The Criterion Collection has announced four titles for Blu-ray release in January. On January 17th, the independent studio will release
Belle de jour (Luis Buñuel, 1967) and
Traffic (Steven Soderbergh, 2000). A week later, on January 24th it will release
The Moment of Truth (Francesco Rosi, 1964) and
Godzilla (Ishiro Honda, 1954).
Technical specs and special features include:
Belle de jour
- New high-definition digital restoration with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Audio commentary featuring Michael Wood, author of the BFI Film Classics book Belle de jour
- New video piece featuring writer and sexual-politics activist Susie Bright and film scholar Linda Williams
- New interview with screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière
- Excerpt from the French television program Cinéma, featuring interviews with Carrière and actress Catherine Deneuve
- Original and American release trailers
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Melissa Anderson and a 1970s interview with director Luis Buñuel
Traffic
- Restored digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Steven Soderbergh and supervising sound editor and rerecording mixer Larry Blake with 5.1 and 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks
- Three audio commentaries, featuring Soderbergh and writer Stephen Gaghan; producers Laura Bickford, Edward Zwick, and Marshall Herskovitz and consultants Tim Golden and Craig Chretien; and composer Cliff Martinez
- Twenty-five deleted scenes, with optional commentary by Soderbergh and Gaghan
- Three sets of demonstrations: one on film processing and the look of the Mexico sequences; one on film editing, with commentary by editor Stephen Mirrione; and one on dialogue editing
- Additional unused footage of various scenes, from multiple angles
- Theatrical trailers and television spots
- Gallery of trading cards depicting the U.S. Customs canine squad used to detect narcotics and illegal substances
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Manohla Dargis
Godzilla
- New high-definition digital restoration with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Audio commentary by David Kalat (A Critical History and Filmography of Toho's Godzilla Series)
- New high-definition digital restoration of Godzilla, King of the Monsters, Terry Morse's 1956 reworking of the original, starring Raymond Burr
- Audio commentary for Godzilla, King of the Monsters by Kalat
- New interviews with actor Akira Takarada (Hideto Ogata), Godzilla performer Haruo Nakajima, and effects technicians Yoshio Irie and Eizo Kaimai
- Interview with legendary Godzilla score composer Akira Ifukube
- Featurette detailing Godzilla's photographic effects
- New interview with Japanese-film critic Tadao Sato
- The Unluckiest Dragon, an illustrated audio essay featuring historian Greg Pflugfelder describing the tragic fate of the fishing vessel Daigo fukuryu maru, a real-life event that inspired Godzilla
- Theatrical trailers
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic J. Hoberman
The Moment of Truth
- New high-definition digital restoration with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Interview with director Francesco Rosi from 2004
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Peter Matthews
Note: On January 17th, Criterion will also release (on DVD only)
Eclipse Series 31: Three Popular Films by Jean-Pierre Gorin.