The Criterion Collection

[Lastyear]

Disappointing list. Never liked Fassbinder. Saw Something Wild on cable last year and was not impressed. His Girl Friday is great but I've already seen it a zillion times. I'll be able to save some money this month.

[lzx]

I was considering getting Kino's The Front Page the other day, now I won't have to!

[belcherman]

Originally Posted by lzx

I was considering getting Kino's The Front Page the other day, now I won't have to!

I don't know, I would think they would make a great double-feature.

Only four for January?

[dwk]

Originally Posted by belcherman

I don't know, I would think they would make a great double-feature.

Only four for January?

A new 2K restoration of the director's preferred version of THE FRONT PAGE is included with HIS GIRL FRIDAY

[belcherman]

Originally Posted by dwk

A new 2K restoration of the director's preferred version of THE FRONT PAGE is included with HIS GIRL FRIDAY

Holy poop! I was so excited about the announcement that I didn't even look at the extras. I would have bought it bare-bones in an eco-case.

[mrjohnnyb]

I will be buying His Girl Friday and Fox and His Friends. Congrats to Hawks and Fassbinder (I know, they're dead.) Normally, I would have picked up Black Girl, too, however, I just purchased the BFI version and the disc literally came in yesterday. Both versions include Ousmane Sembène's short film Borom sarret. Is Sembene the second sub-Saharan director who has a film in the Criterion Collection (the first being Djibril Diop Mambéty for Touki Bouki which is part of the Martin Scorsese World Cinema Project?)

Great month!

[canem]

Oh damn, was not expecting them to release Something Wild. I caught it on TCM a while back and was really taken with it, but disappointed to see the only release was a barebones MOD DVD-r. Criterion saves the day

[erlinmeyer]

Originally Posted by belcherman

Holy poop! I was so excited about the announcement that I didn't even look at the extras. I would have bought it bare-bones in an eco-case.

that is why it is $50 instead of $40

[pro-bassoonist]

Criterion Announces January Titles

HIS GIRL FRIDAY

One of the fastest, funniest, and most quotable films ever made, His Girl Friday stars Rosalind Russell as reporter Hildy Johnson, a standout among cinema's powerful women. Hildy is matched in force only by her conniving but charismatic editor and ex-husband, Walter Burns (played by the peerless Cary Grant), who dangles the chance for her to scoop her fellow newswriters with the story of an impending execution in order to keep her from hopping the train that's supposed to take her to Albany and a new life as a housewife. When adapting Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's smash hit play The Front Page, director Howard Hawks had the inspired idea of turning star reporter Hildy Johnson into a woman, and the result is an immortal mix of hard-boiled newsroom setting with remarriage comedy. Also presented here is a brand-new restoration of the 1931 The Front Page, the famous pre-Code adaptation of the same material, directed by Lewis Milestone.

1940 * 92 minutes * Black & White * Monaural * 1.33:1 aspect ratio

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
* New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
* New 2K restoration of Lewis Milestone's The Front Page (1931), made from a recently discovered print of the director's preferred version
* New interview with film scholar David Bordwell about His Girl Friday
* Archival interviews with director Howard Hawks
* Featurettes from 1999 about Hawks, actor Rosalind Russell, and the making of His Girl Friday
* Radio adaptation of His Girl Friday from 1940
* New piece about the restoration of The Front Page
* New piece about playwright and screenwriter Ben Hecht
* Radio adaptations of the play The Front Page from 1937 and 1946
* His Girl Friday trailers
* PLUS: A booklet featuring essays on His Girl Friday and The Front Page by film critics Farran Smith Nehme and Michael Sragow

2-BLU-RAY EDITION
SRP $49.95
STREET 1/10/17
CAT. NO. CC2704BD
ISBN 978-1-68143-232-8
UPC 7-15515-18951-4


FOX AND HIS FRIENDS

A lottery win leads not to financial and emotional freedom but to social captivity in this wildly cynical classic about love and exploitation by Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Lola, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul). Casting himself against type, the director plays a suggestible working-class innocent who lets himself be taken advantage of by his bourgeois new boyfriend (Peter Chatel) and his circle of materialistic friends, leading to the kind of resonant misery that only Fassbinder could create. Fox and His Friends is unsparing social commentary, an amusingly pitiless and groundbreaking if controversial depiction of a gay community in 1970s West Germany.

1975 * 124 minutes * Color * Monaural * In German with English subtitles * 1.37:1 aspect ratio

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
* New 4K digital restoration, undertaken by the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation and supervised by cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
* New interview with actor Harry Baer
* New interview with filmmaker Ira Sachs
* Excerpt from a 1975 interview with director Rainer Werner Fassbinder
* Excerpts from a 1981 interview with composer Peer Raben
* Trailer
* New English subtitle translation
* PLUS: An essay by film critic Michael Koresky

BLU-RAY EDITION
SRP $39.95
STREET 1/17/17
CAT. NO. CC2718BD
ISBN 978-1-68143-245-8
UPC 7-15515-19141-8


SOMETHING WILD

A complex exploration of the physical and emotional effects of trauma, Something Wild stars Carroll Baker (Baby Doll, The Carpetbaggers), in a layered performance, as a college student who attempts suicide after a brutal sexual assault but is stopped by a mechanic played by Ralph Meeker (Kiss Me Deadly)-whose kindness, however, soon takes an unsettling turn. Startlingly modern in its frankness and psychological realism, the film represents one of the purest on-screen expressions of the sensibility of the intimate community of artists around New York's Actors Studio, which transformed American cinema in the mid-twentieth century. With astonishing location and claustrophobic interior photography by Eugene Schüfftan, an opening-title sequence by the inimitable Saul Bass, and a rhythmic score by Aaron Copland, this film by Jack Garfein (The Strange One) is a masterwork of independent cinema.

1961 * 113 minutes * Black & White * Monaural * 1.66:1 aspect ratio

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
* New, restored 2K digital transfer, supervised by director Jack Garfein, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
* New conversation between Garfein and critic Kim Morgan
* New interview with actor Carroll Baker
* New interview with scholar Foster Hirsch on the Actors Studio's cinematic legacy
* Master Class with Jack Garfein, a 2015 recording of one of the director's world-famous lectures on acting technique
* PLUS: An essay by critic Sheila O'Malley

BLU-RAY EDITION
SRP $39.95
STREET 1/17/17
CAT. NO. CC2716BD
ISBN 978-1-68143-243-4
UPC 7-15515-19121-0

BLACK GIRL

Ousmane Sembène (Xala, Faat Kiné) was one of the greatest and most groundbreaking filmmakers who ever lived, as well as the most internationally renowned African director of the twentieth century-but his name deserves to be better known in the rest of the world. He made his feature debut in 1966 with the brilliant and stirring Black Girl. Sembène, who was also an acclaimed novelist in his native Senegal, transforms a deceptively simple plot-about a young Senegalese woman who moves to France to work for a wealthy white couple and finds that life in their small apartment becomes a prison, both figuratively and literally-into a complexly layered critique of the lingering colonialist mind-set of a supposedly postcolonial world. Featuring a moving central performance by M'Bissine Thérèse Diop, Black Girl is a harrowing human drama as well as a radical political statement-and one of the essential films of the 1960s.

1966 * 59 minutes * Black & White * Monaural * In French and Wolof with English subtitles * 1.37:1 aspect ratio

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
* New 4K digital restoration, undertaken by The Film Foundation's World Cinema Project in collaboration with the Cineteca di Bologna, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
* 4K restoration of the short film Borom sarret, director Ousmane Sembène's acclaimed 1963 debut
* New interviews with scholars Manthia Diawara and Samba Gadjigo
* Excerpt from a 1966 broadcast of JT 20h, featuring Sembène accepting the Prix Jean Vigo for Black Girl
* New interview with actor M'Bissine Thérèse Diop
* Trailer
* New English subtitle translation
* PLUS: An essay by critic Ashley Clark
* More!

BLU-RAY EDITION
SRP $39.95
STREET 1/24/17
CAT. NO. CC2720BD
ISBN 978-1-68143-247-2
UPC 7-15515-19191-3

Pro-B

[Oscar Rothman]

I'd normally expect such a dull and uninspired slate for December. Meh...

[DaBargainHunta]

Is Something Wild the first example of two (unrelated) Criterion releases with the same name?

[pro-bassoonist]

Fantastic slate.

Something Wild: Already one of next year's top releases!!

Outstanding film and the on-demand MGM DVD release will be immediately discarded.
Carroll Baker is impossibly beautiful in this film.

Hopefully, with the other Warner deal Criterion will be able to bring The Grasshopper and The Legend of Lylah Claire to Blu-ray.



Pro-B

[Firecrackker]

surprised at such a mediocre month since people get money/gift cards for christmas to spend

[Blu-Velvet]

While a Criterion-quality Blu-ray release of HIS GIRL FRIDAY is most welcome and long overdue, even bigger news as far as I'm concerned is its bonus feature, a new restoration of the original 1931 THE FRONT PAGE. Note that this is NOT the same as the very fine Kino Blu-ray. They are two completely different cuts. Kino's is the long-available PD version nicely scanned from the Library of Congress 35mm print -- BUT it turns out that was the European cut. The newly discovered original American release version seems to be the source for Criterion's bonus feature.

I love the 1931 version of THE FRONT PAGE as much as I do HIS GIRL FRIDAY. And if that version was made out of the third-best takes, I can't wait to see the preferred American cut made from the best takes (even if it's missing Matt Moore's giving the finger to his honor the mayor)!

From another film forum:

Recently a print of The Front Page from the Howard Hughes estate was studied and, since it was in pretty good shape, was going to be used as the basis for a new restoration. One shot was problematic, so they borrowed the Library of Congress print -- the source of all those Public Domain versions over the decades -- thinking they could use it to fix the one bad shot. Upon closer examination, though, it was discovered that the two prints were totally different. Research revealed that three negatives had been prepared for the film: A U.S. version (which used the best takes and was generally more polished), an English version (now lost) and a General European version assembled from other takes and sometimes eliminating American references in the dialogue. The General European version also has a couple things that could not get by the U.S. censors, like a character giving someone the finger. The Library of Congress print was the European version, having originally been obtained from Europe. The Hughes print was the long-lost American version, unseen for decades. To restore the audio they used original metal stampers that were used to generate sound discs for theaters showing it in the sound-on-disc format. They discovered alternate stampers for Pennsylvania and Ohio, with alterations to comply with local censorship codes.

[SkyAntoine]

Originally Posted by Firecrackker

surprised at such a mediocre month since people get money/gift cards for christmas to spend

Shocked to see the announcements today. I'm good with the titles, but agree that I was expecting a little more for post-Christmas. Before Trilogy would have been nice. But, this just means that I'll have one month less to wait before a 50% off sale to pick it up.

[SpiderBaby]

Originally Posted by DaBargainHunta

Is Something Wild the first example of two (unrelated) Criterion releases with the same name?

Weekend

[TJS_Blu]

Originally Posted by jw007

Actually... I didn't. but wow, announcements on the 14th of a month? That's pretty rare. I'm impressed, Mr. Jon "Criterion" Mulvaney, I'm impressed. And these are some oldies but goodies. Nothing blowing me away but still an admirable month.

Could be something else scheduled for Monday?

Flash Sale announcement?

[Bates_Motel]

Originally Posted by Firecrackker

surprised at such a mediocre month since people get money/gift cards for christmas to spend

It would only be mediocre if they took your advice and included a garbage movie like Deadpool.

[JoeBuck]

Originally Posted by Bates_Motel

It would only be mediocre if they took your advice and included a garbage movie like Deadpool.

Pretty sure that was a joke.
However, there is NOTHING mediocre about His Girl Friday.

[silverlakephil]

Janus Films that have a Blu-Ray for screenings, so a Criterion release is more then likely in the future :

Ozu- Late Autumn
Renoir- The Lower Depths
Jarmusch-Night on Earth
Itami- Tampopo
Waters-Multiple Maniacs