The Criterion Collection
May 14, 2009 — A new, restored print of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes is premiering in Cannes tonight, with Martin Scorsese going onstage to introduce it. So what’s the big Scorsese-Powell connection anyway? Well, you can learn all about it...
May 11, 2009 — “It’s taken more than fifty years, but the world has finally caught up with [the] dark and cynical vision” of Billy Wilder’s chillingly black satire of the fourth estate, Ace in the Hole, A. O. Scott declares in a clever...
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 21, 2009 — That’s how the always cheeky (and clickable!) folks at Very Short List mapped out Stephen Frears’s sun-drenched but blood-chilling early crime thriller The Hit in their e-mail offering yesterday touting Criterion’s upcoming release. “A great lost ’80s thriller, rediscovered,” they...
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 19, 2009 — Big and Little Edie fans have been coming in droves to take advantage of our Grey Gardens $5-off sale. To such an extent, indeed, that we’ve temporarily sold out of our two-disc box set, including both the original film and...
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...
Mar 30, 2009 — Here’s a quick birthday shout-out to Academy Award–winning, New German Cinema trailblazing Volker Schlöndorff, who turns seventy today. The tireless Schlöndorff is reportedly celebrating in (his) style: he’s currently on a reading tour through Germany, promoting his new autobiography, Light,...
Mar 16, 2009 — Dave Kehr heralds the rediscovery of “the oceanic depth and diversity of Japanese cinema” in recent years, “thanks in no small part to home video,” in a lovely New York Times piece on the latest example of that, Eclipse Series...