Forthcoming Lists Discussion and Random Speculation Vol.3

[aox]

Gotcha. Thanks for the confirmation.

[manicsounds]

Criterion admitted they encoded the Seven Samurai dts-HD MA 2.0 surround track as PCM 2.0 by mistake, you have to manually turn on pro-logic on your receiver to get the surround sound in the rear.

[Cinephrenic]

Confirmations from BAM/Pacific:

Wednesday, February 29, 2012
3:10 p.m. Pather Panchali
Satyajit Ray (India, 1955)

Lecture / Marily Fabe
35mm Restored Print!


The first film in Satyajit Ray's celebrated Apu Trilogy centers around the boy Apu's impoverished Brahmin family living in their ancestral village in rural Bengal. The father is a would-be poet, playwright, and priest; the mother, a realist terrorized by wicked neighbors and the prospect of tomorrow. In his quiet optimism and her despair, the family's days obtain an ongoing rhythm. But the film's unlikely driving force is found in Apu's sister Durga, who will steal all she can of life before death steals her; and in an ancient "Auntie," despised for clinging to life like a withering vine. Ravi Shankar's original score is the musical equivalent of Ray's completely visual storytelling, which is so liquid, so purely cinematic, it's strange to remember that it was based on a well–known 1928 novel. At Cannes this low-budget independent first film won a special prize—Best Human Document. It is still that.

—Judy Bloch

• Written by Ray, based on the novel by Bibhutibhushana Bandyopadhyaya. Photographed by Subrata Mitra. With Kanu Banerjee, Karuna Banerjee, Subir Banerjee, Uma Das Gupta. (115 mins, In Bengali with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm, Restored by the Satyajit Ray Preservation Project at the Academy Film Archive with funding from The Film Foundation, Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive, permission Janus Films/Criterion Pictures)

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Thursday, January 12, 2012
7:00 p.m. The Murderer Lives at Number 21
Henri-Georges Clouzot (France, 1942)


(L'assassin habite au 21). After a quartet of corpses is found, each with the calling card of “Monsieur Durand,” the debonair detective Wens (played by the always polished Pierre Fresnay) is assigned the case that is paralyzing Paris. Thus begins Clouzot’s remarkably self-assured directorial debut and his second collaboration with mystery writer Stanislas-André Steeman. The trail of bodies leads Wens to a boardinghouse at No. 21 Avenue Junot where he takes up residence, cloaked as a Protestant minister. Within this seedy domicile reside a fistful of hearty misfits—a failed novelist, a puppet maker, a fakir, a blind boxer, a retired colonel, even a bird-whistling butler. Clouzot handles his house of hams with cutting caricature, inflating the quirkiness of his suspects, any one of which could be the dread Durand. Adding froth to this wry concoction, Wens’s bubbly belle Mila (played by zesty Suzy Delair) arrives to complicate the investigation. As droll as this mystery may be, it shouldn’t be overlooked that The Murderer Lives at Number 21 was made during the Nazi Occupation, a time when your nearest neighbor could be your closest enemy. 

—Steve Seid

• Written by Clouzot, Stanislas-André Steeman, based on the novel by Steeman. Photographed by Armand Thirard. With Pierre Fresnay, Suzy Delair, Jean Tissier. (84 mins, In French with English titles, B&W, 35mm, From Institut Français, permission From Janus Films/Criterion Collection)

[knives]

I'm not sure how legit this is, but last night on teevee they were showing Tony Richardson's The Entertainer and credited it to Criterion.

[ianungstad]

Do you mean it screened with a Janus logo or is this a "Criterion Pictures" deal? I don't think the MGM disc is even out of print.

[knives]

It didn't play with any logos, not even MGM, but a MTV style credit came up saying it was licensed from The Criterion Collection/ Voyager.

[ianungstad]

Seems weird they would be sourcing from the Criterion laserdisc for a television broadcast.

[Jeff]

It didn't play with any logos, not even MGM, but a MTV style credit came up saying it was licensed from The Criterion Collection/ Voyager.

Sounds like they were just playing the old Criterion laserdisc of The Entertainer. Was this a local public television station? They show films from random old sources all the time. Voyager hasn't even existed since 1997.

[knives]

The Voyager thing is why I'm doubting the legitimacy of it, but I don't think it's a public station.

[Noiradelic]

I don't think the MGM disc is even out of print.

Of course, that doesn't mean anything. MGM has kept a majority of the titles they've recently licensed to Criterion in print.

[htshell]

It didn't play with any logos, not even MGM, but a MTV style credit came up saying it was licensed from The Criterion Collection/ Voyager.

Sounds like they were just playing the old Criterion laserdisc of The Entertainer. Was this a local public television station? They show films from random old sources all the time. Voyager hasn't even existed since 1997.

They could just have a problem with their internal metadata and the print source could not have been changed in their database, despite the source actually changing. I'm sure that could be an easy thing to slip by those who are broadcasting it.

[Tribe]

The Voyager thing is why I'm doubting the legitimacy of it, but I don't think it's a public station.

Voyager was the original publisher of the Criterion Collection.

[SamLowry]

ianungstad wrote:
I don't think the MGM disc is even out of print.

Of course, that doesn't mean anything. MGM has kept a majority of the titles they've recently licensed to Criterion in print.

Amazon was out of it close to a year ago and used copies were close to $20 & so I picked it up when I saw it used at a local shop, but it looks like it's back in print or Amazon found some more. I'd consider it a welcome edition...the dvd isn't great, but i'll hang on to it until i see it on Criterion.

[captveg]

I wonder if the Last Temptation of Christ upgrade might include the Scorsese short films we've been speculating about for what seems like forever.

[fdm]

Likely only if they're re-issuing the dvd too.

[Professor Wagstaff]

A recent episode of At the Movies touched upon race in film and showed a clip from Boyz N the Hood, crediting Criterion as its distributor. Not sure about the validity. They've inaccurately credited films to Criterion before (The Wrong Man) and mispelled the title as "Boyz in the Hood".

[Jeff]

A recent episode of At the Movies touched upon race in film and showed a clip from Boyz N the Hood, crediting Criterion as its distributor. Not sure about the validity. They've inaccurately credited films to Criterion before (The Wrong Man) and mispelled the title as "Boyz in the Hood".

This is another case where Criterion released the laserdisc. Was this when they were showing an old clip of Siskel & Ebert? I'd imagine the footage crediting Criterion is from the mid 90s.

[Professor Wagstaff]

No, not a vintage clip. It was a brand new segment from one of the show's current producers.

[SamLowry]

Confirmations from BAM/Pacific:

There are retrospectives of Bresson, Clouzot & Hawks @ PFA.

Hawks candidates would be Red River (MGM deal), Rio Bravo (recently went out of print), The Big Sleep (Warners, wishful thinking?), a silents collection. Scarface was just included as an extra disc with the De Palma Blu-Ray, so that's not likely.

I'd like to see more Clouzot, but unfortunately it doesn't look like there are any new prints or restorations in the retrospective.

Some Bresson titles are likely soon. Olive Films is releasing The Devil Probably, but hopefully Criterion will release editions of The Trial of Joan of Arc, L'Argent & A Man Escaped sometime soon:

Austere Perfectionism: The Films of Robert Bresson

Friday, February 10, 2012
7:00 p.m. The Trial of Joan of Arc
Robert Bresson (France, 1962)

(Le procès de Jeanne d’Arc). Bresson’s film follows Joan of Arc’s prolonged interrogation through to her death. The dialogue consists entirely of the trial transcript, reduced to its essentials; the visuals are austere, consisting mainly of medium shots of Joan and her judges, intercut with extreme close-ups of objects, hands, feet. Out of this icy surface Bresson creates an experience full of the mystery and the drama of this woman’s existence. Bresson: “Joan’s replies . . . serve not so much to give information about present or past events as to provoke significant reactions on Joan’s face, the movements of her soul. . . . I see her with the eyes of a believer. I believe in the marvelous world whose doors she opens and closes. . . . She convinces us of a world at the farthest reach of our faculties. She enters this supernatural world but closes the door behind her.”

• Written by Bresson. Photographed by Léonce-Henry Burel. With Florence Carrez, Jean-Claude Fourneau, Roger Honorat, Marc Jacquier. (65 mins, In French with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm, From Institut Français, permission Janus Films/Criterion Collection)


Friday, February 17, 2012
7:00 p.m. A Man Escaped
Robert Bresson (France, 1956)

New 35mm Print!
Watch the trailer


(Un condamné à mort s’est échappé). A Man Escaped is pure film existentialism. From a newspaper account by a Resistance leader who escaped from a Nazi prison in Lyon just hours before he was to be executed, Bresson created a film in which the drama is all internal. Minimizing the drama of prison life, paradoxically he maximizes its intensity, concentrating on his character Fontaine’s solitude, and on prison relationships in which a tap on the wall, a whisper in the washroom, are bridges to another’s soul. For the rest, he emphasizes the material preparation for escape—the spoon Fontaine must steal, then shape into a cutting tool; the labor involved in taking apart his door. Set to Mozart’s Mass in C Minor, this is a genuinely moving encounter with limits, and the need to transcend them. It is a true action film.

—Judy Bloch

• Written by Bresson, after the account of André Devigny. Photographed by Léonce-Henry Burel. With François Leterrier, Charles LeClainche, Maurice Beerblock. (97 mins, In French with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm, From Janus Films/Criterion Collection)

...and apparently Bresson's debut was an MGM release (in the US) and a possibility:

Sunday, February 5, 2012
4:00 p.m. Les anges du péché
Robert Bresson (France, 1943)

New 35mm Print!


(Angels of Sin). Bresson's visual elegance and uncompromising narrative style are already in evidence in his first feature film, lending calm to its passionate religious ambiguities. The script, written by France's distinguished playwright and novelist Jean Giraudoux, follows a sophisticated young woman, Anne-Marie, into the closed world of a convent devoted to the rehabilitation of delinquent girls. At odds with the Mother Superior, she becomes attached to a rebellious girl, Thérèse, whose indifference to her ministrations drives concern into an obsession. Anne-Marie herself becomes "delinquent"; her personal regeneration progresses in parallel fashion to the girl's rehabilitation. The patiently evoked details of convent life present ritual, discipline, and sometimes ruthlessness as the norm, not as eccentricity as in a film such as Pickpocket. And if the camera's eye is rarely idle, Bresson said, "The knots which are tied and untied inside the characters give the film its movement, its real movement."

• Written by Jean Giraudoux, R. P. Raymond, Leopold Bruckberger, Bresson. Photographed by Philippe Agostini. With Renée Faure, Jany Holt, Louise Sylvie. (96 mins, In French with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm, From Institut Français)

Preceded by: 
Les Affaires Publiques 
(Robert Bresson, France, 1934)

Robert Bresson's legendary first film, long believed lost, proves to be cinema's most intriguingly unlikely directorial debut: "A burlesque comedy; a circus with a plot; a piece of filmic doggerel; a cartoon with live actors-and like a cartoon, activated exclusively by energy" (Gilbert Adair). The action takes place in an imaginary country, Crogandie, where (carefully orchestrated) chaos rules, and the Chancellor is a clown (the great Beby, in one of his few movie roles).

Written by Bresson. Photographed by Nicolas Toporkoff. With Dalio, Beby, Andrée Servilanges, Gilles Margaritis. (1934, 25 mins, In French with English subtitles, B&W, Digital, From La Cinémathèque française)

Total running time: 121 mins

[aox]

I really have to question where the Ozu BDs are at this point. Surely, Tokyo Story, Late Spring and An Autumn Afternoon are potential.

[ShellOilJunior]

I know it's been discussed but is there still a possibility Certified Copy enters the collection? I'm not sure I believe the "minor" work rumors. Plus, I've seen the film multiple times and it is probably my favorite film (with Tree of Life) of the past year or so.

I own the AE Blu-ray and it is good (although the extras, slim and all, are in unacceptable 480p).

[knives]

Because you liking a film totally predicates it's entry into the collection.

[swo17]

No, but it being Criterion's for the taking--as well as a generally very highly regarded film from an already inducted director--might. Around the time the U.S. theatrical release was announced, it was reported that Criterion would eventually be releasing it (though that news was later retracted). The only thing that called an eventual Criterion release into question was a notorious post here from someone who had heard a talk from an IFC representative, and who later stressed that we should not rule out its potential eventual release.

[Harmonov]

No, but it being Criterion's for the taking--as well as a generally very highly regarded film from an already inducted director--might. Around the time the U.S. theatrical release was announced, it was reported that Criterion would eventually be releasing it (though that news was later retracted). The only thing that called an eventual Criterion release into question was a notorious post here from someone who had heard a talk from an IFC representative, and who later stressed that we should not rule out its potential eventual release.

I was the one who asked the President of IFC Jonathan Sehring about Certified Copy as well as Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Tabloid among others. As we know the Herzog and Morris films did not end up at Criterion and Certified Copy was mentioned in a group with those two. He stated that Peter Becker wasn't terribly fond of it along with the Morris and Herzog. I tried to stress in follow-up posts that it may still be a possibility, nothing further. I do hope Criterion releases it. I still haven't seen it and am truly hoping someone will release asap stateside. I don't believe I ever mentioned it being an eventual release. Probably just wishful thinking on my part if it came across that way.

[Brian C]

If IFC were going to release it themselves, in all probability they'd have already done so, right? This long delay between theatrical and DVD seems pretty standard for an eventual Criterion.