds to questions sent in by fans
• Belgian television interview with Jarmusch from 1992
• PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by authors and critics Thom Andersen, Paul Auster, Bernard Eisenschitz, Goffredo Fofi, and Peter von Bagh, and the lyrics to Tom Waits's original songs from the film
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