Another amazing lineup of Blu-ray titles coming up from Criterion. This time, all in black-and-white! That’s right, there isn’t a single colour film in the mix for the month of August. Now, you know I don’t have a problem with that, but it’s certainly going to put a damper on my ability to watch these discs at home. You see, the girlfriend really isn’t keen on anything without colour. Or in a foreign tongue. Or deliberately paced. Or fantastical in any way. Hm, that seems to knock out just about every film in the collection, doesn’t it?
As excited as most film fans might be about getting new HD versions of films by Lubitsch, Frankenheimer and Ophuls, I’m so stoked that Criterion is dipping into the well of newly restored Satyajit Ray films I could just burst! This is a great sign for things to come. In fact, I’d be surprised if we didn’t see an Apu Trilogy boxed set announced in the coming months. Sounds like a perfect holiday gift for your friendly neighbourhood cinephile, if you ask me. (hint, hint!)
THE EARRINGS OF MADAME DE…
(August 6, 2013 – MSRP $39.95)
Video: 1.33:1 1080p
Audio: uncompressed monaural soundtrack
Special Features:
- New, restored high-definition digital film transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Audio commentary featuring film scholars Susan White and Gaylyn Studlar
- Introduction by filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson
- Interviews with director Max Ophuls’s collaborators Alan Jessua, Marc Frédérix, and Annette Wademant
- Visual essay by film scholar Tag Gallagher
- Interview with writer Louise de Vilmorin about Ophuls’s adaptation of her novel
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Molly Haskell, an excerpt from costume designer Georges Annenkov’s 1962 book Max Ophuls, and Vilmorin’s 1951 source novel, Madame de
SECONDS
(August 13, 2013 – MSRP $39.95)
Video: 1.75:1 1080p
Audio: uncompressed monaural soundtrack
Special Features:
- New 4K digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Audio commentary featuring director John Frankenheimer
- Actor Alec Baldwin on Frankenheimer and Seconds
- New program on the making of Seconds, featuring interviews with Evans Frankenheimer, the director’s widow, and actor Salome Jens
- Interview with Frankenheimer from 1971
- New visual essay by film scholars R. Barton Palmer and Murray Pomerance
- PLUS: An essay by critic David Sterritt
THE BIG CITY
(August 20, 2013 – MSRP $39.95)
Video: 1.33:1 1080p
Audio: uncompressed monaural soundtrack
Special Features:
- New 2K digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- New interview with actor Madhabi Mukherjee
- Satyajit Ray and the Modern Woman, a new interview program featuring Ray historian Suranjan Ganguly
- The Coward (1965), a feature film directed by Ray that also addresses modern female identity and stars Mukherjee and Soumitra Chatterjee
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by scholar Chandak Sengoopta and an interview with Ray from the 1980s by his biographer Andrew Robinson
CHARULATA
(August 20, 2013 – MSRP $39.95)
Video: 1.33:1 1080p
Audio: uncompressed monaural soundtrack
Special Features:
- New 2K digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- New interview program with actors Madhabi Mukherjee and Soumitra Chatterjee
- Adapting Tagore, a new interview program featuring Indian film scholar Moinak Biswas and Bengali literature historian Supriya Chaudhuri
- Archival audio interview with director Satyajit Ray by film historian Gideon Bachmann
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Philip Kemp and a 1980s interview with Ray by his biographer Andrew Robinson
TO BE OR NOT TO BE
(August 27, 2013 – MSRP $39.95)
Video: 1.37:1 1080p
Audio: uncompressed monaural soundtrack
Special Features:
- New, restored 2K digital film transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- New audio commentary featuring film historian David Kalat
- Lubitsch le patron, a 2010 French documentary on director Ernst Lubitsch’s career
- Two episodes of The Screen Guild Theater, a radio anthology series: Variety (1940), starring Jack Benny, Claudette Colbert, and Lubitsch, and To Be or Not to Be (1942), an adaptation of the film, starring William Powell, Diana Lewis, and Sig Ruman
- Trailer
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien
- More!
