Hold on to your hats, Criterion fans! January looks to be another gigantic month for film lovers with 1 brand new title making its way into the collection, 2 titles new to Blu and another couple resurfacing on both DVD and Blu with brand new transfers and special features. This post will cover the amazing new titles (Broadcast News!!!) which I’ll follow up with a dedicated post regarding the Sam Fuller re-issues.
READ MORE: Criterion brings Samuel Fuller re-issues to Blu-ray: The Naked Kiss, Shock Corridor
BROADCAST NEWS
(January 25, 2011 – MSRP $39.95)
Video: 1.85:1 1080p
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio
Special Features:
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director James L. Brooks and editor Richard Marks with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- New audio commentary featuring Brooks and Marks
- New documentary on Brooks’s career in television and film, featuring actors Marilu Henner (Taxi) and Julie Kavner (Rhoda, The Simpsons) and several other of Brooks’s collaborators
- Deleted scenes and an alternate ending, with commentary by Brooks
- New video interview with veteran CBS news producer Susan Zirinsky, one of the models for actress Holly Hunter’s character and an associate producer on the film
- Featurette containing on-set footage and interviews with Brooks, Hunter, and actor Albert Brooks
- Original theatrical trailer
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Carrie Rickey
ROBIN CRUSOE ON MARS
(January 11, 2011 – MSRP $39.95)
Video: 2.35:1 1080p
Audio: uncompressed monaural
Special Features:
- Restored high-definition digital transfer with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Audio commentary featuring screenwriter Ib Melchior, actors Paul Mantee and Victor Lundin, production designer Al Nozaki, Oscar-winning special effects designer and Robinson Crusoe on Mars historian Robert Skotak, and excerpts from a 1979 audio interview with director Byron Haskin
- Destination Mars, a video featurette by filmmaker and space historian Michael Lennick detailing the science behind the film
- Music video for Lundin’s song “Robinson Crusoe on Mars”
- Stills gallery
- Theatrical trailer
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by Lennick as well as Melchior’s “Brief Yargorian Vocabulary” (a glossary of original alien dialect) and a list of facts about Mars, both from his original screenplay
ARMY OF SHADOWS
(January 11, 2011 – MSRP $39.95)
Video: 1.85:1 1080p
Audio: uncompressed monaural
Special Features:
- High-definition digital transfer of the 2004 restoration, supervised by director of photography Pierre Lhomme with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Optional DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- Audio commentary featuring film historian Ginette Vincendeau
- Interviews with Lhomme and editor Françoise Bonnot
- On-set footage and excerpts from archival interviews with director Jean-Pierre Melville, cast members, writer Joseph Kessel, and real-life Resistance fighters
- Jean-Pierre Melville et “L’armée des ombres” (2002), a short program on the director and his film
- Le journal de la Résistance (1944), a rare short documentary shot on the front lines during the final days of German-occupied France
- Film restoration demonstration by Lhomme
- Theatrical trailers
- PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by critic Amy Taubin and historian Robert O. Paxton, as well as excerpts from Rui Nogueira’s Melville on Melville
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When I read the notice from Criterion, posted on their blog yesterday morning, that another chunk of their collection of films is about to go Out Of Print (O.O.P. as we home video enthusiasts refer to it) I damn near shed a tear. Sad as I am to see Nicolas Roeg‘s The Man Who Fell To Earth fall OOP (ironically, mere days after his brilliant film Walkabout was released), at least I had a chance to grab up Criterion’s gorgeous Blu-ray edition of the film. At least Criterion had the opportunity to offer us a Blu-ray edition of the film! The same can’t be said for the rest of the titles on this list, all fantastic films in their own right. Films that we may now never see in a Criterion Blu-ray edition. Buñuel!! Godard!! ARGH!! Say it ain’t so…
From Criterion.com:
Dear Criterion collectors,
The following titles are going out of print effective June 30:
Billy Liar
Bob le flambeur
Diary of A Chambermaid
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Kind Hearts and Coronets
The Man Who Fell to Earth (DVD and Blu-ray editions)
The Milky Way
The Phantom of Liberty
That Obscure Object of Desire
Touchez pas au grisbi
A Woman Is a Woman
We will be selling copies only while supplies last, so order yours soon. As ever, we will try to relicense the films so that they can rejoin the collection sometime in the future.
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]]>Looks like Europe is getting another sweet batch of Studio Canal Collection Blu-ray discs! This group of six titles is set to hit shops this coming September and includes a number of titles that were hinted at in the trailer we saw earlier this year. No other information is available at this time, aside from names and month of release. However, we do have package art for all six Blu-ray discs.
As mentioned in our previous article, not all of these titles will make their way to North America, as the licenses for them are held by different studios in the various territories (for instance in the USA The Graduate is from MGM, The Pianist from Universal, etc.) But considering we may not see Mulholland Drive or Delicatessen on Blu here on this side of the Atlantic anytime soon, I can certainly see myself doing a little importing come September.
