The Criterion Collection
Short Takes
May 17, 2012 — The latest comedy by Wes Anderson, Moonrise Kingdom, had its world premiere yesterday at the Cannes Film Festival, and was very warmly received. We hope Anderson is having better luck communicating with French interviewers than he did when he and...
Essays
May 8, 2012 — These thoughts on La haine by director Costa-Gavras first appeared in the program book for the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival, where the film was screened. La haine is a phenomenon, in that it is an abnormal, a surprising, and...
Essays
Apr 17, 2012 — Maybe it is something to do with the sensual seductiveness of cinema: as new-millennium Americans, we care nothing for Japanese poetry, little for Japanese painting and fiction, and certainly too much for Japanese cartoons, and yet Yasujiro Ozu, the least...
In Theaters
Apr 12, 2012 — Repertory Picks The Gold Rush (the original 1925 version) is making its way around the country in a 35 mm print from Janus Films, in collaboration with the Cineteca di Bologna and the Chaplin estate. Because Chaplin rereleased this silent...
Mar 16, 2012 — Did You See This? • Terence Davies on his new film and stealing from David Lean • Unpublished Spartacus photos • The backlash against the Tiny Furniture backlash has begun. • Where in the Dickens did the BFI find this?...
Mar 9, 2012 — The cinematographer tells us how he and Louis Malle went about shooting Vanya on 42nd Street in a decrepit Manhattan theater.
Houston native Wes Anderson’s idiosyncratic directorial style—marked by eccentric, colorful compositions and a fastidious attention to detail—seemed completely anomalous in the U.S. independent film landscape at the outset of his career. But it’s become such an influence on other homegrown...
Nov 8, 2011 — With the very first shots of Fanny and Alexander (1982), director Ingmar Bergman announces his perspective and signals his intentions. Here, we find the ten-year-old Alexander gazing into a puppet theater, lifting layer after layer of skillfully painted backdrop. We...
Oct 28, 2011 — The following is excerpted from a 1972 interview that film scholar Joan Mellen conducted with director Kaneto Shindo. The interview originally appeared in the 1975 book Voices from the Japanese Cinema. I find the social dimension of your films very...
Interviews
Oct 7, 2011 — For Janus Films’ new print of Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend, which starts showing today, designer Steve Chow created an eye-catching poster that vividly captures that New Wave battering ram’s apocalyptic, sideways vision. This is the third Godard design that Chow has...