The Criterion Collection
Essays
Aug 18, 2009 — Jacques Tati’s masterpiece converts work into play so pleasurably that it turns the very acts of seeing and hearing into a form of dancing.
Jul 2, 2009 — This week, Agnès Varda’s beguiling new film, the autobiographical documentary The Beaches of Agnès, makes its U.S. premiere at New York’s Film Forum, and for the occasion A. O. Scott has profiled the indefatigable eighty-one-year-old auteur in a splendid article...
Jul 1, 2009 — Almost thirty years have gone by since Wallace Shawn and André Gregory sat down for dinner on the Upper West Side and talked (and talked) their way into film history. So for our new special edition DVD of that encounter,...
Jun 22, 2009 — So much critical ink has been shed over Last Year at Marienbad that one might wonder if the flood of commentary, once receded, would take the film along with it. Alain Resnais’ second feature has been lavishly praised and royally...
May 21, 2009 — People just can’t get enough of The Red Shoes, judging by the buzz surrounding the new digital restoration of Powell and Pressburger’s Technicolor masterpiece, which premiered last week at the Cannes Film Festival. And the latest offering in the swirl...
May 20, 2009 — With its madcap mixture of the political and the, uh, porcine, Shohei Imamura’s Pigs and Battleships is a strange (and strangely satisfying) beast indeed. To better understand where the director was coming from when he made this breakthrough work, we...
May 6, 2009 — Donald Richie recently came through the United States on his eighty-fifth-birthday tour, and along the way he stopped in Berkeley for a conversation with longtime friend, Telluride codirector, and Mishima producer Tom Luddy. Those who have heard Donald’s Criterion interviews...
Apr 28, 2009 — When science fiction guru Forrest J Ackerman died last December, he was remembered for many firsts. Born November 24, 1916, Ackerman (known as Forry by fans and friends) purchased his first science fiction magazine in 1926. He founded the first...
Production Notes
Apr 22, 2009 — Some of you might have seen the news item on our website regarding the Jacques Tati “centennial-plus” and the exhibits around Paris paying homage to the inventive filmmaker. I had the good fortune to be in the City of Lights...
Apr 16, 2009 — If you’re feeling symptoms of Edie-itis lately—wearing sweaters and towels as kerchiefs, doing impromptu soft-shoes around the house, unexpectedly calling your mom “Mothuh, dahling”—don’t worry, you’re not alone. Something is definitely in the air.Staunch fans of the Maysles brothers’ 1976...