Criterion Collection

[Randall]

Half tempted by Hours, which I haven’t seen since that original Warner Blu around 2005...

I find no evidence of an earlier Blu, aside from a sketchy Spanish edition from 2020. I do find a 2004 US DVD, though.

Nothing for me this month. Curious to see After Hours sometime, but not enough to buy it. I have the Indicator Ranown Westerns set already, and I don't even care for westerns.

[Ben]

I, of course, meant the DVD. I probably went to type "disc", actually, but am so used to just typing Blu that I auto-predicted myself! Wrongly.


Or, Eric:



UK comedy act Reeves & Mortimer did a bunch of these in the 90s.

[Ben]

Targets:
NEW 2K RESTORATION, supervised by director Peter Bogdanovich
Audio commentary from 2003 featuring Bogdanovich
New interview with filmmaker Richard Linklater
Introduction to the film from 2003 by Bogdanovich
Excerpts from a 1983 interview with production designer Polly Platt
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by critic Adam Nayman and excerpts from an interview with Bogdanovich from Eric Sherman and Martin Rubin's 1969 book The Director's Event: Interviews with Five American Film-Maker

Further to Criterion's imminent disc, the BFI has just announced its own long-delayed edition. Extras aren’t up on their page yet, but Amazon lists the following. It loses the Linklater interview and Platt audio, but adds a new commentary, three new interview/featurettes (including Boris' daughter) and more with Bogdanovich himself:

New 2K restoration supervised by director Peter Bogdanovich, presented in HD
New audio commentary by author and film critic Peter Tonguette
Audio commentary by Peter Bogdanovich (2003)
Introduction to the film by Peter Bogdanovich (2003)
New interview with Sara Karloff (2022)
New interview with Stephen Jacobs, author of Karloff: More Than a Monster (2023)
Video essay by Vic Pratt on Karloff, Targets and the changing face of horror (2023)
The Guardian Interview: Peter Bogdanovich (2005, c60 mins): The Oscar-nominated writer and director is interviewed on stage by Clive James
Trailers from Hell: Joe Dante on Targets (3 mins)
Gallery
**FIRST PRESSING ONLY** Illustrated booklet featuring an introduction by Sara Karloff, new writing on the film by Stephen Jacobs and an essay on Peter Bogdanovich by Peter Tonguette

Glad I didn’t jump on Criterion's one so fast, the BFI I think edges it too with its cover, and it’ll likely retail for what a Criterion would be in their sale.

BFI also have a new version of the hilariously cheesy Dirty Harry ripoff Brannigan coming. I held off on the lacklustre Twilight and Kino discs, but if the extras look halfway decent I might let it tumble into my cart, especially on a later sale.

[Daniel]

August titles:

Dreams 4K Blu-ray:
NEW 4K RESTORATION supervised by cinematographer Shoji Ueda, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
Audio commentary featuring film scholar Stephen Prince
Feature-length documentary from 1990 shot on set and directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi
Interviews with production manager Teruyo Nogami and assistant director Takashi Koizumi
Documentary from 2011 by director Akira Kurosawa's longtime translator Catherine Cadou, featuring interviews with filmmakers Bernardo Bertolucci, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Martin Scorsese, Hayao Miyazaki, and others
Trailer
PLUS: An essay by film critic Bilge Ebiri and Kurosawa's script for a never-filmed ninth dream, introduced by Nogami

Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart:
High-definition digital master of a new director's cut, supervised by director Wayne Wang, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
New conversation between Wang and filmmaker and film scholar Arthur Dong
Interview from 2004 with actor Laureen Chew
English subtitle translation and English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by scholar Brian Hu

Drylongso:
NEW 4K RESTORATION, approved by director Cauleen Smith, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
New conversation between Smith and film scholar Michael B. Gillespie
Short films by Smith, including Chronicles of a Lying Spirit by Kelly Gabron, Songs for Earth & Folk, Lessons in Semaphore, Egungun (Ancestor Can't Find Me), Remote Viewing, and Suffolk, with a new introduction by Smith
Trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by film scholar Yasmina Price

Bo Widerberg's New Swedish Cinema: (The Baby Carriage, Raven's End, Elvira Madigan, Adalen 31)
NEW RESOTRATIONS, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks
New introduction to director Bo Widerberg by filmmaker Ruben Östlund
New interviews with actor Tommy Berggren and cinematographer Jörgen Persson
The Boy and the Kite (1962), a short film by Widerberg and Jan Troell, with an introduction by Troell
Swedish television interviews with Widerberg from the 1960s
Behind-the-scenes footage from the making of Elvira Madigan
PLUS: An essay by film historian Peter Cowie and excerpts by Widerberg from his 1962 book Vision in Swedish Film

[Ben]

Criterion just need to get on and do their massive Kurosawa box like they’ve been hinting and and know is highly anticipated. So many standalones and other collections I keep passing up as I know the minute I start getting them they’ll go and drop a Bergman or Fellini-esque comprehensive, house-sized tome that they know we’re all wanting and waiting for!

[Daniel]

September titles:

The Trial 4K Blu-ray:
NEW 4K RESTORATION BY STUDIOCANAL
New audio commentary featuring film historian Joseph McBride
Filming "The Trial," a 1981 documentary about the film's production
Archival interviews with Welles, actor Jeanne Moreau, and director of photography Edmond Richard
Trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by author Jonathan Lethem

Walkabout 4K Blu-ray:
NEW 4K RESTORATION with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
DOLBY VISION/HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
Audio commentary featuring director Nicolas Roeg and actor Jenny Agutter
Interviews with Agutter and actor Luc Roeg
Gulpilil—One Red Blood (2002), a documentary on the life and career of actor David Gulpilil
Theatrical trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by author Paul Ryan

The Princess Bride 4K Blu-ray:
4K RESTORATION OF THE FILM, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
DOLBY VISION/HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
Audio commentary featuring director Rob Reiner, screenwriter William Goldman, producer Andrew Scheinman, and actors Billy Crystal and Peter Falk
Edited audiobook reading of Goldman's novel The Princess Bride by Reiner
Program about Goldman's screenplay
Program about Goldman's tapestry based on his novel
Interviews with Reiner, Goldman, and actors Crystal, Cary Elwes, Christopher Guest, Mandy Patinkin, Chris Sarandon, Fred Savage, and Robin Wright
Interview with art director Richard Holland
Programs about makeup, fencing, and fairy tales
On-set video diary filmed and narrated by Elwes
Five behind-the-scenes videos with commentaries by Reiner, Scheinman, and Crystal
Trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by author Sloane Crosley and Goldman's introduction to his Princess Bride script from his collection Four Screenplays, in a lavishly illustrated, clothbound book

Moonage Daydream 4K Blu-ray:
4K DIGITAL MASTER, supervised by writer-director-editor-producer Brett Morgen, with Dolby Atmos and stereo soundtracks
Audio commentary featuring Morgen
Q&A with Morgen, filmmaker Mark Romanek, and musician Mike Garson at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood
Interview with rerecording mixers David Giammarco and Paul Massey
Trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by film critic Jonathan Romney and a collectible poster insert

La Bamba:
NEW 4K RESTORATION, approved by director Luis Valdez, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
Audio commentaries featuring Valdez, actors Lou Diamond Phillips and Esai Morales, and producers Stuart Benjamin, Taylor Hackford, and Daniel Valdez
New interview with Luis Valdez
Conversation between Valdez and filmmaker Robert Rodriguez from El Rey Network's The Director's Chair
Making-of program featuring cast and crew
Audition footage
Trailer

[Ben]

Weird selection!

I passed on StudioCanal's 4K of The Trial and will do so again for the Criterion. I love Awesome Orson, but that film is a trek to get through, and not worth the time reward by the end. My DVD will suffice for when/if I ever try again.

Likewise with Walkabout, which is actually pretty bizarre (fast as I remember, the opening is never properly explained or resolved) and…slightly boring? I know it has fans for a couple of reasons (!), but again my DVD will suffice. Not like this new one is stuffed with extras either.

Good news for Princess Bride: it’s a friend's most favorite movie ever, but I’ve never been able to fully plug into it, mostly for the most awfully cheap synth scoring that absolutely kills it dead for me. If only they’d gone with a real orchestra — it didn’t even have to be a big one — and made it all feel bigger, more lush, and in keeping with the kind of world it was spoofing. I ran it again for him just before the pandemic and that music still just washes away everything that does work, which itself feels slightly off and slow, mostly in the weird editing. Which is a big surprise considering there were real musicians and musical people heavily involved in this.

No need for Moonage Daydream, though I’d like to see as it’s got good notices. Might wait to see if the UK gets a similar treatment rather than importing, though would prefer to see it first. And La Bamba I haven’t seen since in 1986 or so VHS, but don’t remember it being *too* special, and indeed thinking the film didn’t click with me either. Another I'd like to see again sometime, but a channel here plays it on and off.

Good that all (mostly) are true 4Ks. Was getting a little peeved that Kino were updating all the Criterion Blus I had and wasn’t about to start replacing. Good it CC can do them right first time out!

[EricJ]

I passed on StudioCanal's 4K of The Trial and will do so again for the Criterion. I love Awesome Orson, but that film is a trek to get through, and not worth the time reward by the end. My DVD will suffice for when/if I ever try again.

I like the opening, where Orson sets the "Yeah, I've had ones like that... " dream-tone, with the secret policeman walking into Tony Perkins' bedroom ("W-who are you, what're you doing here?"), but it's still Kafka, which means it's a long, unrewarding slog to nowhere after that.
It's fun watching Welles succeed at what David Lynch tried to do in Eraserhead, but only from a technical standpoint.

And besides, "After Hours" is still the most watchable Kafka movie ever made.

[Ben]

I think the real issue with The Trial is that, after the fine start, it just almost loses interest in its own reason for being, so why should we care, or watch.

Would you consider The Game as Kafkaesque? That would probably come over as even more "mainstream" and accessible as a thriller (with an ending!) than even After Hours, although I suppose that it does hav3 an ending kind of discounts it…

[Daniel]

October titles:

Nanny:
New 4K digital master, approved by director Nikyatu Jusu, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio and uncompressed stereo soundtracks
New program featuring Jusu, actors Anna Diop and Michelle Monaghan, and director of photography Rina Yang
Trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing and English descriptive audio
PLUS: An essay by critic Angelica Jade Bastién

The Others:
New 4K digital restoration, approved by director Alejandro Amenábar, with Dolby Atmos soundtrack
One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
Audio commentary featuring Amenábar
New conversation between Amenábar and film critic Pau Gómez
New making-of program featuring Amenábar, actors Nicole Kidman and Christopher Eccleston, and producer Fernando Bovaira
Archival programs about the film’s production, costume design, soundtrack, and visual effects, featuring interviews and footage recorded on the set
Audition footage of actors Alakina Mann and James Bentley and photography from the “Book of the Dead”
Seven deleted scenes
Trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by scholar Philip Horne

Don’t Look Now:
4K digital restoration, supervised by director of photography Anthony Richmond, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
Conversation between editor Graeme Clifford and film writer and historian Bobbie O’Steen
“Don't Look Now”: Looking Back, a short documentary from 2002 featuring Clifford, Richmond, and director Nicolas Roeg
“Don't Look Now”: Death in Venice, a 2006 interview with composer Pino Donaggio
Program on the writing and making of the film, featuring interviews with Richmond, actors Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, and coscreenwriter Allan Scott
Program on Roeg’s style, featuring interviews with filmmakers Danny Boyle and Steven Soderbergh
Q&A with Roeg from 2003 at London’s Ciné Lumière
Trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by film critic David Thompson

Videodrome:
4K digital restoration of the unrated version, approved by director David Cronenberg, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
Two audio commentaries, one featuring Cronenberg and director of photography Mark Irwin, the other actors James Woods and Deborah Harry
Camera (2000), a short film by Cronenberg
Forging the New Flesh, a short documentary by filmmaker Michael Lennick about the creation of Videodrome’s video and prosthetic makeup effects
Effects Men, an audio interview with special makeup effects creator Rick Baker and video effects supervisor Lennick
Bootleg Video: the complete footage of Samurai Dreams and seven minutes of transmissions from “Videodrome,” presented in their original, unedited form, with filmmaker commentary
Fear on Film, a roundtable discussion from 1982 with Cronenberg and filmmakers John Carpenter, John Landis, and Mick Garris
Original theatrical trailers and promotional featurette
Stills gallery featuring rare behind-the-scenes production photos and posters
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: Essays by writers Carrie Rickey, Tim Lucas, and Gary Indiana

Freaks / The Unknown / The Mystic: Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers:
New 2K digital restoration of Freaks, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
New 2K digital reconstruction and restoration of The Unknown by the George Eastman Museum, with a new score by composer Philip Carli
New 2K digital restoration of The Mystic, with a new score by composer Dean Hurley
Audio commentaries on Freaks and The Unknown and an introduction to The Mystic by film scholar David J. Skal
New interview with author Megan Abbott about director Tod Browning and pre-Code horror
Archival documentary on Freaks
Reading of “Spurs,” the short story by Tod Robbins on which Freaks is based
Prologue to Freaks, which was added to the film in 1947
Program on the alternate endings to Freaks
Video gallery of portraits from Freaks
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by film critic Farran Smith Nehme

[Ben]

I can pass on Nanny, but The Others is tempting, even though I not long got the Paramount reissue.

I have the StudioCanal box of Don't Look Now, and ran it a couple of years ago, and it didn’t nearly hold up as well for us. Videodrome if never been a fan of (yeah, yeah, okay), but interesting extras even if they still can’t get me to bite.

I’m a bit of a Browning fan, and would definitely want Freaks ("One of us! One of us!"), but not sure I need a set of them, with surprisingly scant-ish extras. Then again it’s kind of just a lavish Freaks set with two extra movies, so hopefully won’t street to much highly. I’ll probably wait for reviews, though, as the film is sadly now limited in how great it can look, and Warners' original DVD was pretty nice.

So, yeah, maybe probably The Others and Freaks for me…eventually.

[Randall]

Freaks had been rumoured for a while, and now Criterion surprises impatient fans with a Browning set. Nice! The Unknown is a classic Chaney vehicle, which I may have watched already. I haven't seen The Mystic, but I am keen to do so.

Nothing else for me. I still haven't watched my Blu of Videodrome.

[EricJ]

Coming off last month's Trial/After Hours discussion, could Videodrome be Cronenberg's attempt at a "wild-goose conspiracy" Kafka-esque story?

And I don't mind the "lack" of extras on Freaks, since there were plenty on the original DVD, and I consider new Browning (which usually gets sent to Warner Archive) as the "extras". Three is always better than one, even if they don't get more than one curiosity viewing.

[Ben]

Re Videodrome: interesting take. I have just never found the film appealing, even when in a "nasty" mood.

And don’t get me wrong: very pleased to have the other Browmings in there on Freaks — The Unknown is indeed classic Chaney (I last saw it maybe 15-20 years ago in a double bill with He Who Gets Slapped with live orchestra, which was excellent), and it still has some pretty mixed up ideas and imagery. The Mystic is very much like Chaney's Unholy Three, but without Chaney and therefore without much of the interest. That one (Unholy Three) would have made for a good triple, but then I suppose it would outweigh Freaks as a Browning/Chaney set (good name for the set though!). As it is, Freaks remains the clear draw, with the other two as nice additions. I’m hoping the new scores will be good!

[EricJ]

Re Videodrome: interesting take. I have just never found the film appealing, even when in a "nasty" mood.

Ah, you foreigners and your TV licenses never grew up in the late-70s/early-80s glory days of backwater UHF stations like Civic TV, back before the rabbit-hole of local public-access cable existed.
(Or the days of pre-cable movie channels that used to broadcast on scrambled UHF stations, and the pre-adolescent thrill of trying to squint at the zig-zag static and see if you could decipher their late night Skinemax showings of "The Pom-Pom Girls".)
And then moving on to the thrill of backwater VHS rentals...It's a movie of its time.

And every time there's someone on social media or Twitter who tries to get attention making big out-of-context important-sounding posts that seem to have nothing to do with the rest of the room's conversation, and whose posts seem to exist in some inscrutable ether of his own making (ahemelonmusk), I always refer to the poster as "a Brian O'Blivion", and nobody ever gets the reference.
In the future, we shall all have our social-media names.