Criterion Random Speculation Vol.4

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criterionaficionado · Sat Apr 12, 2008 6:21 pm

the reg 2 shoeshine dvd by moc is absolutley awesome. that should hold you off until the rights issues to shoeshine are granted to criterion possibly?

rossellini is a master filmmaker whom is very under represented in this country. CC needs to release more of his films asap. i have the italian version of il generale della rovere on dvd (with eng subs) and it is an excellent copy.

stromboli is a terrific movie that needs to be released by CC, but viaggio in italia is just as deserving, if not more so.
an eclipse box of rossellini would be great too,maybe with such movies from his late career such as, il messia, cartesius, socrate, anno uno, the rise of louis xvi, era notte a roma, etc, and many other possiblilities of course.

de sica is also deserving of more representation on dvd. CC versions of miracle in milan and gold of naples would be welcome additions. i would like to add other films just as deserving; i girasoli, matrimonio all'italiana,il viaggio, la ciociara (dvd version available now is a disgrace), etc.

Rupert Pupkin · #527 Post by **Rupert Pupkin** » Sun Apr 13, 2008 7:09 am

still no news of Crash (Cronenberg) on Criterion ? (I still have the laserdisc with the great audio commentary)... Not that the Alliance DVD z1 has not a great picture quality (despite that it was released in 1998). But I'd love to see a Criterion treatment with lot of extras a-la Videodrome...

Narshty · #528 Post by **Narshty** » Sun Apr 13, 2008 7:46 am

I think any chance of further New Line titles from Criterion will be zip, given how they're now a subsidiary of Warner (also expect the five current ones - Short Cuts, My Own Private Idaho, Hoop Dreams, Naked and An Angel at my Table - to go OOP once the current licences expire).

#529 Post by **zedz** » Mon Apr 14, 2008 3:11 am

Narshty wrote:I think any chance of further New Line titles from Criterion will be zip, given how they're now a subsidiary of Warner (also expect the five current ones - Short Cuts, My Own Private Idaho, Hoop Dreams, Naked and An Angel at my Table - to go OOP once the current licences expire).

I'm sure you're right, but this could pose an interesting conundrum for Criterion if they're still going ahead with funding the Hoop Dreams sequel / follow-up, as announced some time back (in the NY Times?)

Jobla · #530 Post by **Jobla** » Mon Apr 14, 2008 4:26 pm

At Mobius Forum, Tim Lucas suggests a Roger Vadim collection for Eclipse, comprised of:

BLOOD AND ROSES (from Paramount)
LES LIASONS DANGEREUSES
CHARLOTTE (aka LA JEUNE FILLE ASSASSINEE)

I second the nomination! I'd also be happy to buy a stand-alone release of BLOOD AND ROSES, of course.

#531 Post by **Jeff** » Tue Apr 15, 2008 11:48 pm

Turns out we actually had a "Stalker on DVD" thread. All relevant discussion has been moved over there.

fdm · #532 Post by **fdm** » Wed Apr 16, 2008 4:07 am

kaujot wrote:How about Pinter's Betrayal? Anyone have any info on the status of that one?

Nothing beside I suggested that one a long while back (probably around the same time I suggested W.R. and Bad Timing and Veronique (so yeah, those others are partly my fault

)... Hopefully someday Betrayal will come out (somewhere) too...

I also recall suggesting Moonlighting, but that ended up on a small label in the U.S., and I've been afraid to open it and watch it...

arsonfilms · #533 Post by **arsonfilms** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 12:41 am

Did anyone else see the announcement on DVDBeaver about July Criterions?

July Criterions Announced:
Mon oncle Antoine (Claude Jutra, 1971), Trafic (Jacques Tati, 1971), Vampyr (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932) and High and Low (Kurosawa, 1963)

mogwai · #534 Post by **mogwai** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 12:44 am

Vampyr?! I hope to hell that's true. I didn't expect it nearly this early, though.

#535 Post by **domino harvey** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 12:47 am

I forgot all about it being the middle of the month-- those titles all sound very plausible.

kaujot · #536 Post by **kaujot** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 12:50 am

I could have sworn they said rather recently that a reissue of High and Low wasn't on the schedule any time soon.

tavernier · #537 Post by **tavernier** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 1:21 am

All 2-disc sets in July....from Criterion press release:

Mon oncle Antoine
Claude Jutra’s evocative portrait of a boy’s coming of age in wintry 1940s rural Quebec has been consistently cited by critics and scholars as the greatest Canadian film of all time. Delicate, naturalistic, and tinged with a striking mix of nostalgia and menace, Mon oncle Antoine follows the everyday lives of both young Benoit, as he first encounters the twin terrors of sex and death, and his fellow villagers, living under the thumb of the local asbestos-mine owner. Set during one ominous Christmas, Mon oncle Antoine is a holiday film unlike any other, and an authentically detailed illustration of childhood’s twilight.

SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES:
-- New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director of photography Michel Brault
-- On-Screen: “Mon oncle Antoine,” a 2007 documentary tracing the making and history of the film
-- Claude Jutra, an Unfinished Story, a 2002 documentary that attempts to unravel “the Jutra mystery,” featuring interviews with Brault, Bernardo Bertolucci, actors Geneviève Bujold and Saul Rubinek. and actor-director Paule Baillargeon
-- A Chairy Tale, a 1957 experimental short codirected by Jutra and Norman McLaren
-- Theatrical trailer
-- Optional English-dubbed soundtrack
-- New and improved English subtitle translation
-- PLUS: A new essay by film scholar André Loiselle

SRP: $39.95
Prebook: 6/3/08
Street date: 7/8/08

Trafic
In Jacques Tati’s Trafic, the bumbling Monsieur Hulot, outfitted as always with tan raincoat, beaten brown hat, and umbrella, takes to Paris’s highways and byways. For this, his final outing, Hulot is employed as an auto company’s director of design, and accompanies his new vehicle (a camper tricked out in all sorts of absurd gadgetry) to an auto show in Amsterdam. Naturally, the road is paved with modern-age mishaps. This late-career delight is a masterful demonstration of the comic genius’s expert timing and sidesplitting visual gags, and a bemused last look at technology run amok.

SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES:
-- New, restored high-definition digital transfer
-- In the Footsteps of Monsieur Hulot (1969), a two-hour documentary tracing the evolution of Jacques Tati’s beloved alter ego
-- Interview from 1971 with the cast of Trafic, from the French television program Le journal de cinema
-- “The Comedy of Jacques Tati,” a 1973 episode from the French television program Morceaux de bravoure
-- Theatrical trailer
-- New and improved English subtitle translation
-- PLUS: A new essay by film critic Jonathan Romney

SRP: $39.95
Prebook: 6/10/08
Street date: 7/15/08

Vampyr
With Vampyr, Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer’s brilliance at achieving mesmerizing atmosphere and austere, profoundly unsettling imagery (as in The Passion of Joan of Arc and Day of Wrath) was for once applied to the horror genre. Yet the result—concerning an occult student assailed by various supernatural haunts and local evildoers at an inn outside Paris—is nearly unclassifiable, a host of stunning camera and editing tricks and densely layered sounds creating a mood of dreamlike terror. With its roiling fogs, ominous scythes, and foreboding echoes, Vampyr is one of cinema’s great nightmares.

SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES:
-- New, restored high-definition digital transfer of the 1998 film restoration by Martin Koerber and the Cineteca di Bologna
-- Optional all-new English-text version of the film
-- Audio commentary featuring film scholar Tony Rayns
-- Carl Th. Dreyer (1966), a documentary by Jörgen Roos chronicling Dreyer’s career
-- Visual essay by scholar Casper Tybjerg on Dreyer’s influences in creating Vampyr
-- A 1958 radio broadcast of Dreyer reading an essay about filmmaking
-- New and improved English subtitle translation
-- PLUS: A booklet featuring new essays by Mark Le Fanu and Kim Newman, Martin Koerber on the restoration, and an archival interview with producer and star Nicolas de Gunzburg, as well as a book featuring Dreyer and Christen Jul’s original screenplay and Sheridan Le Fanu 1871 story “Carmilla,” a source for the filmTitle: Vampyr

SRP: $39.95
Prebook: 6/17/08
Street date: 7/22/08

High and Low
Toshiro Mifune is unforgettable as Kingo Gondo, a wealthy industrialist whose family becomes the target of a cold-blooded kidnapper in Akira Kurosawa’s highly influential domestic drama and police procedural High and Low. Adapting Ed McBain’s detective novel King’s Ransom, Kurosawa moves effortlessly from compelling race-against-time thriller to exacting social commentary, creating a diabolical treatise on class and contemporary Japanese society. Criterion is proud to present High and Low (Tengoko to jigoku) in this new high-definition digital transfer.

SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES:
-- New, restored high-definition digital transfer, with newly restored original
four-track surround sound
-- New audio commentary by Akira Kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince
-- A 37-minute documentary on the making of High and Low, created as part of the Toho Masterworks series Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create
-- Rare archival interview with Toshiro Mifune
-- New video interview with actor Tsutomu Yamazaki, who plays the kidnapper
-- Theatrical trailers from Japan and the U.S.
-- New and improved English subtitle translation
-- PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien and a reprinted essay by Japanese film scholar Donald Richie
-- More!

SRP: $39.95
Prebook: 6/17/08
Street date: 7/22/08

#538 Post by **domino harvey** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 1:29 am

Whoops there he is

tavernier · #539 Post by **tavernier** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 1:30 am

At least he gets a "visual essay."

#540 Post by **domino harvey** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 1:31 am

tavernier wrote:At least he gets a "visual essay."

Yeah I didn't make it down all the way to see that-- thank God! =D>
On a related note: MOC must be pissed

What A Disgrace · Thu Apr 17, 2008 1:32 am

I'm in for High and Low, and Vampyr. Trafic can wait until November for me...and I'll see about the Jutra. I have a feeling that Vampyr will either have more in the way of supplements...or that the visual essay is going to be quite extensive. It better be at least as long as the film...I don't pay $28 for a Dreyer film so I can listen to Tony "Thinking Less of Certain Films is a Worthy Approach to DVD Supplements" Rayns talk longer than Casper Tybjerg.

Dissapointing that there is no Eclipse set (as of yet?). I was really hoping for Gremillion, or Naruse, or Duvivier...

justeleblanc · #542 Post by **justeleblanc** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 2:05 am

Funny you mention Duvivier, I had a dream last night that Criterion released an Eclipse set of Feyder films, only Le Grand jeu was too scratched... and as I watched it it slowly became a lost Lubitsch musical.

About VAMPYR, my friend at Criterion just told me that the materials are incredibly f-ed. I'm not sure what they have planned between now and the release, but I'm not too optimistic.

#543 Post by **Jeff** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 2:10 am

Official threads for the July titles are open for business.

denti alligator · Thu Apr 17, 2008 3:38 am

About VAMPYR, my friend at Criterion just told me that the materials are incredibly f-ed.

What is this supposed to mean? We've seen the French DVD and it looks fine (except for inaccurate AR). It's also the Koerber resto, so how could the materials be ....?

criterionaficionado · Thu Apr 17, 2008 3:45 am

i agree, what are these bits of info about vampyr materials being f'ed? stop worrying me...

denti alligator · Thu Apr 17, 2008 3:47 am

Looks like this has already been addressed in the Vampyr thread.

Either way, best month this year so far!

criterionaficionado · Thu Apr 17, 2008 4:07 am

thanks denti...best month for sure, 7/08 is the shit!!!
its been a while since a bergman flic was added to catalogue. i nominate the magician as a late summer/early fall release. come to think of it, bunuel's exterminating angel coupled with simon of the desert is actually making me excited just thinking about it. september: bergman/bunuel - that would be awesome.

El Manchego · #548 Post by **El Manchego** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 4:19 am

criterionaficionado wrote:thanks denti...best month for sure, 7/08 is the shit!!!
its been a while since a bergman flic was added to catalogue. i nominate the magician as a late summer/early fall release. come to think of it, bunuel's exterminating angel coupled with simon of the desert is actually making me excited just thinking about it. september: bergman/bunuel - that would be awesome.

On the subject of more Bunuel, did anything (i.e. rumors) ever develop regarding the Five French Films of Luis Bunuel boxset after they briefly added the formatting to the website a couple months back?

Tommaso · #549 Post by **Tommaso** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 9:05 am

criterionaficionado wrote:its been a while since a bergman flic was added to catalogue. i nominate the magician as a late summer/early fall release.

Wouldn't be bad, but what the world really needs is "Face to Face". And an Eclipse set of his late TV work.

htdm · #550 Post by **htdm** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 3:06 pm

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