The Criterion Collection Announces It November Of 2018 Film Restoration Release Slate

November sizzles over at The Criterion Collection with news this past week that writer/director Billy Wilder’s 1959 comedy gem, Some Like it Hot, has been given a 4K restoration for release as DVD (double-disc) and Blu-ray product offerings on Nov. 13.

Yes, the November release calendar from Criterion was announced and this comedy gem — nominated for six Oscars, including Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay — jumps out as the frontrunner for film buffs, collectors and audiences in general.

Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon have a blast in this Chicago gangland “hit” comedy as Curtis and Lemmon witness a mob massacre and have to take it on the lamb.   They end up in Monroe’s “all-girl” band … need we say more!

Bonus features include vintage commentary (1989) from film scholar Howard Suber (“The Power of Film,” “Letters to Young Filmmakers: Creativity & Getting Your Films Made”), a newly-prepared video session with costume designer Deborah Landis and costume historian Larry McQueen (the film won its only Oscar of six nominations for Orry-Kelly’s Costume Design — he also won for Les Girls in 1957 and An American in Paris in 1951), a 2001 video session with Tony Curtis and film critic Leonard Maltin and a pair of vintage television interviews with Billy Wilder (“The Dick Cavett Show,” 1982) and Jack Lemmon (French television in 1988).

 

There are also three unspecified “making-of documentaries,” which we suspect are from the 2011 MGM Home Entertainment Blu-ray release.    

Also getting a new 4K restoration in November — for delivery as DVD (double-disc) and Blu-ray product offerings — is Orson Welles’ 1942 troubled-production follow-up to Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons.

The Criterion Collection has packed this Welles’ film classic — four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress for Agnes Moorehead — with bonus goodies galore!

There are two separate commentary options — one featuring film scholars Robert Carringer (author of “The Making of Citizen Kane” and “The Magnificent Ambersons: A Reconstruction”) and James Naremore (author of “The Magic World of Orson Welles”), and the second with film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum (author of “Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Limit What Movies We Can See”).   

  

Plus there are three newly-prepared video sessions — film scholars Simon Callow and Joseph McBride discuss the film in general; François Thomas focuses on the film’s cinematographers (Stanley Cortez and Jack MacKenzie) and Christopher Husted zeros in on the film’s score.

Other bonus nuggets include a segment from director David Smith’s Pampered Youth, a 1925 silent film adaptation of the Booth Tarkington, not one but two Mercury Theatre radio plays based on Tarkington novels, “Seventeen” (broadcast 1938) and “The Magnificent Ambersons” (broadcast 1939) and two vintage Orson Welles piences — Welles on “The Dick Cavett Show” in 1970 and the 1979 AFI Symposium on Welles (audio).

Rounding out the November release calendar from Criterion are Japanese filmmaker Kenji Mizoguchi’s 1954 film, A Story from Chikamatsu (Nov. 6) and director David Byrne’s quirky 1986 musical comedy, True Stories.