Late last week Criterion announced the first five titles they will release on Blu-ray high-definition discs and they will come loaded with bonus features and are already available for pre-order on Criterion’s site.
The first five titles include The Third Man and The Man Who Fell to Earth on November 18 and The Last Emperor, Bottle Rocket and Chungking Express the following week on November 25.
I have included the specs and special features below as well as the cover art for three of the titles.
- Will feature a restored high definition transfer in 1.37:1, and an uncompressed mono soundtrack.
- Video introduction by writer-director Peter Bogdanovich
- Two audio commentaries: one by filmmaker Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter Tony Gilroy, and one by by film scholar Dana Polan
- Shadowing “The Third Man” (2005), a ninety-minute feature documentary on the making of the film
- Abridged recording of Graham Greene’s treatment, read by actor Richard Clarke
- “Graham Greene: The Hunted Man,” an hour-long, 1968 episode of the BBC’s Omnibus series, featuring a rare interview with the novelist
- “Who Was the Third Man? (2000),” a thirty-minute Austrian documentary featuring interviews with cast and crew
- The Third Man on the radio: the 1951 “A Ticket to Tangiers” episode of The Lives of Harry Lime series, written and performed by Orson Welles, and the 1951 Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of The Third Man
- Illustrated production history with rare behind-the-scenes photos, original UK press book, and U.S. trailer
- Actor Joseph Cotten’s alternate opening voice-over narration for the U.S. version
- Archival footage of postwar Vienna
- A look at the untranslated foreign dialogue in the film
- A booklet featuring an essay by Luc Sante
The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)
- Will feature a high definition digital transfer approved by director Nicolas Roeg, and an uncompressed stereo soundtrack.
- Audio commentary by Roeg and actors David Bowie and Buck Henry
- New video interview with screenwriter Paul Mayersberg Performance, video interviews with actors Candy Clark and Rip Torn
- Audio interviews with costume designer May Routh and production designer Brian Eatwell
- Audio interview from 1984 with author Walter Tevis, conducted by Don Swaim
- Multiple stills galleries, including Routh’s costume sketches; behind-the-scenes photos; and production and publicity stills, introduced by set photographer David James
- Gallery of posters from Roeg’s films
- Trailers
- Booklet featuring an essay by critic Graham Fuller
The Last Emperor (1987)
- Features a high definition digital transfer approved by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, and a stereo track in DTS-HD Master Audio.
- Audio commentary by director Bernardo Bertolucci, producer Jeremy Thomas, screenwriter Mark Peploe, and composer-actor Ryuichi Sakamoto
- The Italian Traveler: Bernardo Bertolucci, a 53-minute film by Fernand Mozskowicz, tracing the director’s geographic influences, from Parma to China
- Video images taken by Bertolucci in China
- The Chinese Adventure of Bernardo Bertolucci, a 52-minute documentary that revisits the film’s creation
- A 47-minute documentary featuring Storaro, editor Gabriella Cristiana, costume designer James Acheson, and art director Gianni Silvestri
- A 66-minute documentary exploring Bertolucci’s creative process and the making of The Last Emperor
- A 30-minute interview with Bertolucci from 1989
- A new interview with composer David Byrne
- A new interview with Ian Buruma examining the historical period of the film
- Theatrical trailer
- Booklet featuring an essay by critic David Thomson
Chungking Express (1994)
- Features a restored high-definition digital transfer, as well as a remastered Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack supervised by director Wong Kar-wai.
- Audio commentary by noted Asian cinema critic Tony Rayns
- U.S. theatrical trailer
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- Booklet featuring a new essay by critic Amy Taubin and excerpts from a 1996 Sight and Sound interview with Wong by Rayns
Bottle Rocket (1996)
- Features a new, restored transfer supervised by direct Wes Anderson and a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack.
- Commentary by director/co-writer Anderson and co-writer/actor Owen Wilson
- The Making of “Bottle Rocket”: an original documentary by filmmaker Barry Braverman featuring Anderson, James L. Brooks, James Caan, Temple Nash Jr., Kumar Pallana, Polly Platt, Mark Mothersbaugh, Robert Musgrave, Richard Sakai, David and Sandy Wasco, Andrew and Luke and Owen Wilson, and Robert Yeoman
- The original thirteen-minute black-and-white Bottle Rocket short film from 1992
- Eleven deleted scenes
- Anamorphic screen test, storyboards, location photos, and behind-the-scenes photographs by Laura Wilson
- Murita Cycles, a 1978 short film by Braverman
- The Shafrazi Lectures, no. 1: Bottle Rocket
- Booklet featuring an essay by executive producer James L. Brooks, an appreciation by Martin Scorsese, and original artwork by Ian Dingman
