Criterion Additions

From The Onion AV Club today:

Just in time for holiday gift-buying, The Criterion Collection is compiling 25 films by Akira Kurosawa (including four never before released on DVD) for the box set AK 100, a celebration of what would've been the Japanese master's 100th birthday. Here's the line-up, in chronological order:
Sanshiro Sugata (1943)*
Sanshiro Sugata, Part II (1944)*
The Most Beautiful (1944)*
The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (1945)*
No Regrets for Our Youth (1946)
One Wonderful Sunday (1947)
Drunken Angel (1948)
Stray Dog (1949)
Scandal (1950)
The Idiot (1951)
Rashomon (1951)
Ikiru (1952)
Seven Samurai (1954)
I Live in Fear (1955)
The Lower Depths (1957)
Throne of Blood (1957)
The Hidden Fortress (1958)
The Bad Sleep Well (1960)
Yojimbo (1961)
Sanjuro (1962)
High and Low (1963)
Red Beard (1965)
Dodes’ka-den (1970)
Kagemusha (1980)
Madadayo (1993)

The *-ed items are the previously unreleased ones. The box set also comes with a thick book about Kurosawa. List price is 400 bucks, but perhaps you and your neighbors can pool your money, Seven Samurai-style.

d-d-damn

Amazon is selling preorders for $100 off. Seriously considering this! It helps that I've only got a few Criterion Kurosawas.

8 1/2 on BluRay confirmed in latest newsletter.

really wish someone would put out decent versions of Badlands and Night of the Hunter.

my god, i need the AK boxset like, now.

January: Che (standard & blu), Paris, Texas (ditto), and Roberto Rossellini’s
War Trilogy box set. 8 1/2 also comes to blu. Also: Eclipse Series 19:
Chantal Akerman in the Seventies, featuring La chambre, Hotel Monterey, News From Home, Je tu il elle, and Les rendez-vous d'Anna.

So, what are the best movies released under the Eclipse line so far? i've only rented the steel helmet, which i liked.

Brakhage II confirmed (on blu!) in the latest newsletter.

Somewhere, Jay Blanchard is busy being very very happy.

Old news, but February: Revanche, Lola Montes, Hunger (all three standard & Blu) & Make Way For Tomorrow. Also out: Eclipse Series 20: George Bernard Shaw on Film.

Also, a standard edition version of Howard's End drops so the fanboys can stop bitchin' about it having a spin # and being a spined blu.

March: Letters from Fontainhas: Three Films by Pedro Costa (Ossos, In Vanda's Room & Colossal Youth), Bigger Than Life (standard+Blu) & Dillinger Is Dead.

Yojimbo/Sanjuro Box Set also goes Blu.

No Eclipse or Essential Arthouse.

Oshima Eclipse set confirmed in latest newsletter.

April: Vivre Sa Vie*, Ride With The Devil*, The Fugitive Kind & Summer Hours*

Plus Essential Art House 5: Brief Encounter, 8 1/2, Loves of A Blonde, Jules and Jim, Floating Weeds & Kapò

No news from Eclipse

*Standard & Blu

Ride with the devil is such a catastrophe...

Criterion deletions: they're losing a load of titles to Lionsgate of all people at the end of next month. Some big ones, too- Grand Illusion, Alphaville, Pierrot le Fou, the Orphic trilogy, etc. Would copy/paste list but I'm on my phone atm.

hmm. i have alphaville -- pretty bare-bones.

transfer's awful too

here's the list

http://www.collider.com/2010/02/02/oop-criterion-sale-purchase-studiocanal-dvd-and-blu-ray-criterions-before-lionsgate-owns-them/

that said, I doubt that lionsgate will "care" as much criterion did

xp

Alphaville
Carlos Saura’s Flamenco Trilogy (Eclipse Series 6)
Le corbeau
Coup de torchon
Diary of a Country Priest
The Fallen Idol
Forbidden Games (Criterion and Essential Art House editions)
Gervaise (Essential Art House edition)
Grand Illusion (Criterion and Essential Art House editions)
Le jour se lève (Essential Art House edition)
Last Holiday (Essential Art House edition)
Mayerling (Essential Art House edition)
The Orphic Trilogy
Peeping Tom
Pierrot le fou (DVD and Blu-ray editions)
Port of Shadows
Quai des Orfèvres
The Small Back Room
The Tales of Hoffmann (Criterion and Essential Art House editions)
Trafic
Le trou
Variety Lights (Essential Art House edition)
The White Sheik

guess I should grab a copy of that pierrot le fou blu-ray

this will kinda fuck up their janus box too iirc.

wonder how many years lionsgate will take to re-release these, if they even bother to do it at all

a fair number of these are on R2 (british) dvd already, though without the nice extras (not all of these are well extra'd up tho -- don't think the carne is). must see 'the fallen idol'.

May: BY BRAKHAGE: AN ANTHOLOGY, VOLUME TWO, Stagecoach & a reissue of Walkabout all standard & Blu. Plus M on Blu & ECLIPSE SERIES 21: OSHIMA'S OUTLAW SIXTIES (PLEASURES OF THE FLESH, VIOLENCE AT NOON, SING A SONG OF SEX, JAPANESE SUMMER: DOUBLE SUICIDE & THREE RESURRECTED DRUNKARDS)

i can't imagine the person that watches stan brakhage movies on blu-ray

Blanchard!

i'd rent it. i like to know that what i'm watching was in the original film and isn't a compression artifact.

3-disc Hollis Frampton set off in the distance!!!!! (And maybe even a Kuchar?)

June: Close-Up, Mystery Train*, Everlasting Moments, Red Desert* & Night Train to Munich plus The Leopard on Blu. No Eclipse or Essential Art House titles to report.

*Standard & Blu

Please, oh please let them get the rights for a blu-ray of Blow-Up...or hell, even Zabriskie Point.

What is up with the cover to Red Desert... glad the movie is finally coming out, but that has gotta be the worst Criterion cover yet....
http://www.criterion.com/films/1454-red-desert

http://criterion_production.s3.amazonaws.com/release_images/2731/522_box_348x490.jpg

nagl

the english bluray of that is excellent

There been some grumblings about a Criterion Zabriskie. I can't confirm a source but I recall hearing something about Steven Soderbergh claiming during a junket for Che that he'd cut a commentary track for the then forthcoming DVD. Fast forward some months and Warner's has issued a disc w/no commentary and the MGM's adjusted ending (w/the Orbison song instead of additional Pink Floyd). If it gets done I imagine those errors would be corrected. However I don't thing there has ever been a solid confirmation of WB finally working w/Criterion (Stagecoach was a third party acquisition).

Got the Pedro Costa box early and now I'm thinking he's director of the decade material...

wow, did not know that was forthcoming. sight & sound in particular are pretty fond with him as one of the guys of the last decade.

Goddamn, the subtitles that Polanski himself wrote for Knife in the Water are shit! They should keep him in prison just for these fucking subtitles.

ZOMG OMG RED DESERT!!! FWIW I think the cover looks very nice on its own but is an awful fit for the film.

Antichrist confirmed for this fall in the latest newsletter.

They've hinted a confirmation of Fish Tank on Facebook.

are artificial eye dvds/blu-rays region free? you could always import fish tank. so annoying that criterion chose to region lock their BDs

still need to pick up red road myself

are artificial eye dvds/blu-rays region free?

don't think so

i don't have a blu-ray but a seven-y-o could have hacked my dvd player + vlc 4 lyfe

blu-ray is p.nice tho

id be in2 it if i had a job

but even then dvds are awesome enuf for me really

July: The Only Son/There Was a Father: Two Films by Yasujiro Ozu, The Secret of the Grain*, and reissues of The Red Shoes* & Black Narcissus*. Plus Eclipse Series 22:Presenting Sacha Guitry (The Story of a Cheat, The Pearls of the Crown, Désiré & Quadrille)

* Standard & Blu

they fucked up the original issue of black narcissus with colors being way off. glad to see they're giving it another go.

americans u shd see 'fish tank', very good film