Congratulations to the grand-prize winner of our May haiku contest, Tim Masters, for his “Criterion Time”:
In a darkened room
Dreams take shape before my eyes
Not sleeping. Watching.
The runners-up are Holly Beeman, Brendan Bettinger, Rudy Eiland, and Jerry Johnson. You can read their haikus, as well as more of our favorite entries, by clicking here. And special thanks to our guest judge, Donald Richie, who was impressed by the quality, not to mention the sheer volume, of the responses.
For June, we’ve come up with a challenge for all you Dazed and Confused enthusiasts. Click on the following link and you’ll see a selection of 1970s soundtrack bites from Richard Linklater’s now classic teenage all-night rager. Correctly identify the song title and the name of the band that performed it from the following lyric clues and you'll be entered to receive an original poster of the film signed by Linklater and the poster’s designer, Frank Kozik. One grand-prize winner will be randomly selected. Four runners-up will receive their choice of any one- or two-disc Criterion DVD that's in print. Send your entries to contest@criterion.com before June 26.
As always, happy viewing.
Credited with single-handedly reviving the “lost” art of the concert poster, Frank Kozik credits his career to his enthusiasm for Austin’s growing underground rock scene in the mid-eighties. Find out more, at www.frankkozik.net and www.fkozik.com. In addition to the poster included with this month’s Dazed and Confused, Kozik also designed Criterion’s cover art for Gimme Shelter.
1. General Idi Amin Dada
Possibly the most surreal documentary ever filmed. The restored print propels this into a realm of “reality” that’s nearly hallucinogenic. What a snappy dresser! A must for any accordion enthusiast.
2. The Last Wave
Death, bones, secret underground caverns . . . apocalypse. What more could anyone possibly want?
3. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
A masterpiece of art direction and set design. No other film in history has ever quite captured the essential dry rot of the 1970s fourth-rate Mediterranean beach world. Having spent sixteen summers in areas near, but not quite in, low-rent Med tourist towns, it was a thrill ride straight back to childhood.
4. The Naked Kiss
Fuller at his atavistic best. No way out. No redemption. Possibly the best opening sequence in film history.
5. Oliver Twist
This contains some of the most luminescent black-and-white cinematography ever seen. Fagin, as portrayed by Alec Guinness ,will have you squirming with repulsion, yet unable to take your eyes off his balding pate.
6. Time Bandits
Best film Napoléon ever—courtesy of Bilbo Baggins no less. Connery as Agamemnon isn’t bad either.
7. Walkabout
I saw this when I was maybe twelve years old. The father’s suicide, the dead guy in the tree—images that bothered me for decades. Chop that meat.
8. Brazil
Ian Holm seems to get into all the good movies (even, like, Alien). What’s with that? Never has dystopia looked so appealing. Count me in.
9. Burden of Dreams
All the goofy nature footage is worth sitting through for the ten seconds of pure hate that is Kinski’s freakout.
10. Lord of the Flies
Something’s to be said for the Bicameral Mind. Kill the Pig and the Gods will commune through the head on the pole. I think I’m getting Lasik—just in case the veneer shatters.
The Complete Mr. Arkadin
“Amazing... It’s difficult to imagine a better or more important DVD set
coming out this year.”
—Premiere
“The Criterion Collection’s three-disc Mr. Arkadin is one of the richest and most fascinating DVD sets ever produced.”
—Bloomberg.com
Fists in the Pocket
“One of the cleanest, sleekest Criterion transfers I’ve seen in a while . . . Alberto Marrama’s cinematography pulsates with ferocious vibrancy.”
—Slant
“A long-overdue screamer from the underscreened new-wave archives . . . Remains fierce and disconcerting.”
—Village Voice
“Forty-one years later, it’s still a hell of a rush.”
—The Leader
“Rough edged, combative, and honest, Marco Bellocchio’s 1965 I Pugni in tasca (Fists in the Pocket) has the jangly assault of a punk-rock album.”
—The DVD Journal
Elevator to the Gallows
“A taut classic . . . Bonus feature: great footage of Miles Davis.”
—Rolling Stone
“The marvelous score by Miles Davis comes off the speakers in a way that must be heard to be believed.”
—DVD Talk
“It’s never too late to have your view about film history changed. This new release—in a gloriously pristine high-definition digital transfer—of Louis Malle’s debut does that.”
—Cincinnati City Beat
STREET DATE: 6/6
This month, we are proud to present our first release from the unjustly neglected French master Maurice Pialat, À nos amours. A devastating portrait of domestic turmoil and teenage sexual rage, the film is also noteworthy as the ferocious debut of the immensely talented Sandrine Bonnaire, who would go on to become one of France’s most acclaimed actresses, appearing in everything from Agnès Varda’s Vagabond to Claude Chabrol’s La cérémonie. Yet Bonnaire didn’t set out to land her star-making role as the troubled young Suzanne; she was simply accompanying her sister to the audition. However, upon spotting the fiery and sultry Sandrine, Pialat asked her to audition as well. She later went on to play significant roles in Pialat’s next two movies—as well as in more than forty films.
STREET DATE: 6/6
“I’d always had this idea for a strange high school film,” recalls Richard Linklater in an interview appearing on our Dazed and Confused release. “I remember being a freshman in Huntsville and driving around all night with three or four guys in a Le Mans, listening to an eight-track of ZZ Top’s Fandango. Eight-tracks never ended; a song would get quiet, you would hear a click, and then it would pick back up. So, I wanted the film to start with a close-up shot of Fandango sliding into the eight-track player and then have a whole movie in this car, meeting people who drove up next to you, going through the drive-through, getting out and getting beer—basically always in and around the car.” Though Dazed and Confused didn’t end up quite as experimental as all that, it certainly coasts on a groove. And while Linklater was never able to secure the rights to ZZ Top’s song “Thunderbird” (he used Foghat’s “I Just Wanna Make Love to You” instead), you can always pop in the album (luckily Fandango has just been remastered by Rhino Records), select “Thunderbird,” queue up Dazed to the 44:39 mark, and re-create the movie in Linklater’s mind . . . sort of.
STREET DATE: 6/20
To achieve their Ray Harryhausen–inspired stop-motion animation for Equinox (1967), visual-effects master Dennis Muren and fellow monster maven David Allen, both under twenty-one years old at the time, used a slew of preexisting models Allen that had created as a teenager, including a towering Kong-like ape-man, a long-tentacled octopus beast, and a skeleton right out of Harryhausen’s The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. (A bloodred bat-winged demon was the only monster concocted exclusively for the film.) Legendary producer Jack H. Harris (The Blob) later bought Equinox, based on the quality of its special effects, and then hired unsung filmmaker Jack Woods (who had been a foley artist on Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus and helped edit John Cassavetes’s Faces) to lengthen and restructure the film. Muren and Allen have gone on to provide effects for beastly blockbusters from Star Wars to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (and Muren has won a stunning nine Oscars)—which has only enhanced the cult status and youthful charm of their first creature-feature collaboration.
STREET DATE: 6/13
The Complete Monterey Pop is one of our best-selling DVD box sets, and now, on the thirty-ninth anniversary of the Monterey International Pop Festival (June 16–18, 1967), we’ve decided to release D. A. Pennebaker’s concert feature Monterey Pop and his shorts Jimi Plays Monterey/Shake! Otis at Monterey for the first time as separate discs. So if you’ve been hesitant in the past to take the plunge for the entire box, it’s a great time to get your feet wet. These indelible performances from that historic weekend, by Janis Joplin, Simon & Garfunkel, the Who, the Mamas and the Papas, Ravi Shankar, and, of course, Jimi Hendrix and Otis Redding, captured by Pennebaker’s 16mm vérité camera style, remain as riveting as ever.
“This is Michael Powell, speaking and dreaming about Black Narcissus,” says Powell, as he opens his commentary track for Black Narcissus, the first-ever director’s commentary, recorded exclusively for the Criterion Collection way back in 1988. With a special Criterion double disc of Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s much sought-after A Canterbury Tale finally hitting shelves this July, it’s a great time to brush up on the oeuvre of the Archers. A stunning Technicolor melodrama shot by the visual genius Jack Cardiff, Black Narcissus features a young Deborah Kerr as one of five Protestant missionary nuns struggling to set up a school in the gorgeous yet isolated Himalayas. As in A Canterbury Tale, an elegiac paean to Powell’s rural childhood home of Kent, England, Black Narcissus has its share of dark psychologies and pathos, but above all, it’s a wondrously transporting, atmospheric work of art from two filmmakers at the glorious peak of their powers.
Koko: A Talking Gorilla
Yi Yi
Olivier’s Shakespeare box set
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