Criterion today announced it’s Blu-ray Disc lineup for the month of June, 2010. Check out all the details for the upcoming titles: Mystery Train; Close-Up; Red Desert; Everlasting Moments; and The Leopard.
MYSTERY TRAIN
Aloof teenage Japanese tourists, a frazzled Italian widow, and a disgruntled British immigrant all converge in the city of dreams—which, in Mystery Train, from Jim Jarmusch (Stranger Than Paradise, Night on Earth), is Memphis. Made with its director’s customary precision and wit, Mystery Train is a triptych of stories that pay playful tribute to the home of Stax Records, Sun Studio, Graceland, Carl Perkins, and, of course, the King himself, who presides over the film like a spirit.Mystery Train is one of Jarmusch’s very best movies, a boozy and beautiful pilgrimage to an iconic American ghost town and a paean to the music it gave the world.
1989 • 110 minutes • Color • Monaural • in English and Japanese with English subtitles • 1.77:1 aspect ratio
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Jim Jarmusch (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
• Q&A with Jarmusch, in which he responds to questions sent in by fans
• Original documentary on Mystery Train’s locations and Memphis’s rich social and musical history
• On-set photos by Masayoshi Sukita, and behind-the-scenes photos
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by writers Peter Guralnick and Dennis Lim, as well as a collectible poster
CLOSE-UP
Internationally revered Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami (Taste of Cherry, Ten) has created some of the most inventive and transcendent cinema of the past thirty years, and Close-up is his most radical, brilliant work. This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event—the arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf—as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and existence, in which the real people from the case play themselves. With its universal themes and fascinating narrative knots, Close-up continues to resonate with viewers around the world.
1990 • 98 minutes • Color • Monaural • In Farsi with English subtitles • 1.33:1 aspect ratio
RED DESERT
Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1960s panoramas of contemporary alienation were decade-defining artistic events, and Red Desert, his first color film, remains one of his greatest. This provocative look at the spiritual desolation of the technological age—about a disaffected woman, brilliantly portrayed by Antonioni muse Monica Vitti (L’avventura), wandering through a bleak industrial landscape beset by power plants and environmental toxins, and tentatively flirting with her husband’s coworker, played by Richard Harris (This Sporting Life)—continues to exert force over viewers. With one startling, painterly composition after another—of abandoned fishing cottages, electrical towers, overwhelming docked ships—Red Desert creates a nearly apocalyptic image of its time, and confirms Antonioni as cinema’s preeminent poet of the modern age.
1964 • 117 minutes • Color • Monaural • In Italian with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New, restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Audio commentary by Italian film scholar David Forgacs
• Archival video interviews with director Antonioni and actress Monica Vitti
• Outtakes from the film’s production
• Original theatrical trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film historian Mark Le Fanu, an interview with Antonioni by Jean-Luc Godard, and a reprinted essay by Antonioni on his use of color
EVERLASTING MOMENTS
Swedish master Jan Troell (The Emigrants, The New Land) returns triumphantly with Everlasting Moments, a vivid, heartrending story of a woman liberated through art at the beginning of the twentieth century. Though poor and abused by her alcoholic husband, Maria Larsson (Maria Heiskanen, in a beautifully nuanced portrayal) finds an outlet in photography, which opens up her world for the first time. With a burnished bronze tint that evokes faded photographs, and a broad empathetic palette, Everlasting Moments—based on a true story—is a miraculous tribute to the power of image making.
2008 • 131 minutes • Color • Stereo • In Swedish with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio
THE LEOPARD
An epic on the grandest scale, Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard (Il gattopardo)
re-creates, with nostalgia, drama, and opulence, the tumultuous years of Italy’s Risorgimento, when the aristocracy lost its grip and the middle classes rose and formed a unified, democratic Italy. Burt Lancaster (The Killers, Brute Force) stars as an aging prince watching his culture and fortune wane in the face of a new generation, represented by the gorgeous Alain Delon (Purple Noon, Le samouraï) and Claudia Cardinale (8 ½, Once Upon a Time in the West). The Criterion Collection is proud to present The Leopard in two distinct versions: Visconti’s original and the English-language one released in America.
1963 • 185 minutes • Color • Monaural • In Italian with English subtitles • 2.21:1 aspect ratio
BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES
• Restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director of photography Giuseppe Rotunno, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• The 161-minute American release, with English-language dialogue, including actor Burt Lancaster’s own voice
• Audio commentary by film scholar Peter Cowie
• A Dying Breed: The Making of “The Leopard,†an hour-long documentary featuring interviews with actress Claudia Cardinale, screenwriter Suso Ceccho D’Amico, Rotunno, filmmaker Sydney Pollack, and many others
• Video interview with producer Goffredo Lombardo
• Video interview with film scholar Millicent Marcus on the history behind The Leopard
• Original theatrical trailers and newsreels
• Stills gallery of rare behind-the-scenes production photos
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film historian Michael Wood