The Criterion Collection
Production Notes
Nov 30, 2016 — 1.Marlon Brando and his father founded Pennebaker, Inc., one of several companies in the 1950s that were started by leading actors and backed by a major studio. This business model became popular as the “Big Five” studio system began to...
Essays
Nov 22, 2016 — The result of a notoriously troubled production, Marlon Brando’s unorthodox western presents a brooding vision of human futility.
Short Takes
Nov 18, 2016 — Artists across all mediums have long been obsessed with the challenge of evoking dream states, but film—with its oneiric combinations of light and shadow, and its ability to manipulate time and space—has particularly uncanny access to our nighttime reveries. Whether...
Nov 8, 2016 — This adaptation of one of the most influential series in manga history is a delirious mix of breathtaking swordplay and pop vulgarity.
Features
Oct 31, 2016 — In her latest column, critic Imogen Sara Smith explores landmark moments in the intersection of noir and the western, including Marlon Brando’s One-Eyed Jacks.
Criterion Designs
Oct 26, 2016 — When putting together the Criterion editions of Guillermo del Toro’s films, we assembled a talented group of artists, including Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, del Toro collaborator Guy Davis, comic book creator Becky Cloonan, and Russian artist Vania Zouravliov.
Oct 18, 2016 — Guillermo del Toro’s anti–Wizard of Oz refracts the surreal traumas of the Spanish Civil War through the eyes of a young girl.
Oct 11, 2016 — Before the New York Film Festival premiere of Hermia and Helena, his 2016 riff on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Argentine director stopped by to discuss the Bard and the movies that shaped him as a filmmaker.
Oct 5, 2016 — Rock critic Robert Christgau examines the evocative use of three early Leonard Cohen songs in Robert Altman’s brilliant revisionist western.
Oct 3, 2016 — Polish music icon Zbigniew Preisner, who first worked with the Dekalog director on 1985’s No End and went on to contribute to all of his subsequent films. Here, we present a selected playlist of Preisner’s most memorable work for Kieślowski.