The Criterion Collection Announces Its August 2014 Titles

The Criterion Collection has announced two new titles, two Blu-ray upgrades and a seven-film box set for release this July. Check out the new cover art along with a full list of extra features for each in the gallery viewer below with special features detailed underneath.

Debuting in the collection are Alfonso Cuaron’s Y Tu Mama Tambien, Pedro Almodovar’s Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz, John Cassavetes’ Love Streams and, making an upgrade from the DVD, Shohei Imamura’s Vengeance is Mine.

Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN

The smash road comedy from the Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón is that rare movie to combine raunchy subject matter and emotional warmth. Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna shot to international stardom as a pair of horny Mexico City teenagers from different classes who, after their girlfriends jet off to Italy for the summer, are bewitched by a gorgeous older Spanish woman (Maribel Verdú) they meet at a wedding. When she agrees to accompany them on a trip to a faraway beach, the three form an increasingly intense and sensual alliance that ultimately strips them both physically and emotionally bare. Shot with elegance and dexterity by the great Emmanuel Lubezki, “Y tu mamá también” is a funny and moving look at human desire.

– New 2K digital restoration, supervised by director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki and approved by director Alfonso Cuarón, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray

– “On ‘Y tu mamá también’: Then and On ‘Y tu mamá también'”: Now, two new pieces on the making of the film, featuring interviews with actors Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna, and Maribel Verdú; Cuarón; cowriter Carlos Cuarón; and Lubezki

– New interview with philosopher Slavoj ?i?ek about the film

– On-set documentary from 2001

– Deleted scenes

– “You Owe Me One” (2002), a short film by Carlos Cuarón

– Trailers

– New English subtitle translation

– A booklet featuring an essay by critic Charles Taylor and character biographies by Carlos Cuarón

TIE ME UP! TIE ME DOWN!

Pedro Almodóvar?s colorful and controversial tribute to the pleasures and perils of Stockholm syndrome, “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!” is a rambunctious dark comedy starring Antonio Banderas as an unbalanced but alluring former mental patient and Victoria Abril as the B-movie and porn star he takes prisoner in the hopes of convincing her to marry him. A highly unconventional romance that came on the spike heels of Almodóvar?s international sensation Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, this is a splashy, sexy central work in the career of one of the world?s most beloved and provocative auteurs, radiantly shot by the director?s great cinematographer José Luis Alcaine.

– New 2K digital restoration, supervised by director Pedro Almodóvar and executive producer Agustín Almodóvar, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray

– New documentary on the making of the film including interviews with Pedro and Agustín Almodóvar; actors Antonio Banderas, Victoria Abril, Loles Léon, Rossy de Palma, and Penélope Cruz; production manager Esther García; editor José Salcedo; and cinematographer José Luis Alcaine

– New interview with Almodóvar collaborator and Sony Pictures Classics copresident Michael Barker

– Conversation from 2003 between Almodóvar and Banderas

– Footage from the film?s 1990 premieres in Madrid and New York

– New English subtitle translation

– A booklet featuring a 1990 piece about the film by Almodóvar, a conversation between filmmaker Wes Anderson and critic Kent Jones, and an interview with Almodóvar from 1989

VENGEANCE IS MINE

A thief, a murderer, and a charming lady-killer, Iwao Enokizu (Ken Ogata) is on the run from the police. Director Shohei Imamura turns this fact-based story?about the seventy-eight-day killing spree of a remorseless man from a devoutly Catholic family?into a cold, perverse, and at times diabolically funny examination of the primitive coexisting with the modern. More than just a true-crime tale, “Vengeance Is Mine” bares humanity?s snarling id.

– New, restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack

– Audio commentary from 2005 featuring critic Tony Rayns

– Excerpts from a 1999 interview with director Shohei Imamura, produced by the Directors Guild of Japan

– Trailer and teaser

– A booklet featuring an essay by critic Michael Atkinson, a 1994 interview with Imamura by writer Toichi Nakata, and writings by Imamura on “Vengeance Is Mine” and his approach to filmmaking

LOVE STREAMS

The electric filmmaking genius John Cassavetes and his brilliant wife and collaborator Gena Rowlands give luminous, fragile performances as two closely bound, emotionally wounded characters who reunite after years apart. Exhilarating and risky, mixing sober realism with surreal flourishes, Love Streams is a remarkable film that comes at the viewer in a torrent of beautiful, erratic feeling. This inquiry into the nature of love in all its forms was Cassavetes?s last truly personal work.

– New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray

– New audio commentary featuring writer Michael Ventura

– New video essay on actor Gena Rowlands by film critic Sheila O?Malley

– New interviews with executive producer and director of photography Al Ruban and actor Diahnne Abbott

– Interview from 2008 with actor Seymour Cassel

– “‘I?m Almost Not Crazy…’ ? John Cassavetes: The Man and His Work” (1984), a sixty-minute documentary by Ventura on the making of “Love Streams”

– Trailer

– A booklet featuring an essay by critic Dennis Lim and a 1984 piece by Cassavetes on the film from the New York Times

ALL THAT JAZZ

The preternaturally gifted director and choreographer Bob Fosse turned the camera on his own life for this madly imaginative, self-excoriating musical masterpiece. Roy Scheider gives the performance of his career as Joe Gideon, whose exhausting work schedule?mounting a Broadway production by day and editing his latest movie at night?and routine of amphetamines, booze, and sex are putting his health at serious risk. Fosse burrows into Gideon?s (and his own) mind, rendering his interior world as phantasmagoric spectacle. Assembled with visionary editing that makes dance come alive on-screen as never before, and overflowing with sublime footwork by the likes of Ben Vereen, Leland Palmer, and the awesomely leggy Ann Reinking, All That Jazz pushes the musical genre to personal depths and virtuosic aesthetic heights.

– New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed 3.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray

– Two audio commentaries: a feature-length one with editor Alan Heim and a scene-specific one with actor Roy Scheider

– “Razzle-Dazzle,” a new video essay on the film by critic Matt Zoller Seitz

– Episode from 1980 of the television talk show “Tomorrow,” featuring director Bob Fosse and choreographer Agnes de Mille

– New interview with Heim

– New interview with Fosse biographer Sam Wasson

– Interview excerpts and footage from the set, featuring Fosse and Scheider

– “Portrait of a Choreographer,” a 2007 documentary on Fosse

– “The Soundtrack: Perverting the Standards,” a 2007 documentary about the music in the film

– Interview from 2007 with George Benson about his song ?On Broadway,? which opens the film

– A booklet featuring an essay by theater critic Hilton Als

Movie News

Marvel and DC

X