Criterion Announces July Releases
HomeCriterion Announces July Releases
Posted April 15, 2024 02:23 PM by Webmaster
The Criterion Collection has announced its July batch of 4K Blu-ray and Blu-ray releases. They are: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), Le Samouraï (1967), Risky Business (1983), Perfect Days (2023), Farewell My Concubine (1993), and Black God, White Devil (1964).
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid 4K Blu-ray
Description: Sam Peckinpah's cycle of genre-redefining westerns came to a close with this blood- and dust-caked elegy for the American West, which marries his renegade style with a fatalistic sense of finality. As newly minted lawman Pat Garrett (James Coburn) stalks the outlaw Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson) across the plains, their old friendship is twisted into rivalry, and mythic ideals of freedom come up against an emerging ruling-class order—all to the strains of a haunting soundtrack by Bob Dylan (who also appears as the mercurial Alias). Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid—presented here for the first time in three separate versions—stands as perhaps the maverick auteur's richest, most mature work, a world-weary ballad that bears the solemn weight of history passing into legend.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
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Description: A sly piece of pop subversion, this irresistible satire of Reagan-era materialism features Tom Cruise in his star-is-born breakthrough as a Chicago suburban prepster whose college-bound life spirals out of control when his parents go out of town for the week and an enterprising call girl (Rebecca De Mornay) invites him to walk on the wild side. While Cruise boogying in his briefs yielded one of the most iconic pop-cultural moments of the 1980s, it is the film's unexpected mix of tender romance (enhanced by a moody synth score by Tangerine Dream) and sharp-witted capitalist critique that remains fresh and daring.
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Risky Business
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Le Samouraï 4K Blu-ray
Description: In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts. After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armor of fedora and trench coat can protect him. An elegantly stylized masterpiece of cool by maverick director Jean‑Pierre Melville, Le samouraï is a razor-sharp cocktail of 1940s American gangster cinema and 1960s French pop culture—with a liberal dose of Japanese lone-warrior mythology.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Farewell My Concubine 4K Blu-ray
Description: A breathtakingly intimate romance unfolds against a sweeping backdrop of social upheaval in renowned director Chen Kaige's sumptuous saga of passion, fate, and the transcendent possibilities of art. Spanning fifty years of twentieth-century Chinese history, Farewell My Concubine follows aspiring actors Dieyi (a heartbreaking Leslie Cheung) and Xiaolou (Zhang Fengyi) as they emerge from a childhood of brutal training to become Beijing-opera stars, with life mirroring art as Dieyi's unrequited love for Xiaolou and the country's changing political tides engulf them in their own personal tragedies of jealousy and betrayal. The first Chinese film to win the Palme d'Or is epic filmmaking of the highest order—visually and emotionally ravishing from frame to exquisite frame.
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Farewell My Concubine
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Perfect Days 4K Blu-ray
Description: A perfect song that hits at just the right moment, the play of sunlight through leaves, a fleeting moment of human connection in a vast metropolis: the wonders of everyday life come into breathtaking focus in this profoundly moving film by Wim Wenders. In a radiant, Cannes-award-winning performance of few words but extraordinary expressiveness, Koji Yakusho plays a public-toilet cleaner in Tokyo whose rich inner world is gradually revealed through his small exchanges with those around him and with the city itself. Channeling his idol Yasujiro Ozu, Wenders crafts a serenely minimalist ode to the miracle that is the here and now.
Special Fetaures and Techncial Specs:
Perfect Days
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Black God, White Devil
Description: Myth, mysticism, and revolution collide in a blistering existential western from Glauber Rocha, the father of Brazil's socially committed Cinema Novo movement. After killing his swindling boss, ranch hand Manoel (Geraldo Del Rey) goes on the run with his wife, Rosa (Yoná Magalhães). In the stark hinterlands, they join forces with armed bandits and pledge allegiance to a self-styled holy man who preaches revolt against rich landowners while perpetrating unspeakable acts of violence against the innocent. Suffused with antiauthoritarian fervor and the intensity of life in the desert, this landmark work of radical cinema is a scorched-earth allegory about mindless fanaticism and the allure of dead-end ideologies.
Special Fetaures and Tehcncial Specs:
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid 4K Blu-ray
Description: Sam Peckinpah's cycle of genre-redefining westerns came to a close with this blood- and dust-caked elegy for the American West, which marries his renegade style with a fatalistic sense of finality. As newly minted lawman Pat Garrett (James Coburn) stalks the outlaw Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson) across the plains, their old friendship is twisted into rivalry, and mythic ideals of freedom come up against an emerging ruling-class order—all to the strains of a haunting soundtrack by Bob Dylan (who also appears as the mercurial Alias). Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid—presented here for the first time in three separate versions—stands as perhaps the maverick auteur's richest, most mature work, a world-weary ballad that bears the solemn weight of history passing into legend.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- TWO 4K BLU-RAY DISCS AND TWO BLU-RAY DISCS
- NEW 4K RESTORATION of the 50th Anniversary Release, supervised by editors Paul Seydor and Roger Spottiswoode, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- NEW 4K RESTORATION of the Original Theatrical Release, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- NEW 2K RESTORATION of director Sam Peckinpah's Final Preview Cut, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- DOLBY VISION/HDR PRESENTATIONS
- Audio commentary for the 50th Anniversary Release featuring Seydor, Spottiswoode, and critic Michael Sragow
- Dylan in Durango, a new interview with author Clinton Heylin about the film's soundtrack
- Passion & Poetry: Peckinpah's Last Western, a new program about the making of the film
- Archival interview with actor James Coburn
- Trailer and TV spots
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by author Steve Erickson
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- TWO BLU-RAY DISCS
- NEW 4K RESTORATION of the 50th Anniversary Release, supervised by editors Paul Seydor and Roger Spottiswoode, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- NEW 4K RESTORATION of the Original Theatrical Release, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- NEW 2K RESTORATION of director Sam Peckinpah's Final Preview Cut, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Audio commentary for the 50th Anniversary Release featuring Seydor, Spottiswoode, and critic Michael Sragow
- Dylan in Durango, a new interview with author Clinton Heylin about the film's soundtrack
- Passion & Poetry: Peckinpah's Last Western, a new program about the making of the film
- Archival interview with actor James Coburn
- Trailer and TV spots
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by author Steve Erickson
Description: A sly piece of pop subversion, this irresistible satire of Reagan-era materialism features Tom Cruise in his star-is-born breakthrough as a Chicago suburban prepster whose college-bound life spirals out of control when his parents go out of town for the week and an enterprising call girl (Rebecca De Mornay) invites him to walk on the wild side. While Cruise boogying in his briefs yielded one of the most iconic pop-cultural moments of the 1980s, it is the film's unexpected mix of tender romance (enhanced by a moody synth score by Tangerine Dream) and sharp-witted capitalist critique that remains fresh and daring.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- NEW 4K RESTORATION of the director's cut and the original theatrical release, supervised and approved by director Paul Brickman and producer Jon Avnet, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks
- DOLBY VISION/HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
- Audio commentary for the original theatrical release featuring Brickman, Avnet, and actor Tom Cruise
- New interviews with Avnet and casting director Nancy Klopper
- New conversation between editor Richard Chew and film historian Bobbie O'Steen
- The Dream Is Always the Same: The Story of "Risky Business," a program featuring interviews with Brickman, Avnet, cast members, and others
- Screen tests with Cruise and actor Rebecca De Mornay
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by film curator and critic Dave Kehr
Risky Business
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- NEW 4K RESTORATION of the director's cut and the original theatrical release, supervised and approved by director Paul Brickman and producer Jon Avnet, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks
- Audio commentary for the original theatrical release featuring Brickman, Avnet, and actor Tom Cruise
- New interviews with Avnet and casting director Nancy Klopper
- New conversation between editor Richard Chew and film historian Bobbie O'Steen
- The Dream Is Always the Same: The Story of "Risky Business," a program featuring interviews with Brickman, Avnet, cast members, and others
- Screen tests with Cruise and actor Rebecca De Mornay
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by film curator and critic Dave Kehr
Le Samouraï 4K Blu-ray
Description: In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts. After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armor of fedora and trench coat can protect him. An elegantly stylized masterpiece of cool by maverick director Jean‑Pierre Melville, Le samouraï is a razor-sharp cocktail of 1940s American gangster cinema and 1960s French pop culture—with a liberal dose of Japanese lone-warrior mythology.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- NEW 4K RESTORATION, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
- Interviews with Rui Nogueira, editor of Melville on Melville, and Ginette Vincendeau, author of Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris
- Interviews with Melville and actors Alain Delon, François Périer, Nathalie Delon, and Cathy Rosier
- Melville-Delon: D'honneur et de nuit (2011), a short documentary exploring the friendship between the director and the actor and their iconic collaboration on Le samouraï
- Trailer
- PLUS: An essay by film scholar David Thomson, an appreciation by filmmaker John Woo, and excerpts from Melville on Melville
Farewell My Concubine 4K Blu-ray
Description: A breathtakingly intimate romance unfolds against a sweeping backdrop of social upheaval in renowned director Chen Kaige's sumptuous saga of passion, fate, and the transcendent possibilities of art. Spanning fifty years of twentieth-century Chinese history, Farewell My Concubine follows aspiring actors Dieyi (a heartbreaking Leslie Cheung) and Xiaolou (Zhang Fengyi) as they emerge from a childhood of brutal training to become Beijing-opera stars, with life mirroring art as Dieyi's unrequited love for Xiaolou and the country's changing political tides engulf them in their own personal tragedies of jealousy and betrayal. The first Chinese film to win the Palme d'Or is epic filmmaking of the highest order—visually and emotionally ravishing from frame to exquisite frame.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- NEW 4K RESTORATION of the original director's cut, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- New conversation between Chinese-cultural-studies scholar Michael Berry and producer Janet Yang
- Documentary from 2003 on the making of the film
- Interview from 1993 with director Chen Kaige conducted by journalist Charlie Rose
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by author and scholar Pauline Chen
Farewell My Concubine
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- NEW 4K RESTORATION of the original director's cut, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- New conversation between Chinese-cultural-studies scholar Michael Berry and producer Janet Yang
- Documentary from 2003 on the making of the film
- Interview from 1993 with director Chen Kaige conducted by journalist Charlie Rose
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by author and scholar Pauline Chen
Perfect Days 4K Blu-ray
Description: A perfect song that hits at just the right moment, the play of sunlight through leaves, a fleeting moment of human connection in a vast metropolis: the wonders of everyday life come into breathtaking focus in this profoundly moving film by Wim Wenders. In a radiant, Cannes-award-winning performance of few words but extraordinary expressiveness, Koji Yakusho plays a public-toilet cleaner in Tokyo whose rich inner world is gradually revealed through his small exchanges with those around him and with the city itself. Channeling his idol Yasujiro Ozu, Wenders crafts a serenely minimalist ode to the miracle that is the here and now.
Special Fetaures and Techncial Specs:
- 4K DIGITAL MASTER, approved by director Wim Wenders, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
- New interview with Wenders
- Interview with actor Koji Yakusho
- Some Body Comes into the Light (2023), a short by Wenders, featuring a new introduction by the director
- Interview with producer Koji Yanai, founder of the Tokyo Toilet project
- Trailer
Perfect Days
Special Fetaures and Tehcncial Specs:
- 4K DIGITAL MASTER, approved by director Wim Wenders, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
- New interview with Wenders
- Interview with actor Koji Yakusho
- Some Body Comes into the Light (2023), a short by Wenders, featuring a new introduction by the director
- Interview with producer Koji Yanai, founder of the Tokyo Toilet project
- Trailer
Black God, White Devil
Description: Myth, mysticism, and revolution collide in a blistering existential western from Glauber Rocha, the father of Brazil's socially committed Cinema Novo movement. After killing his swindling boss, ranch hand Manoel (Geraldo Del Rey) goes on the run with his wife, Rosa (Yoná Magalhães). In the stark hinterlands, they join forces with armed bandits and pledge allegiance to a self-styled holy man who preaches revolt against rich landowners while perpetrating unspeakable acts of violence against the innocent. Suffused with antiauthoritarian fervor and the intensity of life in the desert, this landmark work of radical cinema is a scorched-earth allegory about mindless fanaticism and the allure of dead-end ideologies.
Special Fetaures and Tehcncial Specs:
- NEW 4K RESTORATION, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Audio commentary by restoration producer Lino Meireles
- New interview with film scholar Richard Peña
- Glauber the Movie, Labyrinth of Brazil (2003), a documentary on director Glauber Rocha
- Cinema Novo (2016), a documentary on the Brazilian film movement
- Memória do cangaço (1964), a short documentary on the origins of cangaço, a form of social banditry in northeastern Brazil
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by film scholar Fábio Andrade
