DVD Talk Forum - October '09 Criterions

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Howards End
James Ivory
United Kingdom
1992
142 minutes
Color
2.35:1
English

Synopsis:

The pinnacle of the decades-long collaboration between director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant, Howards End is a thought-provoking, luminous vision of E. M. Forster’s cutting 1910 novel about class divisions in Edwardian England. Emma Thompson won an Academy Award for her dynamic portrayal of Margaret Schlegel, a flighty yet compassionate middle-class intellectual whose friendship with the dying wife (Vanessa Redgrave) of rich capitalist Henry Wilcox (Anthony Hopkins) commences an intricately woven tale of money, love, and death that encompasses the country’s highest and lowest social echelons. With a brilliant, layered script by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (who also won an Oscar) and a roster of gripping performances, Howards End is a work of both great beauty and vivid darkness, and one of cinema’s greatest literary adaptations.

Disc Features

* High-definition digital transfer, supervised by cinematographer Tony Pierce-Roberts (with uncompressed Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
* New appreciation of the late Ismail Merchant by director James Ivory
* Building “Howards End,” a documentary featuring interviews with Ivory, Merchant, Helena Bonham Carter, costume designer Jenny Beavan, and Academy Award–winning production designer Luciana Arrighi
* The Design of “Howards End,” a detailed look at the costume and production designs for the film, including original sketches
* The Wandering Company (1984), a 50-minute documentary about the history of Merchant Ivory Productions
* Original 1992 behind-the-scenes featurette
* Original theatrical trailer
* PLUS: An essay by critic Kenneth Turan

20 Oct 2009
Blu-Ray
1 Disc
SRP: $39.95

Monsoon Wedding
Mira Nair
India, France, Germany, Italy, United States
2001
114 minutes
Color
1.85:1
Hindi, Punjabi, English

Synopsis:

Cultures and families clash in Mira Nair’s exuberant Monsoon Wedding, a mix of comedy and chaotic melodrama concerning the preparations for the arranged marriage of a modern upper-middle-class Indian family’s only daughter, Aditi. Of course there are hitches—Aditi has been having an affair with a married TV host; she’s never met her husband to be, who lives in Houston; the wedding has worsened her father’s hidden financial troubles; even the wedding planner has become a nervous wreck—as well as buried family secrets. But Nair’s celebration is ultimately joyful and cathartic: a love song to her home city of Delhi and her own Punjabi family.

Disc Features

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:

* New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director Mira Nair and director of photography Declan Quinn (with DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
* Audio commentary featuring Nair
* Nair’s short documentaries So Far from India (1983), India Cabaret (1985), and The Laughing Club of India (2001), featuring video introductions by the director
* Nair’s short fiction films The Day the Mercedes Became a Hat (1993), 11’09"01—September 11 (Segment: “India”) (2002), Migration (2007), and How Can It Be? (2008), featuring video introductions by the director
* New video interview with actor Naseeruddin Shah, conducted by Nair
* New video interviews with Quinn and production designer Stephanie Carroll
* Theatrical trailer
* New and improved English subtitle translation
* PLUS: An essay by critic and travel writer Pico Iyer

13 Oct 2009
DVD
2 Discs
SRP: $39.95
Blu-Ray
1 Disc
SRP: $39.95

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Wings of Desire
Wim Wenders
Germany
1987
127 minutes
Color, Black and White
1.66:1
English, French, German

Synopsis:

Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin) is one of cinema’s loveliest city symphonies. Bruno Ganz is Damiel, an angel perched atop buildings high over Berlin who can hear the thoughts—fears, hopes, and dreams—of all the people living below. But when he falls in love with a beautiful trapeze artist, he is willing to give up his immortality to come back to earth to be with her. Made not long before the fall of the Berlin Wall, this stunning tapestry of sounds and images, shot in black and white and color by the legendary Henri Alekan, is movie poetry. And it forever made the name Wim Wenders synonymous with film art.

Disc Features

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:

* New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Wim Wenders (with DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
* Audio commentary featuring Wenders and actor Peter Falk
* The Angels Among Us (2003), a documentary featuring interviews with Wenders, Falk, actors Bruno Ganz and Otto Sander, writer Peter Handke, and composer Jürgen Knieper
* Excerpt from “Wim Wenders Berlin Jan. 87,” an episode of the French television program Cinéma cinémas, including on-set footage
* Interview with director of photography Henri Alekan
* Deleted scenes and outtakes
* Excerpts from the films Alekan la lumière (1985) and Remembrance: Film for Curt Bois (about the actor who plays Homer in Wings of Desire)
* Notes and photos by production designer Heidi Lüdi and art director Toni Lüdi
* Trailers
* New and improved English subtitle translation
* PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Michael Atkinson and writings by Wenders and Handke

20 Oct 2009
DVD
2 Discs
SRP: $39.95
Blu-Ray
1 Disc
SRP: $39.95

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Z
Costa-Gavras
France, Greece
1969
127 minutes
Color
1.66:1
French

Synopsis:

A pulse-pounding political thriller, Greek expatriate director Costa-Gavras’s Z was one of the cinematic sensations of the late sixties, and remains among the most vital dispatches from that hallowed era of filmmaking. This Academy Award winner—loosely based on the 1963 assassination of Greek left-wing activist Gregoris Lambrakis—stars Yves Montand as a prominent politician and doctor whose public murder amid a violent demonstration is covered up by military and government officials; Jean-Louis Trintignant is the tenacious magistrate who’s determined not to let them get away with it. Featuring kinetic, rhythmic editing, Raoul Coutard’s expressive vérité photography, and Mikis Theodorakis’s unforgettable, propulsive score, Z is a technically audacious and emotionally gripping masterpiece.

Disc Features

* New, restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by cinematographer Raoul Coutard
* Audio commentary featuring film historian Peter Cowie
* New interviews with Costa-Gavras and Coutard
* Archival interviews with Costa-Gavras; producer-actor Jacques Perrin; actors Yves Montand, Irène Papas, and Jean-Louis Trintignant; and Vassilis Vassilikos, author of the book Z
* Theatrical trailer
* New and improved English subtitle translation
* PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Armond White

27 Oct 2009
DVD
1 Disc
SRP: $39.95

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Eclipse Series 18:
Dušan Makavejev
Free Radical

Synopsis:

There’s never been another filmmaker quite like Dušan Makavejev. Even in the 1960s, when all of cinema’s steadfast rules seemed to be breaking down and artists such as Godard, Cassavetes, and Marker were dissolving the boundaries between fiction and documentary, Yugoslavia’s Makavejev stood alone. His films about political and sexual liberation were revolutionary, raucous, and ribald. Across these, his wild, collagelike first three films, Makavejev investigates—with a tonic mix of earnestness and whimsy—love, death, and work; the legacy of war and the absurdity of daily life in a Communist state; criminology and hypnosis; strudels and strongmen.

Collector's set includes:

Man Is Not a Bird
Dušan Makavejev, 1965

Man Is Not a Bird is an antic portrait of the love lives of two less-than-heroic men who labor inside a copper factory, yet Makavejev makes room for plentiful free-form riffing on the almost comically bleak environs.This is one of cinema’s most assured and daring debuts.

Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator
Dušan Makavejev, 1967

This story of a tragic romance between a young telephonist (Eva Ras) and a middle-aged rodent sanitation specialist (Slobodan Aligrudic) in Belgrade is an endlessly surprising, time-shifting exploration of love and freedom.

Innocence Unprotected
Dušan Makavejev, 1968

This free-associative, utterly unclassifiable film—assembled from the “lost” footage of the first Serbian talkie made during the Nazi occupation—is one of Makavejev’s most freewheeling farces.

13 Oct 2009
DVD Box Set
3 Discs
SRP: $44.95