The Criterion Collection
Feb 27, 2013 — More than eighty films into his career, Kenji Mizoguchi made this emotionally devastating masterpiece, from a story by Ogai Mori.
Oct 30, 2012 — “I discovered Criterion in the late eighties with the laserdisc of Citizen Kane, which I still watch,” writes director William Friedkin, whose films include The French Connection, The Exorcist, Sorcerer, and 2011’s Killer Joe. “Since switching to DVD and Blu-ray,...
Jun 12, 2012 — Miguel Arteta has directed the films Star Maps, Chuck & Buck, The Good Girl, Youth in Revolt, and Cedar Rapids, along with episodes of the television series American Horror Story, Nurse Jackie, Six Feet Under, and Ugly Betty. His list...
Short Takes
Apr 18, 2011 — In this photograph of the Brattle Theatre circa 1953, you can see a sign that says “Opening Soon! Foreign Films.” The brilliant idea behind the sign belonged to Harvard classmates Cy Harvey and Bryant Haliday, without whom the Brattle Theatre...
May 13, 2009 — It doesn’t really come as a surprise that Chris Marker is a devoted inhabitant of the virtual world Second Life. After all, one could call the playful French filmmaker and multimedia artist’s kitty—and alter ego—Guillaume-en-Egypt a trailblazing avatar (when asked...
Feb 22, 2009 — “Let me have men about me that are fat.” —Julius Caesar, act 1, scene 2 Just as Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe admired small, brave men who stick to their principles, I like—in the movies at least—heavyset, flamboyant types who walk...
Nov 21, 2008 — Cartoonist, filmmaker, and animator Bill Plympton, whose illustrations have appeared in the pages of the New York Times, the Village Voice, and Vanity Fair, and whose short films became famous on MTV in the eighties, directed the documentary Walt Curtis:...
Nov 21, 2008 — John Lurie, whose band, the Lounge Lizards, was one of the most acclaimed jazz groups of the eighties and nineties, has recorded twenty-two albums and has acted in several films, including Stranger Than Paradise, Down by Law, and The Last...
Nov 20, 2008 — Credited with single-handedly reviving the lost art of the concert poster, Frank Kozik credits his career to his enthusiasm for Austin, Texas’s growing underground rock scene in the mid-eighties. Find out more, at frankkozik.net and fkozik.com. In addition to the...
May 16, 1988 — Prior to the success of Scaramouche in 1952, many in Hollywood felt that the big-budget “swashbuckler” film was no longer a safe investment. While such motion pictures as MGM’s version of The Three Musketeers (directed by George Sidney, 1948) and...