Press Notes

The reviews keep rolling in for The Thief of Bagdad. Dennis Dermody at PAPERMAG writes of the "fabulous fantasy film": "it's a two-disc special edition with a luminous print (with eye-popping color and dazzling visual effects)...a thrilling adventure that only improves with repeated viewings." Meanwhile, Glenn Erickson of DVD Talk calls Thief " the undisputed favorite of all Arabian Nights fantasies...the special effects benchmark of its day--its poetic script and imaginative design have been much imitated but never bettered."

In IFC News, Michael Atkinson reviews Eclipse Series 9: The Delirious Fictions of William Klein: "Like a missing-link hominid stepping out of the jungle, famous photographer William Klein emerges on 21st century DVD as the great bullgoose Art Film-era satirist we never knew we had...The movies in the new Criterion Eclipse set are a revelation, but more than that, they appear to be timeless, and their blitzkrieg critiques are just as pertinent now as they were then."

The Thief of Bagdad receives "A" ratings from this week's issues of Entertainment Weekly and The Onion A.V. Club: Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker calls it "as glorious as any adventure film ever made... Alexander Korda's The Thief of Bagdad is both lush and playful, a fairy tale with gasping suspense...truly a DVD release for all ages, and a film for the ages." Scott Tobias of The Onion A.V. Club writes that "Alexander Korda's awe-inspiring 1940 production of The Thief of Bagdad [is] a Middle Eastern fantasia that springs from the screen like an illustrated storybook come to life."

In the New York Sun, Gary Giddins writes on Alexander Korda's The Thief of Bagdad: "Re-watching The Thief of Bagdad, released today in a glorious Criterion DVD transfer, is not unlike rereading Treasure Island. Conceived to enchant children, they both requite the adult longing for formative influences that withstand disillusionment and fashion...the film [revels] in cinematic craftsmanship--not least the then-novel techniques of color and trick photography--and boasts one of the most magisterial opening shots in cinema."

"So much ado, in New York's cinema culture this year, about the revolutionary upheavals of 1968, and yet very little looks as prescient or as true as a trilogy of satirical films" by William Klein, writes Steve Dollar in The New York Sun. Eclipse Series 9: The Delirious Fictions of William Klein "more than lives up to its title: these Pop art escapades erupt with laughing-gas absurdity." Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? "compels as a catalog of Mr. Klein's compositional verve," Mr. Freedom is "an extraordinarily colorful artifact of its times," and " The Model Couple (1977) holds its own three decades later as a spoof of reality television and social engineering...If only the snooze-fest that is "Big Brother" and its voyeuristic variations were as lively. But then, "reality" has a hard time keeping up with Mr. Klein's delirious fictions."

Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal reviews The Thief of Bagdad: I've just had my own eyes opened, once again, by The Thief of Bagdad, a 1940 fantasy that I've praised before...I thought the colors were sumptuous [before], but they've been bumped up to sublime in [the] magnificent Criterion version... The two-disk set also includes commentary by Francis Coppola and Martin Scorsese, who recall their own childhood enchantment with great children's films in the process of explicating this one."

In the Los Angeles Times, Sam Adams writes on Eclipse Series 9: The Delirious Fictions of William Klein: "Like the other movies in Eclipse's three-film collection,The Delirious Fictions of William Klein, out Tuesday, Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? is a fractured spectacle with an acid heart... Somewhere between the lunatic carnivals of Richard Lester and the wholesale deconstruction of Jean-Luc Godard, Klein's movies mix and match with heady abandon, but their carefree surfaces belie their rigorous designs."

DVDBeaver reviews the May release The Thief of Bagdad, which "maintains Criterion's hallmark standard of perfection. Overall, it is an unbelievably strong presentation... Fans of the film should be quite overwhelmed... like Martin Scorsese says, 'a child-like - not childish - film' of adventures and grandiose events."

In their "5 Things You Should Know About" feature, Time magazine reviews Louis Malle's The Lovers: "This 1958 drama about a bored middle-aged wife's affair established Malle's reputation and made Jeanne Moreau an international icon of erotic wisdom. The sex scenes, tame by today's standards, triggered a legal fight decided in the movie's favor by the U.S. Supreme Court. It's still an elegant study of urgent amour in bed, bath and beyond."

Jamie Rich reviews Louis Malle's The Lovers at DVD Talk, calling the film "an erudite reimagining of a traditional bodice ripper...the new Criterion DVD--its first U.S. release in the format--is a beautiful package, from the sophisticated design of the cover to the spotless widescreen video transfer...highly recommended."

In The Onion A.V. Club, Noel Murray reviews Eclipse Series 9: The Delirious Fictions of William Klein. Murray writes: "Like the documentaries Klein made prior to, during, and after his flirtation with narrative filmmaking, these three features sport a piercing wit, a wild imagination, and a general disinterest in proper storytelling... [With] a flair for political grotesquerie...all of Klein's films artfully express the philosophy espoused by one of the cultural commentators in Polly Maggoo: 'The surface is reality too.'"

David Wilentz writes on Eclipse 10: Silent Ozu: Three Family Comedies in the Brooklyn Rail: "The three 'family comedies' in the Silent Ozu package (dating from 1931-1933) find Ozu already making sharp observances about the Japanese psyche. That Ozu resisted the advent of sound underscores his affinity for visual storytelling... [he] was the undisputed master of transcendent family drama."

On his blog, esteemed former Chicago Reader critic Jonathan Rosenbaum rates Alex Cox's Walker a "must-see," and quotes from his original 1987 review: "the exhilaration and lyricism of its furious anger and wit are such that they could enlighten us all." In addition to praising "Criterion's recent and very attractive DVD release," Rosenbaum also mentions the "excellent" release of Two-Lane Blacktop and Mr. Freedom (now out as part of the latest Eclipse set), which received a "surprisingly warm and appreciative welcome in [Rosenbaum's] '60s world cinema course a few weeks ago."

In a "Summer DVDs" special in The New York Times, Charles Taylor writes on the July title Mon oncle Antoine: "Little known outside his native Quebec, [director] Claude Jutra was a spiritual brother of the great humanist filmmakers Jean Renoir, Vittorio de Sica and Satyajit Ray. Like them, he achieved the invisible technique that only master directors do... there are moments so wounding you recognize the vision and force of a great artist at work... Filmgoers should never have had to wait this long to discover Claude Jutra."

ln their "May DVDs" roundup, New York magazine writes on the Alexander Korda Technicolor wonder The Thief of Bagdad, out later this month. "This 1940 effects fantasia is a gobsmacking adaptation of The Arabian Nights--and the sharp two-disc set packs in an A-list extra: a commentary track from Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese."

In a New York Times "Summer DVDs" special, Stephanie Zacharek writes on the May title The Fire Within: "If it's possible to make an elegant movie about suicidal depression, Louis Malle did it with his 1963 The Fire Within... Scene by scene [Maurice] Ronet's performance is so delicately balanced that even when you know where the movie is headed, nothing can prepare you for the shattering near-silence of the final moment, one of the most mournful endpapers in the movies."

At Eye Weekly, Jason Anderson reviews Three Children's Classics from Janus Films: "all three of these shorts demonstrate the level of artistry possible in films made for children, a genre seldom given the critical attention it deserves." Anderson singles out Paddle to the Sea for praise: "blessed with a first-rate transfer, [Paddle] proves once and for all that the most beloved character in the history of Canadian cinema is carved out of wood."

Reviewing Eclipse Series 10: Silent Ozu--Three Family Comedies, Dan Callahan writes in The House Next Door: this "new Eclipse series release... is valuable in that it lets us see the genesis of his refined late style... Ozu's technical skills are already impressive in these three early films, and his way of looking at life and people is as firm at age thirty as it would be at age fifty."