The Criterion Collection
announced its May selections of DVD and Blu-ray film releases this past week …
they arrive in two three-titled waves on May 19 and May 26.
In the first group,
arriving at retail on May 19, is a newly-prepared restoration (approved by
director Mark Rydell) of the 1979 film release of The Rose, starring Bette
Midler (her first of two Oscar-nominations for Best Actress … the other being
1992 release of For the Boys) as Mary Rose Foster, a fictional character based
on singing legend Janis Joplin. Alan
Bates, Harry Dean Stanton and Frederic Forrest (Oscar nominated for Best
Supporting Actor) are her co-stars.
Blu-ray and DVD SKUs will
be available from Criterion.
Bonus nuggets include
commentary from Mark Rydell (The Cowboys, Cinderella Liberty, On
Golden Pond, For the Boys, etc.), newly-prepared
video sessions with Mark Rydell, Bette Midler and cinematographer Vilmos
Zsigmond (four times nominated for Best Cinematography, with an Oscar win for Close
Encounters of the Third Kind) and vintage interviews with both Midler
and Rydell.
Also streeting on May 19
are newly restored DVD and Blu-ray editions of Charles Chaplin’s 1952 drama, Limelight
(with Claire Bloom, Buster Keaton, Norman Lloyd and Nigel Bruce).
Bonus goodies here
include a new video session with Chaplin biographer David Robinson (author of
“Chaplin: His Life and Art”), newly-prepared video interviews with Claire Bloom
and Norman Lloyd and two silent short films featuring Chaplin — A
Night in the Snow (1915) and The Professor (1919).
Lastly, May 19 is the
release date for a Blu-ray edition of 1937 tearjerker, Make Way For Tomorrow,
starring Beulah Bondi and Victor Moore.
Shifting to May 26, the
Criterion Collection brings to the Blu-ray format two films from auteur filmmaker Costa-Gavras, State
of Siege and The Confession.
With the Oscar-win for
Best Foreign Language film in 1969 with Z, Costa-Gavras suddenly found
himself thrust into the international spotlight … and he delivered two
magnificent films in the space of just three years, The Confession (1970,
with Yves Montand and Simone Signoret) and State of Siege (1972, also with
Montand).
The Confession sports a new film transfer (supervised by
Costa-Gavras), the 1971 documentary short, You Speak of Prague: The Second Trial of
Artur London, vintage video sessions and a newly-prepared video
interview with the film’s editor, Françoise Bonnot (Oscar winner for Best Film
Editing for Z).
Bonus features for State
of Siege include a newly-prepared interview session with Costa-Gavras
and film scholar Peter Cowie (“John Ford and the American West,” “Ingmar
Bergman: A Critical Biography,” etc.) and a vintage NBC News clip featuring Dan
Mitrione (on whose life the film was based).
Lastly, May 26 brings the
Blu-ray and DVD debut of auteur filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s
little-seen 1971 film, The Merchant of Four Seasons.
Bonus features here
include commentary from fellow German filmmaker Wim Wenders, newly-produced
interview sessions with actors Irm Hermann and Hans Hirschmüller and a new
video discussion with film scholar Eric Rentschler (author of “The Ministry of
Illusion: Nazi Cinema and Its Afterlife”).
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