Real Life (1979) / Mother (1996) 4K UHD

[StLouisRibs]

Two comedy masterpieces both coming from Criterion via Paramount this August, both straight from DVD up to 4K!

Real Life

Decades before reality television reigned supreme, there was Albert Brooks’s debut feature, Real Life, a brilliantly deadpan, stylistically innovative satire about the perils and pitfalls of trying to capture the truth on film. The writer-director plays “Albert Brooks,” a narcissistic Hollywood filmmaker who plans to spend the year in Phoenix embedded with Warren and Jeanette Yeager (Charles Grodin and Frances Lee McCain) and their two children, deploying an arsenal of cutting-edge equipment (including the over-the-head Ettinaur 226XL camera) to capture an American family’s ordinary day-to-day. Chronicling the project’s disastrous fallout, as the meddlesome Albert can’t help getting too close to his subjects, this pioneering mockumentary is more relevant than ever amid today’s media landscape.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Albert Brooks, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• New interview with Brooks
• New interview with actor Frances Lee McCain
• 3D trailer directed by Brooks
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

Mother

Reeling after his second divorce and struggling with writer’s block, sci-fi novelist John Henderson (Albert Brooks) resolves to figure out where his life went wrong, and hits on an unorthodox solution: moving back in with his relentlessly disapproving, cheerfully passive-aggressive mother (Debbie Reynolds), whose favorite son has always been John’s younger brother, Jeff (Rob Morrow). It’s an experiment that, however harebrained, delivers surprising results. Brooks’s film perfectly blends the writer-director-star’s biting wit with insight and inviting warmth, while giving him a formidable foil in the delightful Reynolds, triumphant in a comeback role that’s equal parts caustic and charming.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Albert Brooks, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• New interview with Brooks
• New interview with actor Rob Morrow
• Teaser directed by Brooks
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by critic Carrie Rickey