I dunno, didn't Jim Jarmusch reject his own commentary for the Criterion Laserdisc of Stranger Than Paradise? But that's the only instance I can think of and I may be remembering wrong.

I like the video essays where the critic speaks over relevant sections of the film. The most brilliant by far is Tag Gallagher's on the R2 Letter From an Unknown Woman.

Seconded -- on average, far better than either commentaries or talking heads interviews/ speeches

I should be outraged that some cheeky fecker has uploaded it to YouTube (not least because the quality is dire), but I'm very proud of this Quay Brothers interview, especially given the bargain-basement budget and schedule.

It took a grand total of a day and a half to make - half a day to shoot the video, and a day in an edit suite with their back catalogue to hand to cut in appropriate illustrations.

My personal favourite bit starts at 3:45 on the clip I've linked to - when we got that right in the edit, there was a fair amount of whooping and air-punching. In fact, you'd swear that they were specifically commenting over that section of the film, though they were as surprised as anyone when they saw the final result!

It does seem to be the best solution; let's just hope that more releases start including them. It would be nice if they moved out of mostly being included on boutique releases like Criterions, but I'm not sure that'll ever happen; I think that, if they're even on their radar at all, most mainstream studios seem to view them as too much work.

They shouldn't be, provided they're planned intelligently.

I'm taking a very keen interest in this particular topic, since I've just been asked to do a 10-15 minute piece to accompany a forthcoming release.

While most of it will be in the form of a to-camera introduction, I'm hoping I'll be able to throw in some analysis of apposite extracts - even if I end up editing the thing myself in Final Cut Pro to keep the budget down to an absolute minimum.

Me too - for example, Isabelle Huppert did an excellent scene-specific commentary on the R2 La Pianiste.

I didn't know there were so many others on the forum who are not indiffierent to commentaries but actually find them a negative. Aside from taking something away from the experience of a film by separating the images from the dialog and soundtrack (silent films aside), I also think they waste a lot of studio funds that are often very scarce for the releases I like.

I find good commentary tracks useful on foreign films where they can fill in info about cultural norms or historical context that I might have missed. Granted that even in a *good* track this is only a sparse scattering of information through the movie.

One recent example was the chopsticks stuck vertically in the rice in Drunken Angel. That was something that I hadn't realized the full significance of when I first watched the movie.

And therein lies the rub: the studios seem to be so used to churning out docs/interviews/commentaries as features that, however easy they might be to produce, video essays and the like just aren't happening. Maybe the majors will catch up someday to the independents; one can only hope.

I'm looking forward to these Bunuels, commentary or no. I've been interested in Nazarin (even if it doesn't have a commentary) ever since I saw it excerpted in one of the Discreet Charm docs (not commentary).

Now that this thread is back to the Bunuels, I just wanted to point out that, even if these upcoming Lionsgate releases turn out to be straight ports of the Mexican Alter discs, they're not too bad. I have three of the Alter discs, and there's no need to fret too much about A/V quality. I'd say that they're clearly superior to Yume's NTSC-PAL monstrosities and a little better than the recent Facets releases, too.

Now, the question becomes: Does anybody know where one can find This Is the Dawn, Death in the Garden, and Fever Rises in El Pao with English subs? Those will be the last Bunuels that I have never seen -- or indeed that are still unavailable anywhere (even the bootleg market) with English subs, to the best of my knowledge.

Back in the dark days before DVD (ah, the 90s), I picked up two of these from Facets on VHS. I believe La Fievre Monte a El Pao and Cela s'appelle l'aurore both had subs. Fievre was poor quality, near unwatchable with those white subtitles on the print itself. Mort en ce Jardin got a legit release, if I remember correctly, and was pretty good beat-up sister to Clouzot's Wages of Fear; definitely the most colorful of Bunuel's output at the time, with a great performance from Simone Signoret. I wish I knew what happened to the tapes I had. I must have pawned them off at some point in the road. Of the three, Death in the Garden is by far the best, followed by Dawn and then El Pao, the latter being a political film that never really gelled for me. Atypical Bunuel.

I take it, then, that you've seen La Hija del Engaño? That was one I found languishing unrented on a Mom-and-Pop videostore rack on unsubbed Mexican VHS back in the day and really enjoyed (I tried to convice the videostore owner to sell it to me, but she said no dice, so I duped it). I know it's gotten a release on DVD, but to my knowledge, no subs.

No, but it will be one of the six that will get released by Lionsgate in April. So I will have seen it by then. Same goes for River and Death.

I was just thinking ahead to the three that seem to be totally off the radar at the moment.

What do you gents (and gals) think of Robinson Crusoe? I've had this thing laying around on VHS for years and never gotten to it. Should I plunge?

It's not bad at all, but of course not much like a "typical" Bunuel film.

Yeah, thats pretty much the reason I kept putting it off.

I agree. I would much rather have had Bunuel direct his first choice for a Daniel Defoe novel, Journal of a Plague Year. His scriptbuddy Jean-Claude Carriere did a bang-up job on a similar project, Jean Giono's The Horseman on the Roof.

I managed to pick up Alter Films' versions of 5 of these when I was in Mexico the year before last. Unless there's some huge improvement in quality (which, given the prices I highly doubt) I'll just be picking up the set with La Hija del engaño.

Interesting set coming on 5/27. Includes:

- The Sound Barrier (David Lean, 1952)
- King & Country (Joseph Losey, 1964)
- Angels One Five (George More O'Ferrall, 1952)
- The Captive Heart (Basil Dearden, 1946)

King and Country, The Captive Heart, and The Sound Barrier? The awesome train has come to town.

Wow, usually WWII boxed sets feature a real rag-bag of films, but this one looks good!

King & Country will hopefully be 1.66:1 anamorphic. The Captive Heart is a sadly overlooked classic, with Michael Redgrave giving a superb performance. Doug Slocombe was the DP. Basil Deardon made some great films.

I recently bought the R2 Optimum release of this title. (I assume that Lionsgate will use the same print.) And it looks fantastic. Slocombe's cinematography is exquisite at times; the film is good, but it really comes alive artistically with Slocumbe's on-location work. It's also got to be one of the very few POW films with absolutely no time dedicated to escape plans. It's all about the tedium of imprisonment, which -- let's face it -- was the realistic experience of 99.9% of all POWs. I second Gordon's hearty recommendation.

As part of a recent restoration of 10 Lean films, a new transfer of 'The Sound Barrier' will be released in the UK in August - I wonder if this will be that new restoration?

BTW, the artwork screams 'don't mention the British!'

Guess we know now where Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), et al. will be coming from for certain.

Perhaps Johnny Guitar will be finally released.