The Criterion Collection
Dec 25, 2008 — Photo GalleriesNewspaper columnist turned producer and screenwriter Mark Hellinger wanted New York City to be the main character of a crime film he was working on, ultimately called The Naked City, after the landmark book by tabloid newspaper photographer Weegee....
Dec 17, 2008 — ANew Year’s treat from the Film Society of Lincoln Center: Jacques Tati’s supersized comic odyssey Playtime will be shown in its original, rarely screened 70 mm format at the Walter Reade Theater. If you haven’t seen this visionary work, which...
Dec 4, 2008 — The soundtrack to Wes Anderson’s short protofilm for Bottle Rocket will be available digitally for the first time starting December 9, from Fantasy Records/Concord Music, the company announced today. The release was timed to coincide with Criterion’s new DVD of...
Dec 2, 2008 — Ian Thomson has written a fascinating piece on Pier Paolo Pasolini for the Times Online, on the occasion of the publication of two books on the Italian filmmaker-writer-poet: John David Rhodes’s new study of Pasolini’s Rome, Stupendous, Miserable City, and...
Dec 1, 2008 — Today marks the first-ever home video release of Sam Fuller’s controversial, long-unseen antiracist allegory White Dog, the story of an innocent canine trained to attack blacks, and the black animal trainer who tries to cure him. Get a taste of...
Essays
Nov 19, 2008 — Albert Lamorisse’s principled balancing of objective fact with childish wish fulfillment results in a new, paradoxical genre—the documentary of dreams.
Nov 9, 2008 — “Though the Maysles are best known for their hippie-era music docs Monterey Pop and Gimme Shelter, as well as the opaque weirdness of Grey Gardens from 1975, Salesman stands as the movie where they really found their voice as leading...
Nov 9, 2008 — Ken Ogata was a brave and talented actor. He took chances in a system that discouraged risk taking. I had been told that no reputable Japanese actor would star in Mishima because of the controversy surrounding Mishima and the notion...
Nov 2, 2008 — It’s all things Quantum of Solace these days, with the latest in the Bond franchise opening next week. And Newsweek took the opportunity to ask Swiss director Marc Forster what his film influences were. He came up with a very...
After making his mark in the early thirties with two very different films, this French master closed out the decade with two humanistic studies of French society that routinely turn up on lists of the greatest films ever made.