The Criterion Collection

[Gacivory]

Originally Posted by Scottie

Return to Reason (2023, Man Ray)
https://www.janusfilms.com/films/2181

This looks interesting! I’m in!

[hawkikwah]

Originally Posted by jshaide

Unsure if this has been posted, but I spied this just now.

https://www.ifccenter.com/films/man-...urn-to-reason/

Saw this in Detroit w SQÜRL. It was an exquisite evening.

[MifuneFan]

Orlando, My Political Biography (2023) (Janus Contemporaries) - June 2024

https://www.criterion.com/films/3390...ical-biography

INCLUDES

• Meet the Filmmakers, a new interview with director Paul B. Preciado
• Trailer

“Come, come! I’m sick to death of this particular self. I want another.” Taking Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando: A Biography as his starting point, academic virtuoso turned filmmaker Paul B. Preciado fashioned the documentary Orlando, My Political Biography—a personal essay, historical analysis, and social manifesto. For almost a century, Woolf’s eponymous hero(ine) has inspired readers with their gender fluidity as well as their physical and spiritual metamorphoses across a three-hundred-year span. In making his film, Preciado invited a diverse group of more than twenty trans and nonbinary people to play the role of Orlando and to participate in this shared biography. Together, they perform interpretations of the novel, weaving into Woolf’s narrative their own stories of transition and identity formation. Not content to simply update a groundbreaking work, Preciado interrogates the relevance of Orlando in the ongoing struggle to secure dignity for trans people worldwide.

ORLANDO, MY POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY - Official US Trailer - YouTube

[mclellandj]

I'm loving this Janus Contemporaries line. It really filled a hole in Criterion's curation and I've been impressed with all the releases (except Lynch/Oz)

[Gacivory]

Originally Posted by mclellandj

I'm loving this Janus Contemporaries line. It really filled a hole in Criterion's curation and I've been impressed with all the releases (except Lynch/Oz)

Agreed! I also like that it’s outside of the main month of announcements so it feels like a nice treat of different films!

[mmarczi]

I should also note that even though they don't advertise them on the release pages, the Janus Contemporary releases (at least the ones I've gotten so far) do contain leaflet essays, for those who find such writings on film valuable. I only wanted to mention that because I was pleasantly surprised to find one when I watched Tori and Lokita, for example, assuming there wouldn't be one.

With that said, I have no idea why they don't mention the essays as a supplement. They're really no different than the essays we get in most Criterion releases these days.

[jshaide]

Hoping Criterion isn't too far behind Arrow on Long Good Friday and Withnail and I.

[Taylor3978]

Originally Posted by jshaide

Hoping Criterion isn't too far behind Arrow on Long Good Friday and Withnail and I.

Criterion seems to be where releases go to die.

[Rayjg]

This is no film label. It's a tomb.

[DukeTogo84]

Originally Posted by Rayjg

This is no film label. It's a tomb.

"You got the rights, but you never released them!! You never released them! WHY???!!!"

- Craig T. Nelson

[amputd]

Originally Posted by jshaide

Hoping Criterion isn't too far behind Arrow on Long Good Friday and Withnail and I.

They’re losing sales. I don’t wait on Criterion anymore. You never know when or if they will release something in 4k and the UK labels often have better special features and encodes. I still support Criterion but they no longer the leaders they once were.

[Scottie]

The Beast has been added to Janus's website.

I imagine it'll be released via the Contemporaries line sometime in the late summer.

[DukeTogo84]

One thing Criterion tends to pride itself in is that when it gets the film rights to something, they get them for a really long time. I am curious if they have a perpetuity deal with a lot of the films, especially the Japanese films.

If not, I would assume they would also some rights to lapse for films that aren't getting a lot of views on their channel or not a lot of physical sales. I do kinda hope it's not a perpetuity thing with a lot of their Japanese films, otherwise a lot of these films will never get a release.

[Scottie]

Joel Kim Booster’s Closet Picks - YouTube

[mmarczi]

One thing I wonder about is how Criterion decides what to release in the Criterion Collection and what to release as a Janus Contemporaries title. For example, I was very surprised that Tori and Lokita got stuck in the Janus Contemporaries line when they've already released a number of Dardennes Brothers films. I was sure EO would be a Criterion edition as well. Anatomy of a Fall gets a Criterion edition (not a shock) but Christian Petzold's Afire doesn't, when he already has a title in the Collection. Nanny gets a Criterion edition but not Godland or The Innocent.

[Scottie]

Originally Posted by mmarczi

One thing I wonder about is how Criterion decides what to release in the Criterion Collection and what to release as a Janus Contemporaries title. For example, I was very surprised that Tori and Lokita got stuck in the Janus Contemporaries line when they've already released a number of Dardennes Brothers films. I was sure EO would be a Criterion edition as well. Anatomy of a Fall gets a Criterion edition (not a shock) but Christian Petzold's Afire doesn't, when he already has a title in the Collection. Nanny gets a Criterion edition but not Godland or The Innocent.

All of the films that Janus/Sideshow acquires become part of the new line.

Anatomy of a Fall belongs to NEON and Nanny belongs to Amazon.

[ravenus]

Originally Posted by mmarczi

One thing I wonder about is how Criterion decides what to release in the Criterion Collection and what to release as a Janus Contemporaries title.

[ravenus]

The first film I saw of Kafka's The Trial was a venture with Kyle Machlachlan and Anthony Hopkins, shown sometime in the late 90's on satellite TV in India. It was pretty good but it didn't quite capture the fervid paranoid spirit that Orson Welles did in his 1962 adaptation. Welles' film starts off like a nightmare and does not let up till the end. Anthony Perkins in the lead may have been typecast as a man with a crippling guilt complex, but he absolutely nails the part. Welles creates a claustrophobic feel even when his protagonist is dwarfed in vast environments - his office is a sea of typewriter desks, a 'court hearing' seems to be held in a gargantuan town hall.

Whether in the scrappy rental I saw 20 years back or in this new 4K restoration from Studio Canal which I watched last night on the Criterion release, the film has a power and vitality that to my mind eclipses the visually more grandiose, but stodgier Citizen Kane. One of the best psychological/social horror films ever made.

Trivia: For the first time, I noticed that the film was produced by Alexander Salkind, the man behind the Christopher Reeve Superman films.

Image-wise, it looks damn good to me. The shadows can sometimes be oppressive, but I am not that sensitive to macroblocking and didn't notice anything distracting. The audio is mostly clear, but I did have to raise the volume for some of the dialog. Haven't yet gone through the extras.

[jshaide]

Went to see the Sword Trilogy at MOMA today—restorations all look great, folks will be happy with this package when Criterion eventually gets to it maybe perhaps.

[Warm Gun]

Whenever I see this in a Toho movie or in old French movies, I think to myself that the masters they have are of value and what they distributed is only product for the unimportant masses, so can be covered up with watermarks.