Wow, what a great response we got to last month’s Oscar contest.* We received a record-setting number of e-mails, so instead of selecting one contestant to choose a free DVD, we decided to pick five. Plus, five additional contestants were awarded new Criterion T-shirts. Congratulations to all the lucky winners listed below. We’re not offering a contest for April, but keep your eyes peeled for another in the May newsletter. And be sure to check out our press section for some nice words about some of our new releases.
As always, happy viewing.
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Street date:
4/18 |
In April we offer one of our most exciting titles yet: Orson Welles’s The Complete “Mr. Arkadin.” While film scholars agree that there is no definitive version of this wonderfully garish, labyrinthine, European-travelogue mystery, we’ve pulled together all the enticing evidence. Our three-disc set features the Corinth version (the earliest extant English-language print and what many believe to be the closest to Welles’s vision of the film); Confidential Report, the 1956 European release; and our brand-new “comprehensive version,” an amalgamation of elements from all known versions, pieced together like a jigsaw. Also included is the equally mysterious novel of the film, a pulp classic in the tradition of James M. Cain, and three half-hour episodes of the radio program The Lives of Harry Lime, upon which the film is based.
Needless to say, we are thrilled to present this truly comprehensive set, which reflects the contributions of Orson Welles scholars from around the world who have been trying to untangle this enigma for decades. Premiere magazine, which picked The Complete “Mr. Arkadin” as its May classic DVD of the month, said: “Amazing . . . It’s difficult to imagine a better or more important DVD set coming out this year.”
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Street date:
4/25
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We’d always wanted to get Jeanne Moreau on camera for an interview but were never able to convince her, not even for Jules and Jim. But when it came to Louis Malle’s feature-film debut, Elevator to the Gallows, the grande dame of French cinema was all ready to sit with us for a nice, long chat. Perhaps it’s because the film, and Malle himself, remain so important to her to this day: speaking of her director, and onetime lover, Moreau states, “He opened doors for me, as though I came out of a jail.”
We’ve also always been crazy about Miles Davis’s incredible soundtrack for Elevator to the Gallows, but what came as a real surprise was discovering just how much his score changed jazz history. Music critic Gary Giddins states in Miles Goes Modal, a special documentary feature on our release, “Where Miles Davis went, jazz went.” Well, on December 4, 1957, where Miles Davis went was the cinema, right on the cusp of the French new wave. Davis, after a little convincing from Malle, recorded the haunting, improvised score in one all-night session in Paris, with a host of young musicians. Davis’s score, Giddins says, showed “the beginnings of what would develop into his Milestones and Kind of Blue.” In this video clip sample, Giddins and jazz trumpeter John Faddis discuss Davis’s unforgettable contribution to film history.
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Street date:
4/25
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With both Marco Bellocchio and Bernardo Bertolucci having just burst onto the film scene, Italian cinema was seemingly at its radical peak in the mid-sixties. Bellocchio’s blackly comic Fists in the Pocket, with its depiction of a violently dysfunctional middle-class family that descends into murder, so infuriated Italy’s Christian Democrat Party that forty-one of its members called for its ban. Seen as a grotesque attack on “decent” family values, Bellocchio’s deliciously morbid cause célèbre really shook up the right-wingers, but its full-frontal assault on the bourgeoisie piqued the interest of critics, festival juries, and cinephiles everywhere, and it’s remembered to this day as a landmark.
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Was your money on the Gators or the Bruins? Well, ours is still on Hoop Dreams, and we can think of no better way to spend your March Madness winnings than on Criterion’s deluxe edition of Steve James, Frederick Marx, and Peter Gilbert’s unforgettable documentary. Following inner-city high school basketball stars and NBA hopefuls Arthur Agee and William Gates over the course of five difficult years, Hoop Dreams was hailed instantly as one of the great films of the 1990s. And with our 2005 edition, we caught up with everyone ten years later—the filmmakers as well as their subjects—to see where they are now, and to discover that, of course, the journey never ends.
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Congratulations to the winners of last month’s Oscar contest. Free DVDs were awarded to Seth Engel, Kate Diehn, Jon Witmer, Captain Bob, and Charles K. Noyes. New Criterion T-shirts were awarded to Matt Swanson, Neil Blanchard, Jheights, Justin Rielly, and Pasquale Vignola
*And for the record, fifteen foreign-language movies from the Criterion collection received Oscar’s best in show:
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For further information on Criterion and our products, please visit our website at www.criterionco.com.
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© 2006 The Criterion Collection |
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Our 2006 releases continue to receive rave reviews from all over the web and beyond.
La bête humaine
“A fascinating film, one made even more memorable by Criterion's perfected presentation.”
—DVD Talk
“With this picture, [Renoir] also proved himself a master of suspense . . .”
—Reel.com
Kind Hearts and Coronets
“This tour de force of black comedy from Ealing Studios remains one of the truly undimmed classics of British postwar cinema.”
—Variety
“Criterion’s reliably deluxe package is thorough and engrossing. Highly recommended.”
—DVD Talk
"The future Obi-Wan's tour de force makes for perfectly calibrated black comedy that's equal parts Oscar Wilde and Agatha Christie.”
—Time Out New York
Metropolitan
“Metropolitan seems even better than it did in 1990 because nothing since has been anything like it.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Metropolitan is a roadmap of where today's brightest filmmakers (including Noah Baumbach and Wes Anderson) "borrow" their best ideas”
—Spin
“A pristine package to a pristine film.”
—Reverse Shot
“It must be hoped that the release of Metropolitan, as a prestigious Criterion Collection DVD, will bring about the rediscovery of a director who has been gone from our screens for far too long.”
—DVD Times
The Virgin Spring
“As shocking and disturbing as ever"
—Entertainment Weekly
“The Virgin Spring is a surpassingly beautiful film . . . Criterion's transfer is immaculate.”
—Stop Smiling Online
“Bergman's Oscar-winning stunner is still the benchmark for a certain kind of unsettling art-house horror, and one of the Swedish master's best.”
—Time Out New York
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Selected by Gary Giddins
In honor of his participation in this month’s release of Elevator to the Gallows, we invited critic Gary Giddins to contribute a list of his ten favorite Criterion films:
M
The Naked Kiss
High and Low
Night and the City
Richard III
Mr. Arkadin
Children of Paradise
The Third Man
The Honeymoon Killers
The Lady Eve
For Giddins’s comments on these films, click here.
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This month we’d like to celebrate our friends in the New York City film community by singling out Manhattan’s Film Forum. The impeccable programming at this landmark theater runs the art-film gamut, from the latest in documentary and foreign film to comprehensive retrospectives of art-house legends like Ingmar Bergman and such overlooked artists as Japanese master Mikio Naruse and Hollywood dynamo Don Siegel, whose career is currently getting a four-week tribute. Visit www.filmforum.org for show times and to buy tickets online, and you can sign up for their e-newsletter here.
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