The Criterion Collection
Nov 2, 2009 — The following, written in 1986, is from the first treatment for Wings of Desire. And we, spectators always, everywhere,looking at, never out of, everything!—Rilke, “The Eighth Elegy” At first it’s not possible to describe anything beyond a wish or a...
Short Takes
Nov 2, 2009 — Ang Lee has confirmed that his next film will be an adaptation of Yann Martel’s mammoth best-seller Life of Pi, the fanciful tale of a young boy from Pondicherry, India, who survives a shipwreck only to be stranded in a...
Short Takes
Oct 29, 2009 — In the spirit of the season, we asked a select coven of horror mavens (including a couple of our own) to write about their favorite Criterion scarefests. Chuck StephensEquinox: The Eyebrows of Mr. Asmodeus There are myriad ways into Equinox,...
Essays
Oct 27, 2009 — Who speaks of Howards End these days? Who expounds on the virtues of this magnificent drama, whose traditional style seems almost as distant as its Edwardian setting? Seen today, years past its 1992 release, it strikes one as not only...
Essays
Oct 25, 2009 — Costa-Gavras’s 1969 political assassination thriller Z appeared at the end of a decade of burgeoning cultural change and rampant paranoia. In the United States, this Algerian-French coproduction sparked a sensation, not just relaying the European political crisis but perfectly capturing...
Short Takes
Oct 22, 2009 — Sheila Heti of the Believer had a chance to talk to Agnès Varda during the Toronto International Film Festival—or rather, a chance to be one of a group of reporters whom Varda, at the festival with her film The Beaches...
Short Takes
Oct 22, 2009 — The eighty-one-year-old Ennio Morricone has been composing hypnotic music for film since the early 1960s, for projects ranging from spaghetti westerns (his whistling, woodwindy five-note theme for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is one of the most recognizable...
Interviews
Oct 22, 2009 — Almost a decade ago, Catherine Breillat, one of contemporary cinema’s great provocateurs, gave us Fat Girl (À ma soeur!), a disturbing and graphic look at the pitfalls of adolescent sexuality from the point of view of a pair of young sisters....
Short Takes
Oct 21, 2009 — Starting today, Paris is catching Fellini fever. The Cinémathèque française, the Jeu de Paume museum, and the Italian Cultural Institute of Paris are joining forces to pay an extended tribute to the Italian maestro. The Jeu de Paume exposition, Fellini,...
Short Takes
Oct 20, 2009 — There’s been no shortage of tributes and farewells to Ingmar Bergman in the two years since his death. Considering the parallels between his tumultuous personal life (five wives, nine children) and the troubled personae of his characters, and since his...