The Criterion Collection

[keldons]

Looks like I'll blind buy Paths of Glory. It was between that and The Night of the Hunter, but I watched the latter today and wasn't really impressed. Thanks guys.

[pro-bassoonist]

Final press release:

The Double Life of Véronique
This ravishing, mysterious rumination on identity, love, and human intuition remains one of the most beloved films of Krzysztof Kieslowski (Decalogue, the Three Colors trilogy). Irène Jacob (Red, Othello) is incandescent as both Weronika, a Polish choral soprano, and her double, Véronique, a French music teacher. Though unknown to each other, the two women share an enigmatic, purely emotional bond, which Kieslowski details in gorgeous reflections, color, and movement. The Double Life of Véronique is an unforgettable symphony of feeling.

1991 • 97 minutes • Color • Stereo • In Polish and French with English subtitles • 1.66:1 aspect ratio

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• Restored high-definition digital transfer, with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• Audio commentary featuring Annette Insdorf, author of Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski
• Three short documentaries by Kieslowski: Factory (1970), Hospital (1976), and Railway Station (1980)
• The Musicians (1958), a short film by Kieslowski’s teacher Kazimierz Karabasz
• Kieslowski—Dialogue (1991), a documentary featuring a candid interview with Kieslowski and rare behind-the-scenes footage from the set of this film
• 1966–1988: Kieslowski, Polish Filmmaker, a 2005 documentary tracing the director’s work in Poland, from his days as a student through The Double Life of Véronique
• Video interviews with actress Irène Jacob, cinematographer Sławomir Idziak, and composer Zbigniew Preisner
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Jonathan Romney and selections from Kieslowski on Kieslowski

TITLE: The Double Life of Véronique (BLU-RAY EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC1977BD
UPC: 7-15515-06771-3
ISBN: 978-1-60465-384-7
SRP: $39.95
STREET: 2/1/11

AMARCORD
This carnivalesque portrait of provincial Italy during the fascist period, the most personal film from Federico Fellini (La strada, Nights of Cabiria, 8½), satirizes the director’s youth and turns daily life into a circus of social rituals, adolescent desires, male fantasies, and political subterfuge, all set to Nina Rota’s classic, nostalgia-tinged score. The Academy Award–winning Amarcord is one of cinema’s most delightful treasures.

1973 • 123 minutes • Color • Monaural • In Italian with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• Restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• Audio commentary by film scholars Peter Brunette and Frank Burke
• Fellini’s Homecoming, a forty-five-minute documentary on director Federico Fellini’s complicated relationship to his hometown and past
• Video interview with star Magali Noël
• Fellini’s drawings of characters in the film
• Felliniana, a presentation of ephemera devoted to Amarcord
• Archival audio interviews with Fellini and his friends and family, by film critic Gideon Bachmann
• Restoration demonstration
• Deleted scene
• American release trailer
• Optional English-dubbed soundtrack
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by scholar Sam Rohdie, author of Fellini Lexicon, and the full text of Fellini’s 1967 essay “My Rimini”

TITLE: Amarcord (BLU-RAY EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC1983BD
UPC: 7-15515-06831-4
ISBN: 978-1-60465-390-8
SRP: $39.95
STREET: 2/8/11

STILL WALKING
The lyrical, profoundly moving Still Walking is the most personal work to date from contemporary Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda (Maborosi, After Life, Nobody Knows). Fashioned as a tribute to his parents, the film depicts one day in the life of the Yokoyamas, gathered together for a celebratory ritual that only gradually makes itself clear. Rather than focus on big dramatic moments, Kore-eda relies on simple gestures and domestic routines (especially cooking) to evoke a family’s entire life, its deep regrets and its daily joys. Featuring vivid, heartrending performances and a gentle naturalism that harks back to the director’s earlier, documentary work, Still Walking is an extraordinary portrayal of the ties that bind us.

2008 • 114 minutes • Color • 2.0 surround • In Japanese with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New high-definition digital transfer, approved by director Hirokazu Kore-eda and director of photography Yutaka Yamazaki, with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• New video interviews with Kore-eda and Yamazaki
• Making “Still Walking”
• Trailer
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by film critic Dennis Lim and recipes for the food prepared in the film

TITLE: Still Walking (BLU-RAY EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC1975BD
UPC: 7-15515-06751-5
ISBN: 978-1-60465-382-3
SRP: $39.95
STREET: 2/8/11

SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS
In the swift, cynical Sweet Smell of Success, directed by Alexander Mackendrick (The Ladykillers), Burt Lancaster (Brute Force, The Leopard) stars as barbaric Broadway gossip columnist J. J. Hunsecker, and Tony Curtis (Some Like It Hot, Spartacus) as Sidney Falco, the unprincipled press agent he ropes into smearing the up-and-coming jazz musician romancing his beloved sister. Featuring deliciously unsavory dialogue in an acid, brilliantly structured script by Clifford Odets (Notorious, Bigger Than Life) and Ernest Lehman (North by Northwest, The Sound of Music) and noirish neon cityscapes from Oscar-winning cinematographer James Wong Howe (The Thin Man, Yankee Doodle Dandy), Sweet Smell of Success is a cracklingly cruel dispatch from the kill-or-be-killed wilds of 1950s Manhattan.

1957 • 96 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • 1.66:1 aspect ratio

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New, restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• New audio commentary by film scholar James Naremore
• Mackendrick: The Man Who Walked Away, a 1986 documentary featuring interviews with director Alexander Mackendrick, actor Burt Lancaster, producer James Hill, and more
• James Wong Howe: Cinematographer, a 1973 documentary about the Oscar-winning director of photography, featuring lighting tutorials with Howe
• New video interview with film critic and historian Neil Gabler (Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity) about legendary columnist Walter Winchell, inspiration for the character J. J. Hunsecker
• New video interview with filmmaker James Mangold about Mackendrick, his instructor and mentor
• Original theatrical trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Gary Giddins, two short stories by Ernest Lehman featuring the characters from the film, notes about the film by Lehman, and an excerpt from Mackendrick’s book On Film-making

TITLE: Sweet Smell of Success (BLU-RAY EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC1979BD
UPC: 7-15515-06791-1
ISBN: 978-1-60465-386-1
SRP: $39.95
STREET: 2/22/11


FISH TANK
British director Andrea Arnold (Red Road) won the Cannes Jury Prize for the searing and invigorating Fish Tank, about a fifteen-year-old girl, Mia (electrifying newcomer Katie Jarvis), who lives with her mother and sister in the depressed housing projects of Essex. Mia’s adolescent conflicts and emerging sexuality reach boiling points when her mother’s new boyfriend (a lethally attractive Michael Fassbender [Hunger, Inglourious Basterds]) enters the picture. In her young career, Arnold has already proven herself to be a master of social realism (evoking the work of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach), investing her sympathetic portraits of dead-end lives with a poetic, earthy sensibility all her own. Fish Tank heralds the official arrival of a major new filmmaker.

2009 • 122 minutes • Color • Surround • 1.33:1 aspect ratio

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New high-definition digital transfer, approved by director Andrea Arnold, director of photography Robbie Ryan, and editor Nicolas Chaudeurge, with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• All three of Arnold’s short films: Milk (1998), Dog (2001), and the Oscar-winning Wasp (2003)
• New video interview with actor Kierston Wareing
• Interview with actor Michael Fassbender from 2009
• Audition footage
• Stills gallery by on-set photographer Holly Horner
• Original theatrical trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Ian Christie

TITLE: Fish Tank (BLU-RAY EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC1947BD
UPC: 7-15515-06501-6
ISBN: 978-1-60465-354-0
SRP: $39.95
STREET: 2/22/11


SENSO
This lush, Technicolor tragic romance from Luchino Visconti (Le notti bianche, The Leopard) stars Alida Valli (The Third Man, Eyes Without a Face) as a nineteenth-century Italian countess who, amid the Austrian occupation of her country, puts her marriage and political principles on the line by engaging in a torrid affair with a dashing Austrian lieutenant, played by Farley Granger (Rope, Strangers on a Train). Gilded with fearless performances, ornate costumes and sets, and a rich classical soundtrack, Visconti’s operatic melodrama is an extraordinary evocation of reckless emotions and deranged lust from one of the cinema’s great sensualists.

1954 • 123 minutes • Color • Monaural • In Italian with English subtitles • 1.33:1 aspect ratio

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New, restored high-definition digital transfer, created in collaboration with the Cineteca di Bologna and Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation, supervised by director of photography Giuseppe Rotunno, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• The Making of “Senso,” a new documentary featuring Rotunno, assistant director Francesco Rosi, costume designer Piero Tosi, and Caterina D’Amico, daughter of screenwriter Suso Cecchi D’Amico and author of Life and Work of Luchino Visconti
• Viva VERDI, a new documentary on Visconti, Senso, and opera featuring Italian film scholar Peter Brunette, Italian historian Stefano Albertini, and author Wayne Koestenbaum
• The Wanton Countess, the rarely seen English-language version of the film
• Visual essay by film scholar Peter Cowie
• Man of Three Worlds: Luchino Visconti, a 1966 BBC special exploring Visconti’s parallel masteries of cinema, theater, and opera direction
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by filmmaker and author Mark Rappaport and an excerpt from actor Farley Granger’s autobiography, Include Me Out

TITLE: Senso (BLU-RAY EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC1981BD
UPC: 7-15515-06811-6
ISBN: 978-1-60465-388-5
SRP: $39.95
STREET: 2/22/11

Pro-B

[cardiac161]

Nice to see Criterion finally releasing at least one Kore-eda film, Still Walking. I would hope that they would pursue the director's past works such as Maborosi, After Life and Nobody Knows since these films seem to very much fit the Criterion catalog.

[Crimson King]

I notice that Criterion has "The Hit" on DVD. I'm a big Terence Stamp fan, is the film any good? I've never seen it.

[blkhrt]

Originally Posted by pro-bassoonist

Final press release:




Pro-B

Pretty much the only bad thing about these releases (aside from those people who don't like the artwork) is having to wait until February for them!

[rkish]

Well...picked up Night of the Hunter and Modern Times today...looks like a slight wait on Sherlock Jr.

The packaging on NOTH is very nice...but unfortunately, cardboard cases can take a beating in transit. Mine is dinged in a few places (not easily noticeable...too bad I'm so anal), but I can live with it.

I hope those that have ordered it to ship home don't have issues with bad dings and dents/creases.

[Crimson King]

Originally Posted by rkish

Well...picked up Night of the Hunter and Modern Times today...looks like a slight wait on Sherlock Jr.

The packaging on NOTH is very nice...but unfortunately, cardboard cases can take a beating in transit. Mine is dinged in a few places (not easily noticeable...too bad I'm so anal), but I can live with it.

I hope those that have ordered it to ship home don't have issues with bad dings and dents/creases.

My "Night of The Hunter" was bought at the store and had some dings on it a well, mine copy a small square silver UCLA sticker next to the traditional blue CC sticker. Does'nt seem to be as sturdy as the Seven Samurai box... I have "Modern Times" reserved,waiting for me at the register, will pick up tomorrow before a long days toil.

[octagon]

Originally Posted by BillyJack

I notice that Criterion has "The Hit" on DVD. I'm a big Terence Stamp fan, is the film any good? I've never seen it.

I rented less than a year ago and I'm surprised at how little of it I remember right now. I distinctly remember Tim Roth and John Hurt being very good but what they might have been good at is a complete blank.

[Eny-]

Originally Posted by rkish

Well...picked up Night of the Hunter and Modern Times today...looks like a slight wait on Sherlock Jr.

The packaging on NOTH is very nice...but unfortunately, cardboard cases can take a beating in transit. Mine is dinged in a few places (not easily noticeable...too bad I'm so anal), but I can live with it.

I hope those that have ordered it to ship home don't have issues with bad dings and dents/creases.

Unfortunately that is always the case with me.

[The Theory]

I tried to buy both Modern Times and Night of the Hunter, but my B&N was already sold out (and only got two of each in, both of which never even saw the light of the shelf)... the lady did assure me they were getting more in. Ooo lala.

Instead I settled for 5 other titles:
8 1/2
Antichrist
Black Orpheus
Chungking Express
Lola Montes

Ultimately a haul I feel quite pleased with.

[SpiderBaby]

Originally Posted by rkish

I hope those that have ordered it to ship home don't have issues with bad dings and dents/creases.

I'm still waiting for B&N to even ship NotH and Sherlock Jr out. What is the point of pre-order with them?

[greekak229]

Originally Posted by CassavetesGodard

I'm still waiting for B&N to even ship NotH and Sherlock Jr out. What is the point of pre-order with them?

Same with Night of the Hunter.

[Weirded Wonder]

Originally Posted by CassavetesGodard

I'm still waiting for B&N to even ship NotH and Sherlock Jr out. What is the point of pre-order with them?

Same here. I love when they 'ship' my order and it doesn't leave their storage for 3 or 4 days.

[SteelPen]

Originally Posted by rkish

Well...picked up Night of the Hunter and Modern Times today...looks like a slight wait on Sherlock Jr.

The packaging on NOTH is very nice...but unfortunately, cardboard cases can take a beating in transit. Mine is dinged in a few places (not easily noticeable...too bad I'm so anal), but I can live with it.

I hope those that have ordered it to ship home don't have issues with bad dings and dents/creases.

Lucky for me, my copy of NOTH is in mint condition! I was able to pick out my own copy, even though the store only got 2 copies!

[SpiderBaby]

Originally Posted by Beard Esquire

Same here. I love when they 'ship' my order and it doesn't leave their storage for 3 or 4 days.

Yeah I got an e-mail yesterday saying it was ready to ship, but nothing has happened.

[greekak229]

Originally Posted by CassavetesGodard

Yeah I got an e-mail yesterday saying it was ready to ship, but nothing has happened.

I got no email about it being ready to ship and it was supposed to be gone by today. Good job, Barnes.

[madmojo]

I'd had NotH and Modern Times pre-ordered for over a week, and just a few minutes ago, Barnes and Noble said they'd just shipped from New Jersey. Now I just have to wonder if they'll end up cancelling my Paths of Glory order, as it's not due to ship until the 1st of December.

[SteelPen]

My copy of The Thin Red Line shipped today via UPS! I'll be getting it on Thursday!

[g.schweet]

Originally Posted by BillyJack

My "Night of The Hunter" was bought at the store and had some dings on it a well, mine copy a small square silver UCLA sticker next to the traditional blue CC sticker. Does'nt seem to be as sturdy as the Seven Samurai box...

It's just that The Night of the Hunter's outer box is a tad too big, making it less sturdy and prone to damage. Whereas Seven Samurai's outer box and insides fit snugly, making it pretty solid.
I suggest that Criterion remedy this situation by offering a replacement book program for TNOTH w/ twice as many essays so my packaging is perfectly snug.



P.S. I don't want this done because I'm OCD like some of you, but because my The Night of the Hunter blu keeps telling me she feels inferior standing next to her sexy sister Seven Samurai blu. I keep telling her it's the movie in your insides that counts, but she doesn't believe me and wants to get book enlargement. badum-CHING

[The Theory]

I know there was a pretty indepth discussion on Antichrist a few pages back, but I just finished this and--wow--what an experience. I highly respect anything that can make me look upon nature and feel such a strong intent of malice from it. It is one of those films I wouldn't recommend to any of my friends (and the one friend I might have recommended it to already saw it and hated it), but as a personal experience it was top-notch.