The Criterion Collection Announces It February 2016 DVD And Blu-ray Release Calendar — Headed By A Restored Presentation Of The Graduate

Here’s to you Mrs. Robinson on Feb. 23, so say the Criterion Collection as it preps a new 4K restoration of director Mike Nichols’ 1968 film gem, The Graduate.

Nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Dustin Hoffman, Best Actress for Anne Bancroft and Best Supporting Actress for Katharine Ross, the film walked away with just the Oscar for the late Mike Nichols direction (his only win despite being nominated five times — The Remains of the Day, Working Girl, Silkwood and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? were his other Best Director Oscar nominations).

Criterion has both a double-disc DVD edition and a Blu-ray release planned for that date.

Bonus nuggets include two vintage commentary tracks — from 2007, Mike Nichols and Steven Soderbergh, and from 1987, author and former chair of UCLA’s Film and Television Producers Program, Howard Suber — plus there are newly-prepared video sessions with Dustin Hoffman; producer Lawrence Turman and screenwriter Buck Henry, and film historian Bobbie O’Steen (co-author of “Cut to the Chase: Forty-Five Years of Editing America's Favourite Movies” (with her father Sam O’Steen) and author of “The Invisible Cut: How Editors Make Movie Magic”) gives insights into editor Sam O’Steen’s work on the film (he was Oscar-nominated for Best Film Editing on Silkwood, Chinatown and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?).

Not done yet, the Criterion Collection also includes screen tests, the short film titled “Students of The Graduate,” the featurette, “The Graduate at 25” and Barbara Walters’ 1966 interview session with director Mike Nichols.

How’s that for a grand beginning to the Criterion Collection’s February release calendar?  

Also heading home in February as DVD and Blu-ray SKUs are director Jan Troll’s Emigrants/The New Land (Swedish) (3 disc DVD set or 2 disc Blu-ray) on Feb. 9; a new 4K restoration of Charles Chaplin’s 1921 film release of The Kid and Japanese filmmaker Nagisa Oshima’s 1968 film, Death by Hanging (both of these street on Feb. 16) and joining The Graduate on Feb. 23 is Italian filmmaker Antonio Pietrangeli’s 1965 film, I Knew Her Well.