Criterion Collection

Kurosawa's Palm D'or winning Kagemusha

2 by Suzuki: Fighting Elegy & Youth of the Beast
2 by Becker: Hands off the Loot! & Casque D'or

Cecil B. DeMille's King of Kings
Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander

Just heard the news, My Own Private Idaho is getting the royal Criterion treatment. No release date has been announced, but the word is early 2005. I say this is good news, I've been looking forward to this film being released on DVD for quite awhile now. So let's all jump up and down in celebration.

Also recently watched Criterion's Secret Honor and Tanner '88. I admired the updated Tanner '04 segments, although they probably shouldn't have incorporated it into the film, that's a little too much like something George Lucas would do.

Secret Honor on the other hand is a superb DVD. The film is tough and hard to get into, but there is a two man commentary, a great interview with Phillip Baker Hall and about 80 minutes of Richard Nixon footage. Hall's performance alone makes Secret Honor worth your time, so by all mean's hunt that out.

That's great about My Own Private Idaho -- is it usual for a well known film of the early Nineties not to be reissued on dvd till now? I'd like to see how the Criterion edition gathers information about the local background and follows up on the cast. Where are those boys now? Some of them have died (apart from River, also Rodney Harvey, who sadly went the same way). Harvey was used in a brief and shocking anti-drug spot on TV that showed successive mug shots--horrible decline. Many assorted interesting characters were involved in the film. Van Sant would be likely to know where they are now.

Altman's Nixon film Silent Honor sounds both obscure and interesting, therefore worth bringing out again, with notes.

Bernardo Bertolucci's La commare secca is coming soon (probably February).

Special Features
-Exclusive interview with director Bernardo Bertolucci
-Essay by film critic David Thompson
-New and improved English subtitle translation

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Godard and Gorin's Tout va Bien isn't far away.

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Well My Own Private Idaho is confirmed for February, as is Jules Dassin's Night and the City as well as Thieves Highway.

Grim Reaper and Tout va Bien are also slated to be released in Feb, so busy month and I for one am excited, particularly about My Own Private Idaho.

Of these films I have only seen Night and the City which has been too long out of print. I would recommend it to anyone, and they are certainly going for the royal treatment on this one.

As I figured, Kagemusha, the Kurosawa film I am most looking forward to getting released, is being postponed. So far the date is pushed back until March. The rest of the January releases though still seem to be on schedule.

Also on tap for March

The River (1951)
The Sword of Doom (1966)
Young Torless (1966)
L'Eclisse (1962)
Andrzej Wajda: Thre War Films
a. A Generation (1954)
b. Kanal (1957)
c. Ashes and Diamonds (1958)
Jules and Jim (1962)

now this line up may be impressive, but Facets has already released Ashes and Diamonds and Kanal on DVD. Plus Fox Lorber's Jules and Jim is the only good release they have probably ever put out.

Most excited about Jean Renoir's English-language The River (which I saw on the big screen almost 20 years ago) and Antonioni's L'Eclisse (I've only seen the excerpts included in Scorsese's My Voyage to Italy dvd).

I own the excellent region #3 disc of Kagemusha with a 4.0 Surround sound track. What makes me curious is that Criterion is releasing the 3-hour version. It's 20 minutes longer than the version currently available, which is not necessarily a good thing (for instance, many prefer Apocalypse Now to the longer "Redux" version).

Hope someday Criterion puts out a few Mizoguchi titles and Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar, just out in the U.K.

I thought .Jules et Jim was already out as mentioned by wpqx


As I recall L'eclisse wasn't available in a such a good copy on videotape. Certainly the no. 1 reason for getting a Criterion dvd is to get a good copy of the film. You can't always rely on the commentaries being good. As I said earlier some laser disc versions of movies have had great and rich supplementary materials; I gave the example of Altman's Short Cuts.

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
As I recall L'eclisse wasn't available in a such a good copy on videotape. Certainly the no. 1 reason for getting a Criterion dvd is to get a good copy of the film.

Yes and yes.

You can't always rely on the commentaries being good.

True of director commentaries in particular (Egoyan and Scorsese among the exceptions). Criterion commentaries are unformly excellent (I love Peter Cowie).

I wouldn't know, but I look forward to finding out as I watch all of the ones you nabbed.

On tap for April are Pietro Germi's satire Divorce Italian Style and Orsen Welles's stunning but very personal doc. F for Fake.


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Better sell my vhs copy of the wonderful F for Fake pronto. Any info on extras?

It looks like Criterion has gone all out for this one. They're presenting it as a "Special Edition Double-Disc Set."

Extras include:

*Video interview by director Peter Bogdonavich
*Audio commentary featuring director of photography Gary Graver
*Orson Welles: One-Man Band (1988), an hour-long investigation of Welles’s unfinished projects
*Almost True, a 1992 Norwegian Film Institute documentary on art forger Elmyr de Hory
*10-minute trailer
*New essay by film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum

I'm not overly excited for these releases, although I will most certainly be picking both of them up. There are just about 400 films I would rather see come out. I'm not even going to bother listing them, but I'll just say one thing, Mizoguchi.

Bogdanovich is always interesting. He's on the first set of Sopranos dvds, and I suppose many other commentaries by him exist?