March Criterions/Eclipse
#2
Senior Member
Special Features
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer
- A 1996 interview with director Alberto Lattuada by filmmaker Daniele Luchetti
- New video interviews with the director's son, Alessandro Lattuada, and wife, actress Carla Del Poggio (Variety Lights)
- Italian and U.S. theatrical trailers
- Stills gallery of promotional caricatures by artist Keiko Kimura New and improved English subtitle translation
Special Features
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer
- New video interview with architect Arata Isozaki
- Gaudí, Catalunya 1959, a short film by Hiroshi Teshigahara featuring footage from his first trip to Spain
- Monitor: Antonio Gaudí (1961), a short film essay by director Ken Russell
- VITA, a short film by Teshigahara on the sculpture work of his father, Sofu Teshigahara
- Original theatrical trailer
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by art historian Dore Ashton, and reprinted writings by Hiroshi and Sofu
Special Features
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Ang Lee and director of photography Frederick Elmes
- Audio commentary featuring Lee and producer-screenwriter James Schamus
- New documentary featuring interviews with actors Joan Allen, Kevin Kline, Christina Ricci, and Elijah Wood
- New video interview with novelist Rick Moody
- Deleted scenes
- Footage from an event honoring Lee and Schamus at New York's Museum of the Moving Image
- Production designs and sketches, with commentary by the designers
- Theatrical trailer
- PLUS: A new essay by film critic Bill Krohn
#7
Member
Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 159
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Originally Posted by Drop
The Ice Storm is a really great film, not matter what you may think of Ang Lee. It's worth a rental.
I'll probably end up buying it at the end of the year, anyway. I'll give Lee a third chance.
#8
Senior Member
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 782
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I have very little interest in the three Criterion releases, but the William Klein set is intriguing. It must be the most unexpected Eclipse release since the outstanding Raymond Bernard set.
#13
DVD Talk Special Edition
William Klein's explosive, challenging New York street photography made him one of the most heralded artists of the fifties. An American expatriate in Paris, Klein has also been making challenging cinema for over forty years, yet, with the exception of his acclaimed 1969 documentary Muhammad Ali, the Greatest, his film work is barely known in the United States. In his three fiction features—Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?, Mr. Freedom, and The Model Couple—he skewers the fashion industry, American imperialism, and middle-class complacency with hilarious, cutting aplomb. Today, Klein's politically galvanizing and insanely entertaining social critiques seem even more ahead of their time than works of the more famous New Wavers that overshadowed them: colorful, surreal antidotes to all forms of social oppression.
Box Set Includes:
Model Couple, The
William Klein, 1977
In 1977 France, the Ministry of the Future chooses two average, white, middle-class citizens, Claudine (Anemone) and Jean-Michel (André Dussolier), for a national experiment. They will be monitored and displayed for six months in a model apartment outfitted with state-of-the-art products and nonstop surveillance—the template for "a new city for the new man." An unusually prescient depiction of the breakdown of individual freedoms in the face of an increasingly mechanized consumer culture, William Klein's The Model Couple deftly satirizes a modern age out of control.
Mr. Freedom
William Klein, 1969
William Klein moved into more blatantly political territory with this hilarious, angry Vietnam-era spoof of imperialist American foreign policy. Mr. Freedom (John Abbey), a bellowing good ol' boy superhero, decked out in copious football padding, jets off to France to curtail a Commie invasion from Switzerland. A destructive, arrogant patriot in tight pants, Freedom joins forces with Marie-Madeleine (satirically sexy Delphine Seyrig) to combat lefty freethinkers, as well as insidious evildoers Moujik Man and the inflatable Red China Man, culminating in a gloriously star-spangled showdown of kitschy excess. Delightfully crass, Mr. Freedom is a trenchant, rib-tickling takedown of gaudy modern Americana.
Who Are You, Polly Magoo?
William Klein, 1966
After a nearly decade as Vogue's most subversive fashion photographer, William Klein made this wild, pseudo-vérité peek into the world of Parisian haute couture—and was summarily released from his contract at the magazine. Elegant, scathing humor ties together the various strands of this alternately glamorous and grotesque portrait of American in Paris Polly Maggoo (Dorothy MacGowan), a mannequin-like supermodel who becomes the pin-up plaything of media hounds and the fragmented fantasy of haunted Prince Igor (Sami Frey). Klein's first fiction film is a daring deflation of cultural pretensions and institutions dressed up in ravishing black-and-white.
#14
DVD Talk Legend
Wow i open a Criterion thread and ive heard of one of the movies! I love The Ice Storm and the dvd i have is pretty cruddy so i might pick this one up.I agree with steelpotato on the cover though
#16
Member
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Tallahassee, FL
Posts: 249
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I will definitely be buying The Ice Storm, although I agree that the cover is bad (especially with the white border around it - why did they do that?), but I was also disappointed to see that it's only getting a 2.0 audio track. I know it's a dialogue-driven film, but still. Even the existing Fox DVD has better.
#17
DVD Talk Gold Edition
Join Date: Dec 1999
Location: Seattle
Posts: 2,165
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I'm getting the whole lot. I've only seen The Ice Storm (and I love that cover art, simply beautiful) and it's my favorite Lee film.
All the others sound very interesting and I wouldn't mind having them in the collection.
I haven't seen The Ice Storm in years, so I'm more than happy that I'll finally be able to own this and from Criterion...
All the others sound very interesting and I wouldn't mind having them in the collection.
I haven't seen The Ice Storm in years, so I'm more than happy that I'll finally be able to own this and from Criterion...
#19
DVD Talk Platinum Edition
Join Date: Jun 2002
Location: Seattle, WA
Posts: 3,129
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Antonio Gaudi is a definite purchase for me, although the features don't sound like they warrant a 2-disc set. The Klein Eclipse release sounds very interesting, and will certainly be worth a look.
Not sure if I'll bother upgrading the Ice Storm, but I do like the cover... but not that overused, unappealing alternating bold type.
Not sure if I'll bother upgrading the Ice Storm, but I do like the cover... but not that overused, unappealing alternating bold type.
#21
Member
Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 159
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I've decided to buy The Ice Storm as soon as it comes out, after all. This sounds a lot better than some of Criterion's other choices for modern American film.
Considering that you can currently sell the old edition of Gaudi for nearly $300, and that the Criterion edition is bound to be vastly superior to the old edition (not to mention it has a Ken Russel film and some other lovely extras)...it must take a lot to make you happy.
Though I agree that this is a somewhat slight month. Not at all an uninteresting one, but compared to an immense Varda box, some Lubitsch musicals or a gigantic (contraversial aspect ratio'd) The Last Emperor, this is a lesser month.
Originally Posted by bdots48
I'm probably sticking with the previous versions of Gaudi and The Ice Storm. IMO not exceptionally exciting Criterion news for a change.
Though I agree that this is a somewhat slight month. Not at all an uninteresting one, but compared to an immense Varda box, some Lubitsch musicals or a gigantic (contraversial aspect ratio'd) The Last Emperor, this is a lesser month.
Last edited by AGameWithStones; 12-15-07 at 09:23 AM.
#23
DVD Talk Special Edition
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 1,482
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Originally Posted by AGameWithStones
I've decided to buy The Ice Storm as soon as it comes out, after all. This sounds a lot better than some of Criterion's other choices for modern American film.
#24
DVD Talk Gold Edition
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Papillion, NE!
Posts: 2,342
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I'm really digging the Eclipse line. While I never heard of William Klein, I think this is the ideal thing to do...release a set of his films to get a little known director out there and that's what I really like about the Eclipse line.
#25
Originally Posted by Zodiac_Speaking
I'm really digging the Eclipse line. While I never heard of William Klein, I think this is the ideal thing to do...release a set of his films to get a little known director out there and that's what I really like about the Eclipse line.