re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

They made it their cover photo on facebook. If they don't announce it this month I'm going to cry forever.

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

yeah - should be Wednesday the 15th

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

I always thought their announcements were on the second Monday of every month. That's what I get for assuming.

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

...And it's announcement time:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/criterion-pr...ox_348x490.jpg http://s3.amazonaws.com/criterion-pr...ox_348x490.jpg http://s3.amazonaws.com/criterion-pr...ox_348x490.jpg http://s3.amazonaws.com/criterion-pr...ox_348x490.jpg http://s3.amazonaws.com/criterion-pr...jpg?1368647002http://s3.amazonaws.com/criterion-pr...png?1368647709

Seconds

Rock Hudson is a revelation in this sinister, science-fiction-inflected dispatch from the fractured 1960s. Seconds, directed by John Frankenheimer, concerns a middle-aged businessman dissatisfied with his suburban existence, who elects to undergo a strange and elaborate procedure that will grant him a new life. Starting over in America, however, is not as easy as it sounds. This paranoiac symphony of canted camera angles (courtesy of famed cinematographer James Wong Howe), fragmented editing, and layered sound design is a remarkably risk-taking Hollywood film that ranks high on the list of its legendary director’s major achievements.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 4K digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Audio commentary featuring director John Frankenheimer
• Actor Alec Baldwin on Frankenheimer and Seconds
• New program on the making of Seconds, featuring interviews with Evans Frankenheimer, the director’s widow, and actor Salome Jens
• Interview with Frankenheimer from 1971
• New visual essay by film scholars R. Barton Palmer and Murray Pomerance
• PLUS: An essay by critic David Sterritt

The Big City

The Big City (Mahanagar), set in mid-1950s Calcutta and directed by the great Satyajit Ray, follows the personal triumphs and frustrations of Arati (Madhabi Mukherjee), who decides, despite the initial protests of her bank-clerk husband, to take a job to help support their family. With remarkable sensitivity and attention to the details of everyday working-class life, Ray gradually builds a powerful human drama that is at once a hopeful morality tale and a commentary on the identity of the contemporary Indian woman.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 2K digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• New interview with actor Madhabi Mukherjee
• Satyajit Ray and the Modern Woman, a new interview program featuring Ray historian Suranjan Ganguly
• The Coward (1965), a feature film directed by Ray that also addresses modern female identity and stars Mukherjee and Soumitra Chatterjee
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by scholar Chandak Sengoopta and an interview with Ray from the 1980s by his biographer Andrew Robinson

Charulata

This film about a woman’s artistic and romantic yearning by Satyajit Ray is set in late nineteenth-century, pre-independence India. It takes place in the gracious home of a liberal-minded, workaholic newspaper editor and his lonely, stifled wife, Charulata (Madhabi Mukherjee), whose exquisitely composed features mask a burning creativity. When her husband’s poet cousin comes to stay with them, Charulata finds herself both inspired by him to pursue her own writing and dangerously drawn to him physically. Based on a novella by the great Rabindranath Tagore, Charulata is a work of subtle textures, a delicate tale of a marriage in jeopardy and a woman taking the first steps toward establishing her own voice.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 2K digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• New interview program with actors Madhabi Mukherjee and Soumitra Chatterjee
• Adapting Tagore, a new interview program featuring Indian film scholar Moinak Biswas and Bengali literature historian Supriya Chaudhuri
• Archival audio interview with director Satyajit Ray by film historian Gideon Bachmann
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Philip Kemp and a 1980s interview with Ray by his biographer Andrew Robinson

To Be or Not to Be

As nervy as it is hilarious, this screwball masterpiece from Ernst Lubitsch stars Jack Benny and, in her final screen appearance, Carole Lombard as husband-and-wife thespians in Nazi-occupied Warsaw who become caught up in a dangerous spy plot. To Be or Not to Be is a Hollywood film of the boldest black humor, which went into production soon after the U.S. entered World War II. Lubitsch manages to brilliantly balance political satire, romance, slapstick, and urgent wartime suspense in a comic high-wire act that has never been equaled.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New, restored 2K digital film transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• New audio commentary featuring film historian David Kalat
• Lubitsch le patron, a 2010 French documentary on director Ernst Lubitsch’s career
• Two episodes of The Screen Guild Theater, a radio anthology series: Variety (1940), starring Jack Benny, Claudette Colbert, and Lubitsch, and To Be or Not to Be (1942), an adaptation of the film, starring William Powell, Diana Lewis, and Sig Ruman
• Trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien
• More!

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

The Ray films are pretty cool, but there is still no P@HR, so it looks like I will indeed be crying forever.

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

That cover art for To Be is pretty clever.

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

SECONDS and TO BE OR NOT TO BE :thumbsup:

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

Not so sure about some of the covers, but these are all great movies. Pleasantly surprised to see more Satyajit Ray so soon after hearing about their deal to restore something like 20 of his films. (Also note The Coward among the extras for The Big City).

The only disappointment is the Fassbinder Eclipse set - you can buy more thorough sets from the UK for about the same price. Wait for a sale and you can probably even get them for about $20 shipped per set. (Now if they'd just start releasing the Eclipse sets on Blu-ray it would be an instant purchase.)

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

Great announcements, but I'm especially excited about To Be or Not to Be.

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

I'll get To Be Or Not To Be, can't use any of the others.

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

p@hr?

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

Picnic At Hanging Rock

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

I'm thrilled to see Seconds announced...

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

all 5 are must haves really.

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

Description says "science fiction", but what style would this be comparable to? The description above reminds me of Total Recall/We Can Remember It For You Wholesale.

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

If I remember it correctly, it's more akin to an old Twilight Zone episode where it was sci-fi but not with your typical sci-fi trappings and more of a weird drama.

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

Hmm, maybe grab that one a little later. I love TZ, but not sure about paying Criterion prices for something like that.

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

according to this article...janus films has acquired THE BROOD. :)

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

That's good news. Great news would be if they acquired Shivers.

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

With The Brood acquired those rumors of an "Early Cronenberg" set with Shivers, The Brood, Rabid and Scanners are looking better :D

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

That would be awesome.

I'm liking the love that Criterion seem to be giving Cronenberg lately.

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

An "Early Cronenberg" set would be cool, as long as it's all on blu and not an eclispe set...

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

Seeing as how those films have been available on DVD before, and how Scanners is quite a known title in it's own right, I don't see them being put on the Eclipse line.

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

"She just finished watching a recent Janus acquisition, David Cronenberg’s early horror masterpiece The Brood — she had to angle her laptop on a recent flight so it wouldn’t disturb the attendants —"

:lol:

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

The "Booed At Cannes" video from (I think) the Wall Street Journal showed a clip of "Crash" and the source said Criterion, so it looks like they'll be doing that one too.

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

I'd keep the dvd's I have over buying an Early Cronenberg Eclipse set. However if it was Blu Ray and was packaged as nice as the Cassavetes set, I'd probably go for it. My first choice though, would still be a seperate release for every Cronenberg film they decide to put out.

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

Crash!!

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

Yeah, I'm fairly certain the people at Criterion are smart enough to put any Cronenberg titles in the mainline - and probably as individual releases rather than a set. Those are almost guaranteed to be among their best sellers on BD - putting them in an Eclipse set would be mindbogglingly stupid.

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

Anybody figure out the new clue image yet?

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

It's apparently the Roberto Rossellini/Ingrid Bergman "Solitude" trilogy, which includes Europa '51, Stromboli, and Voyage in Italy. It should make a nice complement to the Rossellini War Trilogy set.

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

sounds right given the restorations for the last two (BFI is putting them out in Region B).

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot- perhaps is getting the Blu treatment from CC


http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=221132



take it FWIW

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot?!?! YESSSSSSSS

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

Just a heads up, a lot/most of the titles are 50% off on Amazon.

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

Looks like Linklater's Slacker will finally see the light of day on Blu courtesy of Criterion. And the thought of a Before trilogy would simply make my day.

http://collider.com/slacker-blu-ray-...ard-linklater/

Richard Linklater Reveals Criterion Is Releasing SLACKER on Blu-ray; Hopes to Eventually Release a BEFORE Trilogy Blu-ray Box Set

“I just had a thing from Criterion today that they’re gonna do a Blu-ray of Slacker, which isn’t kind of an obvious Blu-ray title but I’m glad they’re doing it. I think they’re just doing all their titles. It reminds me of when films were on VHS and they were retrospectively going back and doing DVDs, now we’re going back and doing Blu-rays of the titles. So I think they’ll get to all of them eventually. I’d like to see a triple box set, at some point, of all [Before] Blu-rays… And we’ve never really done a lot of extras and stuff, so we probably could do one up correctly.”

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

I just got a huge stiffy on the possibility of a Before trilogy blu-box from Criterion.

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

Man, now I really want to go out and buy some early Cronenberg Criterion Blu-rays. :(

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

I just came

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

I'm employing "patience is a virtue" and hoping it will pay off with a box set that'll get me harder than a Chinese calculus exam.

re: The Criterion Collection 4K/Blu-ray Discussion and Release Thread
 

I'll dump my old copies of Brood and Scanners but hold onto Rabid until something's announced. I'd be surprised if Criterion didn't make use of the commentary Cronenberg did for the SE DVD, but even if he records a new one for a CC disc, it'd be nice to have the original as well.

. . . and ditto for my Crash LD!

Stacked individual releases would be great, but I'd more than accept a box set that's lighter on extras, say only a commentary + some short featurettes/interviews on each film.