The Criterion Collection has announced that it will add six new titles to its Blu-ray catalog in January: Charles Vidor's
Gilda (1946), Giuseppe De Santis'
Bitter Rice (1949), Toshiya Fujita's
Lady Snwblood (1973) and
Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance (1974), Wim Wenders'
The American Hero (1977), and Ethan and Joel Coen's
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013).
The Complete Lady Snowblood
A young woman (Meiko Kaji), trained from childhood as an assassin and hell-bent on revenge for her father's murder and her mother's rape, hacks and slashes her way to gory satisfaction. Rampant with inventive violence and spectacularly choreographed swordplay, Toshiya Fujita's pair of influential cult classics Lady Snowblood and Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance, set in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Japan, respectively, are bloody, beautiful extravaganzas composed of one elegant widescreen composition after another. The first Lady Snowblood was a major inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill saga, and both of Fujita's films remain cornerstones of Asian action cinema.
Lady Snowblood
Gory revenge is raised to the level of visual poetry in Toshiya Fujita's stunning Lady Snowblood. A major inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill saga, this endlessly inventive film, set in late nineteenth-century Japan, charts the single-minded path of vengeance taken by a young woman (Meiko Kaji) whose parents were the unfortunate victims of a gang of brutal criminals. Fujita creates a wildly entertaining action film of remarkable craft, an effortless balancing act between beauty and violence.
Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance
Meiko Kaji returns in Toshiya Fujita's invigorating sequel to his own cult hit Lady Snowblood. Our furious heroine is captured by the authorities and sentenced to death for the various killings she has committed; however, she is offered a chance of escape—if she carries out dangerous orders for the government. More politically minded than the original, Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance is full of exciting plot turns and ingenious action sequences.
Special Features:
- New 2K digital restorations of both films, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-rays
- New interviews with Kazuo Koike, the writer of the manga on which the films are based, and screenwriter Norio Osada
- Trailers
- New English subtitle translations
- PLUS: An essay by critic Howard Hampton
STREET DATE: JANUARY 5.
Riso amaro
During planting season in Northern Italy's Po Valley, an earthy rice-field worker (the seductive Silvana Mangano) falls in with a small-time criminal (Vittorio Gassman) who is planning a daring heist of the crop, as well as his femme-fatale-ish girlfriend, played by the Hollywood star Doris Dowling. Both a socially conscious look at the hardships endured by underpaid field workers and a melodrama tinged with sex and violence, this early smash for producer extraordinaire Dino De Laurentiis and director Giuseppe De Santis is neorealism with a heaping dose of pulp.
Special Features:
- New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Giuseppe de Santis, a 2007 documentary by screenwriter Carlo Lizzani
- Interview with Lizzani from 2003
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by critic Pasquale Iannone
STREET DATE: JANUARY 12.
The American Friend
Wim Wenders pays loving homage to rough-and-tumble Hollywood film noir with The American Friend, a loose adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel Ripley's Game. Dennis Hopper oozes quirky menace as an amoral American art dealer who entangles a terminally ill German everyman, played by Bruno Ganz, in a seedy criminal underworld as revenge for a personal slight—but when the two become embroiled in an ever-deepening murder plot, they form an unlikely bond. Filmed on location in Hamburg and Paris, with some scenes shot in grimy, late-seventies New York City, Wenders's international breakout is a stripped-down crime story that mixes West German and American film flavors, and it features cameos by filmmakers Jean Eustache, Samuel Fuller, and Nicholas Ray.
Special Features:
- New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by director Wim Wenders, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Audio commentary from 2002 featuring Wenders and actor Dennis Hopper
- New interview with Wenders
- New interview with actor Bruno Ganz
- Deleted scenes with audio commentary by Wenders
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by author Francine Prose
STREET DATE: JANUARY 12.
Gilda
"Gilda, are you decent?" Rita Hayworth tosses her hair back and slyly responds, "Me?" in one of the great star entrances in movie history. Gilda, directed by Charles Vidor, features a sultry Hayworth in her most iconic role, as the much-lusted-after wife of a criminal kingpin (George Macready), as well as the former flame of his bitter henchman (Glenn Ford), and she drives them both mad with desire and jealousy. An ever-shifting battle of the sexes set on a Buenos Aires casino's glittering floor and in its shadowy back rooms, Gilda is among the most sensual of all Hollywood noirs.
Special Features:
- New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Audio commentary from 2010 by film critic Richard Schickel
- New interview with film noir historian Eddie Muller
- Appreciation of Gilda from 2010 featuring filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Baz Luhrmann
- Rita Hayworth: The Columbia Lady, a 2000 featurette on Hayworth's career as an actor and dancer
- Trailer
- PLUS: An essay by critic Sheila O'Malley
STREET DATE: JANUARY 19.
Inside Llewyn Davis
The visionary chroniclers of eccentric Americana Joel and Ethan Coen present one of their greatest creations in Llewyn Davis, a singer barely eking out a living on the peripheries of the flourishing Greenwich Village folk scene of the early sixties. As embodied by Oscar Isaac, in a revelatory performance, Llewyn (loosely modeled on off-the-radar folk legend Dave Van Ronk) is extraordinarily talented but also irascible, rude, and self-defeating. Our man's circular odyssey through an unforgiving wintry cityscape, evocatively captured by cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel, is realized with poignant humor and the occasional surreal touch. Featuring a folk soundtrack curated by T Bone Burnett, Inside Llewyn Davis reminds us that in the Coens' world, history isn't necessarily written by the winners.
Special Features:
- New 4K digital transfer, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New audio commentary featuring writers Robert Christgau, David Hajdu, and Sean Wilentz
- The First Hundred Feet, the Last Hundred Feet, a new conversation between filmmaker Guillermo del Toro and directors Joel and Ethan Coen about the evolution of their approach, from Blood Simple to Inside Llewyn Davis
- Inside "Inside Llewyn Davis," a forty-five-minute 2013 documentary
- Another Place, Another Time (2014), a 101-minute film documenting an Inside Llewyn Davis tribute concert, featuring Joan Baez, Mumford & Sons, Punch Brothers, Gillian Welch, Jack White, and others
- New piece on the history of "Fare Thee Well (Dink's Song)," featuring music producer T Bone Burnett and the Coens
- New piece about Dave Van Ronk and the Greenwich Village folk scene of the early sixties, featuring music writer and historian Elijah Wald
- Sunday, a short 1961 documentary by Dan Drasin about the riots that took place in Washington Square Park after folk musicians were prevented from gathering and playing there
- Trailers
- PLUS: An essay by film critic Kent Jones
STREET DATE: JANUARY 19.