The Criterion Collection Announces Its July Slate Of New Film Restorations

The Criterion Collection announced its latest slate of film restorations destined for release as both DVD and Blu-ray product offerings that will be available during the month of July.

Topping the list — and that is always a subjective observation — is director Byron Haskin’s 1953 film adaptation of the H.G. Wells’ 1898 sci-fi novel, The War of the Worlds.

A new 4K restoration of this venerable Technicolor thriller starring Gene Barry (Burke’s Law, Bat Masterson) and Ann Robinson (as Queen Juliandra in Rocky Jones, Space Ranger) arrives on July 7 and both the DVD and Blu-ray editions.

The War of the Worlds comes loaded with extras, including the 1938 radio broadcast of “The War of the Worlds” by Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre, which created a nationwide panic on Oct. 30, 1938 when it ran on the CBS Radio Network.

Other bonus goodies include a vintage commentary (circa 2005) with director Joe Dante, film historian Bob Burns and writer Bill Warren (author of “Keep Watching the Skies! American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties”), the Tara Tremaine and Eric Young production of The Sky Is Falling: Making The War of the Worlds (a 30-minute documentary), a vintage audio session with George Pal and two newly-prepared featurettes — “Movie Archaeologists” and “From the Archive.”

Also to be found on the July release schedule from the Criterion Collection is a new 4K film restoration of the 1938 screwball comedy from director Preston Sturges, The Lady Eve, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda.

Both DVD and Blu-ray editions will be available on July 14.

Bonus features include a vintage commentary track (2001) with film professor Marian Keane (assistant Professor of Film Studies at the University of Colorado), the newly-prepared video session with film critic David Cairns, the 1942 Lux Radio Theatre broadcast with Barbara Stanwyck and Ray Milland … and more.

The next release from Criterion’s output deal with Netflix is director Noah Baumbach’s Best Picture nominee, Marriage Story, which will be available on July 21 as both a double-disc DVD edition as well as a single-disc Blu-ray presentation.

The ARR is a leisurely 256 days and box office receipts, which Netflix refuses to report, are estimated to be $2 million in the domestic market.   For a film with a reported production budget of $18 million, it is a lot of red ink.

Bonus features include video sessions with filmmaker Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale) and Randy Newman, plus a trio of featurettes — “The Players,” “The Filmmakers” and “The Making of Marriage Story.”

Rounding out the July release calendar from the Criterion Collection is the seven-disc Blu-ray-only collection on July 14 titled Bruce Lee: His Greatest Hits and Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami’s 1997 film release of Taste of Cherry (available as Blu-ray-only on July 21).