The Criterion Collection Thread 2.0

[cupboy]

Looks like Last Days Of Disco will be the only one for me. I'll pick it up at the local B&N in a few weeks.

[Super-VHS]

October 2:

In the Mood for Love
Wong Kar-wai
Hong Kong 2000 98 minutes Color 1.66:1 Cantonese Spine #147

Hong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk) move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery about their spouses sparks an intimate bond between them. At once delicately mannered and visually extravagant, Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments. With its aching musical soundtrack and its exquisitely abstract cinematography by Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping-bin, this film has been a major stylistic influence on the past decade of cinema, as well as a milestone in Wong’s redoubtable career.

Disc Features:

• High-definition digital restoration, approved by cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-bin, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• “In the Mood for Love,” director Wong Kar-wai’s documentary on the making of the film
• Deleted scenes with director’s commentary
• Hua yang de nian hua (2000), a short film by Wong
• Archival interview with Wong and a “cinema lesson” given by the director at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival
• Toronto International Film Festival press conference from 2000, with stars Maggie Cheung Man-yuk and Tony Leung Chiu-wai
• Trailers and TV spots
• Two new interviews with critic Tony Rayns, one about the film and the other about the soundtrack
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by novelist and film critic Steve Erickson and the Liu Yi-chang story that provided thematic inspiration for the film

October 16:

The Forgiveness of Blood
Joshua Marston
United States 2011 109 minutes Color 1.85:1 Albanian Spine #628

American director Joshua Marston broke out in 2004 with his jolting, Oscar-nominated Maria Full of Grace, about a young Colombian woman working as a drug mule. In his remarkable follow-up, The Forgiveness of Blood, he turns his camera on another corner of the world: contemporary northern Albania, a place still troubled by the ancient custom of interfamilial blood feuds. From this reality, Marston sculpts a fictional narrative about a teenage brother and sister physically and emotionally trapped in a cycle of violence, a result of their father’s entanglement with a rival clan over a piece of land. The Forgiveness of Blood is a tense and perceptive depiction of a place where tradition and progress have an uneasy coexistence, as well as a dynamic coming-of-age drama.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION:

• New high-definition digital transfer, approved by producer Paul Mezey, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Audio commentary featuring director and cowriter Joshua Marston
• Two new video programs: Acting Close to Home, a discussion between Marston and actors Refet Abazi, Tristan Halilaj, and Sindi Laçej, and Truth on the Ground, featuring new and on-set interviews with Mezey, Abazi, Halilaj, and Laçej
• Audition and rehearsal footage
• Trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film writer Oscar Moralde

October 23:

Sunday Bloody Sunday
John Schlesinger
United Kingdom 1971 110 minutes Color 1.66:1 English Spine #629

John Schlesinger followed his Academy Award–winning Midnight Cowboy with this sophisticated and highly personal take on love and sex. Sunday Bloody Sunday depicts the romantic lives of two Londoners, a middle-aged doctor and a prickly thirtysomething divorcée—played by Oscar winners Peter Finch and Glenda Jackson—who are sleeping with the same handsome young artist. A revelation in its day, this may be the 1970s’ most intelligent, multitextured film about the complexities of romantic relationships; it is keenly acted and sensitively directed, from a penetrating screenplay by novelist and critic Penelope Gilliatt.

Disc Features:

• New high-definition digital restoration, supervised by director of photography Billy Williams, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• New video interviews with actor Murray Head, Williams, and production designer Luciana Arrighi
• Illustrated 1975 audio interview with director John Schlesinger
• New interview with writer William J. Mann (Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger) about the making of Sunday Bloody Sunday
• New interview with photographer Michael Childers, Schlesinger’s longtime partner
• Trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay and screenwriter Penelope Gilliatt’s 1971 introduction to the film’s screenplay

October 30:

Rosemary’s Baby
Roman Polanski
United States 1968 136 minutes Color 1.85:1 English Spine #634

Terrifying and darkly comic, Rosemary’s Baby marked the Hollywood debut of Roman Polanski. This wildly entertaining nightmare, faithfully adapted from Ira Levin’s best seller, stars a revelatory Mia Farrow as a young mother-to-be who grows increasingly suspicious that her overfriendly elderly neighbors, played by Sidney Blackmer and an Oscar-winning Ruth Gordon, and self-involved husband (John Cassavetes) are hatching a satanic plot against her and her baby. In the decades of occult cinema Polanski’s ungodly masterpiece has spawned, it’s never been outdone for sheer psychological terror.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION:

• New high-definition digital restoration, approved by director Roman Polanski, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• New interviews with Polanski, actor Mia Farrow, and producer Robert Evans
• Komeda, Komeda, a feature-length documentary on the life and work of jazz musician and composer Krzysztof Komeda, who wrote the score for Rosemary’s Baby
• 1997 radio interview with author Ira Levin from Leonard Lopate’s WNYC program New York and Company on the 1967 novel, the sequel, and the film
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Ed Park and Levin’s afterword for the 2003 New American Library edition of his novel, in which he discusses its and the film’s origins

[skycracksopen]

Glad to see The Forgiveness of Blood getting a US blu release.

[BostonMA]

utter disappointment i must say. granted, i will rewatch In the Mood for Love, as it's regarded as one of the very best films of the last decade...but i'm not much of a fan of Schlesinger, and i've always greatly disliked Polanski's Rosemary's Baby. yes, i know i'm in the high minority on that one. i hope On the Waterfront is announced in next month's line-up, so that i can at least own that title by November of this year.

[Boston007]

utter disappointment i must say. granted, i will rewatch In the Mood for Love, as it's regarded as one of the very best films of the last decade...but i'm not much of a fan of Schlesinger, and i've always greatly disliked Polanski's Rosemary's Baby. yes, i know i'm in the high minority on that one. i hope On the Waterfront is announced in next month's line-up, so that i can at least own that title by November of this year.

Why did you dislike Rosemary's Baby?

[skycracksopen]

Holy crap, BostonMA and Boston007 are different people!

I always just saw the "Boston" part and didn't pay close enough attention to notice the difference until now.

[BostonMA]

Why did you dislike Rosemary's Baby?

everything that treads on after the initial foreshadowing feels extremely fake and completely unrealistic. i was never convinced that the story that i was watching unfold could happen realistically in our real world. perhaps the film hasn't aged all that well for the uber modern times we now live in but that isn't my fault. that, and i find the "twist" ending to be utterly predictable in how Polanski directs. now, i suppose the picture is supposed to work that way, with the viewer more or less knowing how the rest of the plot will unravel, but i consider that to be a huge mistake in the movie's storytelling. i also greatly dislike the performances of both, Mia Farrow and the "great" John Cassateves. neither one stands out for me, with the latter being a particularly empty role in regards to the screenplay's structure.

i felt similarly towards The Tenant, so it's definitely somewhat of a Polanski thing. however, with that said, Chinatown is one of my all-time favorite films, and Repulsion is stoned into my refined collection, so he's really all over the place for me as a serious film fan (usually for me, auteurs are either all yes or all no).

Holy crap, BostonMA and Boston007 are different people!

I always just saw the "Boston" part and didn't pay close enough attention to notice the difference until now.

hahaha. check the posts ratio...i've been here much longer.

[Boston007]

everything that treads on after the initial foreshadowing feels extremely fake and completely unrealistic. i was never convinced that the story that i was watching unfold could happen realistically in our real world. perhaps the film hasn't aged all that well for the uber modern times we now live in but that isn't my fault. that, and i find the "twist" ending to be utterly predictable in how Polanski directs. now, i suppose the picture is supposed to work that way, with the viewer more or less knowing how the rest of the plot will unravel, but i consider that to be a huge mistake in the movie's storytelling. i also greatly dislike the performances of both, Mia Farrow and the "great" John Cassateves. neither one stands out for me, with the latter being a particularly empty role in regards to the screenplay's structure.

i felt similarly towards The Tenant, so it's definitely somewhat of a Polanski thing. however, with that said, Chinatown is one of my all-time favorite films, and Repulsion is stoned into my refined collection, so he's really all over the place for me as a serious film fan (usually for me, auteurs are either all yes or all no).

I have not seen the film in years, maybe when I was in high school and I did enjoy it. I haven't seen it recently. The film had such an eery, weird feel to it - I don't know, I can easily see these types of people living in society. I loved Chinatown as well. I need to see Repulsion.

hahaha. check the posts ratio...i've been here much longer.

Yah that was funny! Skycrack, BostonMA is correct, he has been here longer than me and I don't think he has ever changed his avatar pic since I joined, have you?

[skycracksopen]

Yeah, you've both been here longer than me though, so I've noticed your posts for the same amount of time.

I also noticed the different avatars, but I guess I just thought it was one person switching between two avatars.... haha

[Boston007]

Yeah, you've both been here longer than me though, so I've noticed your posts for the same amount of time.

I also noticed the different avatars, but I guess I just thought it was one person switching between two avatars.... haha

NO, I am much more handsome

LOL

[BostonMA]

Yah that was funny! Skycrack, BostonMA is correct, he has been here longer than me and I don't think he has ever changed his avatar pic since I joined, have you?

no, i have. in the last two years, i've sported avatars of Vertigo's film poster, a b&w still from the opening scene of Once Upon a Time in the West, and a couple others that i am specifically forgetting at the moment. my favorite actor has always been Christian Bale, and being a Batman fanatic, i had a shot of his Bruce Wayne aligned with the Batsuit from The Dark Knight as my avatar for a time leading up to the release of the film and for about a year and a half to two years afterwards. Now, with the third and final film coming this week (!!!!), i decided that it would be nicely fitting to update my avatar back to that of Bale as Wayne, only this time it's a shot from Rises.

[Boston007]

no, i have. in the last two years, i've sported avatars of Vertigo's film poster, a b&w still from the opening scene of Once Upon a Time in the West, and a couple others that i am specifically forgetting at the moment. my favorite actor has always been Christian Bale, and being a Batman fanatic, i had a shot of his Bruce Wayne aligned with the Batsuit from The Dark Knight as my avatar for a time leading up to the release of the film and for about a year and a half to two years afterwards. Now, with the third and final film coming this week (!!!!), i decided that it would be nicely fitting to update my avatar back to that of Bale as Wayne, only this time it's a shot from Rises.

LOL

I am hearing this new movie is as spectacular as it is depressing. UGH.

[Whirlygig]

Holy crap, BostonMA and Boston007 are different people!

I always just saw the "Boston" part and didn't pay close enough attention to notice the difference until now.

You are not alone. I've just been caught with my pants down as well. Never put this together.

[Boston007]

You are not alone. I've just been caught with my pants down as well. Never put this together.

LMAO!

Why were you expecting different?

[ashley]

I've watched In the Mood for Love on blu ray its fantastic!