The Criterion Collection has announced its Blu-ray slate for January 2010: Federico Fellini's '
8½', Steven Soderbergh's '
Che', and Wim Wenders' '
Paris, Texas' are set respectively for January 12, 19 and 26. 'Che' and 'Paris, Texas' will both feature director-approved video transfers. Audio will be uncompressed mono for '8½' and DTS-HD Master Audio for the other two titles.
'Che' was initially intended for December 2009, but, as Criterion president Peter Becker explained on a note, "Steven Soderbergh needed time to reconstruct some deleted scenes, and we were also able, in what we think is going to be a controversial coup, to persuade Che biographer Jon Lee Anderson to do commentaries on both films, but he also needed more time to prepare. In short, it became clear that if we delayed the release a month we would be able to make a much better set. That's a trade we will always make, even if it means we don't get the benefit of sales in the holiday season, and we think that's the kind of decision our collectors would want us to make."
Release details follow:
8½
- Introduction by filmmaker Terry Gilliam
- Audio commentary featuring film critic and Fellini friend Gideon Bachmann and NYU film professor Antonio Monda
- Fellini: A Director's Notebook, a 52-minute film by Federico Fellini, newly-restored and in high definition
- The Last Sequence, a new 52-minute documentary on Fellini's lost alternate ending for 8 1/2 (BD exclusive)
- Nino Rota: Between Cinema and Concert, a compelling 48-minute documentary about Fellini's longtime composer
- Interviews with actress Sandra Milo, director Lina Wertmüller, and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro
- Rare photographs from Bachmann's collection
- Gallery of behind-the-scenes and production photos
- US theatrical trailer
- A booklet featuring writings by Fellini and essays by critics Tullio Kezich and Alexander Sesonske
Che
- Audio commentaries on both films, featuring Jon Lee Anderson, author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life
- Making “Che,” a new documentary about the film's production, featuring interviews with Soderbergh, producer Laura Bickford, actor-producer Benicio del Toro, and writers Peter Buchman and Ben van der Veen
- New interviews with Cuban historians as well as participants in the 1958 Cuban Revolution and Che's 1967 Bolivian campaign
- Deleted scenes
- Theatrical trailers
- A booklet featuring an essay by critic Amy Taubin
Paris, Texas
- Audio commentary featuring Wim Wenders
- Interview with Wenders by German journalist Roger Willemsen
- Excerpts from the 1990 film Motion and Emotion: The Road to “Paris, Texas,” featuring interviews with Wenders, actors Harry Dean Stanton, Hanns Zischler, Dennis Hopper, and Peter Falk, composer Ry Cooder, cinematographer Robby Müller, novelist Patricia Highsmith, and filmmaker Samuel Fuller
- New interviews with filmmakers Allison Anders and Claire Denis
- Cinéma cinémas: “Wim Wenders Hollywood April '84,” with Wenders and Cooder working on the score
- Deleted scenes and Super 8 home movies
- Gallery of Wenders's location-scouting photos, from his book Written in the West
- Behind-the-scenes photos by Robin Holland
- Theatrical trailer
- A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Nick Roddick and interviews with Stanton, writer Sam Shepard, and actors Nastassja Kinski and Dean Stockwell