Perhaps Criterion has been paying attention to my Best Movies posts. Next week sees the release of Federico Fellini‘s La Dolce Vita on Blu-ray, which was the first installment in my Best Movies feature and a title I’ll be reviewing later this week, and now my third installment, Kihachi Okamoto‘s The Sword of Doom will be arriving on January 6 with a new high-definition digital restoration.
Unfortunately the Sword of Doom release won’t come with any new features, though the film, Hiroshi Murai‘s cinematography, Masaru Satô‘s score and an audio commentary from Stephen Prince will do for me as that is a title that simply must be part of my collection.
Also coming in January is Rainer Werner Fassbinder‘s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant on January 13, Guy Maddin‘s My Winnipeg on January 20, Preston Sturges‘s 1942 comedy The Palm Beach Story starring Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea on January 20 and, finally, on January 27 Lucrecia Martel‘s La ciénaga.
Supplemental details are included below.
The Sword of Doom
- New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
- Audio commentary featuring film historian Stephen Prince
- Trailer
- An essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director of photography Michael Ballhaus, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New interviews with Ballhaus and actors Margit Carstensen, Eva Mattes, Katrin Schaake, and Hanna Schygulla
- New interview with film scholar Jane Shattuc about director Rainer Werner Fassbinder and the film
- Role Play: Women on Fassbinder, a 1992 German television documentary by Thomas Honickel featuring interviews with Carstensen, Schygulla, and actors Irm Hermann and Rosel Zech
- New English subtitle translation
- An essay by critic Peter Matthews
My Winnipeg
- New high-definition digital restoration, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Conversation between director Guy Maddin and art critic Robert Enright
- “My Winnipeg” Live in Toronto, a 2008 featurette
- Various cine-essays by Maddin on Winnipegiana
- Three Maddin shorts, with introductions by the director: Spanky: To the Pier and Back (2008), Sinclair (2010), and Only Dream Things (2012)
- Deleted scene
- Trailer
- An essay by critic Wayne Koestenbaum
The Palm Beach Story
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New interview with writer and film historian James Harvey about director Preston Sturges
- New interview with actor and comedian Bill Hader about Sturges
- Safeguarding Military Information, a 1942 World War II propaganda short written by Sturges
- Screen Guild Theater radio adaptation of the film from March 1943
- An essay by critic Stephanie Zacharek
La ciénaga
- New 4K digital film transfer, approved by director Lucrecia Martel, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master
- Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New interview with filmmaker Andrés di Tella about Martel and the film
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- An essay by critic David Oubiña
