Jan 2006 Criterions
 

I searched and couldn't find any mention of these. Image has listed four new Criterions coming out in January:

Akira Kurosawa's The Bad Sleep Well

Vittorio De Sica's The Children Are Watching Us

Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring

John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln

Here are the specs for each (i stole them from Criterionforum):
The Bad Sleep Well ($29.95):
New, Restored High-Definition Digital Transfer
36 Minute Documentary on the Making-Of Bad Sleep Well
Original Theatrical Trailer
New and Improved Subtitle Translation
New Essays by Richard Combs and Michael Almereyda

Young Mr Lincoln ($29.95):
New, Restored High-Definition Digital Transfer
Archival Audio Interviews with John Ford and Henry Fonda
Academy Award Theater Radio Dramatization, Downloadable as an MP3 File
Stills Gallery
Optional English Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
New Essay by Film Critic Geoffrey O'Brien
More!

The Children Are Watching Us ($29.95):
New, Restored High-Definition Digital Transfer
New Video Interviews with Luciano de Ambrosis and Cesare Zavattini
New and Improved Subtitle Translation
Booklet Featuring Robert Cardullo and Stuart Klawans on Cesare Zavattini

The Virgin Spring ($39.95):
New, Restored High-Definition Digital Transfer
Audio Commentary by Ingmar Bergman Scholar Birgitta Steene
New Video Interviews With Gunnel Linblom and Birgitta Petersson
New Essay by Film Historian and Bergman Scholar Peter Cowie
New and Improved English Subtitle Translation
More!

Hell Yea

Wow. If those specs are correct, it looks like Criterion is getting even more creative with their supplements, particularly with the stuff on "Young Mr. Lincoln". Subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing? A downloadable MP3?!? Not sure about how I feel about that last one - no doubt it being downloadable is a factor in keeping the cost ten bucks cheaper, but still, I like to have everything right there.

But dang, what a line-up. More Kurosawa is always welcome, and more Bergman is just plain awesome. I've been especially waiting for them to announce "Virgin Spring". But the real cream of the crop has to be the long-awaited inclusion of John Ford into the Collection, with "Young Mr. Lincoln". Again I say, Wow.

Classic!!!!! I am very much looking forward to this new print.....

John Ford...finally one of our greatest directors will get a proper treatment!! Just superb news!!

Ciao,
Pro-B

More Bergman ... always a great thing!

...you posted exactly what I was going to post, word for word, a few hours before I ever got out of bed. Impressive. Now get out of my head.

-JP

Akira Kurosawa's The Bad Sleep Well, Finally!:)

The John Ford title is the one I'm most excited about but I can't wait to get The Bad Sleep Well also.

I'm all over the first three.

The cover art for Bad Sleep Well is now up at the criterion website. Here is the link:
http://www.criterionco.com/asp/release.asp?id=319

great news about young mr. lincoln. i hope that they visit some other ford titles too.

Bergman, Kurosawa, Ford, and DeSica. Wow.

I hope every Criterion month in 2006 is like January!

Young Mr. Lincoln as a criterion?!
Wow, I was awaiting this eagerly but never saw it being a criterion. Good news. Another '39 classic out on DVD.

Still no Spanish language movies?

I won't be buying any of these titles.

I keep hoping that sooner or later Criterion would release a Kusturica film...either The Time of the Gypsies OR....Black Cat White Cat...that would be superb!!!

Pro-B

I think Young Mr. Lincoln is my favorite Criterion cover now:

http://www.criterionco.com/content/i...ox_348x490.jpg

Cover for The Bad Sleep Well:

http://www.criterionco.com/content/i...ox_348x490.jpg

Yeah... it's great and all but...

http://criterionco.com/content/image...ox_348x490.jpg

Oh, that one's tres cool too - but I just love the atmosphere of YML (the river, the tree branches at the top, etc). Even the font has that 'old feeling'. It definitely has gotten me over the slight disappointment of the Naked cover.

The Young Mr. Lincoln cover is too much like The Man Who Fell to Earth cover.

How so? As how the text is placed? Of course, they are similarly placed - but that is all that is similar between them.

As you can tell from TMWFTE's cover, the title was placed like that for a reason: the title becomes smaller as it goes down (it's falling).

YML's title, IMO, symbolizes a biographical/novel-esque experience (the title is written as if it were on a biography or a novel). Plus we don't have a huge Henry Fonda head shot - replacing that with a scenic view and a 'body shot'.

Quite looking foward to that one!

It's a nice picture on Young Mr. Lincoln, but I don't like the text over it.

Got Young Mr. Lincoln...when did criterion go to the stacked disc....this case is awful. Double wide, but discs stacked on top of each other...

I was shocked by the case as well. I innitially chalked it up to a cost-cutting measure, as I thought this title had an MSRP of $29.99, cheap for a 2 disc Criterion. (I know I got it online for a very low price...) However, today at the store, I noticed it selling for $39.99. Crappy case and all.

I first saw this type of case on the later Star Trek DVDs, and again figured that Paramount was just trying to cut corners while maintaining the "fat" look of the series packaging. I guess i can live with that, but in the case of "Young Mr. Lincoln", it doesn't have to match any packaging, other than other Criterion 2-discers. Normally I'm all for a big solid-looking case, but these cases just seeem hollow and unstable, like the discs could fall off the spindles at any moment, and really swim around in there. The thinker two-disc cases (like they use for Star Wars movies) would've be good for this. (Assuming their booklet would've fit as well...)