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Friday, July 15, 2016

The Criterion Collection Releases for October Have Been Announced!

Guillermo del Toro is at the center of the exciting October slate, which features a new stand-alone edition of the haunting, Oscar-winning fantasy epic Pan's Labyrinth as well as a set-available in both a DVD edition and a sumptuously designed Blu-ray box that includes a deluxe hardcover book-collecting the writer-director's trilogy of fabulist Spanish-language films: Cronos, The Devil's Backbone, and Pan's Labyrinth. We're also thrilled about two European masterpieces making long-awaited entries into the collection: Ermanno Olmi's Palme d'Or-winning The Tree of Wooden Clogs, an absorbing and sensual elegy that faithfully captures the rhythms of a now-lost way of life in rural Italy at the turn of the twentieth century; and The Executioner, a darkly comedic and fiercely subversive political satire by Luis García Berlanga, regarded by filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar as "the true father of Spanish cinema." All this plus Richard Linklater's one-of-a-kind chronicle of childhood and adolescence, Boyhood, in a special edition featuring exclusive new material; and a new Blu-ray of Robert Altman's star-studded adaptation of Raymond Carver stories, Short Cuts.

PAN'S LABYRINTH
 
An Academy Award-winning dark fable set five years after the end of the Spanish Civil War, Pan's Labyrinth encapsulates the rich visual style and genre-defying craft of Guillermo del Toro (The Devil's Backbone, Cronos). Eleven-year-old Ofelia (Ivana Baquero, in a mature and tender performance) comes face to face with the horrors of fascism when she and her pregnant mother are uprooted to the countryside, where her new stepfather (Sergi López), a sadistic captain in General Franco's army, hunts down Republican guerrillas who refuse to give up the fight. The violent reality in which she lives merges seamlessly with a fantastical interior world when Ofelia meets a faun in a decaying labyrinth and is set on a strange, mythic journey that is at once terrifying and beautiful. In his revisiting of this bloody period in Spanish history, del Toro creates a vivid depiction of the monstrosities of war infiltrating a child's imagination and threatening the innocence of youth.

2006 * 119 minutes * Color * 5.1 Surround * In Spanish with English subtitles * 1.85:1 aspect ratio
 
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
  • Newly graded 2K digital master, supervised by director Guillermo del Toro, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Alternate DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 surround soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Audio commentary by del Toro from 2007 
  • New interview with del Toro by novelist Cornelia Funke about fairy tales, fantasy, and Pan's Labyrinth 
  • New interview with actor Doug Jones 
  • Four 2007 making-of documentaries, examining the characters, production, special effects, themes, and music of the film 
  • Interactive director's notebook 
  • Footage of actor Ivana Baquero's audition for the film 
  • Animated comics featuring prequel stories for the film's menagerie of creatures 
  • Programs comparing selected production storyboards and del Toro's thumbnail sketches with the final film; visual effects work for the Green Fairy; and elements of the film's score 
  • Trailers and TV spots 
  • PLUS: An essay by film critic Michael Atkinson

BLU-RAY EDITION  
SRP $39.95  
PREBOOK 9/13/16
STREET 10/11/16 
CAT. NO. CC2684BD  
ISBN 978-1-68143-211-3
UPC 7-15515-18681-0
 
2-DVD EDITION
SRP $29.95  
PREBOOK 9/13/16
STREET 10/11/16 
CAT. NO. CC2685DDVD
ISBN 978-1-68143-212-0 
UPC 7-15515-18691-9
 
TRILOGÍA DE GUILLERMO DEL TORO
 
Throughout a career that encompasses both visually arresting art-house hits and big-budget Hollywood spectacles, director Guillermo del Toro has continually redefined and elevated the horror genre with his deeply personal explorations of myths and monsters. These three Spanish-language films, each a tale of childhood in troubled times, showcase his singular fusion of the fantastic and the real. Drawing inspiration from a rich variety of sources, from Alfred Hitchcock to Francisco de Goya, the gothic-infused stories collected here-populated by vampires, ghosts, and a fairy-tale princess-make evident why del Toro is considered the master cinematic fabulist of our time.
 
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION COLLECTOR'S SET FEATURES
  • High-definition digital restoration of Cronos, 2K digital restoration of The Devil's Backbone, newly graded 2K digital master of Pan's Labyrinth, all supervised and approved by director Guillermo del Toro, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack for Cronos and 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks for The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth on the Blu-rays
  • Alternate DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 surround sound-track for Pan's Labyrinth on the Blu-ray
  • Audio commentaries on all three films
  • Interviews with del Toro, director of photography Guillermo Navarro, and actors Doug Jones, Federico Luppi, and Ron Perlman
  • Welcome to Bleak House, a 2010 video tour by del Toro of his personal collections
  • New piece on Pan's Labyrinth featuring del Toro and novelist Cornelia Funke
  • Interactive director's notebooks for The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth
  • Making-of documentaries for The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth
  • Geometria, a 1987 short horror film by del Toro finished in 2010
  • Footage of actor Ivana Baquero auditioning for Pan's Labyrinth in 2005
  • Original Spanish-language voice-over introduction for Cronos
  • Introductions by del Toro for The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth
  • Deleted scenes from The Devil's Backbone, with commentary by del Toro
  • Selected on-screen picture-in-picture presentation of del Toro's thumbnail sketches for The Devil's Backbone
  • Programs comparing del Toro's thumbnail sketches and production storyboards for The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth with the final films
  • Piece on The Devil's Backbone's depiction of the Spanish Civil War
  • Animated comics featuring prequel stories for the creatures of Pan's Labyrinth
  • Gallery of stills from Cronos, captioned by del Toro
  • Trailers and TV spots
  • English subtitle translations approved by del Toro
  • Deluxe box set for the Blu-ray, featuring new illustrations by Vania Zouravliov
  • Blu-ray: A 100-page hardcover book featuring an introduction by author Neil Gaiman and essays by critics Michael Atkinson, Mark Kermode, and Maitland McDonagh, along with production notes and sketches by del Toro and illustrators Carlos Giménez and Raúl Monge
  • DVD: Essays by Atkinson, Kermode, and McDonagh, and production notes for Cronos by del Toro

3-BLU-RAY EDITION  
SRP $99.95 
PREBOOK 9/13/16
STREET 10/11/16
CAT. NO. CC2686BD 
ISBN 978-1-68143-213-7
UPC 7-15515-18701-5

5-DVD EDITION
SRP $99.95 
PREBOOK 9/13/16
STREET 10/11/16
CAT. NO. CC2687DDVD
ISBN 978-1-68143-214-4 
UPC 7-15515-18711-4
 
BOYHOOD
 
There has never been another movie like Boyhood, from director Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused). An event film of the utmost modesty, it was shot over the course of twelve years in the director's native Texas and charts the physical and emotional changes experienced by a child named Mason (Ellar Coltrane), his divorced parents (Patricia Arquette, who won an Oscar for her performance, and Ethan Hawke), and his older sister (Lorelei Linklater). Alighting not on milestones but on the small, in-between moments that make up our lives, Linklater fashions a flawlessly acted, often funny portrait that flows effortlessly from one year to the next. Allowing us to watch people age on film with documentary realism while gripping us in a fictional narrative of exquisite everydayness, Boyhood has a power that only the art of cinema could harness.

2014 * 165 minutes * Color * 5.1 Surround * 1.85:1 aspect ratio
 
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
  • New 2K digital transfer, supervised by director Richard Linklater, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • New audio commentary featuring Linklater and nine members of the cast and crew
  • New documentary chronicling the film's production, featuring footage shot over the course of its twelve years
  • New discussion featuring Linklater and actors Patricia Arquette and Ellar Coltrane, moderated by producer John Pierson
  • New conversation between Coltrane and actor Ethan Hawke 
  • New video essay by critic Michael Koresky about time in Linklater's films, narrated by Coltrane
  • Collection of portraits of cast and crew by photographer Matt Lankes, narrated with personal thoughts from Linklater, Arquette, Hawke, Coltrane and producer Cathleen Sutherland
  • PLUS: An essay by novelist Jonathan Lethem

BLU-RAY EDITION  
SRP $39.95  
PREBOOK 9/20/16
STREET 10/18/16 
CAT. NO. CC2598BD  
ISBN 978-1-68143-220-5
UPC 7-15515-18771-8
 
2-DVD EDITION
SRP $29.95  
PREBOOK 9/20/16
STREET 10/18/16 
CAT. NO. CC2599DDVD
ISBN 978-1-68143-124-6 
UPC 7-15515-17071-0
 
SHORT CUTS
 
The work of two great American artists merges in Short Cuts, a kaleidoscopic adaptation of the stories of renowned author Raymond Carver by maverick director Robert Altman (McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Nashville). Epic in scale yet meticulously observed, the film interweaves the stories of twenty-two characters as they struggle to find solace and meaning in contemporary Los Angeles. The extraordinary ensemble cast includes Tim Robbins (The Player), Julianne Moore (Far from Heaven), Robert Downey Jr. (Chaplin), Jack Lemmon (Some Like It Hot), and Jennifer Jason Leigh (Margot at the Wedding)-all giving fearless performances in what is one of Altman's most compassionate creations.

1993 * 187 minutes * Color * 2.0 surround * 2.35:1 aspect ratio
 
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
  • New, restored 4K digital transfer, approved by cinematographer Walt Lloyd, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Alternate 5.1 soundtrack mix, plus isolated music track
  • Conversation between Altman and actor Tim Robbins from 2004
  • Luck, Trust & Ketchup: Robert Altman in Carver Country, a 1993 feature-length documentary on the making of Short Cuts
  • To Write and Keep Kind, a 1992 PBS documentary on the life of author Raymond Carver
  • One-hour 1983 audio interview with Carver, conducted for the American Audio Prose Library
  • Original demo recordings of the film's Doc Pomus-Mac Rebennack songs, performed by Dr. John
  • Deleted scenes
  • A look inside the marketing of Short Cuts
  • PLUS: An essay by film critic Michael Wilmington

2-BLU-RAY EDITION  
SRP $39.95  
PREBOOK 9/20/16
STREET 10/18/16 
CAT. NO. CC2688BD  
ISBN 978-1-68143-215-1
UPC 7-15515-18721-3
 
2-DVD EDITION
SRP $29.95  
PREBOOK 9/20/16
STREET 10/18/16 
CAT. NO. CC2693DDVD
ISBN 978-1-68143-221-2
UPC 7-15515-18821-0
 
THE EXECUTIONER
 
This masterpiece of black humor, beloved in Spain but too little seen elsewhere, threads a scathing critique of Franco-era values through a macabre farce about an undertaker who marries an executioner's daughter and reluctantly takes over her father's job so the family can keep their government-allotted apartment. As caustic today as it was in 1963, this early collaboration between Luis García Berlanga (Welcome, Mr. Marshall!; Plácido) and his longtime screenwriter Rafael Azcona (El pisito, Belle Époque) is an unerring depiction of what Berlanga called "the invisible traps that society sets up for us." A furiously funny personal attack on capital punishment, The Executioner escaped the state censors who sought to suppress it, and today is regarded as one of the greatest Spanish films of all time.

1963 * 92 minutes * Black & White * Monaural * In Spanish with English subtitles * 1.66:1 aspect ratio
 
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
  • New, restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • New interview with filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar
  • New program on director Luis García Berlanga, featuring interviews with his son José Luis Berlanga; film critic Carlos F. Heredero; writers Fernando R. Lafuente and Bernardo Sánchez Salas; and director of the Berlanga Film Museum Rafael Maluenda
  • Spanish television program from 2012 on The Executioner, featuring archival interviews with Berlanga
  • Trailer
  • New English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: An essay by film critic David Cairns

BLU-RAY EDITION  
SRP $39.95  
PREBOOK 9/27/16
STREET 10/25/16 
CAT. NO. CC2689BD  
ISBN 978-1-68143-216-8
UPC 7-15515-18731-2
 
2-DVD EDITION
SRP $29.95  
PREBOOK 9/27/16
STREET 10/25/16 
CAT. NO. CC2690DDVD
ISBN 978-1-68143-217-5 
UPC 7-15515-18741-1
 
THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS
 
A painterly and sensual immersion in late nineteenth-century Italian farm life, Ermanno Olmi's The Tree of Wooden Clogs lovingly focuses on four families working for one landowner on an isolated estate in the province of Bergamo. Filming on an abandoned farm for four months, Olmi adapted neorealist techniques to tell his story, enlisting local people to live as their own ancestors had, speaking in their native dialect on locations with which they were intimately familiar. Through the cycle of seasons, of back-breaking labor, love and marriage, birth and death, faith and superstition, Olmi naturalistically evokes an existence very close to nature, one that celebrates its beauty, humor, and simplicity but also acknowledges the feudal cruelty that governs it. Winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1978, The Tree of Wooden Clogs is at once intimate in scale and epic in scope-a towering, heart-stirring work of humanist filmmaking.


1978 * 186 minutes * Color * Monaural * In Bergamasque with English subtitles * 1.33:1 aspect ratio
 
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
  • New 4K restoration, created in collaboration with The Film Foundation at L'Immagine Ritrovata and supervised by director Ermanno Olmi, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Alternate Italian-language soundtrack
  • Ermanno Olmi: The Roots of the Tree, an hour-long episode of The South Bank Show from 1981, featuring an interview with Olmi on the film and a visit to the farm where it was shot
  • New program featuring cast and crew discussing the film at the Cinema Ritrovato film festival in Bologna, Italy, in 2016
  • Archival interviews with Olmi
  • Trailer
  • New English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: An essay by film critic Deborah Young

BLU-RAY EDITION  
SRP $39.95  
PREBOOK 9/27/16
STREET 10/25/16 
CAT. NO. CC2691BD  
ISBN 978-1-68143-218-2
UPC 7-15515-18751-0
 
2-DVD EDITION
SRP $29.95  
PREBOOK 9/27/16
STREET 10/25/16 
CAT. NO. CC2692DDVD
ISBN 978-1-68143-219-9 
UPC 7-15515-18761-9

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