The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

News on Criterion and Janus Films.
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Roger Ryan
Joined: Wed Apr 28, 2010 12:04 pm
Location: A Midland town spread and darkened into a city

Re: The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

#301 Post by Roger Ryan » Wed Oct 30, 2019 8:21 am

Michael Kerpan wrote:
Tue Oct 29, 2019 6:50 pm
Lowry_Sam wrote:
Tue Oct 29, 2019 5:28 pm
So should I feel deprived now that mine did not come with a "chain-like thing"?
Maybe you tossed out the chain by accident (it wasn't really obvious). ;-)

I figured our to fasten in into a closed loop holding the card -- eventually.
Right, the thin metal cord was separate from the card and was resting at the bottom of the envelope. I looped it through the card and connected it...then stared at it for a few moments pondering a use. Since it's too bulky (and sharp) to be a keychain, the best I could come up with is to use it as a decorative suitcase attachment for easier identification on an airport baggage carousel.

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Lowry_Sam
Joined: Mon Jul 05, 2010 3:35 pm
Location: San Francisco, CA

Re: The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

#302 Post by Lowry_Sam » Wed Oct 30, 2019 3:14 pm

Thanks for the heads up. I went to the trash & fished out the envelope 1 hr. before the trashman came (fortunately he was running late this time) & sure enough there was a wire lying on the bottom of the envelope. Seems like this thing could be more useful than the card. To hold a luggage tag was my first thought too.

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371229
Joined: Wed Mar 02, 2016 12:28 am

Re: The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

#303 Post by 371229 » Wed Oct 30, 2019 4:19 pm

I got a metal card too. What is this for? Just to add to my mountain of ever increasing crap? I think it would have been nicer if they just sent a gift cert. or maybe a pack of their post cards.

Glowingwabbit
Joined: Wed May 01, 2013 1:27 pm

Re: The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

#304 Post by Glowingwabbit » Wed Oct 30, 2019 4:26 pm

371229 wrote:
Wed Oct 30, 2019 4:19 pm
I got a metal card too. What is this for? Just to add to my mountain of ever increasing crap? I think it would have been nicer if they just sent a gift cert. or maybe a pack of their post cards.
There are a few Dave & Buster's near me. I'm going to try to use it there.
Last edited by Glowingwabbit on Wed Oct 30, 2019 4:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Matt
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:58 pm

Re: The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

#305 Post by Matt » Wed Oct 30, 2019 4:28 pm

If you're a charter member, you already got a gift certificate, probably two.

Use the card as a pocket ice scraper. Dough scraper. Grouting tool. Cheese knife. Bookmark. Wrap a cable around it.

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Batzomon
Joined: Mon Aug 26, 2013 10:44 am

Re: The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

#306 Post by Batzomon » Sat Nov 09, 2019 11:44 am

Vidor’s War and Peace is no longer on the site. When was it removed? I don’t see any evidence that it was confirmed to be leaving.

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fdm
Joined: Fri Apr 21, 2006 1:25 pm

Re: The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

#307 Post by fdm » Sat Nov 09, 2019 2:13 pm

I noticed the other day that it was available at Prime to stream...

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Lowry_Sam
Joined: Mon Jul 05, 2010 3:35 pm
Location: San Francisco, CA

Re: The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

#308 Post by Lowry_Sam » Mon Nov 11, 2019 2:29 am

albucat wrote:
Fri Sep 20, 2019 1:03 pm
Blood Feast, Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1963
Carving Magic, Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1959
Color Me Blood Red, Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1965
The Gore Gore Girls, Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1972
The Gruesome Twosome, Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1967
Herschell Gordon Lewis: The Godfather of Gore, Frank Henenlotter and Jimmy Maslon, 2010
Two Thousand Maniacs!, Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1964
The Wizard of Gore, Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1970
So is no one else surprised by these showing up on The Criterion Channel?

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Matt
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:58 pm

Re: The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

#309 Post by Matt » Fri Nov 15, 2019 2:32 pm

No? Criterion has been a longtime champion of low-budget genre films, these were all very recently restored and re-released, John Waters (friend of Criterion) is a huge fan, and HGL is a major auteur and innovator of this type of film. When they feature a Bob Cresse retrospective, THEN I'll be surprised.

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Satori
Joined: Sun May 09, 2010 10:32 am

Re: The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

#310 Post by Satori » Sat Nov 16, 2019 9:06 am

While I would never suggest that anyone actually watch a HGL film (although I myself have seen more than my share during a more masochistic phase of my life), there is an early 90s conversation between him and John Waters on the channel (from "Split Screen") that is predictably delightful. I also watched the Frank Henenlotter doc, which was not very insightful, although I always enjoy stories about no-budget filmmaking from that era. However, I really think people need to be slightly more critical when talking about Two Thousand Maniacs and singing its main theme song!

albucat
Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2011 12:06 am

Re: The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

#311 Post by albucat » Mon Nov 25, 2019 3:08 pm

Complete list of films premiering on the Criterion Channel in December:

Alfie, Lewis Gilbert, 1966
Aves, Nietzchka Keene, 1994
The Best Years of Our Lives, William Wyler, 1946
Black Legion, Archie Mayo, 1937
The Black Stallion, Carroll Ballard, 1979
The Breaking Point, Michael Curtiz, 1950
The Cabin in the Cotton, Michael Curtiz, 1932
Dark Victory, Edmund Goulding, 1939
Dead End, William Wyler, 1937
Diamantino, Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt, 2019
Dodsworth, William Wyler, 1936
Elles, Małgorzata Szumowska, 2011
Everyone Else, Maren Ade, 2009**
The Forest for the Trees, Maren Ade, 2003**
The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Peter Yates, 1973
Front Page Woman, Michael Curtiz, 1935
Get Carter, Mike Hodges, 1971
Girlhood, Céline Sciamma, 2014
Gold Diggers of 1933, Mervyn LeRoy, 1933
He Ran All the Way, John Berry, 1951
Hell’s House, Howard Higgin, 1932
Hinterland, Nietzchka Keene, 1983
In This Our Life, John Huston, 1942
The Italian Job, Peter Collinson, 1969
Jezebel, William Wyler, 1938
The Juniper Tree, Nietzchka Keene, 1990
Kid Galahad, Michael Curtiz, 1937
Killer’s Kiss, Stanley Kubrick, 1955
The Killing, Stanley Kubrick, 1956
The Letter, William Wyler, 1940
The Little Foxes, William Wyler, 1941
The Lovers on the Bridge, Leos Carax, 1991
The Man Who Came to Dinner, William Keighley, 1942
Marked Woman, Lloyd Bacon, 1937
Mauvais sang, Leos Carax, 1986
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, Preston Sturges, 1944
Mr. Skeffington, Vincent Sherman, 1944
Murder on the Orient Express, Sidney Lumet, 1974
Now, Voyager, Irving Rapper, 1942
Of Human Bondage, John Cromwell, 1934
The Old Maid, Edmund Goulding, 1939
Oliver!, Carol Reed, 1968
The Petrified Forest, Archie Mayo, 1936
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, Michael Curtiz, 1939
Red Road, Andrea Arnold, 2006
Rififi, Jules Dassin, 1955**
Scarlet Street, Fritz Lang, 1945
Something Wild, Jonathan Demme, 1986
The Shop Around the Corner, Ernst Lubitsch, 1940
Still, Nietzchka Keene, 1978
These Three, William Wyler, 1936
Three on a Match, Mervyn LeRoy, 1932
Terms of Endearment, James L. Brooks, 1983**
Tomboy, Céline Sciamma, 2011
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Philip Kaufman, 1988
Water Lilies, Céline Sciamma, 2007
The Westerner, William Wyler, 1940
The Woman in the Window, Fritz Lang, 1944
Wren Boys, Harry Lighton, 2017
Wuthering Heights, Andrea Arnold, 2011

**Available in the U.S. only

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Ribs
Joined: Fri Jun 13, 2014 1:14 pm

Re: The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

#312 Post by Ribs » Mon Nov 25, 2019 3:15 pm

Is there a reason you never actually post the groupings and themes and just make it the giant list that's much less simple to parse?

Sunday, December 1
Starring Bette Davis
Featuring a new introduction by critic Farran Smith Nehme

With her live-wire intensity, acerbic delivery, and striking saucer eyes, Bette Davis was a force of nature who dominated the screen with her fearless portrayals of complex, often defiantly unsympathetic characters. After showing flashes of brilliance in pre-Code gems like Three on a Match and Cabin in the Cotton, she got her star-making breakthrough in Of Human Bondage, netting a write-in Oscar nomination for her volcanic performance as a tempestuous cockney working girl. As the undisputed queen of the Warner Bros. lot from the midthirties to the early forties, she displayed dazzling versatility in a string of iconic roles: a strong-willed Southern belle in Jezebel (for which she won her second Academy Award), a dying socialite in the three-tissue tearjerker Dark Victory, a murderous femme fatale in the feverish noir The Letter, and a repressed spinster-gone-glam in the melodrama motherlode Now, Voyager. As showcases for her electrifying, larger-than-life screen presence, these films don’t just star Bette Davis—they can barely contain her.

Three on a Match, Mervyn LeRoy, 1932
Hell’s House, Howard Higgin, 1932
The Cabin in the Cotton, Michael Curtiz, 1932
Of Human Bondage, John Cromwell, 1934
Front Page Woman, Michael Curtiz, 1935
The Petrified Forest, Archie Mayo, 1937
Marked Woman, Lloyd Bacon, 1937
Kid Galahad, Michael Curtiz, 1937
Jezebel, William Wyler, 1938
Dark Victory, Edmund Goulding, 1939
The Old Maid, Edmund Goulding, 1939
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, Michael Curtiz, 1939
The Letter, William Wyler, 1940
The Little Foxes, William Wyler, 1941
Now, Voyager, Irving Rapper, 1942
The Man Who Came to Dinner, William Keighley, 1942
In This Our Life, John Huston, 1942
Mr. Skeffington, Vincent Sherman, 1944

Monday, December 2
Diamantino
Exclusive streaming premiere

A word-of-mouth sensation on the festival circuit, Diamantino is one of the most unclassifiable films of the year. When bighearted but dim-witted Portuguese soccer hunk Diamantino (Carloto Cotta) blows it in the World Cup finals, he goes from superstar to laughing stock overnight. His sheltered worldview is further shattered after learning about the European refugee crisis, and he resolves to make amends by adopting an African refugee—only to find that his new “son” is actually an undercover lesbian tax auditor investigating him on the suspicion of corruption. From there, Diamantino gets swept up in a gonzo comic odyssey involving cigarette-smoking evil twins, secret service skullduggery, mad-science genetic modification, and a right-wing anti-EU conspiracy. Vividly photographed in Super 16 mm and featuring the biggest stampedes of giant Pekingese puppies you’ve ever seen, Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt’s genre-blending and gender-bending satire is a high-camp masterpiece.

Monday, December 2
Something Wild: Criterion Collection Edition #563

A straitlaced businessman meets a quirky, free-spirited woman at a downtown New York greasy spoon. Her offer of a ride back to his office results in a lunchtime motel rendezvous—just the beginning of a capricious interstate road trip that brings the two face-to-face with their hidden selves. Featuring a killer soundtrack and electric performances from Jeff Daniels, Melanie Griffith, and Ray Liotta, Something Wild, directed by oddball American auteur Jonathan Demme, is both a kinky comic thriller and a radiantly off-kilter love story. SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Interviews with Jonathan Demme and writer E. Max Frye.

Tuesday, December 3
Short + Feature: For the Birds
The Cage and Kes
Featuring an introduction by Criterion Channel programmer Penelope Bartlett

A bird is a boy’s best friend in these bittersweet coming-of-age fables, both of which blend social-realist grit with child’s-eye poetry. Romanian director Adrian Sitaru’s The Cage embeds a perceptive study of father-son dynamics within its poignant tale of a boy who takes in an injured bird with hopes of nursing it back to health. Its brand of kitchen-sink humanism hearkens back to Ken Loach’s early masterpiece Kes, a heartrending study of working-class British life in which a wayward teenager finds escape from his dreary existence through his bond with a wild kestrel.

Wednesday, December 4
Directed by Andrea Arnold

Bristling with a wild, untamed naturalism, the films of British auteur Andrea Arnold are bracing immersions into the worlds of the young, the restless, and the dispossessed. After establishing her bold vision with the wrenching, Academy Award–winning short Wasp, Arnold made her feature debut with the provocative voyeur thriller Red Road, embracing the Dogme 95 movement’s penchant for handheld camera work, natural light, and grainy realism. Arnold’s interest in nonprofessional actors led to the discovery of Katie Jarvis, whose astonishing performance lights up Fish Tank, an electrifying coming-of-age drama costarring Michael Fassbender. And her fearless commitment to raw, elemental filmmaking breathes fresh life into her take on Wuthering Heights, a richly textured adaptation that captures the novel’s rebellious spirit.

Shorts
Milk, 1998
Dog, 2001
Wasp, 2003

Features
Red Road, 2006
Fish Tank, 2009
Wuthering Heights, 2011

Thursday, December 5
Bogart’s Beginnings

Before he was Bogie, Humphrey Bogart was just another workaday character actor struggling to break out of the Warner Bros. stock company. After getting a late start in the film industry, he went through periods of unemployment throughout the early 1930s before attracting attention for his turn as a ruthless gangster opposite Bette Davis in The Petrified Forest. Typecast as a tough-guy villain in gritty crime dramas like Marked Woman and Dead End, Bogart gradually honed his legendary persona—sardonic, wounded, and world-weary—so that when the A-list at last beckoned in the early forties, he was more than ready for his close-up. The rest, as they say, is history . . .

Three on a Match, Mervyn LeRoy, 1932
Black Legion, Archie Mayo, 1937
Dead End, William Wyler, 1937
Marked Woman, Lloyd Bacon, 1937
The Petrified Forest, Archie Mayo, 1937
Kid Galahad, Michael Curtiz, 1937
Dark Victory, Edmund Goulding, 1939

Friday, December 6
Double Feature: Paint It Black
Scarlet Street and The Woman in the Window

The hands of fate grip like a vise in two of master director Fritz Lang’s darkest journeys through the lower depths, each revolving around paintings and starring the crackerjack noir trio of Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, and Dan Duryea. First, Robinson plays an artist mixed up in a web of deceit in Scarlet Street, one of the most harrowing and haunting noirs of the 1940s. Then, he’s a psychology professor whose encounter with a mysterious woman—whom he first glimpses in a painting—leads him down a road to ruin in The Woman in the Window.


Saturday, December 7
Saturday Matinee: The Black Stallion

A wild horse saves a young boy’s life after a terrifying shipwreck and the two become unlikely friends in Carroll Ballard’s cinematic tour de force, adapted from Walter Farley’s classic children’s novel. From the crystalline shores of a deserted island to the green grass and dusty roads of 1940s suburban America, Ballard and director of photography Caleb Deschanel create a film of consistent visual invention and purity, one that also features a winning supporting performance by Mickey Rooney as a retired jockey and a gorgeous score by Carmine Coppola. SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Five short films by Carroll Ballard, a conversation between Ballard and critic Scott Foundas, an interview with Caleb Deschanel, and more.

Sunday, December 8
The Art of the Heist

A crack team, an ingenious scheme, a foolproof getaway plan . . . what could possibly go wrong? Perhaps the only thing more fun than watching a perfectly executed cinematic heist unfold is watching it unravel, as evidenced by these safe-cracking classics, each a tour de force of palm-sweating, high-stakes tension. Featuring ice-cool French thrillers like Rififi and Le cercle rouge, pulpy noir gems like The Killing and They Live by Night, and rollicking capers like The Italian Job and Big Deal on Madonna Street, this survey of some of cinema’s most elaborate, daring, and memorable heists crackles with the white-knuckle thrill of the score.

They Live by Night, Nicholas Ray, 1948
He Ran All the Way, John Berry, 1951
Rififi, Jules Dassin, 1955
Bob le flambeur, Jean-Pierre Melville, 1956
The Killing, Stanley Kubrick, 1956
Big Deal on Madonna Street, Mario Monicelli, 1958
The League of Gentlemen, Basil Dearden, 1960
Cruel Gun Story, Takumi Furukawa, 1964
The Italian Job, Peter Collinson, 1969
Le cercle rouge, Jean-Pierre Melville, 1970
The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Peter Yates, 1973
Incident by a Bank, Ruben Östlund, 2009

Monday, December 9
The Friends of Eddie Coyle: Criterion Collection Edition #475

In one of the best performances of his legendary career, Robert Mitchum plays small-time gunrunner Eddie “Fingers” Coyle in an adaptation by Peter Yates 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. SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: An audio commentary featuring Peter Yates.

Tuesday, December 10
Short + Feature: Jingle Hells
Bad Night for the Blues and Mon oncle Antoine

Family got you down this holiday season? Commiserate with the poor, put-upon nephews in these incisive portraits of yuletide dysfunction. In his dryly funny short Bad Night for the Blues, British director Chris Shepherd delves into his own family’s history to recreate a wild December night out with his daft, wine-swilling Tory aunt. Then, a teenage boy gets a jarring Christmastime awakening in Claude Jutra’s bittersweet Quebecois classic Mon oncle Antoine, widely cited as the greatest Canadian film ever made.

Wednesday, December 11
Directed by Maren Ade
Featuring an interview with Ade

One of contemporary cinema’s most astute chroniclers of the intricacies of social interaction—often at its messiest and most awkwardly uncomfortable—German auteur Maren Ade navigates complex emotional terrain with deadpan delicacy. By turns wryly funny and profoundly piercing, her films—including her remarkably assured debut The Forest for the Trees and international breakout Everyone Else—display a unique mastery of tone and nuanced understanding of human relationships that elicits laughs and cringes in equal measure.

The Forest for the Trees, 2003
Everyone Else, 2009

Thursday, December 12
The Breaking Point: Criterion Collection Edition #889

Michael Curtiz brings a master skipper’s hand to the helm of this thriller, Hollywood’s second crack at Ernest Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not. John Garfield stars as Harry Morgan, an honest charter-boat captain who, facing hard times, takes on dangerous cargo to save his boat, support his family, and preserve his dignity. Left in the lurch by a freeloading passenger, Harry starts to enter¬tain the criminal propositions of a sleazy lawyer (Wallace Ford), as well as the playful come-ons of a cheeky blonde (Patricia Neal), making a series of compromises that stretch his morality—and his marriage—further than he’ll admit. Hewing closer to Hemingway’s novel than Howard Hawks’s Bogart-Bacall vehicle does, The Breaking Point charts a course through daylight noir and working-class tragedy, guided by Curtiz’s effortless visual fluency and a stoic, career-capping performance from Garfield. SUPPLTEMENTAL FEATURES: Interviews with critic Alan K. Rode and acting instructor Julie Garfield, John Garfield’s daughter; a video essay by Taylor Ramos and Tony Zhou; and a tour of Ernest Hemingway’s house in Key West, Florida.

Thursday, December 12
Terms of Endearment

Terms of Endearment dazzled critics and audiences alike with its believable, insightful story of two captivating people, mother and daughter, unforgettably played by Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger. From grand slapstick to deepest sentiment, director James L. Brooks masterfully paints scenes from their evolving thirty-year relationship. Jack Nicholson turns in a great comic performance as MacLaine’s neighbor, a boozy, womanizing former astronaut. The rare Hollywood film that captures the rhythms of everyday life, Terms of Endearment won Oscars for best picture, director, adapted screenplay, actress, and supporting actor, cementing its status as a classic tragicomedy.

Friday, December 13
Double Feature: Blondell Bombshells
Three on a Match and Gold Diggers of 1933

A ubiquitous presence throughout the Warner Bros. films of the 1930s, Joan Blondell had a brassy charm that was perfectly suited to the pre-Code era, when chiselers, good-time girls, and wisecracking dames were screen staples. She’s at her sassy, scene-stealing best playing world-wise showgirls in both the pulp firecracker Three on a Match (costarring Ann Dvorak and Bette Davis) and the eyeball-whirling Depression-era musical Gold Diggers of 1933.

Saturday, December 14
Saturday Matinee: On the Town

“New York, New York, it’s a wonderful town!” For this exuberant adaptation of Leonard Bernstein’s Broadway hit, directors Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen busted out of the soundstage and hit the streets of the Big Apple. Making unprecedented use of location shooting—from the Brooklyn Bridge to Central Park to the top of Rockefeller Center—On the Town bursts with a joyous, freewheeling energy as three sailors (Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munshin) find romance and adventure over the course of a whirlwind twenty-four-hour shore leave.

Sunday, December 15
Starring Juliette Binoche

Incandescent muse of the French cinema, Hollywood movie star, and international art-house icon: Juliette Binoche has been all of the above in her extraordinary career. Bringing nuance, intelligence, and a radiant screen presence to each of her performances, she has delved fearlessly into a wide range of complex roles for some of the greatest and most daring directors of the last four decades, including Gallic luminaries like Leos Carax (Mauvais sang), Olivier Assayas (Clouds of Sils Maria), André Téchiné (Rendez-vous), and Bruno Dumont (Camille Claudel 1915) and international titans like Krzysztof Kieślowski (Three Colors: Blue), Abbas Kiarostami (Certified Copy), Michael Haneke (Caché), and Philip Kaufman (The Unbearable Lightness of Being). Encompassing every stage of her evolution—from ingenue to grande dame—this career-spanning survey celebrates the majesty and mystique that have made “La Binoche” synonymous with cutting-edge cinema.

Rendez-vous, André Téchiné, 1985
Mauvais sang, Leos Carax, 1986
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Philip Kaufman, 1988
The Lovers on the Bridge, Leos Carax, 1991
Three Colors: Blue, Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1993
Code Unknown, Michael Haneke, 2000
Caché, Michael Haneke, 2005
Summer Hours, Olivier Assayas, 2008
Certified Copy, Abbas Kiarostami, 2010
Elles, Małgorzata Szumowska, 2011
Camille Claudel 1915, Bruno Dumont, 2013
Clouds of Sils Maria, Olivier Assayas, 2014
Slack Bay, Bruno Dumont, 2016

Monday, December 16
The Killing: Criterion Collection Edition #575

Stanley Kubrick’s account of an ambitious racetrack robbery is one of Hollywood’s tautest, twistiest noirs. Aided by a radically time-shuffling narrative, razor-sharp dialogue from pulp novelist Jim Thompson, and a phenomenal cast of character actors, including Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Timothy Carey, Elisha Cook Jr., and Marie Windsor, The Killing is both a jaunty thriller and a cold-blooded punch to the gut. And with its precise tracking shots and gratifying sense of irony, it’s Kubrick to the core. SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Stanley Kubrick’s 1955 noir feature Killer’s Kiss, with an appreciation by critic Geoffrey O’Brien, and interviews with Sterling Hayden, producer James B. Harris, and author Robert Polito.

Tuesday, December 17
Short + Feature: Let’s Talk About Love
Presentation, or Charlotte and Her Steak and Metropolitan

With their emphasis on literate conversation and the romantic complications of the young and urbane, the films of French New Wave titan Eric Rohmer and New York indie darling Whit Stillman share a sophisticated spiritual connection. Starring a very young Jean-Luc Godard, Rohmer’s early short Presentation, or Charlotte and Her Steak captures a fleeting amorous encounter in a snowbound Swiss village. Though it was made decades later, Whit Stillman’s sparkling, Christmastime-set comedy of manners Metropolitan feels almost contemporaneous in its acid-tongued look at romantic and class anxieties among a coterie of fledgling Upper East Side socialites.

Wednesday, December 18
Directed by Céline Sciamma

To mark the release of her acclaimed new film Portrait of a Lady on Fire, we’re revisiting the revelatory first three features by French director Céline Sciamma. Forming a loose trilogy centered around the experiences of young people grappling with issues of sexual, gender, and social identity, Water Lilies, Tomboy, and Girlhood ache and soar with the pain, confusion, and exhilaration of adolescence. Graced with an evocative, impressionistic visual style and remarkable performances from their young, non-professional leads, these intimate coming-of-age tales are lit from within by a raw, heart-pounding emotional honesty.

Water Lilies, 2007
Tomboy, 2011
Girlhood, 2014

Thursday, December 19
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Criterion Collection Edition #360

In his one-of-a-kind fiction/documentary hybrid Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One, director William Greaves presides over a beleaguered film crew in New York’s Central Park, leaving them to try to figure out what kind of movie they’re making. A couple enacts a break-up scenario over and over, a documentary crew films a crew filming the crew, locals wander casually into the frame: the project defies easy description. Yet this wildly innovative sixties counterculture landmark remains one of the most tightly focused and insightful movies ever made about making movies. Criterion presents the film along with its sequel, Take 2½, made thirty-five years later with executive producers Steven Soderbergh and Steve Buscemi. SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: A documentary on William Greaves’s career and an interview with Steve Buscemi.

Friday, December 20
Double Feature: Madcap Marriages
I Married a Witch and The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek

It’s a match made in screwball heaven! René Clair’s ebulliently inventive supernatural romance I Married a Witch stars Veronica Lake at her saucy best as a seductive sorceress who uses her hex appeal to get revenge on a hapless Fredric March. The film’s original producer (who ultimately left the project due to artistic differences), Preston Sturges, directs the uproarious The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, a jaw-droppingly subversive treatment of sex and marriage that somehow slipped past the 1940s censors.

Saturday, December 21
Saturday Matinee: Murder on the Orient Express

When a much-despised financier is murdered onboard the titular train, everyone’s a suspect in Sidney Lumet’s brilliantly entertaining, star-studded adaptation of the classic Agatha Christie whodunnit. Albert Finney steps into the gumshoes of famed detective Hercule Poirot alongside a lineup of legends that includes Lauren Bacall, Sean Connery, John Gielgud, Vanessa Redgrave, Michael York, Jacqueline Bisset, Anthony Perkins, Wendy Hiller, and Ingrid Bergman, who won an Oscar for her small but unforgettable turn.

Sunday, December 22
Blue Christmas

It may be the season of cheerful carols and twinkling lights, but the holidays also bring about a melancholy mood that has inspired some of the world’s greatest filmmakers. This selection explores the clashing emotions at the heart of the yuletide spirit, including Jacques Demy’s gorgeous musical romance The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Guillermo del Toro’s emotionally captivating fantasy Cronos, Luis García Berlanga’s stinging satire Plácido, and Ingmar Bergman’s intimate epic Fanny and Alexander.

Morning for the Osone Family, Keisuke Kinoshita, 1946
Black Narcissus, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947
Plácido, Luis García Berlanga, 1961
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Jacques Demy, 1964
My Night at Maud’s, Eric Rohmer, 1969
Fanny and Alexander, Ingmar Bergman, 1982
Cronos, Guillermo del Toro, 1993
A Christmas Tale, Arnaud Desplechin, 2008

Monday, December 23
Observations on Film Art No. 33: Mise-en-scène in My Brilliant Career

Adapted from the beloved novel by Miles Franklin, Gillian Armstrong’s Australian New Wave classic My Brilliant Career depicts the world of a rebellious young woman who dreams of becoming a writer while growing up in the rugged countryside of nineteenth-century Australia. In this episode of Observations on Film Art, Professor Jeff Smith explores how Armstrong uses lighting, costuming, and decor to upend the conventionally masculine mythologies of the frontier tale, creating a uniquely feminine “western” in which self-realization is tied to creative expression and the rejection of patriarchal norms

Tuesday, December 24
Short + Feature: Homoerotic for the Holidays
Wren Boys and Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence

Queer love and desire smolder behind bars in these unconventional holiday tales. Harry Lighton’s expectation-defying short Wren Boys spins off in increasingly surprising directions as it unravels the relationships between an incarcerated man, his boyfriend on the outside, and an Irish Catholic priest. Then, Japanese electronic-pop icon Ryuichi Sakamoto only has eyes for David Bowie in Nagisa Oshima’s offbeat POW drama Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, a heartrending holiday movie unlike any other.

Wednesday, December 25
The Juniper Tree
Streaming premiere, featuring three short films by Nietzchka Keene

The late, unsung visionary Nietzchka Keene made her stark, stunning feature debut with this medieval-set fable of witchcraft and persecution. Loosely based on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale of the same name, The Juniper Tree stars an incandescent Björk in her first film performance as a young woman who, after her mother is burned at the stake for practicing witchcraft, flees with her sister (Bryndis Petra Bragadóttir) through the harsh Icelandic wilderness—a journey shot through with both terror and mystic revelation. Spectacularly shot on location in poetic black and white and punctuated by indelible waking dream sequences (courtesy of legendary experimental filmmaker Pat O’Neill), this lost-and-found masterwork is a singular feminist fantasia of uncanny, elemental power.

Thursday, December 26
Three Starring Michael Caine

With his much-impersonated cockney accent, sly grin, and signature blend of humor and grit, Michael Caine has been a British screen legend for six decades and counting. This trio of favorites from Caine’s heyday in the late 1960s and early 1970s showcases the actor in three of his most iconic roles: as a conflicted playboy wondering what’s it all about in the swinging-London classic Alfie, a debonair robber in the stylish heist romp The Italian Job, and a ruthless gangster gone rogue in the potent crime drama Get Carter.

Alfie, Lewis Gilbert, 1966
The Italian Job, Peter Collinson, 1969
Get Carter, Mike Hodges, 1971

Friday, December 27
Double Feature: Love Notes
In the Good Old Summertime and The Shop Around the Corner

Ernst Lubitsch’s beloved holiday-time charmer The Shop Around the Corner—starring James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan as coworkers who can barely stand each other even as they unwittingly fall in love through anonymous correspondence—has spawned many remakes and homages, including this rosily nostalgic musical reboot. Transposing the story from 1930s Budapest to a music shop in turn-of-the-century Chicago, In the Good Old Summertime stars Judy Garland and Van Johnson as the quarreling couple who gradually warm to each other, this time accompanied by a Tin Pan Alley hit parade that includes Garland’s stirring rendition of “Merry Christmas.”

Saturday, December 28
Saturday Matinee: Oliver!

Winner of six Academy Awards—including best picture and director—Carol Reed’s rollicking adaptation of the West End musical hit based on Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist traces the eponymous orphan’s journey through the Victorian London underworld as he goes from runaway street urchin to pickpocket-in-training under the tutelage of the mischievous Fagin (Ron Moody). Boasting an impressive cast of talented kiddos, an early turn by Oliver Reed as the villainous Bill Sikes, and infectiously catchy showstoppers like “Food, Glorious Food” and “You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two,” Oliver! is a big, boisterous triumph of heartwarming entertainment.

Sunday, December 29
Directed by William Wyler

One of Hollywood’s preeminent craftsmen, William Wyler brought a rigorous technical perfectionism and penetrating emotional insight to some of the richest, most complex human dramas of the studio era. Infamous among actors and crew for his exacting standards—which typically entailed doing countless retakes until he was satisfied with a scene—Wyler’s meticulous methods paid off in masterpieces like Dodsworth, The Little Foxes, and The Best Years of Our Lives, powerful, character-driven works grounded in a vivid psychological realism. Working with frequent collaborators like Bette Davis, whom he directed in some of her greatest performances, and cinematographer Gregg Toland, with whom he developed his deep-focus visual style, Wyler was a consummate master of the medium who pushed everyone in his orbit to rarely surpassed heights of excellence.

Dodsworth, 1936
These Three, 1936
Dead End, 1937
Jezebel, 1938
Wuthering Heights, 1939
The Letter, 1940
The Westerner, 1940
The Little Foxes, 1941
The Best Years of Our Lives, 1946

Monday, December 30
Tunes of Glory: Criterion Collection Edition #225

In Ronald Neame’s Tunes of Glory, the incomparable Alec Guinness plays Jock Sinclair—a whiskey-drinking, up-by-the-bootstraps commanding officer of a peacetime Scottish battalion. A lifetime military man, Sinclair expects respect and loyalty from his men. But when Basil Barrow (John Mills)—an educated, by-the-book scion of a military family—enters the scene as Sinclair’s replacement, the two men engage in a fierce struggle for control of both the battalion and the hearts and minds of its men. Based on the novel by James Kennaway and featuring flawless performances by Guinness and Mills, Tunes of Glory uses the rigid stratification of military life to comment on the institutional contradictions and class hierarchies of English society, making for an unexpectedly moving drama. SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Interviews with Ronald Neame, Alec Guinness, and John Mills.

Tuesday, December 31
Short + Feature: Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door
Coda and The Phantom Carriage

Drunken nights lead to encounters with the Grim Reaper—and, paradoxically, a chance at rebirth—in these tales of death and transfiguration. In Alan Holly’s animated phantasmagoria Coda, a brush with death begets not terror but a wondrous cosmic journey through the glories of life. Then, Death comes at midnight in Victor Sjöström’s groundbreaking silent masterpiece The Phantom Carriage, a shivery New Year’s Eve–set ghost story renowned for its otherworldly special effects and pioneering use of flashbacks.

albucat
Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2011 12:06 am

Re: The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

#313 Post by albucat » Mon Nov 25, 2019 4:37 pm

Because it leads to a huge, messy post like this when a lot of people are more interested in the actual films than random groupings (the films are all available on the first of the month, regardless of what series they might be themed after). Feel free to do as you like.

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domino harvey
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Re: The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

#314 Post by domino harvey » Mon Nov 25, 2019 4:39 pm

It’s “less simple to parse” an alphabetical list?

Glowingwabbit
Joined: Wed May 01, 2013 1:27 pm

Re: The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

#315 Post by Glowingwabbit » Mon Nov 25, 2019 4:43 pm

I actually appreciate the groupings and themes (Thanks, Ribs!), otherwise it's just a random list of films. I wonder if using the spoiler tags would be good in order to cut down on the space used?

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starmanof51
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Re: The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

#316 Post by starmanof51 » Mon Nov 25, 2019 5:42 pm

I much prefer the simple list (to each their own), and appreciate the prompt sharing.

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Yaanu
Joined: Sat Aug 10, 2013 12:18 am

Re: The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

#317 Post by Yaanu » Mon Nov 25, 2019 7:48 pm

Glowingwabbit wrote:
Mon Nov 25, 2019 4:43 pm
I actually appreciate the groupings and themes (Thanks, Ribs!), otherwise it's just a random list of films. I wonder if using the spoiler tags would be good in order to cut down on the space used?
It shouldn't be hard to compromise by starting with the alphabetical list, then one spoiler tag per week of releases (Dec. 1-7, Dec. 8-14, etc.) for the detailed entries and summaries.

Noiradelic
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Re: The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

#318 Post by Noiradelic » Tue Nov 26, 2019 6:04 am

I prefer the alphabetical listing -- thanks, albucat! -- though the other format has value too. It's not a random list of films if you've heard of most of the films, or at least directors or stars, and have your own tastes and priorities.

Andrew_VB
Joined: Thu Jan 03, 2008 1:07 am

Re: The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

#319 Post by Andrew_VB » Sun Dec 01, 2019 12:37 am

Glowingwabbit wrote:
Mon Nov 25, 2019 4:43 pm
I actually appreciate the groupings and themes (Thanks, Ribs!), otherwise it's just a random list of films. I wonder if using the spoiler tags would be good in order to cut down on the space used?
they literally post it on the criterion site in that format. just go there.

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barryconvex
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Re: The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

#320 Post by barryconvex » Wed Dec 04, 2019 3:20 am

I watched Magnet Of Doom the other night on the C Channel. This was at the absolute top of my most desperate to see list. I would've shelled out big dollars for a bootleg if I knew where to find one, would've driven for hours if it got a screening somewhere on the eastern seaboard and...it stinks. Melville (the same Melville who has been the single greatest discovery of my adult film watching life) must have suffered a blow to the head prior to filming, or something, as he seems to have completely forgotten what constitutes competent filmmaking. Of course even the greatest of directors have their off days but this was so poorly made it still came as something of a shock.

A road movie (one of my better liked sub genres normally) starring Charles Vanel as an aging, crooked banker with $50 million in an American bank and Belmondo as a failed boxer hired by Vanel as a traveling secretary and chauffeur go on the run from NYC through the southern USA tailed all the while by the feds who want to ship Vanel back to France for tax evasion. Their big plan is to wait for the funds to be withdrawn from the bank then flee to Venezuela. Why they don't just wait it out in New York isn't explained but what's even more puzzling is how Melville could get so lost on such familiar and fertile ground. There's one particularly ill-conceived scene that sticks out: in which Vanel throws thousands of dollars in traveling money off a river embankment in order to "keep control of the situation". Belmondo, who had stopped earlier to pick up up a foxy American hitchhiker, then climbs down the grade, scoops up the cash and returns to the car. There's a point to be made here about trust as Vanel is basically at the mercy of this stranger he's hired or Melville could've explored the complexities of the relationship between these two desperate men or even something as generic as honor among thieves would've been...something. Instead Melville chooses to ignore those topics, focusing instead on the journey and as both characters appear to be as clueless about where they're headed as Melville is it seems like the natural decision. The two end up renting a house in a swamp outside New Orleans and some other boring stuff happens before the movie sputters to a finish.

Ted Todorov
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 1:00 pm

Re: The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

#321 Post by Ted Todorov » Sat Dec 07, 2019 2:23 am

Klute, which was released last month and was part of the “Caught on Tape” collection seems to have disappeared. Is this normal for the Criterion Channel to have releases available for a week or two and then remove them without any notice?

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TraverseTown
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Re: The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

#322 Post by TraverseTown » Sat Dec 07, 2019 7:06 am

Ted Todorov wrote:
Sat Dec 07, 2019 2:23 am
Klute, which was released last month and was part of the “Caught on Tape” collection seems to have disappeared. Is this normal for the Criterion Channel to have releases available for a week or two and then remove them without any notice?
It did appear in their list of titles that were expiring at the end of November.

Ted Todorov
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 1:00 pm

Re: The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

#323 Post by Ted Todorov » Sat Dec 07, 2019 8:46 am

TraverseTown wrote:
Sat Dec 07, 2019 7:06 am
Ted Todorov wrote:
Sat Dec 07, 2019 2:23 am
Klute, which was released last month and was part of the “Caught on Tape” collection seems to have disappeared. Is this normal for the Criterion Channel to have releases available for a week or two and then remove them without any notice?
It did appear in their list of titles that were expiring at the end of November.
Good to know, I have to carefully go through the expiring list.
But is it common for them to feature a film so briefly? And are Klute's extras available from any other source? (The movie is available from iTunes but as far as I know, none of the extras).

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dwk
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Re: The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

#324 Post by dwk » Sat Dec 07, 2019 10:14 am

Most films that they do not own are up for about 3 months, but they have had a number of titles only up for 1 or 2 months.

albucat
Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2011 12:06 am

Re: The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

#325 Post by albucat » Sat Dec 07, 2019 10:52 am

Likewise, new titles go up on the first of the month, even if they're in a collection that won't be featured until later.

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