June 2008 Criterion Releases
03-14-08, 05:48 PM
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June 2008 Criterion Releases
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (432, MSRP $39.95)
Synopsis
Paul Schrader's visually stunning, structurally audacious collagelike portrait of acclaimed Japanese author and playwright Yukio Mishima (played by Ken Ogata) investigates the inner turmoil and contradictions of a man who attempted an impossible harmony between self, art, and society. Taking place on Mishima's last day, when he famously committed public seppuku (ritual suicide), the film is punctuated by extended flashbacks to the writer's life as well as gloriously stylized evocations of his fictional works. With its rich cinematography by John Bailey, exquisite sets and costumes by Eiko Ishioka, and unforgettable, highly influential score by Philip Glass, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is a sincere tribute to its subject, and a bold, investigative work of art in its own right.
Special Features
* - DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES
* - New, restored high-definition digital transfer of the director's cut, supervised and approved by director Paul Schrader and cinematographer John Bailey
* - Optional English and Japanese voice-over narrations, the former by Roy Scheider, the latter by Ken Ogata
* - New audio commentary featuring Schrader and producer Alan Poul
* - The Strange Case of Yukio Mishima, a 55-minute BBC documentary about the author
* - New interviews with Donald Richie and John Nathan, collaborators and friends of Yukio Mishima
* - New interviews with Bailey, producers Tom Luddy and Mata Yamamoto, composer Philip Glass, and production designer Eiko Ishioka
* - A new audio interview with coscreenwriter Chieko Schrader
* - A video interview excerpt featuring Mishima talking about writing
* - Theatrical trailer
* - New and improved English subtitle translation
* - PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by critic Kevin Jackson and a piece on the film’s censorship in Japan
Patriotism (433, MSRP $24.95)
Synopsis
Playwright and novelist Yukio Mishima predicted his own suicide with this ravishing short feature, his only foray into filmmaking (codirected with Domoto Masaki), yet made with the expressiveness and confidence of a true cinema artist. All prints of Patriotism (Yukoku), which depicts the seppuku (ritual suicide) of a naval officer, were destroyed after Mishima's death in 1970, though the negative was saved, and the film resurfaced thirty-five years later. New viewers will be stunned at the depth and clarity of Mishima's vision, as well as his graphic depictions of sex and death. The film is presented here with a choice of Japanese or English intertitles.
Special Features
* - New, restored high-definition digital transfer of the Japanese and English versions, with optional Japanese or English intertitles
* - A 45-minute audio recording of Yukio Mishima speaking to the Foreign Correspondents' Association of Japan
* - A 45-minute making-of documentary, featuring crew from the film's production
* - Interview excerpts featuring Mishima discussing war and death
* - New and improved English subtitle translation
* - PLUS: A new essay by renowned critic and historian Tony Rayns, Mishima's original short story, and Mishima's extensive notes on the film's production
Classe tous risques (434, MSRP $29.95)
Synopsis
Though sentenced to death, in absentia, in France, former gangland chief Abel Davos (Lino Ventura) sneaks back to Paris with his children after hiding out in Milan for nearly a decade. Accompanied by appointed guardian Eric Stark (Jean-Paul Belmondo, in his first release after Breathless) and beset by backstabbing former friends, Abel begins a journey through the postwar Parisian underworld that's both throat grabbing and soul searching. A character study of a career criminal at the end of his rope, this rugged noir from Claude Sautet (Un coeur en hiver) is a thrilling highlight of sixties French cinema.
Special Features
* - New, restored high-definition digital transfer
* - Excerpts from Claude Sautet ou La magie invisible, a documentary on the director by writers N. T. Binh and Dominique Rabourdin
* - Archival interview footage featuring actor Lino Ventura discussing his career
* - Original French and U.S. release trailers
* - New and improved English subtitle translation
* - PLUS: New essays by director Bertrand Tavernier and critic N. T. Binh, a reprinted interview with Sautet, and a tribute by Jean-Pierre Melville
The Furies (435, MSRP $39.95)
Synopsis
Barbara Stanwyck and Walter Huston are at their fierce finest in master Hollywood craftsman Anthony Mann’s crackling western melodrama The Furies. In 1870s New Mexico Territory, megalomaniacal widowed ranch owner T. C. Jeffords (Huston, in his final role) butts heads with his daughter, Vance (Stanwyck), a firebrand with serious daddy issues, over her dowry, choice of husband, and, finally, ownership of the land itself. Both sophisticated in its view of frontier settlement and ablaze with searing domestic drama, The Furies is a hidden treasure of American filmmaking, boasting Oscar–nominated cinematography and vivid supporting turns from Judith Anderson, Wendell Corey, and Gilbert Roland.
Special Features
* - New, restored high-definition digital transfer
* - Audio commentary featuring film historian Jim Kitses (Horizons West)
* - A rare, 1931 on-camera interview with Walter Huston, made for the movie theater series Intimate Interviews
* - New video interview with Nina Mann, daughter of director Anthony Mann
* - Stills gallery of rare behind-the-scenes photos
* - Theatrical trailer
* - PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by critic Robin Wood ans a 1957 Cahiers du cinéma interview with Mann, as well as a new printing of Niven Busch's original novel
* - More!
Before the Rain (436, MSRP $39.95)
Synopsis
The first film made in the newly independent Republic of Macedonia, Milcho Manchevski's Before the Rain crosscuts the stories of an orthodox Christian monk (Grégoire Colin), a British photo agent (Katrin Cartlidge), and a native Macedonian war photographer (Rade Šerbedžija) to paint a portrait of simmering, entrenched ethnic and religious hatred about to reach its boiling point. Made during the strife of the war-torn Balkan states in the nineties, this gripping triptych of love and violence is also a timeless evocation of the loss of pastoral innocence, and remains one of recent cinema's most poetic evocations of the futility of war.
Special Features
* - DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
* - New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Milcho Manchevski
* - Audio commentary featuring Manchevski and film scholar Annette Insdorf
* - New video interview with actor Rade Šerbedžija
* - Manchevski's award-winning music video of Arrested Development's "Tennessee"
* - Stills galleries of Manchevski's photographs and on-set shots
* - Theatrical trailer
* - New and improved English subtitle translation
* - PLUS: A new essay by film scholar Ian Christie
Synopsis
Paul Schrader's visually stunning, structurally audacious collagelike portrait of acclaimed Japanese author and playwright Yukio Mishima (played by Ken Ogata) investigates the inner turmoil and contradictions of a man who attempted an impossible harmony between self, art, and society. Taking place on Mishima's last day, when he famously committed public seppuku (ritual suicide), the film is punctuated by extended flashbacks to the writer's life as well as gloriously stylized evocations of his fictional works. With its rich cinematography by John Bailey, exquisite sets and costumes by Eiko Ishioka, and unforgettable, highly influential score by Philip Glass, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is a sincere tribute to its subject, and a bold, investigative work of art in its own right.
Special Features
* - DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES
* - New, restored high-definition digital transfer of the director's cut, supervised and approved by director Paul Schrader and cinematographer John Bailey
* - Optional English and Japanese voice-over narrations, the former by Roy Scheider, the latter by Ken Ogata
* - New audio commentary featuring Schrader and producer Alan Poul
* - The Strange Case of Yukio Mishima, a 55-minute BBC documentary about the author
* - New interviews with Donald Richie and John Nathan, collaborators and friends of Yukio Mishima
* - New interviews with Bailey, producers Tom Luddy and Mata Yamamoto, composer Philip Glass, and production designer Eiko Ishioka
* - A new audio interview with coscreenwriter Chieko Schrader
* - A video interview excerpt featuring Mishima talking about writing
* - Theatrical trailer
* - New and improved English subtitle translation
* - PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by critic Kevin Jackson and a piece on the film’s censorship in Japan
Patriotism (433, MSRP $24.95)
Synopsis
Playwright and novelist Yukio Mishima predicted his own suicide with this ravishing short feature, his only foray into filmmaking (codirected with Domoto Masaki), yet made with the expressiveness and confidence of a true cinema artist. All prints of Patriotism (Yukoku), which depicts the seppuku (ritual suicide) of a naval officer, were destroyed after Mishima's death in 1970, though the negative was saved, and the film resurfaced thirty-five years later. New viewers will be stunned at the depth and clarity of Mishima's vision, as well as his graphic depictions of sex and death. The film is presented here with a choice of Japanese or English intertitles.
Special Features
* - New, restored high-definition digital transfer of the Japanese and English versions, with optional Japanese or English intertitles
* - A 45-minute audio recording of Yukio Mishima speaking to the Foreign Correspondents' Association of Japan
* - A 45-minute making-of documentary, featuring crew from the film's production
* - Interview excerpts featuring Mishima discussing war and death
* - New and improved English subtitle translation
* - PLUS: A new essay by renowned critic and historian Tony Rayns, Mishima's original short story, and Mishima's extensive notes on the film's production
Classe tous risques (434, MSRP $29.95)
Synopsis
Though sentenced to death, in absentia, in France, former gangland chief Abel Davos (Lino Ventura) sneaks back to Paris with his children after hiding out in Milan for nearly a decade. Accompanied by appointed guardian Eric Stark (Jean-Paul Belmondo, in his first release after Breathless) and beset by backstabbing former friends, Abel begins a journey through the postwar Parisian underworld that's both throat grabbing and soul searching. A character study of a career criminal at the end of his rope, this rugged noir from Claude Sautet (Un coeur en hiver) is a thrilling highlight of sixties French cinema.
Special Features
* - New, restored high-definition digital transfer
* - Excerpts from Claude Sautet ou La magie invisible, a documentary on the director by writers N. T. Binh and Dominique Rabourdin
* - Archival interview footage featuring actor Lino Ventura discussing his career
* - Original French and U.S. release trailers
* - New and improved English subtitle translation
* - PLUS: New essays by director Bertrand Tavernier and critic N. T. Binh, a reprinted interview with Sautet, and a tribute by Jean-Pierre Melville
The Furies (435, MSRP $39.95)
Synopsis
Barbara Stanwyck and Walter Huston are at their fierce finest in master Hollywood craftsman Anthony Mann’s crackling western melodrama The Furies. In 1870s New Mexico Territory, megalomaniacal widowed ranch owner T. C. Jeffords (Huston, in his final role) butts heads with his daughter, Vance (Stanwyck), a firebrand with serious daddy issues, over her dowry, choice of husband, and, finally, ownership of the land itself. Both sophisticated in its view of frontier settlement and ablaze with searing domestic drama, The Furies is a hidden treasure of American filmmaking, boasting Oscar–nominated cinematography and vivid supporting turns from Judith Anderson, Wendell Corey, and Gilbert Roland.
Special Features
* - New, restored high-definition digital transfer
* - Audio commentary featuring film historian Jim Kitses (Horizons West)
* - A rare, 1931 on-camera interview with Walter Huston, made for the movie theater series Intimate Interviews
* - New video interview with Nina Mann, daughter of director Anthony Mann
* - Stills gallery of rare behind-the-scenes photos
* - Theatrical trailer
* - PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by critic Robin Wood ans a 1957 Cahiers du cinéma interview with Mann, as well as a new printing of Niven Busch's original novel
* - More!
Before the Rain (436, MSRP $39.95)
Synopsis
The first film made in the newly independent Republic of Macedonia, Milcho Manchevski's Before the Rain crosscuts the stories of an orthodox Christian monk (Grégoire Colin), a British photo agent (Katrin Cartlidge), and a native Macedonian war photographer (Rade Šerbedžija) to paint a portrait of simmering, entrenched ethnic and religious hatred about to reach its boiling point. Made during the strife of the war-torn Balkan states in the nineties, this gripping triptych of love and violence is also a timeless evocation of the loss of pastoral innocence, and remains one of recent cinema's most poetic evocations of the futility of war.
Special Features
* - DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
* - New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Milcho Manchevski
* - Audio commentary featuring Manchevski and film scholar Annette Insdorf
* - New video interview with actor Rade Šerbedžija
* - Manchevski's award-winning music video of Arrested Development's "Tennessee"
* - Stills galleries of Manchevski's photographs and on-set shots
* - Theatrical trailer
* - New and improved English subtitle translation
* - PLUS: A new essay by film scholar Ian Christie
Last edited by Sondheim; 03-25-08 at 11:09 AM.
Sinister art work!!! I absolutely love it. Hope the short film is worth it however.
03-14-08, 08:46 PM
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This is one of the best years ever for Criterion IMO.
Before the Rain and the Furies are must-rents and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is probably gonna be a blind buy. Patriotism sounds good but I don't really dig short films. possible rent on that one. Looks like that $600 the government is giving me soon is gonna end up going to the Criterion Collection this year.
Before the Rain and the Furies are must-rents and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is probably gonna be a blind buy. Patriotism sounds good but I don't really dig short films. possible rent on that one. Looks like that $600 the government is giving me soon is gonna end up going to the Criterion Collection this year.
03-14-08, 08:46 PM
#8
DVD Talk Gold Edition
And to think, less than a month ago in the International forum I was grumbling about the lack of an English-friendly CLASSE TOUS RISQUES release...I'm very pleased by this news!
03-14-08, 10:26 PM
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Originally Posted by MoviePage
The Furies sounds very interesting, and the cover art is amazing. Haven't seen it, but it looks like another blind-buy Criterion for me. I'm rarely disappointed.
03-14-08, 11:55 PM
#14
Originally Posted by DVD Guy ATL
Thanks... was hoping for some Italian neorealism though, "Miracle in Milan" or "Ossessione", which have been hinted at on other boards... will keep my fingers crossed!
03-15-08, 06:17 AM
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The release of Patriotism; Mishima's only film, is a major R1 coup for Criterion, and they deserve to be applauded for getting it out there.
I plan on getting everything else this month, too. The best month for Criterion in ages.
I plan on getting everything else this month, too. The best month for Criterion in ages.
03-15-08, 11:30 AM
#21
DVD Talk Special Edition
The efforts of 2 DVD talkers, Pro-B and myself, are one of the main reasons why Criterion is releasing Before the Rain on DVD. It's unreal to me that it is finally going to be released. I hope that everyone gives the movie a shot...it's definitely worth a blind buy.
03-15-08, 12:35 PM
#22
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This is one of the best months Criterion has had in quite a while, in my opinion. I'm planning to purchase every single one of these titles.
I must say your guys' promotion of the film is what sold it for me (though Criterion's description also does a good job of making me want to see it - as does the cover.) I will be giving it a blind buy as soon as it comes out, and I'm fully expecting to love it. (But if I don't... 
)
Originally Posted by badlieut
The efforts of 2 DVD talkers, Pro-B and myself, are one of the main reasons why Criterion is releasing Before the Rain on DVD. It's unreal to me that it is finally going to be released. I hope that everyone gives the movie a shot...it's definitely worth a blind buy.
)
03-15-08, 12:51 PM
#23
DVD Talk Special Edition
Originally Posted by me12321
This is one of the best months Criterion has had in quite a while, in my opinion. I'm planning to purchase every single one of these titles. I must say your guys' promotion of the film is what sold it for me (though Criterion's description also does a good job of making me want to see it - as does the cover.) I will be giving it a blind buy as soon as it comes out, and I'm fully expecting to love it. (But if I don't... )
)
Last edited by badlieut; 03-15-08 at 12:54 PM.
03-15-08, 06:54 PM
#24
DVD Talk Hero
Before The Rain is a beautiful film, but it kinda makes me want to kill myself, therefore it's not something I ever want to own (or revisit). I'll be getting Mishima though.
03-15-08, 07:23 PM
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Originally Posted by badlieut
The efforts of 2 DVD talkers, Pro-B and myself, are one of the main reasons why Criterion is releasing Before the Rain on DVD. It's unreal to me that it is finally going to be released. I hope that everyone gives the movie a shot...it's definitely worth a blind buy.
Either way, nice release. Saw the movie a long time ago on VHS, and I recall liking it. Won't be buying, but I might rent it somewhere down the line.