Da habe ich es doch glatt vergessen, über die Mai-Veröffentlichungen von Criterion zu berichten. Dabei ist bereits ein Monat seit der Ankündigung vergangen und die Juni-Titel sind ebenfalls schon bekannt.

12. Mai 2009
Blu-ray #316: “Ran” [J 1985, Akira Kurosawa]
1 Disc
$39.95

With Ran, legendary director Akira Kurosawa reimagines Shakespeare’s King Lear as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan. Majestic in scope, the film is Kurosawa’s late-life masterpiece, a profound examination of the folly of war and the crumbling of one family under the weight of betrayal, greed, and the insatiable thirst for power.

DISC FEATURES

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer
• Uncompressed stereo soundtrack
• Audio commentary featuring film scholar Stephen Prince
• An appreciation of the film by director Sidney Lumet
• A.K., a 74-minute film by director Chris Marker
• A 30-minute documentary on the making of Ran, from the Toho Masterworks series Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create
• Video interview with actor Tatsuya Nakadai
• Theatrical trailers
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• Plus: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Michael Wilmington and an interviews with Kurosawa

12. Mai 2009
DVD #470: “Die Weisheit des Blutes [aka: Der Ketzer] / Wise Blood” [USA / BRD 1979, John Huston]
1 Disc
$39.95

In this acclaimed adaptation of the first novel by legendary Southern writer Flannery O’Connor, John Huston vividly brings to life her poetic world of American eccentricity. Brad Dourif, in an impassioned performance, is Hazel Motes, who, fresh out of the army, attempts to open the first Church Without Christ in the small town of Taulkinham. Populated with inspired performances that seem to spring right from O’Connor’s pages, Huston’s Wise Blood is an incisive portrait of spirituality and Evangelicalism, and a faithful, loving evocation of a writer’s vision.

DISC FEATURES

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer
• New interviews with actor Brad Dourif, writer Benedict Fitzgerald, and writer-producer Michael Fitzgerald
• Rare archival audio recording of author Flannery O’Connor reading her short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”
• A 28-minute episode of the television program Creativity with Bill Moyers from 1982, featuring John Huston discussing his life and work
• Theatrical trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by author Francine Prose

19. Mai 2009
DVD #471: “Pigs, Pimps and Prostitutes: 3 Films by Shohei Imamura”
3 Discs
$79.95

In the 1960s, Japanese filmmakers responded to a stale studio system by looking for fresh ways to tell stories, and Shohei Imamura was one of the leading figures of this new wave. With the three films in this set—Pigs and Battleships, The Insect Woman, and Intentions of Murder—Imamura truly emerged as an auteur, bringing to his national cinema an anthropological eye and a previously unseen taste for the irreverent. Claiming his interests lay in “the relationship of the lower part of the human body and the lower part of the social structure,” Imamura dotted the decade with earthy, juicy, idiosyncratic films featuring persevering, willful heroines. His remains a unique cinematic voice.

DVD #472: “Buta to gunkan / Pigs and Battleships” [J 1961, Shohei Imamura]
1 Disc

A dazzling, unruly portrait of postwar Japan, Pigs and Battleships details, with escalating absurdity, the desperate power struggles between small-time gangsters in the port town of Yokosuka. Shot in gorgeously composed, bustling CinemaScope, the film follows a young couple as they try to navigate Yokosuka’s corrupt businessmen, chimpira, and their own unsure future together. With its breakneck pacing and constantly inventive cinematography, this film marked Shohei Imamura as a major voice in Japanese cinema.

DISC FEATURES

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer
• “Imamura: the Freethinker,” a 1995 episode of the French television series Cinéma de notre temps
• Interview with critic and historian Tony Rayns
• New and improved English subtitle translations
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Audie Bock

DVD #473: “Nippon konchuki / The Insect Woman” [J 1963, Shohei Imamura]
1 Disc

Born in a rural farming village in 1918, Tomé survives decades of Japanese social upheaval, as well as abuse and servitude at the hands of various men. Yet Shohei Imamura, ever the cinematic “entomologist,” refuses to make a victim of her, instead observing Tomé (played by the extraordinary Sachiko Hidari) as a fascinating, pragmatic creature of twentieth-century Japan. A portrait of opportunism and resilience in three generations of women, The Insect Woman is Imamura’s most expansive film, and Tomé his ultimate heroine.

DISC FEATURES

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer
• Conversation between Shohei Imamura and critic Tadao Sato about the film
• Interview with critic and historian Tony Rayns
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critics Dennis Lim

DVD #474: “Verbotene Leidenschaft / Akai satsui / Intentions of Murder” [J 1964, Shohei Imamura]
1 Disc

Sadako (Masumi Harukawa), cursed by generations before her and neglected by her common-law husband, falls prey to a brutal home intruder. But rather than become a victim, she forges a path to her own awakening. This disturbing and pitiless evocation of domestic drudgery and sexual violence is also a fascinating, unsentimental account of one woman’s determination. Filled with director Shohei Imamura’s characteristic flashbacks and dream sequences, Intentions of Murder is a gripping, audacious portrait of a woman coming into her own in a man’s world.

DISC FEATURES

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer
• Conversation between Shohei Imamura and critic Tadao Sato about the film
• Interview with critic and historian Tony Rayns
• New and improved English subtitle translations
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic James Quandt

19.  Mai 2009
DVD #475: “Die Freunde von Eddie Colye / The Friends of Eddie Coyle” [USA 1973, Peter Yates]
1 Disc
$29.95

In one of the best performances of his legendary career, Robert Mitchum plays small-time gunrunner Eddie “Fingers” Coyle in Peter Yates’s adaptation of George V. Higgins’s acclaimed novel The Friends of Eddie Coyle. World-weary and living hand to mouth, Coyle works on the sidelines of the seedy Boston underworld just to make ends meet. But when he finds himself facing a second stretch of hard time, he’s forced to weigh loyalty to his criminal colleagues against snitching to stay free. Directed with a sharp eye for its gritty locales and an open heart for its less-than-heroic characters, this is one of the true treasures of 1970s Hollywood filmmaking—a suspenseful crime drama in stark, unforgiving daylight.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by director Peter Yates
• Audio commentary featuring Yates
• Stills gallery
• PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by film critic Kent Jones and a 1973 on-set profile of Robert Mitchum from Rolling Stone