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Posted: |
Jul 16, 2014 - 7:43 PM
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By: |
johnjohnson
(Member)
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The Criterion Collection has announced ten titles for Blu-ray release in October: On October 14th, it will release John Ford's My Darling Clementine. On October 21, it will release Orson Welles' F For Fake and Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita. And on October 28th, it will release a seven-disc box set with films directed by Jacques Tati and George Sluizer's The Vanishing.
My Darling Clementine
John Ford takes on the legend of the O.K. Corral shoot-out in this multilayered, exceptionally well-constructed western, one of the director's very best films. Henry Fonda cuts an iconic figure as Wyatt Earp, the sturdy lawman who sets about the task of shaping up the disorderly Arizona town of Tombstone, and Victor Mature gives the performance of his career as the boozy, tubercular gambler and gunman Doc Holliday. Though initially at cross-purposes, the pair ultimately team up to confront the violent Clanton gang. Affecting and stunningly photographed, My Darling Clementine is a story of the triumph of civilization over the Wild West from American cinema's consummate mythmaker.
Special Features:
New 4K digital restoration of the theatrical release version of the film, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
High-definition presentation of the 103-minute prerelease version of the film
New audio commentary featuring John Ford biographer Joseph McBride
New interview with western historian Andrew C. Isenberg about the real Wyatt Earp
Comparison of the two versions by the UCLA Film & Television Archive's Robert Gitt
New video essay by Ford scholar Tag Gallagher
A Bandit's Wager, a 1916 short costarring Ford and directed by his brother, Francis Ford, featuring new music composed and performed by Donald Sosin
NBC broadcast reports from 1963 and 1975 about the history of Tombstone and Monument Valley
Lux Radio Theatre adaptation from 1947 starring Henry Fonda and Cathy Downs
Trailer
PLUS: An essay by critic David Jenkins
F for Fake
Trickery. Deceit. Magic. In F for Fake, a free-form documentary by Orson Welles, the legendary filmmaker (and self-described charlatan) gleefully reengages with the central preoccupation of his career: the tenuous line between illusion and truth, art and lies. Beginning with portraits of the world-renowned art forger Elmyr de Hory and his equally devious biographer, Clifford Irving, Welles embarks on a dizzying journey that simultaneously exposes and revels in fakery and fakers of all stripes—not the least of whom is Welles himself. Charming and inventive, F for Fake is an inspired prank and a clever examination of the essential duplicity of cinema.
Special Features:
New, restored digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Audio commentary from 2005 by cowriter and star Oja Kodar and director of photography Gary Graver
Introduction from 2005 by filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich
Orson Welles: One-Man Band, a documentary from 1995 about Welles's unfinished projects
Almost True: The Noble Art of Forgery, a fifty-two-minute documentary from 1997 about art forger Elmyr de Hory
60 Minutes interview from 2000 with Clifford Irving about his Howard Hughes autobiography hoax
Hughes's 1972 press conference exposing Irving's hoax
Extended, nine-minute trailer
PLUS: An essay by critic Jonathan Rosenbaum
La Dolce Vita
The biggest hit from the most popular Italian filmmaker of all time, La dolce vita rocketed Federico Fellini to international mainstream success—ironically, by offering a damning critique of the culture of stardom. A look at the darkness beneath the seductive lifestyles of Rome's rich and glamorous, the film follows a notorious celebrity journalist—played by a sublimely cool Marcello Mastroianni—during a hectic week spent on the peripheries of the spotlight. This mordant picture was an incisive commentary on the deepening decadence of the European 1960s, and it provided a prescient glimpse of just how gossip- and fame-obsessed our society would become.
Special Features:
New 4K digital restoration by the Film Foundation, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
New visual essay by : : kogonada
New interview with filmmaker Lina Wertmüller, who worked as assistant director on the film
Scholar David Forgacs discusses the period in Italy's history when the film was made
New interview with Italian film journalist Antonello Sarno about the outlandish fashions seen in the film
Audio interview with actor Marcello Mastroianni from the early 1960s, conducted by film historian Gideon Bachmann
Felliniana, a presentation of ephemera related to La dolce vita from the collection of Don Young
PLUS: An essay by critic Gary Giddins
The Complete Jacques Tati
Though he made only a handful of films, director, writer, and actor Jacques Tati ranks among the most beloved of all cinematic geniuses. With a background in music hall and mime performance, Tati steadily built an ever more ambitious movie career that ultimately raised sight-gag comedy to the level of high art. In the surrogate character of the sweet and bumbling, eternally umbrella-toting and pipe-smoking Monsieur Hulot, Tati invented a charming symbol of humanity lost in a constantly modernizing modern age. This set gathers his six hilarious features—Jour de fête, Monsieur Hulot's Holiday, Mon oncle, PlayTime, Trafic, and Parade—along with seven delightful Tati-related short films.
Jour de fête
In his enchanting debut feature, Jacques Tati stars as a fussbudget of a postman who is thrown for a loop when a traveling fair comes to his village. Even in this early work, Tati was brilliantly toying with the devices (silent visual gags, minimal yet deftly deployed sound effects) and exploring the theme (the absurdity of our increasing reliance on technology) that would define his cinema. Here, Jour de fête is presented in three versions: the original 1949 black-and-white release, a 1964 version featuring hand-painted color sequences and newly incorporated footage, and the full-color 1994 rerelease, which finally realized Tati's original vision for the film.
Monsieur Hulot's Holiday
Monsieur Hulot, Jacques Tati's endearing clown, takes a holiday at a seaside resort, where his presence provokes one catastrophe after another. Tati's masterpiece of gentle slapstick is a series of effortlessly well-choreographed sight gags involving dogs, boats, and firecrackers; it was the first entry in the Hulot series and the film that launched its maker to international stardom. We are presenting Monsieur Hulot's Holiday in the 1978 rerelease version, reedited by Tati himself, along with the original 1953 theatrical version.
Mon oncle
Slapstick prevails again when Jacques Tati's eccentric, old-fashioned hero, Monsieur Hulot, is set loose in Villa Arpel, the geometric, oppressively ultramodern home of his brother-in-law, and in the antiseptic plastic hose factory where he gets a job. The second Hulot movie and Tati's first color film, Mon oncle is a supremely amusing satire of mechanized living and consumer society that earned the director the Academy Award for best foreign-language film. This edition features both the original French release and My Uncle, the version Tati created for English-speaking audiences.
PlayTime
Jacques Tati's gloriously choreographed, nearly wordless comedies about confusion in an age of high technology reached their apotheosis with PlayTime. For this monumental achievement, a nearly three-year-long, bank-breaking production, Tati again thrust the loveably old-fashioned Monsieur Hulot, along with a host of other lost souls, into a bafflingly modern world, this time Paris. With every inch of its superwide frame crammed with hilarity and inventiveness, PlayTime is a lasting testament to a modern era tiptoeing on the edge of oblivion.
Trafic
In Jacques Tati's Trafic, the bumbling Monsieur Hulot, kitted out as always with tan raincoat, beaten brown hat, and umbrella, takes to Paris's highways and byways. In this, his final outing, Hulot is employed as an auto company's director of design, and accompanies his new product (a camper outfitted with absurd gadgetry) to an auto show in Amsterdam. Naturally, the road there is paved with modern-age mishaps. This late-career delight is a masterful demonstration of the comic genius's expert timing and sidesplitting knack for visual gags, and a bemused last look at technology run amok.
Parade
For his final film, Jacques Tati takes his camera to the circus, where the director himself serves as master of ceremonies. Though it features many spectacles, including clowns, jugglers, acrobats, contortionists, and more, Parade also focuses on the spectators, making this stripped-down work a testament to the communion between audience and entertainment. Made for Swedish television (with Ingmar Bergman's legendary director of photography Gunnar Fischer serving as one of its cinematographers), Parade is a touching career send-off that recalls its maker's origins as a mime and theater performer.
Special Features:
New digital restorations of all six feature films, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-rays of Jour de fête, Monsieur Hulot's Holiday, Mon oncle, Trafic, and Parade and uncompressed stereo soundtrack on the Blu-ray of PlayTime
New digital restorations of all seven short films: On demande une brute (1934), Gai dimanche (1935), Soigne ton gauche (1936), L'école des facteurs (1946), Cours du soir (1967), Forza Bastia (1978), and Dégustation maison (1978)
Two alternate versions of Jour de fête, a partly colorized 1964 version and the full-color 1994 rerelease version
Original 1953 theatrical release version of Monsieur Hulot's Holiday
My Uncle, the version of Mon oncle that director Jacques Tati created for English-language audiences
Introductions by actor and comedian Terry Jones to Monsieur Hulot's Holiday, Mon oncle, and PlayTime
Archival interviews with Tati
In the Footsteps of Monsieur Hulot, a 1989 documentary about Tati's beloved alter ego Five visual essays by Tati expert Stéphane Goudet
New interview with film scholar Michel Chion on the sound design of Tati's films
"Jour de fête": In Search of the Lost Color, a 1988 documentary on the process of realizing Tati's original color vision for that film
Once Upon a Time . . . "Mon oncle," a 2008 documentary about the making of that film
Everything Is Beautiful, a 2005 piece on the fashion, furniture, and architecture of Mon oncle
Selected-scene commentaries on PlayTime by Goudet, theater director Jérôme Deschamps, and critic Philip Kemp
Tativille, a documentary shot on the set of PlayTime
Beyond "PlayTime," a short 2002 documentary featuring on-set footage
A Homage to Jacques Tati, a 1982 French TV program featuring Tati friend and set designer Jacques Lagrange
Audio interview with Tati from the U.S. premiere of PlayTime at the 1972 San Francisco International Film Festival
Interview with PlayTime script supervisor Sylvette Baudrot from 2006
Tati Story, a short biographical film from 2002
Professor Goudet's Lessons, a 2013 classroom lecture by Goudet on Tati's films
Alternate English-language soundtracks for Monsieur Hulot's Holiday and PlayTime
New English subtitle translations
PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by critics David Cairns, James Quandt, Jonathan Rosenbaum, and Kristin Ross
The Vanishing
A young man embarks on an obsessive search for the girlfriend who mysteriously disappeared while the couple were taking a sunny vacation trip, and his three-year investigation draws the attention of her abductor, a mild-mannered professor with a diabolically clinical mind. An unorthodox love story and a truly unsettling thriller, Dutch filmmaker George Sluizer's The Vanishing unfolds with meticulous intensity, leading to an unforgettable finale that has unnerved audiences around the world.
Special Features:
New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
New interview with director George Sluizer
New interview with actor Johanna ter Steege
Trailer
PLUS: An essay by critic Scott Foundas
http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=14483
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A good month. I'm particularly looking forward to adding The Vanishing to my collection. Also looking forward to a rental of La Dolce Vita -- I've never really explored Fellini yet so I'm taking the BDs of his films as the chance to do so.
Definitely Fellini's masterpiece - the high point he was working towards throughout the 1950s, and never topped in the next 30 years despite making some fine films in that time.
I'm looking forward to the Tati set too. The artwork alone is delightful - and it's great to have "Trafic" back in print at Criterion.
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