The Criterion Collection has announced that it will add five new titles to its Blu-ray catalog in October. Amongst them are Robert Altman's
Short Cuts, Richard Linklater's
Boyhood. and Guillermo del Toro's
Pan's Labyrinth.
The Executioner
This masterpiece of black humor, beloved in Spain but too little seen elsewhere, threads a scathing critique of Franco-era values through a macabre farce about an undertaker who marries an executioner's daughter and reluctantly takes over her father's job so the family can keep their government-allotted apartment. As caustic today as it was in 1963, this early collaboration between Luis García Berlanga and his longtime screenwriter Rafael Azcona is an unerring depiction of what Berlanga called "the invisible traps that society sets up for us." A furiously funny personal attack on capital punishment, The Executioner escaped the state censors who sought to suppress it, and today is regarded as one of the greatest Spanish films of all time.
- New, restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New interview with filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar
- New program on director Luis García Berlanga, featuring interviews with his son José Luis Berlanga; film critic Carlos F. Heredero; writers Fernando R. Lafuente and Bernardo Sánchez Salas; and director of the Berlanga Film Museum Rafael Maluenda
- Spanish television program from 2012 on The Executioner, featuring archival interviews with Berlanga
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by film critic David Cairns
STREET DATE: OCTOBER 25.
The Tree of Wooden Clogs
A painterly and sensual immersion in late nineteenth-century Italian farm life, Ermanno Olmi's The Tree of Wooden Clogs lovingly focuses on four families working for one landowner on an isolated estate in the province of Bergamo. Filming on an abandoned farm for four months, Olmi adapted neorealist techniques to tell his story, enlisting local people to live as their own ancestors had, speaking in their native dialect on locations with which they were intimately familiar. Through the cycle of seasons, of back-breaking labor, love and marriage, birth and death, faith and superstition, Olmi naturalistically evokes an existence very close to nature, one that celebrates its beauty, humor, and simplicity but also acknowledges the feudal cruelty that governs it. Winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1978, The Tree of Wooden Clogs is at once intimate in scale and epic in scope—a towering, heart-stirring work of humanist filmmaking.
- New 4K restoration, created in collaboration with The Film Foundation at L'Immagine Ritrovata and supervised by director Ermanno Olmi, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Alternate Italian-language soundtrack
- Ermanno Olmi: The Roots of the Tree, an hour-long episode of The South Bank Show from 1981, featuring an interview with Olmi on the film and a visit to the farm where it was shot
- New program featuring cast and crew discussing the film at the Cinema Ritrovato film festival in Bologna, Italy, in 2016
- Archival interviews with Olmi
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by film critic Deborah Young
STREET DATE: OCTOBER 25.
Short Cuts
The work of two great American artists merges in Short Cuts, a kaleidoscopic adaptation of the stories of renowned author Raymond Carver by maverick director Robert Altman. Epic in scale yet meticulously observed, the film interweaves the stories of twenty-two characters as they struggle to find solace and meaning in contemporary Los Angeles. The extraordinary ensemble cast includes Tim Robbins, Julianne Moore, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Lemmon, and Jennifer Jason Leigh—all giving fearless performances in what is one of Altman's most compassionate creations.
- New, restored 4K digital transfer, approved by cinematographer Walt Lloyd, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Alternate 5.1 soundtrack mix, plus isolated music track
- Conversation between Altman and actor Tim Robbins from 2004 Luck, Trust & Ketchup: Robert Altman in Carver Country, a 1993 feature-length documentary on the making of Short Cuts
- To Write and Keep Kind, a 1992 PBS documentary on the life of author Raymond Carver
- One-hour 1983 audio interview with Carver, conducted for the American Audio Prose Library
- Original demo recordings of the film's Doc Pomus–Mac Rebennack songs, performed by Dr. John
- Deleted scenes
- A look inside the marketing of Short Cuts
- PLUS: An essay by film critic Michael Wilmington
STREET DATE: OCTOBER 18.
Boyhood
There has never been another movie like Boyhood, from director Richard Linklater. An event film of the utmost modesty, it was shot over the course of twelve years in the director's native Texas and charts the physical and emotional changes experienced by a child named Mason (Ellar Coltrane), his divorced parents (Patricia Arquette, who won an Oscar for her performance, and Ethan Hawke), and his older sister (Lorelei Linklater). Alighting not on milestones but on the small, in-between moments that make up our lives, Linklater fashions a flawlessly acted, often funny portrait that flows effortlessly from one year to the next. Allowing us to watch people age on film with documentary realism while gripping us in a fictional narrative of exquisite everydayness, Boyhood has a power that only the art of cinema could harness.
- New 2K digital transfer, supervised by director Richard Linklater, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New audio commentary featuring Linklater and nine members of the cast and crew
- New documentary chronicling the film's production, featuring footage shot over the course of its twelve years
- New discussion featuring Linklater and actors Patricia Arquette and Ellar Coltrane, moderated by producer John Pierson
- New conversation between Coltrane and actor Ethan Hawke
- New video essay by critic Michael Koresky about time in Linklater's films, narrated by Coltrane
- Collection of portraits of cast and crew by photographer Matt Lankes, narrated with personal thoughts from Linklater, Arquette, Hawke, Coltrane and producer Cathleen Sutherland
- PLUS: An essay by novelist Jonathan Lethem
STREET DATE: OCTOBER 18.
Pan's Labyrinth
An Academy Award–winning dark fable set five years after the end of the Spanish Civil War, Pan's Labyrinth encapsulates the rich visual style and genre-defying craft of Guillermo del Toro. Eleven-year-old Ofelia (Ivana Baquero, in a mature and tender performance) comes face to face with the horrors of fascism when she and her pregnant mother are uprooted to the countryside, where her new stepfather (Sergi López), a sadistic captain in General Franco's army, hunts down Republican guerrillas who refuse to give up the fight. The violent reality in which she lives merges seamlessly with a fantastical interior world when Ofelia meets a faun in a decaying labyrinth and is set on a strange, mythic journey that is at once terrifying and beautiful. In his revisiting of this bloody period in Spanish history, del Toro creates a vivid depiction of the monstrosities of war infiltrating a child's imagination and threatening the innocence of youth.
- Newly graded 2K digital master, supervised by director Guillermo del Toro, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Alternate DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 surround soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Audio commentary by del Toro from 2007
- New interview with del Toro by novelist Cornelia Funke about fairy tales, fantasy, and Pan's Labyrinth
- New interview with actor Doug Jones
- Four 2007 making-of documentaries, examining the characters, production, special effects, themes, and music of the film
- Interactive director's notebook
- Footage of actor Ivana Baquero's audition for the film
- Animated comics featuring prequel stories for the film's menagerie of creatures
- Programs comparing selected production storyboards and del Toro's thumbnail sketches with the final film; visual effects work for the Green Fairy; and elements of the film's score
- Trailers and TV spots
- PLUS: An essay by film critic Michael Atkinson
STREET DATE: OCTOBER 11.
Trilogía de Guillermo del Toro BOX SET
Throughout a career that encompasses both visually arresting art-house hits and big-budget Hollywood spectacles, director Guillermo del Toro has continually redefined and elevated the horror genre with his deeply personal explorations of myths and monsters. These three Spanish-language films, each a tale of childhood in troubled times, showcase his singular fusion of the fantastic and the real. Drawing inspiration from a rich variety of sources, from Alfred Hitchcock to Francisco de Goya, the gothic-infused stories collected here—populated by vampires, ghosts, and a fairy-tale princess—make evident why del Toro is considered the master cinematic fabulist of our time.
Cronos
Guillermo del Toro made an auspicious and audacious feature debut with Cronos, a highly unorthodox tale about the seductiveness of the idea of immortality. Kindly antiques dealer Jesús Gris (Federico Luppi) happens upon an ancient golden device in the shape of a scarab, and soon finds himself the possessor and victim of its sinister, addictive powers, as well as the target of a mysterious American named Angel (a delightfully crude and deranged Ron Perlman). Featuring marvelous special makeup effects and the haunting imagery for which del Toro has become world-renowned, Cronos is a dark, visually rich, and emotionally captivating fantasy.
The Devil's Backbone
One of the most personal films by Guillermo del Toro, The Devil's Backbone is also among his most frightening and emotionally layered. Set during the final week of the Spanish Civil War, it tells the tale of a twelve-year-old boy who, after his freedom-fighting father is killed, is sent to a haunted rural orphanage full of terrible secrets. Del Toro expertly combines gothic ghost story, murder mystery, and historical melodrama in a stylish mélange that, like his later Pan's Labyrinth, reminds us the scariest monsters are often the human ones.
Pan's Labyrinth
An Academy Award–winning dark fable set five years after the end of the Spanish Civil War, Pan's Labyrinth encapsulates the rich visual style and genre-defying craft of Guillermo del Toro. Eleven-year-old Ofelia (Ivana Baquero, in a mature and tender performance) comes face to face with the horrors of fascism when she and her pregnant mother are uprooted to the countryside, where her new stepfather (Sergi López), a sadistic captain in General Franco's army, hunts down Republican guerrillas who refuse to give up the fight. The violent reality in which she lives merges seamlessly with a fantastical interior world when Ofelia meets a faun in a decaying labyrinth and is set on a strange, mythic journey that is at once terrifying and beautiful. In his revisiting of this bloody period in Spanish history, del Toro creates a vivid depiction of the monstrosities of war infiltrating a child's imagination and threatening the innocence of youth.
STREET DATE: OCTOBER 11.