I would agree that most of the April titles would generally not be considered iconic Hollywood or European releases. And those are certainly desirable. On the other hand, how many of these films would get a release if it weren't for Criterion? Maybe Harold and Maude?
I didn't say I wouldn't buy them, or watch them, or haven't enjoyed the ones I have seen TJS_Blue. The balance just seems 'off' somehow this month.
Czech New Wave is the most interesting "New Wave" period to come out of the 60's, besides the Cinema Novo.
Agree. I was referring to what made it to Blu SpiderBaby.
Damn my luck that the one release which does seem interesting - and is underepresented within the collection proper - is Czech cinema, or for that matter, any other non-Russian cinema from the Cold War era.
Question, and not to start a Malick war, but why has Badlands become this Citizen Kane of "please release!"?
Because a few pages back, that's what we all thought the Alambrista sunset was going to be.
And that caused all the Malick nuts to start falling off the Tree of Life.
Quote:
Originally Posted by blkhrt
I kind of love the Harold and Maude cover.
Ehh... (And was it the earlier Polanski film, Paramount, or Ruth Gordon that got everyone on those nutty Rosemary's guesses for a while? )
The movie's cult claim to fame is from cashing in on early-70's countercultural iconoclasm for the Nixon-era M*A*S*H crowd, usually with the image of Gordon on her motorcycle.
Here, the cover looks like some droll teacup spin on Merchant/Ivory.
Sigh...Someday they'll get the covers right.
I agree, the Czech set would have been amazing on blu-ray. There is no reason to celebrate it on DVD in 2012. we shouldn't be so desperate that we get happy over something that is a step back in quality. I have a bunch of DVDs for titles I think will never come to blu (I almost bought czech new wave titles, which are already available in the UK on DVD, but decided to wait. now...ugh).
if Criterion is releasing this then it is an insult to the films not to give the best medium for them. They did that with Z too, one of the best films ever, they didn't think deserve bluray? All of us would have bought it. what are we to think, when the best company in the world behaves this way.
Also I think criterion fans not having all region capability is silly considering Region B > far greater than Region A
Apparently, re-releasing Traffic - already overserved on Blu-ray - was more *urgent*.
I'm not so sure about that. In fact, I rather seriously doubt it.
I saw Harold and Maude once about thirty years ago and that sums up my entire exposure the April lineup. I have precious little basis on which to judge the quality of any of these releases and I suspect I'm not alone.
Did I shrug at the Frampton announcement? I sure did but quality didn't enter into it simply because it couldn't.
Admittedly, that one was the big stickler for me octagon. I'm not by any sretch a Hollis Frampton 'completist'. Years ago, I saw all of his shorts I could stand. I don't need 24 of those damn things!
And yes, I'm just curious (and OCD) enough that I will no doubt eventually spring for that Blu anyway. Sometimes Criterion's weaker titles have been saved by the backstory features and interviews (cf. Something Wild).
...or Dazed and Confused. All these titles with parallel home studio Blu-ray releases could have waited.
All of which are pretty mediocre titles in of themselves. Traffic is a decent film, but there are hundreds of other titles I would've picked from the collection that I would've rather had upgraded.
Finally, the expert! Sincere thanks for the recommendations. I will consider Late Spring and look into A Hen In The Wind. Right now I'm wrestling my love/hate relationship with Antonioni. Typically if there is a revered director whose films just fall flat for me on first viewing, I try to revisit them again or even twice more to figure out if it's me or them. Ozu shall be next.
My pleasure! "A Hen in the Wind" is the supplemental film on the BFI release of "An Autumn Afternoon" (Ozu's final film) which is on both the BD and DVD in that release. "A Hen in the Wind" is on the DVD only...likely due to the condition of the film...which is very watchable.
This is the Beaver review of the film...mostly pics
Forgive me for veering away from the current discussion and bringing up a lowly DVD, but does anyone know why The Last Days of Disco criterion DVD is $33 (Amazons price)?
Seems unreasonably expensive considering that it IS a DVD and most of their blu-rays go for $23 on amazon.
Thanks again! Do you have the Ozu Eclipse set (or those films in another form)? Would you recommend them?
And I am region-free now, so I'm excited to start exploiting that fact!
The only Ozu Eclipse that I currently own is the "Silent Ozu" set...which I bought during the last sale...mostly to compliment my "Silent Naruse" Eclipse set.
I own all of the current BFI Ozu releases...those that are from Criterion DVDs:
Eclipse Series 3 - Late Ozu: Of the five films in that set...only Equinox Flower and Late Autumn have been released by BFI...both on BD. I am willing to wait for BFI to release Early Spring, Tokyo Twilight, and The End of Summer...which I think will all be released on blu.
Individual releases: The Only Son/There as a Father (Criterion) have already been released by BFI as supplements on two different releases. The Only Son (CC) on Late Spring (BFI) and There Was A Father (CC) on Equinox Flower (BFI). The Only Son on DVD only and There Was a Father on blu.
Tokyo Story was released by BFI on blu...along with Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family on DVD only.
Early Summer was also released by BFI on blu...with the supplemental film What Did The Lady Forget (pre-war classic)...DVD only.
An Autumn Afternoon (blu) and A Hen in the Wind (DVD) which was mentioned earlier.
Good Morning (blu) and I Was Born...But (DVD only).
The only CC DVD set that hasn't seen a BFI blu treatment yet: Floating Weeds (1959...remake of) A Story of Floating Weeds (1934)... I expect these two within the next year or so.
The only Ozu Eclipse that I currently own is the "Silent Ozu" set...which I bought during the last sale...mostly to compliment my "Silent Naruse" Eclipse set.
I own all of the current BFI Ozu releases...those that are from Criterion DVDs:
Eclipse Series 3 - Late Ozu: Of the five films in that set...only Equinox Flower and Late Autumn have been released by BFI...both on BD. I am willing to wait for BFI to release Early Spring, Tokyo Twilight, and The End of Summer...which I think will all be released on blu.
Individual releases: The Only Son/There as a Father (Criterion) have already been released by BFI as supplements on two different releases. The Only Son (CC) on Late Spring (BFI) and There Was A Father (CC) on Equinox Flower (BFI). The Only Son on DVD only and There Was a Father on blu.
Tokyo Story was released by BFI on blu...along with Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family on DVD only.
Early Summer was also released by BFI on blu...with the supplemental film What Did The Lady Forget (pre-war classic)...DVD only.
An Autumn Afternoon (blu) and A Hen in the Wind (DVD) which was mentioned earlier.
Good Morning (blu) and I Was Born...But (DVD only).
The only CC DVD set that hasn't seen a BFI blu treatment yet: Floating Weeds (1959...remake of) A Story of Floating Weeds (1934)... I expect these two within the next year or so.
Icon of the American avant-garde Hollis Frampton made rigorous, audacious, brainy, and downright thrilling films, leaving behind a body of work that remains unparalleled. In the 1960s, having started out as a poet and photographer, Frampton became fascinated with the possibilities of 16 mm filmmaking. In such radically playful, visually and sonically arresting works as Surface Tension, Zorns Lemma, (nostalgia), Critical Mass, and the enormous, unfinished Magellan cycle (cut short by his death at age forty-eight), Frampton repurposes cinema itself, making it into something by turns literary, mathematical, sculptural, and simply beautiful—and always captivating. This collection of works by the essential artist—the first home video release of its kind—includes twenty-four films, dating from 1966 to 1979.
1966–1979 • 264 minutes • Black & White/Color • Silent/Monaural • 1.33:1 aspect ratio
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New high-definition digital restorations of all twenty-four films, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-ray edition
• Audio commentary and remarks by filmmaker Hollis Frampton on selected works
• Excerpted interview with Frampton from 1978
• A Lecture, a performance piece by Frampton, recorded in 1968 with the voice of artist Michael Snow
• Gallery of works from Frampton’s xerographic series By Any Other Name
• PLUS: A booklet with an introduction by film critic Ed Halter and essays and capsules on the films by Frampton scholars Ken Eisenstein, Bruce Jenkins, and Michael Zryd
In ˇAlambrista!, a farmworker sneaks across the border from Mexico into California in an effort to make money to send to his family back home. It is a story that happens every day, told here in an uncompromising, groundbreaking work of realism from American independent filmmaker Robert M. Young (Dominick and Eugene). Vivid and spare where other films about illegal immigration might sentimentalize, Young’s take on the subject is equal parts intimate character study and gripping road movie, a political work that never loses sight of the complex man at its center. ˇAlambrista!, winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s inaugural Camera d’Or in 1978, remains one of the best films ever made on this perennially relevant topic.
1977 • 96 minutes • Color • Stereo • In English and Spanish with English subtitles • 1.66:1 aspect ratio
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New high-definition digital restoration, with 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• New audio commentary featuring director Robert M. Young and coproducer Michael Hausman
• New interview with actor Edward James Olmos (Stand and Deliver)
• Children of the Fields, a 1973 short documentary by Young, accompanied by a new interview with the director
• Trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film historian Charles Ramírez-Berg
With the idiosyncratic American fable Harold and Maude, countercultural director Hal Ashby (Being There) fashioned what would become the cult classic of its era. Working from a script by Colin Higgins (9 to 5), Ashby tells the story of the emotional and romantic bond between a death-obsessed young man (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou’s Bud Cort) from a wealthy family and a devil-may-care, bohemian octogenarian (Rosemary’s Baby’s Ruth Gordon). Equal parts gallows humor and romantic innocence, Harold and Maude dissolves the line between darkness and light along with the ones that separate people by class, gender, and age, and it features indelible performances and a remarkable soundtrack by Cat Stevens.
1971 • 91 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Optional remastered stereo soundtrack
• Audio commentary by Hal Ashby biographer Nick Dawson and producer Charles B. Mulvehill
• Illustrated audio excerpts of seminars by Ashby and writer-producer Colin Higgins
• New interview with songwriter Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens)
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Michael Wood; a 1971 New York Times profile of star Ruth Gordon; and excerpted transcripts of two interviews, one from 1997 with star Bud Cort and director of photography John Alonzo and one from 2001 with executive producer Mildred Lewis
TITLE: Harold and Maude (BLU-RAY EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC2137BD
UPC: 7-15515-09451-1
ISBN: 978-1-60465-571-1
SRP: $39.95
STREET: 4/17/12
Late Spring
One of the most powerful of the family portraits by Yasujiro Ozu (Tokyo Story), Late Spring tells the story of a widowed father who feels compelled to marry off his beloved only daughter. Eminent Ozu players Chishu Ryu (There Was a Father) and Setsuko Hara (Late Autumn) command this poignant tale of love and loss in postwar Japan, which remains as potent today as ever—and as strong a justification for its maker’s inclusion in the pantheon of cinema’s greatest directors.
1949 • 108 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In Japanese with English subtitles • 1.33:1 aspect ratio
BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• High-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• Audio commentary by Richard Peńa, program director of New York’s Film Society of Lincoln Center
• Tokyo-ga (1985), filmmaker Wim Wenders’s ninety-two-minute documentary about director Yasujiro Ozu
• PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by critic Michael Atkinson and Japanese-film historian Donald Richie
TITLE: Late Spring (BLU-RAY EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC2135BD
UPC: 7-15515-09441-2
ISBN: 978-1-60465-569-8
SRP: $39.95
STREET: 4/17/12
The Organizer
In turn-of-the-twentieth-century Turin, an accident in a textile factory incites workers to stage a walkout. But it’s not until they receive unexpected aid from a traveling professor (8˝’s Marcello Mastroianni) that they find a voice, unite, and stand up for themselves. This historical drama by Mario Monicello (Big Deal on Madonna Street) is a beautiful and moving ode to the power of the people, brimming with humor and honesty. The Organizer (I compagni) features engaging, naturalistic performances; cinematography by the great Giuseppe Rotunno (Amarcord); and a multilayered, Oscar-nominated screenplay, by Monicelli, Agenore Incrocci (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly), and Furio Scarpelli (Il postino).
1963 • 130 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In Italian with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Introduction by director Mario Monicelli from 2006
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by film critic J. Hoberman
Eclipse Series 32: Pearls Of The Czech New Wave DVD
Of all the cinematic New Waves that broke over the world in the 1960s, the one in Czechoslovakia was among the most fruitful, fascinating, and radical. With a wicked sense of humor and a healthy streak of surrealism, a group of fearless directors—including eventual Oscar winners Miloš Forman and Ján Kadár—began to use film to speak out about the hypocrisy and absurdity of the Communist state. A defining work was the 1966 omnibus film Pearls of the Deep, which introduced five of the movement’s greatest voices: Věra Chytilová, Jaromil Jireš, Jiří Menzel, Jan Němec, and Evald Schorm. This series presents that title, along with four other crucial works that followed close on its heels, one from each of those filmmakers—some dazzlingly experimental, some arrestingly realistic, all singular expressions from a remarkable time and place.
FOUR-DVD BOX SET INCLUDES:
Pearls of the Deep
A manifesto of sorts for the Czech New Wave, this five-part anthology shows off the breadth of expression offered by the movement’s versatile directors. All based
on stories by the legendary writer Bohumil Hrabal, the shorts range from surreally chilling to caustically observant to casually romantic, but all have a cutting, wily view of the world.
1966 · 107 minutes · Black & White/Color · Monaural · In Czech with English subtitles · 1.33:1 aspect ratio
Daisies
Perhaps the New Wave’s most anarchic entry, Věra Chytilová’s absurdist farce follows the slapstick misadventures of two brash young women, known only as Marie I and Marie II. Believing the world to be “spoiled,” they decide to spoil themselves as well, and embark on a series of disorderly, prankish escapades in which nothing—food, clothes, men, war—is sacred. Daisies is an aesthetically and politically adventurous film that’s widely considered one of the great works of feminist cinema.
1966 · 76 minutes · Black & White/Color · Monaural · In Czech with English subtitles · 1.33:1 aspect ratio
A Report on the Party and Guests
In Jan Němec’s surreal fable, the weekend countryside frolic of an ordinary group of men and women is rudely transformed into a lesson in political hierarchy when a handful of mysterious authority figures show up and begin to control their actions. This allegory about oppression and conformity was banned in its home country but became an international success after it premiered at the New York Film Festival.
1966 · 70 minutes · Black & White · Monaural · In Czech with English subtitles · 1.33:1 aspect ratio
Return of the Prodigal Son
Evald Schorm was one of the most outspokenly political of the movement’s filmmakers. This raw psychological drama about an engineer unable to adjust to the world around him following a suicide attempt is at heart a scathing portrait of social alienation and moral compromise.
1967 · 103 minutes · Black & White · Monaural · In Czech with English subtitles · 1.33:1 aspect ratio
Capricious Summer
Two years after his worldwide hit Closely Watched Trains, Jiří Menzel directed this funny and reflective idyll about three middle-aged bourgeois men whose carefree
summer, occupied by little more than fishing, drinking, and eating, is interrupted by the arrival of young traveling circus performers. Especially distracting is the beautiful magician’s assistant, Anna. A meditation on aging and sex, shot in warm, sun-dappled color, Capricious Summer is one of the New Wave’s loveliest reveries.
1968 · 76 minutes · Color · Monaural · In Czech with English subtitles · 1.33:1 aspect ratio
The Joke
Jaromil Jireš’s brilliantly fragmentary adaptation of Milan Kundera’s novel jumps between the past and present to tell the Kafkaesque tale of Ludvik, a scientist who, in the 1950s, was expelled from the Communist Party when the authorities intercepted a postcard from him to his girlfriend that he’d intended as a political joke. After being sent for “rehabilitation” to the mines and doing a stint in a military prison, Ludvik hatches a revenge plot against the former friend who betrayed him. Completed after the Soviet invasion that ended the Prague Spring, The Joke was banned, though it’s now acknowledged as one of the movement’s greatest works.
1969 · 81 minutes · Black & White · Monaural · In Czech with English subtitles · 1.33:1 aspect ratio
TITLE: Eclipse Series 32: Pearls Of The Czech New Wave
CAT. NO: ECL147
UPC: 7-15515-09511-2
ISBN: 978-1-60465-577-3
SRP: $69.95
STREET: 4/24/12
All countries
Argentina
Austria
Belgium
Brazil
Bulgaria
Chile
China
Colombia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Estonia
Denmark
Finland
Greece
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
Indonesia
Ireland
Israel
India
Latvia
Lithuania
Malaysia
New Zealand
Norway
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russia
Singapore
South Africa
South Korea
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Thailand
Turkey
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
)
Sincere thanks for the recommendations. I will consider Late Spring and look into A Hen In The Wind. Right now I'm wrestling my love/hate relationship with Antonioni. Typically if there is a revered director whose films just fall flat for me on first viewing, I try to revisit them again or even twice more to figure out if it's me or them. Ozu shall be next.
Linear Mode
