4LOM
30-03-2004, 23:19
All titles will be released on 22nd June 2004:
#236 Mamma Roma (http://www.criterionco.com/asp/release.asp?id=236)
Cover-Artwork (http://www.criterionco.com/content/images/full_boxshot/236_box_348x490.jpg)
[I]Synopsis
Anna Magnani is Mamma Roma, a middle-aged prostitute who attempts to extricate herself from her sordid past for the sake of her son. Filmed in the great tradition of Italian neorealism, Mamma Roma offers an unflinching look at the struggle for survival in postwar Italy, and highlights director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s lifelong fascination with the marginalized and dispossessed. Though banned upon its release in Italy for obscenity, today Mamma Roma is considered a classic: a glimpse at a country’s most controversial director in the process of finding his style and a powerhouse performance by one of cinema’s greatest actresses.
Film Infos
110 minutes
Black and white
1.33:1
Dolby Digital Mono 1.0
Not Anamorphic
Italian
$39.95
Special Features
- New high-definition digital transfer, with restored image and sound
- Three new interviews about director Pier Paolo Pasolini: Bernardo Bertolucci, an assistant to Pasolini on his early films; Tonino Delli Colli, cinematographer on eleven of Pasolini’s fourteen films; and Enzo Siciliano, author of Pasolini: A Biography
- "Pier Paolo Pasolini" (1955), a 55-minute documentary by filmmaker Ivo Barnabò Micheli covering the career of the controversial artist
- "La ricotta" (1963), a 35-minute film by Pasolini about a director who sets out to make a film about the Passion of Jesus
- Original theatrical trailer
- Poster gallery
- Essay by novelist and cultural critic Gary Indiana
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition
- More!
#238 Une Femme est une Femme / A Woman is a Woman [DVD-title] (http://www.criterionco.com/asp/release.asp?id=238) [F / I 1961, Jean Luc Godard]
Cover-Artwork (http://www.criterionco.com/content/images/full_boxshot/238_box_348x490.jpg)
Synopsis
With A Woman is a Woman (Une Femme est une femme), compulsively innovative director Jean-Luc Godard presents “a neorealist musical, that is, a contradiction in terms.” Featuring French superstars Anna Karina, Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Jean-Claude Brialy at their peak of adorability, A Woman is a Woman is a sly, playful tribute to—and interrogation of—the American musical comedy, showcasing Godard’s signature wit and intellectual acumen. The film tells the story of exotic dancer Angéla (Karina) as she attempts to have a child with her unwilling lover Émile (Brialy). In the process, she finds herself torn between him and his best friend Alfred (Belmondo). A dizzying compendium of color, humor, and the music of renowned composer Michel Legrand, A Woman is a Woman finds the young Godard at his warmest and most accessible, reveling in and scrutinizing the mechanics of his great obsession—the cinema.
Film Infos
84 minutes
Color
2.35:1
Dolby Digital Mono 1.0
Anamorphic
French
$29.95
Special Features
- New digital transfer, supervised by director of photography Raoul Coutard, with restored image and sound and enhanced for widescreen televisions
- Charlotte et Véronique ou Tous les garçons s’appellent Patrick (All Boys Are Called Patrick, 1957), an early short film by director Jean-Luc Godard
- Qui ëtes-vous Anna Karina?; excerpts from a 1966 French television interview with Karina, Brialy, and Serge Gainsbourg
- Collection of A Woman Is a Woman posters from around the world
- Original theatrical trailer
- New essay by film critic J. Hoberman, author of The Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition
- More!
No direct link to the Criterion-website for the next title available at this time, so I linked it to the Home Vision Entertainment homepage. No spine-number available, too.
Donzoko / The Lower Depths [DVD-title] (http://www.homevision.com/film.php?id=LOW030) [J 1957, Akira Kurosawa] + Les Bas-fonds / The Lower Depths [DVD-title] (http://www.homevision.com/film.php?id=LOW030) [F 1936, Jean Renoir]
Cover-Artwork (http://www.homevision.com/packaging/1056663529-LOW030.gif)
Synopsis
The Criterion Collection is proud to present two dramatically different interpretations of Maxim Gorsky's classic play by two of cinema's greatest masters.
Jean Renoir's The Lower Depths (Les Bas-fonds—1936)
Made in the 1930s, amidst the rise of Hitler in Germany and the Popular Front in France, Jean Renoir took license with Maxim Gorky’s source material for The Lower Depths. Aware that the plight of Gorky’s desperates might sit uneasily in his own country on the edge of war, Renoir never lets his derelicts sink quite to the depths, offering them—like in so many of his other films—the possibility of hope. Marking the first time the director would work with Jean Gabin (Grand Illusion) and featuring the great Louis Jouvet (Quai des Orfèvres, Carnival in Flanders), The Lower Depths demonstrates one of cinema’s greatest directors transforming a classic play into his own terms for a distinct time.
Akira Kurosawa's The Lower Depths (Donzoko—1957)
Director Akira Kurosawa’s transformation of Maxim Gorky’s classic proletarian play, The Lower Depths, demonstrates another side of the acclaimed filmmaker’s remarkable versatility. In contrast to his usual broad canvas and kinetic filmmaking style, here he explores the possibilities of the stage, finding intimacy in his examination of a group of destitutes set, ironically, within Japan’s prosperous Edo period. Starring an ensemble cast that includes Toshiro Mifune, Isuzu Yamada, and Minoru Chiaki, this adaptation is a Buddhist meditation on the human condition, a poignant yet comic investigation of one of Kurosawa’s favorite themes—the conflict between illusion and reality.
Film Infos
85/125 minutes
1.33:1
Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono
Japanese / French
$39.95
Special Features
Jean Renoir's The Lower Depths (Les Bas-fonds—1936)
- New high-definition digital transfer, with restored image and sound
- Introduction to the film by Jean Renoir
- New essay by film scholar Alexander Sesonske, author of Jean Renoir: The French Films 1924–1939
- New and improved English subtitle translation
Akira Kurosawa's The Lower Depths (Donzoko—1957)
- New high-definition digital transfer, with restored image and sound
- Original theatrical trailer
- A documentary on the making of The Lower Depths, part of the Toho Masterworks series Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create
- Audio commentary featuring Japanese-film expert Donald Richie (A Hundred Years of Japanese Film)
- New essay by Keiko McDonald (From Book to Screen: Modern Japanese Literature in Film) and Thomas Rimer (A Reader’s Guide to Japanese Literature)
- Cast biographies by Stephen Prince (The Warrior’s Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa)
- New and improved English subtitle translation by renowned Japanese-film translator Linda Hoaglund
- Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition
#236 Mamma Roma (http://www.criterionco.com/asp/release.asp?id=236)
Cover-Artwork (http://www.criterionco.com/content/images/full_boxshot/236_box_348x490.jpg)
[I]Synopsis
Anna Magnani is Mamma Roma, a middle-aged prostitute who attempts to extricate herself from her sordid past for the sake of her son. Filmed in the great tradition of Italian neorealism, Mamma Roma offers an unflinching look at the struggle for survival in postwar Italy, and highlights director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s lifelong fascination with the marginalized and dispossessed. Though banned upon its release in Italy for obscenity, today Mamma Roma is considered a classic: a glimpse at a country’s most controversial director in the process of finding his style and a powerhouse performance by one of cinema’s greatest actresses.
Film Infos
110 minutes
Black and white
1.33:1
Dolby Digital Mono 1.0
Not Anamorphic
Italian
$39.95
Special Features
- New high-definition digital transfer, with restored image and sound
- Three new interviews about director Pier Paolo Pasolini: Bernardo Bertolucci, an assistant to Pasolini on his early films; Tonino Delli Colli, cinematographer on eleven of Pasolini’s fourteen films; and Enzo Siciliano, author of Pasolini: A Biography
- "Pier Paolo Pasolini" (1955), a 55-minute documentary by filmmaker Ivo Barnabò Micheli covering the career of the controversial artist
- "La ricotta" (1963), a 35-minute film by Pasolini about a director who sets out to make a film about the Passion of Jesus
- Original theatrical trailer
- Poster gallery
- Essay by novelist and cultural critic Gary Indiana
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition
- More!
#238 Une Femme est une Femme / A Woman is a Woman [DVD-title] (http://www.criterionco.com/asp/release.asp?id=238) [F / I 1961, Jean Luc Godard]
Cover-Artwork (http://www.criterionco.com/content/images/full_boxshot/238_box_348x490.jpg)
Synopsis
With A Woman is a Woman (Une Femme est une femme), compulsively innovative director Jean-Luc Godard presents “a neorealist musical, that is, a contradiction in terms.” Featuring French superstars Anna Karina, Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Jean-Claude Brialy at their peak of adorability, A Woman is a Woman is a sly, playful tribute to—and interrogation of—the American musical comedy, showcasing Godard’s signature wit and intellectual acumen. The film tells the story of exotic dancer Angéla (Karina) as she attempts to have a child with her unwilling lover Émile (Brialy). In the process, she finds herself torn between him and his best friend Alfred (Belmondo). A dizzying compendium of color, humor, and the music of renowned composer Michel Legrand, A Woman is a Woman finds the young Godard at his warmest and most accessible, reveling in and scrutinizing the mechanics of his great obsession—the cinema.
Film Infos
84 minutes
Color
2.35:1
Dolby Digital Mono 1.0
Anamorphic
French
$29.95
Special Features
- New digital transfer, supervised by director of photography Raoul Coutard, with restored image and sound and enhanced for widescreen televisions
- Charlotte et Véronique ou Tous les garçons s’appellent Patrick (All Boys Are Called Patrick, 1957), an early short film by director Jean-Luc Godard
- Qui ëtes-vous Anna Karina?; excerpts from a 1966 French television interview with Karina, Brialy, and Serge Gainsbourg
- Collection of A Woman Is a Woman posters from around the world
- Original theatrical trailer
- New essay by film critic J. Hoberman, author of The Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition
- More!
No direct link to the Criterion-website for the next title available at this time, so I linked it to the Home Vision Entertainment homepage. No spine-number available, too.
Donzoko / The Lower Depths [DVD-title] (http://www.homevision.com/film.php?id=LOW030) [J 1957, Akira Kurosawa] + Les Bas-fonds / The Lower Depths [DVD-title] (http://www.homevision.com/film.php?id=LOW030) [F 1936, Jean Renoir]
Cover-Artwork (http://www.homevision.com/packaging/1056663529-LOW030.gif)
Synopsis
The Criterion Collection is proud to present two dramatically different interpretations of Maxim Gorsky's classic play by two of cinema's greatest masters.
Jean Renoir's The Lower Depths (Les Bas-fonds—1936)
Made in the 1930s, amidst the rise of Hitler in Germany and the Popular Front in France, Jean Renoir took license with Maxim Gorky’s source material for The Lower Depths. Aware that the plight of Gorky’s desperates might sit uneasily in his own country on the edge of war, Renoir never lets his derelicts sink quite to the depths, offering them—like in so many of his other films—the possibility of hope. Marking the first time the director would work with Jean Gabin (Grand Illusion) and featuring the great Louis Jouvet (Quai des Orfèvres, Carnival in Flanders), The Lower Depths demonstrates one of cinema’s greatest directors transforming a classic play into his own terms for a distinct time.
Akira Kurosawa's The Lower Depths (Donzoko—1957)
Director Akira Kurosawa’s transformation of Maxim Gorky’s classic proletarian play, The Lower Depths, demonstrates another side of the acclaimed filmmaker’s remarkable versatility. In contrast to his usual broad canvas and kinetic filmmaking style, here he explores the possibilities of the stage, finding intimacy in his examination of a group of destitutes set, ironically, within Japan’s prosperous Edo period. Starring an ensemble cast that includes Toshiro Mifune, Isuzu Yamada, and Minoru Chiaki, this adaptation is a Buddhist meditation on the human condition, a poignant yet comic investigation of one of Kurosawa’s favorite themes—the conflict between illusion and reality.
Film Infos
85/125 minutes
1.33:1
Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono
Japanese / French
$39.95
Special Features
Jean Renoir's The Lower Depths (Les Bas-fonds—1936)
- New high-definition digital transfer, with restored image and sound
- Introduction to the film by Jean Renoir
- New essay by film scholar Alexander Sesonske, author of Jean Renoir: The French Films 1924–1939
- New and improved English subtitle translation
Akira Kurosawa's The Lower Depths (Donzoko—1957)
- New high-definition digital transfer, with restored image and sound
- Original theatrical trailer
- A documentary on the making of The Lower Depths, part of the Toho Masterworks series Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create
- Audio commentary featuring Japanese-film expert Donald Richie (A Hundred Years of Japanese Film)
- New essay by Keiko McDonald (From Book to Screen: Modern Japanese Literature in Film) and Thomas Rimer (A Reader’s Guide to Japanese Literature)
- Cast biographies by Stephen Prince (The Warrior’s Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa)
- New and improved English subtitle translation by renowned Japanese-film translator Linda Hoaglund
- Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition