The Criterion Collection
Apr 30, 2009 — The concept of “obscenity” is tested when we dare to look at something that we desire to see but have forbidden ourselves to look at. When we feel that everything has been revealed, “obscenity” disappears and there is a certain...
Apr 28, 2009 — For his ongoing series “Philip French’s Screen Legends,” begun in January 2008 on the Guardian’s website, the British film critic has been profiling the “great actors in film, choosing their key works and assessing their legacy,” in neat little encapsulations....
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...
Essays
Apr 27, 2009 — Stephen Frears’s gangland drama subverts its genre by removing its villains to an alternate mythic universe, that of the western, as its protagonists traverse the roads that snake through Spain’s arid hills and plains.
Apr 27, 2009 — The idea of making a film about Japan’s most famous sex crime, with a decent budget and in conditions of complete freedom, reawakened Nagisa Oshima’s desire to direct—and the prospect of circumventing Japanese censorship must have made the decision even...
Apr 23, 2009 — These profiles of the real-life Sada Abé and the actress who portrayed her in Nagisa Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses first appeared in Donald Richie’s 1987 book Different People: Pictures of Some Japanese, and can also be found...
Apr 23, 2009 — This interview, conducted by Michael Henry, first appeared in the May 1978 issue of Positif.
Apr 21, 2009 — Mark your calendars: Janus Films and the Criterion Collection’s theatrical release Revanche opens next Friday, May 1, in New York, Seattle, and Boston, and the early press is awesome. Götz Spielmann got a rave for his tense, thrilling drama from...
Essays
Apr 21, 2009 — “Just takes a few months to get to be a hundred. If you’re in the right place at the right time.” I first saw Henri-Georges Clouzot’s masterpiece The Wages of Fear when the restored version was released in the U.S.,...
Apr 20, 2009 — The French scientist-educator-filmmaker Jean Painlevé’s groundbreaking work consistently revealed not only a commitment to informed science and effective communication but to the creative expression of ideas.