British distributors Arrow Video will add three new titles to their Blu-ray catalog: Richard Linklater's
Waking Life (2001) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's
The Merchant of Four Seasons (1971) and
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974).
Waking Life
In 2001 writer-director Richard Linklater released a spiritual sequel to his acclaimed early features Slacker and Before Sunset. Taking its cue from their walk-and-talk stream of consciousness, Waking Life enquired into the relationship between dreams and the big screen, and how cinema captures the phantasy state.
Aiding Linklater's exploration were two major players: actor Wiley Wiggins (Dazed and Confused, Computer Chess), who acts as our guide through the dreamscape, and animator Bob Sabiston, who created the appropriately disassociated, floating rotoscoped visuals. He and Linklater would later collaborate again on A Scanner Darkly to equally stunning effect.
Featuring Adam Goldberg, Nicky Katt, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke (reprising their Jesse and Céline characters from Before Sunrise) and director Steven Soderbergh, Waking Life is an extraordinary thought-provoking trip, quite unlike anything before or since.
Special Features:
- High definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentations
- Original 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio
- Optional subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
- Commentary by writer-director Richard Linklater, art director Bob Sabiston, actor Wiley Wiggins and producer Tommy Pallotta
- Commentary by the 25-strong animation team
- A selection of Bob Sabiston's short films, including The Trees (1991), Project Incognito (1997), Snack and Drink (1999), Figures of Speech (1999), Grasshopper (2003), Ryan's Capitol Tour (2006) and The Even More Fun Trip (2007)
- Original 'making of' featurette including interviews with Linklater, Sabiston and Pallotta
- Animation tutorial with Sabiston
- Deleted and alternative animation sequences
- Pre-animation live action footage captured on Mini DV
- Trivia subtitle track written by Linklater
- Theatrical trailer
- Booklet: The first pressing also includes a booklet containing new writing on the film by critic David Jenkins and a guide to Bob Sabiston's short films
UK ONLY STREET DATE: MARCH 14, 2016.
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
In March 1974 Rainer Werner Fassbinder released what would become arguably his most loved work. Fresh from the Cannes Film Festival, where it had earned its director two prizes, Fear Eats the Soul would soon delight audiences the world over with its tale of romance and racial prejudice in present-day Munich.
Emmi (Brigitte Mira), a widowed cleaning lady in her sixties, meets Ali (El Hedi ben Salem), a Moroccan immigrant in his thirties. Seeking companionship, the pair marry to the outrage Emmi's family (including Fassbinder himself as her aggressive son-in-law), her friends and her colleagues.
Paying homage to the classic melodramas of Douglas Sirk, in particular All That Heaven Allows, Fear Eats the Soul is a beautifully performed look at intolerance and hypocrisy, and a key film for both Fassbinder and the New German Cinema.
Special Features:
- Brand new 4K restoration from original camera negatives
- High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
- Original uncompressed PCM mono audio
- Optional English subtitles
- Audio commentary by critic and lecturer Mark Freeman
- My Name is Not Ali, Viola Shafik's 2011 feature-length documentary on the life and death of El Hedi ben Salem, star of Fear Eats the Soul
- Newly-filmed interviews with director of photography Jürgen Jürges
- Theatrical trailer
UK ONLY STREET DATE: MARCH 28.
The Merchant of Four Seasons + Beware of a Holy Whore
Made in quick succession in 1970 and 1971, Beware of a Holy Whore and The Merchant of Four Seasons represent a key stage in the career of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the point at which he matured as a filmmaker and first began to attract an international audience.
A fictional recounting of the making of Whity, Fassbinder's take on the American West, Beware of a Holy Whore is a backstage melodrama set in a Spanish seaside hotel. Starring Lou Castel (Requiescant) as the director and Eddie Constantine (Alphaville) as himself, the film is an intriguing and often acidic look through the mirror at Fassbinder and his 'family' of cast and crew.
The Merchant of Four Seasons concerns itself with Hans, a fruit seller, former Foreign Legionnaire and family man. Inspired by the discovery of Douglas Sirk's work – and set, like those classic melodramas, in the 1950s – Fassbinder charts Hans' downfall with a perfect blend of poignancy and high drama. The Sirkian formula worked so well it would inspire a new phase in the director's output and produce such classics as The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant and Fear Eats the Soul.
Special Features:
- Brand new 4K restorations of the films from original camera negatives
- High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentations
- Original uncompressed PCM mono audio
- Optional English subtitles
- Audio commentary on The Merchant of Four Seasons by critics Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Christian McCrea
- Audio commentary on Beware of a Holy Whore by Adrian Martin
- Newly-filmed interview with actor Lou Castel on Beware of a Holy Whore
- Beware of a Holy Whore theatrical trailer
UK ONLY STREET DATE: MARCH 28.