It is official. The Criterion Collection announced its month of May selections this past week and there are some real treats on the schedule, including a new 2K film restoration of auteur filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich's Targets and a 4K restoration of filmmaker Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise.
So let us get to it. Back in the mid-60s, the late Peter Bogdanovich became friends with the legendary Roger Corman, a man who has launched more film careers than ships sent by Menelaus to rescue Helen from the Trojans. Legend has it that Corman suggested that Bogdanovich take time off from being a film critic and instead write and direct a small-budget film for him using Boris Karloff, who owed Corman some screentime.
The result was Targets, which was cobbled-together for under $150,000 by using roughly twenty-minutes-worth of footage from The Terror (a Karloff/Nicholson film that Corman had produced and directed in 1963) and another twenty or so minutes of newly-shot Karloff footage (the screentime he owed Corman).
The balance of the running time was filled out with the main storyline and the performance of Tim O'Kelly as Bobby Thompson, the crazed killer/sniper (patterned after the Charles Joseph Whitman Texas Tower sniper event that took place on August 1, 1966), who sets up shop — after murdering his wife and mother — atop an oil storage tank near the old Sepulveda Drive-In Theatre and begins randomly killing people.
Targets is a marvelous example of indie filmmaking at its finest. This “little” film launched Bogdanovich’s career … The Last Picture Show, What’s Up Doc, Paper Moon, Daisy Miller and more would follow and establish him as one of the great auteur filmmakers of the 20th Century.
Targets will be available on Apr. 11 as both DVD and Blu-ray buying options. Bonus features include an archived 2003 commentary with Peter Bogdanovich, a newly-minted video session with fellow filmmaker Richard Linklater, and excerpts from a 1983 interview featuring Polly Platt, who was married to Bogdanovich at the time and received screenwriting credit — along with Samuel Fuller — for Targets (Platt would go on to become a film producer — Pretty Baby, Broadcast News, The War of the Rose and Evening Star are counted among her producing credits).
Director Ridley Scott has been nominated for Best Director Oscar on three separate occasions, Black Hawk Down in 2001, Gladiator in 2000 and Thelma & Louise back in 1991. Criterion has a new 4K digital restoration — supervised by Scott — of his first Best Director-nominated film, Thelma & Louise, lined up for a two-SKU push on May 30.
There will be a newly minted 4K Ultra HD/2 Blu-ray Combo Pack, as well as a double-disc Blu-ray edition available on that date.
Not only was Ridley Scott nominated for Best Director, but his leading ladies, Thelma/Geena Davis, and Louise/Susan Sarandon were both nominated for Best Actress — usually when that happens they tend to knock each other off, but in 1991 the Best Actor and Best Actress Oscars were a foregone conclusion with the leads from Silence of the Lambs, Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster, a lock.
Screenwriter Callie Khouri (Something to Talk About, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Respect … and the creator/producer of the Nashville television series) did, however, win the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
Bonus features include two commentary options, video sessions with Ridley Scott and Callie Khourim, deleted and extended scenes, an extended ending (with commentary by Scott), a documentary on the film, the Glenn Frey music video titled “Part of Me, Part of You” and the 1965 Ridley Scott short film, Boy and Bicycle.
Rounding out the May release schedule for the Criterion Collection are 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo Pack editions of director Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire (May 2) and Japanese filmmaker Seijun Suzuki’s Branded to Kill (May 9), plus DVD and Blu-ray SKUs for director Céline Sciamma’s latest, Petite Maman (French … ARR of 396 days; box office: $819.781).
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