Criterion in April
 

Mathieu Kassovitz's LA HAINE
Stuart Cooper's OVERLORD
Jules Dassin's BRUTE FORCE

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Synopsis
When he was just twenty-nine years old, Mathieu Kassovitz took the international film world by storm with La haine (Hate), a gritty, unsettling, and visually explosive look at the racial and cultural volatility in modern-day France, specifically in the low-income banlieue districts on Paris’s outskirts. Aimlessly whiling away their days in the concrete environs of their dead-end suburbia, Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Hubert (Hubert Koundé), and Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui)—a Jew, an African, and an Arab—give human faces to France’s immigrant populations, their bristling resentment at their social marginalization slowly simmering until it reaches a climactic boiling point. A work of tough beauty, La haine is a landmark of contemporary French cinema and a gripping reflection of its country’s ongoing identity crisis.

Special Features
New, restored high-definition digital transfer
New English-language audio commentary by writer-director Mathieu Kassovitz
Optional Dolby Digital 5.1 track
Video introduction by Jodie Foster
Social Dynamite, a new video featurette on the film’s banlieue setting, including interviews with sociologists Sophie Body-Gendrot, Jeffrey Fagan, and William Kornblum
Stills gallery of behind-the-scenes photos
Theatrical trailers
New and improved English subtitle translation
PLUS: A new essay by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau and notes by acclaimed director Costa-Gavras
and MORE!!

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Synopsis
Seamlessly interweaving archival war footage and a fictional narrative, Stuart Cooper’s immersive account of one twenty-year-old’s journey from basic training to the front lines of D-day brings all the terrors and isolation of war to life with jolting authenticity. Overlord, impressionistically shot by Stanley Kubrick’s longtime cinematographer John Alcott, is both a document of World War II and a dreamlike meditation on man’s smallness in a large, incomprehensible machine.

Special Features
New, restored high-definition digital transfer
Audio commentary featuring director Stuart Cooper and actor Brian Stirner
Mining the Archive, a new video featuring Imperial War Museum film archivists detailing the war footage used in the film
“Capa Influences Cooper,” a new photo essay featuring Cooper on photographer Robert Capa
Cameramen at War, the British Ministry of Information’s 1943 film tribute to newsreel and service film unit cameramen
Germany Calling, a 1941 British Ministry of Information propaganda film, clips of which appear in Overlord
Journals from two D-day soldiers, read by Brian Stirner Theatrical trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: A new essay by critic Kent Jones, a short history of the Imperial War Museum, and excerpts from the Overlord novelization, by Cooper and Christopher Hudson


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Synopsis
As hard-hitting as its title, Brute Force was the first of Jules Dassin’s forays into the crime genre, a prison melodrama that takes a critical look at American society as well. Burt Lancaster is the timeworn Joe Collins, who, along with his fellow inmates, lives under the heavy thumb of the sadistic, power-tripping guard Captain Munsey (a riveting Hume Cronyn). Only Collins’s dreams of escape keep him going, but how can he possibly bust out of Munsey’s chains? Matter-of-fact and ferocious, Brute Force builds to an explosive climax that shows the lengths men will go to when fighting for their freedom.

Special Features
New, restored high-definition digital transfer
Audio commentary by film noir specialists Alain Silver and James Ursini
A new interview with Paul Mason, author of Capturing the Media: Prison Discourse in Popular Culture
Theatrical trailer
Stills gallery
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by film critic Michael Atkinson, and more!



Ciao,
Pro-B

Holy shit. Harry and the Hendersons, and now La haine? Ever since Hoop Dreams was released, it seems like every title on my unreleased wishlist is slowly but surely making it's way into production. Color me excited.

-JP

La Haine, fuck yeah!

La Haine

Yeah not bad if it was 5 years ago but there are 2 European HD-DVD and collector edition DVD sets out there already.

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Criterion = old hat this time.

Agreed 100%

Ciao,
Pro-B

I will get La Haine HD as soon as I get a player. At least they got it eventually though

Overlord is long overdue. I've wanted to see it since being astounded by the images on the Z Channel documentary. Blind buy, I think.

a yay for brute force.

I have the r2 la haine, but if the transfer's substantially better by criterion, I'll get it since I wont be getting a HD player anytime soon.

I'd buy the criterion la haine just for the additional extras. I own the r2 tin already.

None of these look all that compelling this time around. Which is fine, I need a break. all of their other release so far this year have been too compelling. :lol:

I'm really looking forward to Brute Force, I'll buy that one for sure. Overlord looks interesting as well, I'd at least like to see it.

Just Brute Force for me.

Me, too. Plus Ebert gave it a 4-star review not too long ago.

i really dont see what all the fuss is about with Criterion, can someone please explain it to me??

I'll wait for the reviews on the Haine. Hopefully I'll be able to find it cheaper than the R2.

They usually put a good deal of thought and effort into the DVDs they release. Many of the films would never get decent treatment by a major studio and many have never been released on DVD. Other than that, they are just another DVD studio. If the films they release don't interest you, then don't buy them.

I'm a fan of film noir and I can't wait for their releases of The Naked City in March and now Brute Force in April.

agreed.

I'm all over Brute Force. :up:

<b>La Haine</b> intrigues me, just because I've yet to see it, but I doubt I'll buy any of these, unless of course I run across them cheap used.

All three look interesting.

LA HAINE CC has a better cover than HDDVD version

At least La Haine will finally get to be seen by people who are shackled by region coding.

Yes indeed. "La Haine" may be 'old hat' for many of us, but I suspect it's been seen by a ridiculously small North American audience. Given that it's arguably one of the more relevant French films of the 90s, made ever more so given the violence in the Banlieues of last year, I think in addition to criticisms of 'old hat', we might also acknowledge that it's "about time" somebody finally released this film on DVD in North America.

Blind buy for any? yay or nay? Just to let you all know i'm a big fan of weird, surreal stuff any of that this time around? Or any other Criterion you would reccomend? :)

Ditto.

And for those of us who have never seen La Haine, this makes it much accessible.