Happy 2006 to all of you, and thank you for your many notes last month.

We recognize that Criterion discs are a significant investment, and we’re determined to do what we can to help our customers build their collections. We encourage customers to shop around, because there are plenty of good deals out there. TowerRecords.com is offering 10 to 25 percent off most Criterion titles, and you’ll find discounts of up to 30 percent on selected titles at BarnesandNoble.com. CriterionDVD.com is an entire online store dedicated to Criterion discs, with most priced at 25 to 28 percent off the suggested retail price. At DVDPriceSearch.com you can quickly compare prices and shipping rates at a number of leading online retailers, and one store that consistently stands out for great prices is DVDPlanet.com, where the entire Criterion catalog is 35 percent off and shipping is free on orders over $25. If you find a retailer you think is doing an especially good job supporting Criterion customers, please don’t hesitate to let us know, so we can spread the word.

Wishing you happy viewing as always,
The Criterion Collection
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Akira Kurosawa often turned to Shakespeare for inspiration. Our 2003 release Throne of Blood (based on Macbeth) and last year’s Ran (with roots in King Lear) show the fusion of the great bard with the director’s unique vision, and The Bad Sleep Well follows suit. A modern-day tale of the corrupting influence of power, the film has connections to Hamlet, though, as with the others, Kurosawa makes the story his own. In the film’s brilliant opening minutes—an achievement unparalleled even within the director’s own career—he makes clear that something is indeed rotten at Public Corp. Who would have imagined that the emergence of a wedding cake could conjure up the dead?
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The release of The Virgin Spring in the U.S., in 1960, incited censorship battles across the country, because of a scene of sexual violence. New York State ordered the removal of twenty-four seconds from the film to tone down the offending episode, and the film remained in this form in subsequent years. For the first time on home video, we are presenting the film with the original scene intact. Ingmar Bergman always defended his depiction, noting that “we must not hesitate in our portrayal of human degradation, even if, in our demand for truth, we must violate certain taboos.”
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We’ve long been fans of Michael Barker and his copresidents at Sony Pictures Classics, Tom Bernard and Marcie Bloom. Together they have brought out some of the best and most successful independent and international films of the last two decades, from Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and City of Lost Children to House of Flying Daggers and Saraband to this year’s Capote and Cache. Michael has also been an invaluable friend and supporter of Criterion, offering advice, suggestions, and occasionally helping us to secure the participation of some of the many filmmakers whose respect and admiration he has earned. Michael recently told us that The Virgin Spring had inspired both Pedro Almodóvar and Ang Lee to make movies, and it is thanks to him that Mr. Lee appears in an interview on our new release of Bergman’s 1960 Academy Award winner. No filmmaker was closer to Michael’s heart than Louis Malle, whose Au revoir les enfants he and his partners originally released, and on the eve of Criterion’s upcoming Louis Malle box set, we asked him to pick his ten favorite Criterion releases. To read about his Criterion selects, click here.
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Heaven Can Wait
L’eclisse
Ikiru
The Killers

That Obscure Object of Desire
Pickpocket
Contempt
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
The Shop on Main Street
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3 Films by Louis Malle
  Murmur of the Heart
  Lacombe, Lucien
  Au revoir les enfants
Kind Hearts & Coronets

La bête humaine
Metropolitan
The Children Are Watching Us
Traffic
 Young Mr. Lincoln
For further information on Criterion and our products, please visit our website at www.criterion.com

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©2005 The Criterion Collection
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We’ve got a couple of things we want to respond to this month. A number of you have asked whether Image’s announcement of the reissue of Steven Soderberg’s Traffic means that a new version is hitting stores. The short answer is no; this version is identical to the one that received the Video Software Dealers Award for best Special Edition Disc of 2003. Unfortunately, its availability has been very limited. It seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle when USA Films was acquired by Universal. Many customers have written in to ask if we could help make the Criterion Traffic more readily available, and we’re happy to announce that we’ve worked out a deal to put our edition back in a wide array of stores beginning in March.

Thanks also to all of you who have written in about the postcards now appearing in select Criterion releases. We launched with four designs—Le samouraï, Masculin féminin, Tales of Hoffmann, and Ugetsu—and the enthusiastic response we’ve received has been very gratifying. In the coming months, we will continue to expand the postcard offerings to include original DVD and theatrical release art (click here to see those currently available). These postcards will be placed in first printings of single-edition releases as well as in single-edition catalog titles. Feel free to send along suggestions for the next round.
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Award season is around the corner, and one of the contenders is a name familiar to Criterion. David Cronenberg and his 2005 A History of Violence—an extraordinary look at violence, its roots, and how we become who we are—continue to garner nominations, for the film’s acting and its brilliant direction. Cronenberg was one of the first directors to appear on DVD at Criterion (Dead Ringers is spine number 21), and in the past two years we’ve added Naked Lunch and Videodrome to the collection. Recently, Cronenberg has acknowledged that he has taken a new direction in his work, moving toward the deeply personal—part of what he describes as a larger trend of “self-obsession” among artists. In his extraordinary commentary on our 2004 DVD release of Videodrome, he describes this new approach—one where he hopes to go within, showing all the world “in a grain of sand.” To hear this brief commentary excerpt, click here.
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