45 Years (2015) - 7. marts 2017Citat:
In this exquisitely calibrated film, Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay perform a subtly off-kilter pas de deux as Kate and Geoff, an English couple who, on the eve of an anniversary celebration, find their long marriage shaken by the arrival of a letter to Geoff that unceremoniously collapses his past into their shared present. Director Andrew Haigh carries the tradition of British realist cinema to artful new heights in 45 Years, weaving the momentous into the mundane as the pair go about their daily lives, while the evocatively flat, wintry Norfolk landscape frames their struggle to maintain an increasingly untenable status quo. Loosely adapting a short story by David Constantine, Haigh shifts the focus from the slightly erratic Geoff to Kate, eliciting a remarkable, nuanced portrayal by Rampling of a woman’s gradual metamorphosis from unflappable wife to woman undone.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED EDITION:
- High-definition digital transfer, supervised by director Andrew Haigh, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Audio commentary featuring Haigh and producer Tristan Goligher
- New documentary featuring interviews with Haigh, Goligher, actors Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay, editor Jonathan Alberts, and director of photography Lol Crawley
- New interview with David Constantine, author of the short story on which the film is based
- Trailer
- PLUS: An essay by critic Ella Taylor
Canoa: A Shameful Memory (1976) - 14. marts 2017Citat:
One of Mexico’s most highly regarded works of political cinema, Canoa: A Shameful Memory reimagines a real-life incident that had occurred just eight years before its release, when a group of urban university employees on a hiking trip were viciously attacked by residents of the village of San Miguel Canoa who had been manipulated by a corrupt priest into believing the travelers were communist revolutionaries. Director Felipe Cazals adopts a gritty documentary style to narrate the events in Canoa while referencing the climate of political repression that would lead to the massacre of student protesters in Mexico City shortly thereafter. The resulting film is a daring commentary on ideological manipulation, religious fanaticism, and mass violence, as well as a visceral expression of horror.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED EDITION:
- New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by director Felipe Cazals, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New introduction by filmmaker Guillermo del Toro
- New conversation between filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón and Cazals
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by critic Fernanda Solórzano
Being There (1979) - 21. marts 2017Citat:
In one of his most finely tuned performances, Peter Sellers plays the pure-hearted, childlike Chance, a gardener who is forced into the wilds of Washington, D.C., when his wealthy guardian dies. Shocked to discover that the real world doesn’t respond to the click of a remote, Chance stumbles into celebrity after being taken under the wing of a tycoon (Melvyn Douglas, in an Oscar-winning performance), who mistakes his protégé’s horticultural mumblings for sagacious pronouncements on life and politics, and whose wife (Shirley MacLaine) targets Chance as the object of her desire. Adapted from a novel by Jerzy Kosinski, this satire, both deeply melancholy and hilarious, is the culmination of Hal Ashby’s remarkable string of films in the 1970s, and a carefully modulated examination of the ideals, anxieties, and media-fueled delusions that shaped American culture during that decade.
- New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New documentary on the making of the film, featuring interviews with members of the production team
- Excerpts from a 1980 American Film Institute seminar with director Hal Ashby
- Author Jerzy Kosinksi in a 1979 appearance on The Dick Cavett Show
- Appearances from 1980 by actor Peter Sellers on NBC’s Today and The Don Lane Show
- Promo reel featuring Sellers and Ashby
- Trailer and TV spots
- Deleted scene, outtakes, and an alternate ending
- PLUS: An essay by critic Mark Harris
Multiple Maniacs (1970) - 21. marts 2017Citat:
John Waters’ gloriously grotesque second feature is replete with all manner of depravity, from robbery to murder to one of cinema’s most memorably blasphemous moments. Made on a shoestring budget in Waters’ native Baltimore, with the filmmaker taking on nearly every technical task, this gleeful mockery of the peace-and-love ethos of its era features the Cavalcade of Perversion, a traveling show mounted by a troupe of misfits whose shocking proclivities are topped only by those of their leader: the glammer-than-glam, larger-than-life Divine, out for blood after discovering her lover’s affair. Starring members of Waters’ beloved regular cast, the Dreamlanders (including David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, Mink Stole, Susan Lowe, Edith Massey, George Figgs, and Cookie Mueller), Multiple Maniacs is an anarchic masterwork from an artist who has doggedly tested the limits of good taste for decades.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED EDITION:
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director John Waters, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New audio commentary featuring Waters
- New interviews with cast and crew members Pat Moran, Vincent Peranio, Mink Stole, Susan Lowe, and George Figgs
- More!
- PLUS: An essay by critic Linda Yablonsky
Blow-Up (1966) - 28. marts 2017Citat:
In 1966, Michelangelo Antonioni transplanted his existentialist ennui to the streets of swinging London for this international sensation, the Italian filmmaker’s first English-language feature. A countercultural masterpiece about the act of seeing and the art of image making, Blow-Up takes the form of a psychological mystery, starring David Hemmings as a fashion photographer who unknowingly captures a death on film after following two lovers in a park. Antonioni’s meticulous aesthetic control and intoxicating color palette breathe life into every frame, and the jazzy sounds of Herbie Hancock, a beautifully evasive performance by Vanessa Redgrave, and a cameo by the Yardbirds make the film a transporting time capsule from a bygone era. Blow-Up is a seductive immersion into creative passion, and a brilliant film by one of cinema’s greatest artists.
- New, restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- A new piece about director Michelangelo Antonioni’s artistic approach, featuring photography curators Walter Moser and Philippe Garner and art historian David Alan Mellor
- Blow-up of “Blow-Up,” a new 52-minute documentary on the making of the film
- Conversation from 2016 between Garner and actor Vanessa Redgrave
- Archival interviews with Antonioni and actors David Hemmings and Jane Birkin
- Trailers
- PLUS: A book featuring an essay by film scholar David Forgacs and more