Criterion Random Speculation Vol.3

[Gordon]

Speaking of boxset themes from Eclipse, why not a Jean-Pierre Melville box of Second Breath, Magnet of Doom, Le Doulos, Leon Morin Petre, Two Men in Manhattan. It would be the shit in my opinion.

Don't forget his extraordinary debut, Le Silence de la Mer.

[Highway 61]

Melville would be excellent. But I agree with Souvenir that considering how lucrative it's been for Rialto and Criterion to slowly trickle his movies out we'll probably never see them in an affordable box set.

[Derek Estes]

Elio Petri's films are sadly MIA. I Giorni contati is a masterpiece, and has never been properly released in the US outside of art house retrospectives, it is sometimes translated as Numbered Days. This is exactly the type of film that will benefit from Eclipse. Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion is also in need of a DVD release, but I would bet this would deserve Criterion treatment.

[tavernier]

A new print of Petri's "Investigation" is being shown at Film Forum as part of a Morricone series in February.

[Lino]

Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion is also in need of a DVD release, but I would bet this would deserve Criterion treatment.

Hear, hear! If only that wasn't a Columbia title...sigh...

I recently recorded it from a TV broadcast and the print was gorgeous! Can't wait for a DVD, though.

[Derek Estes]

Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion is also in need of a DVD release, but I would bet this would deserve Criterion treatment.

Hear, hear! If only that wasn't a Columbia title...sigh...

That sucks. I guess this will suffer the same fate as A Matter Of Life And Death. Oh, well.

[Gregory]

They might be able to get The Working Class Goes to Heaven from New Line.

[criterionsnob]

I had a dream last night that Eclipse released a series dedicated to Mike Leigh, including Life is Sweet and High Hopes.

[Cameron]

There was an 82-minute documentary made about Under the Volcano. Hopefully, it will show up on the upcoming Criterion disc.

Oh shit, I hope they include the novel with the DVD. That would rule!!

[Jeff]

There was an 82-minute documentary made about Under the Volcano. Hopefully, it will show up on the upcoming Criterion disc.

Oh shit, I hope they include the novel with the DVD. That would rule!!

That would certainly be nice. I imagine that it is a pretty expensive proposition though.

In addition to the documentary I mentioned previously (Observations Under the Volcano), there is also a slightly shorter one from Canada called Notes From Under the Volcano. Throw in a piece about Malcolm Lowry (like the Academy Award-nominated doc Volcano: An Inquiry Into the Life and Death of Malcolm Lowry), an Albert Finney interview, and a commentary by Huston scholar Lesley Brill, and you'd have yourself a helluva package!

[Anthony]

I had a dream last night that Eclipse released a series dedicated to Mike Leigh, including Life is Sweet and High Hopes.

Now that would be sweet!

[Mental Mike]

Us folks up in Canada are proud that Lowry had Canadian citizenship and lived in Canada...every Canadian should own the movie of his masterpiece work...I'm going into the store draped in the Canadian flag when I purchase this disc!

[Narshty]

The Naked City is great news, but is anyone else wondering where Brute Force is? If they can reissue The Atomic Submarine, et al, as another hand-me-down-spruce-me-up former Image property, they can certainly do the same for Dassin's great prison-break film, despite his apparent distaste for it.

[Foulard]

It would make sense for them to release Brute Force, since they're doing NC. Wild Side in France released the two of them as a set last fall (2005). I had the luck of getting to see Naked City at the Action Christine theater in Paris when I was there on vacation at the time. Looking forward to revisiting it--it's a fun film and a great document of 40s New York.

[Kristoffer4]

Hey have you guys seen this from the bits?

Robinson Crusoe on mars, on it's way!

There's some really great news from Criterion about their anticipated Eclipse line. From Criterion's own blog: "We're nine years into the DVD market, and there are still hundreds of important films that can only be seen in old VHS versions or, if you're lucky enough to live in a town with a good repertory theater, a new print might come around once every ten years or so. We want those films to be more readily available, and that's why we're creating Eclipse. Each month we'll present a short series, usually three to five films, focusing on a particular director or theme. There will be no supplements and the master materials will be the best we can find, but they won't be full Criterion restorations. Retail pricing for each set will average under $15 per disc, and we are examining the logistics of making the sets available at an even more favorable rate on a subscriber or club basis. The goal here is to make these films available, to make sure that Criterion's own work style doesn't contribute to the continuing unavailability of these films. Once our producers and restoration crew get started on a Criterion edition, the project takes on a life of its own. Months later, with a little luck, we'll have something really special to show for it, but at that rate we can't make a dent in the number of important unreleased films that we'd like people to be able to see. The early films of Ingmar Bergman, the documentaries of Louis Malle-these are extraordinary and important films that are very hard to find outside the revival-house circuit. At the moment you'll find more Mizoguchis in theaters (thanks to a traveling retrospective) than in the video store, and that's certainly also true for Naruse, Ozu, and Imamura. While Criterion is working on new special editions of individual pictures by all of these filmmakers, at a rate of maybe one or two a year, we'll never be able to represent the breadth of their bodies of work. Eclipse will help to fill that gap." The first offering in this series will be Early Bergman, a collection of several films pre-dating The Seventh Seal. In other Criterion news, harkening back to laserdisc days, the much-requested Robinson Crusoe on Mars is on Criterion's 2007 schedule as well. Finally, Criterion is now indicating that the anticipated release of Jules Dassin's The Naked City (1948, with Barry Fitzgerald and Howard Duff) will occur on March 20th. The features include: a new, restored high-definition digital transfer; audio commentary by screenwriter Malvin Wald: analysis of the film's New York locations by “Celluloid Skylineâ€

[Caligula]

Robinson Crusoe on Mars...

[Jeff]

In the spirit of truly "random speculation" and in honor of Jun-Dai's now-defunct "Guess the x releases" threads, here are some educated guesses about how Criterion might fill out the rest of 2007. Most are culled from the "forthcoming" threads, and a couple may well be from my own imagination, but all are reasonable guesses. Even if only 50% of this list actually comes to pass, I'll be ecstatic.

April
Army of Shadows
The Third Man Redux
Overlord
Eclipse Series 2: Introducing Jean Grémillon

May
Jodorowsky Collection
WR: Mysteries of the Organism
Sweet Movie
Saló Redux
Eclipse Series 3: Japanese Sci-Fi

June
She's Gotta Have It
Before the Revolution
Cabiria
Phantom India
Eclipse Series 4: Documentaries by Malle

July
Le Jour Se Léve
Humanity and Paper Balloons
Robinson Crusoe on Mars
This Sporting Life
Eclipse Series 5: Introducing Raymond Bernard

August
Teshigahara Collection
Rome, Open City
Under the Volcano
Miss Julie
Eclipse Series 6: Early Mizoguchi

September
Gorin Collection
Mafioso
Zero for Conduct et. al.
The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums
Eclipse Series 7: Introducing Jean-Paul Le Chanois

October
Marker Collection
Lola
Bay of Angels
Eclipse Series 8: Silent Hitchcock

November
Picnic at Hanging Rock Redux
High and Low Redux
The Earrings of Madam de…
Jour de Fête
Eclipse Series 9: Silent Ozu

December
Berlin Alexanderplatz
Breathless
Eclipse Series 10: Early Fuller

[HerrSchreck]

To zero in on one item I think you might have bullseyed the Vigo-- certainly NY'er are not going to surrender L'ATALANTE any time soo, so some sort of ARTIFICIAL EYE COMPLETE VIGO-MINUS-LATALANTE will probably be forthcoming, my guess as a single disc release (ZERO being less than fifty minutes, and NICE and TARIS being shorts.) I actually have the old Janus/HVe ZERO vhs which was actually a quite nice release of a nice print of the film (approx the closest I'd seen a run of the mill commercial vhs approach dvd quality)... so I know the thing is sitting in their library and screaming out for release in region 1 along with the avant shorts.

I say single disc (dual layer) because, even if they'd include some supplements, they've never NOT butchered a Cineaste notre temps episode, so there's no reason to assume a change. Of course there are other options for extras-- something new & useless like the "video installation whatchamafuck" based on LISTENING TO BRITAIN on CANTERBURY TALE disc 2.

Meaning I'd stick with the glorious AEye-- whoever has an all region player, and doesn't own this, is sinning against their own selves.

One thing I will say-- in certain cases the New Yorker L'ATALANTE subtitles translate the zaniness (particularly of pere Jules) better than the AEye.

[skuhn8]

Of course there are other options for extras-- something new & useless like the "video installation whatchamafuck" based on LISTENING TO BRITAIN on CANTERBURY TALE disc 2.

Off topic, but Christ, I just watched the second disc of CanTale the other day and that video installation piece definitely rates as one of the lames extra features I've seen on a CC disc. Of couse, one doesn't HAVE to watch it but I'm always disappointed when inarticulate shit-sellers like that get greater distribution for their intellectual abortions.

[HerrSchreck]

It is really just the dumbest extra I think I've seen not just this year but EVER... coincidentally inspired by perhaps the finest extra of all 2006 save maybe TOKYO GA. I can't believe CC found this worthy to sit alongside. By the 3rd time watching that same b&w forest still then CANTERB footage of the chick breezy then spinning, I nearly lost a perfectly good tv set by picking-up up in my hands then flinging Myself at it.

Does anybody like that piece?

[Tommaso]

Agreed, its as awful as it could possibly get. But I really like the rest of the extras on the disc, especially the one about the 'Canterbury Tale appreciation tour'. Its weirdness made me smile more than once, of course, but it's great to see that Mickey Powell can excite such fandom among totally unacademic looking people.

[miless]

In the spirit of truly "random speculation" and in honor of Jun-Dai's now-defunct "Guess the x releases" threads, here are some educated guesses about how Criterion might fill out the rest of 2007. Most are culled from the "forthcoming" threads, and a couple may well be from my own imagination, but all are reasonable guesses. Even if only 50% of this list actually comes to pass, I'll be ecstatic.

The Four big absentees from your list (for me, at least) are: The Exterminating Angel, The Milky Way, Walkabout redux (as it is being theatrically re-released with a new print) and a Bruce Baillie set (and potentially Last Year at Marienbad late 2007/early 2008 as Rialto are theatrically re-releasing it in 2007)

[justeleblanc]

In the spirit of truly "random speculation" and in honor of Jun-Dai's now-defunct "Guess the x releases" threads, here are some educated guesses about how Criterion might fill out the rest of 2007. Most are culled from the "forthcoming" threads, and a couple may well be from my own imagination, but all are reasonable guesses. Even if only 50% of this list actually comes to pass, I'll be ecstatic.

I love it, but you need to add 2 or 3 Things to the list since that will be coming out this year.

[Jeff]

The Four big absentees from your list (for me, at least) are: The Exterminating Angel, The Milky Way, Walkabout redux (as it is being theatrically re-released with a new print) and a Bruce Baillie set (and potentially Last Year at Marienbad late 2007/early 2008 as Rialto are theatrically re-releasing it in 2007)

You may be right about the Buñels. Walkabout may be revisited eventually, but I'm not sure that the fact that they've struck a new print necessarily means that they'll be releasing a new DVD. The DVD transfer would be made from an interpositive or dup neg anyway. The major studios strike new prints for rep houses all the time. I hope Marienbad makes it this year, but I'm betting 2008 is more likely.

I love it, but you need to add 2 or 3 Things to the list since that will be coming out this year.

I went back and forth with that one. Since the Rialto screenings are beginning early in 2007 it will probably make it this fall, but we've started seeing some longer windows between Rialto and Criterion.

[Cinephrenic]

My Criterion 2007 guesses

French
Le Jour se leve
Breathless
Pierrot le fou
The Crime of Monsieur Lange
The Earrings of Madame de...
Les Amants
Le feu follet
Paris Belongs to Us
Army of Shadows
Classe tous risques
The Two of Us
The Milky Way

Documentaries
Phantom India
American Dream
Titicut Follies
High School

Japan
Drunken Angel
Humanity and Paper Balloons
Gate of Hell
Teshigahara Box
Sansho the Bailiff
Early Spring
Pigs and Battleships
Intentions of Murder
Three Outlaw Samurai
Black River or Twenty-four Eyes
Cruel Story of Youth or The Sun's Burial

Re-issues
Salo
The Third Man
Picnic at Hanging Rock

UK
Overlord
This Sporting Life

USA
Robinson Crusoe on Mars
Under the Volcano
She's Gotta Have It

Italy
Before the Revolution
Shoeshine
The Organizer
Open City
Bitter Rice
Red Desert or La Notte

Sweden
Miss Julie
The Phantom Chariot
The Magician

Spain
Death of a Cyclist
Cria!

Other
W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism
Berlin Alexanderplatz
The Exterminating Angel
Sweet Movie

Eclipse Series
Silent Hitchcock
Mizoguchi
Samuel Fuller
Jean-Pierrre Gorin Set
Japanese Sci-fi
Early Japanese Masters (Gosho, Shimizu, etc...)
Early French: Gremillion, Le Chinois
Mikio Naruse
Ozu
Carlos Saura
Bergman set 2
Kurosawa early films
Louis malle documentaries set