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Criterion DVD and Blu-ray releases for June

17 March 2010

Criterion have announced their DVD and Blu-ray releases for June, and as ever there are some real mouth-watering treats here, though ones that UK viewers will need multi-region players to savour. Coming on DVD and Blu-ray are Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train, Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up, Michelangelo Antonioni's Red Desert, and Jan Troell's Everlasting Moments. On DVD only is Carol Reed's Night Train to Munich and on Blu-ray only Luchino Visconti's The Leopard. Details, exact release dates and extras for each are below.

Mystery Train (1989) / DVD and Blu-ray / 15th June 2010 / $39.95 each

Aloof teenage Japanese tourists, a frazzled Italian widow, and a disgruntled British immigrant all converge in the city of dreams – which, in Mystery Train, from Jim Jarmusch (Stranger Than Paradise, Night on Earth), is Memphis. Made with its director's customary precision and wit, Mystery Train is a triptych of stories that pay playful tribute to the home of Stax Records, Sun Studio, Graceland, Carl Perkins, and, of course, the King himself, who presides over the film like a spirit. Mystery Train is one of Jarmusch's very best movies, a boozy and beautiful pilgrimage to an iconic American ghost town and a paean to the music it gave the world.

This director approved special edition features a new, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Jim Jarmusch (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition), plus the following extras:

  • Q&A with Jarmusch, in which he responds to questions sent in by fans;
  • Original documentary on Mystery Train's locations and Memphis's rich social and musical history;
  • On-set photos by Masayoshi Sukita, and behind-the-scenes photos;
  • A booklet featuring essays by writers Peter Guralnick and Dennis Lim, as well as a collectible poster.

Close Up / Nema-ye Nazdik (1990) / DVD and Blu-ray / 22nd June 2010 / $39.95 each

Internationally revered Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami (Taste of Cherry, Ten) has created some of the most inventive and transcendent cinema of the past thirty years, and Close-Up is one of his most radical and brilliant works. This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event—the arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf—as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and existence, in which the real people from the case play themselves. With its universal themes and fascinating narrative knots, Close-up continues to resonate with viewers around the world.

The special edition Blu-ray and double-DVD features a new, restored high-definition digital transfer, new and improved English subtitle translation, and the following extras:

  • Audio commentary by Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa and Jonathan Rosenbaum, authors of Abbas Kiarostami;
  • The Traveler, a notable early feature by director Abbas Kiarostami;
  • "Close-up" Long Shot, a forty-five-minute documentary on Close-Up's central figure, Hossein Sabzian, five years after Kiarostami's film;
  • A Walk with Kiarostami (2003), a thirty-two minute documentary portrait of the director by Iranian film professor Jamsheed Akram;
  • New video interview with Kiarostami;
  • A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Godfrey Cheshire.

Red Desert / Il deserto rosso (1964) / DVD and Blu-ray / 22nd June 2010 / $39.95 each

Michelangelo Antonioni's 1960s panoramas of contemporary alienation were decade-defining artistic events, and Red Desert, his first color film, remains one of his greatest. This provocative look at the spiritual desolation of the technological age—about a disaffected woman, brilliantly portrayed by Antonioni muse Monica Vitti (L'avventura), wandering through a bleak industrial landscape beset by power plants and environmental toxins, and tentatively flirting with her husband's coworker, played by Richard Harris (This Sporting Life)—continues to exert force over viewers. With one startling, painterly composition after another—of abandoned fishing cottages, electrical towers, overwhelming docked ships—Red Desert creates a nearly apocalyptic image of its time, and confirms Antonioni as cinema's preeminent poet of the modern age.

  • This special edition features a new, restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition and the following extras:
  • Audio commentary by Italian film scholar David Forgacs;
  • Archival video interviews with director Antonioni and actress Monica Vitti;
  • Outtakes from the film's production;
  • A booklet featuring an essay by film historian Mark Le Fanu, an interview with Antonioni by Jean-Luc Godard, and a reprinted essay by Antonioni on his use of colour.

Night Train to Munich (1940) / DVD / 22nd June 2010 / $29.95

A twisting, turning, cloak-and-dagger delight, Night Train to Munich is a gripping, occasionally comic confection from writers Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat (Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes) and director Carol Reed (The Fallen Idol, The Third Man). Paced like an out-of-control locomotive, Night Train takes viewers on a World War II–era journey from Prague to England to the Swiss Alps, as Nazis pursue a Czech scientist and his daughter (Margaret Lockwood, of The Lady Vanishes), who are being aided by a debonair British undercover agent, played by Rex Harrison (Major Barbara, My Fair Lady). This captivating, long-overlooked adventure—which also features Casablanca's Paul Henreid—mixes comedy, romance, and thrills with enough skill and cleverness to give the master of suspense himself pause.

This new DVD special edition features a new, restored high-definition digital transfer and the following extras:

  • New video conversation between film scholars Peter Evans and Bruce Babington about director Carol Reed, screenwriters Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, and the social and political climate in which Night Train to Munich was made;
  • A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Philip Kemp.

Everlasting Moments / Maria Larssons eviga ögonblick (2008) / DVD and Blu-ray / 29th June 2010 / $39.95 each

Swedish master Jan Troell (The Emigrants, The New Land) returns triumphantly with Everlasting Moments, a vivid, heartrending story of a woman liberated through art at the beginning of the twentieth century. Though poor and abused by her alcoholic husband, Maria Larsson (Maria Heiskanen, in a beautifully nuanced portrayal) finds an outlet in photography, which opens up her world for the first time. With a burnished bronze tint that evokes faded photographs, and a broad empathetic palette, Everlasting Moments – based on a true story – is a miraculous tribute to the power of image making.

This director approved special edition Blu-ray and double-disc DVD features a new high-definition digital transfer, approved by director Jan Troell and the following extras:

  • Jan Troell's Magic Mirror, an hour-long documentary about Troell's life and career;
  • Short documentary on the making of Everlasting Moments, featuring interviews with Troell, cast, and crew;
  • Documentary featuring photographs by the real Maria Larsson, accompanied by narration telling her story;
  • Theatrical trailer;
  • A booklet featuring an essay by critic Armond White.

The Leopard / Il gattopardo (1963) / Blu-ray / 29th June 2010 / $49.95

An epic on the grandest scale, Luchino Visconti's The Leopard re-creates, with nostalgia, drama, and opulence, the tumultuous years of Italy's Risorgimento, when the aristocracy lost its grip and the middle classes rose and formed a unified, democratic Italy. Burt Lancaster (The Killers, Brute Force) stars as an aging prince watching his culture and fortune wane in the face of a new generation, represented by the gorgeous Alain Delon (Purple Noon, Le samouraï) and Claudia Cardinale (8 ½, Once Upon a Time in the West). The Criterion Collection presents The Leopard in two distinct versions: Visconti's original and the English-language one released in America.

This Blu-ray Special Edition double disc set features a restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director of photography Giuseppe Rotunno, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack, the 161-minute American release, with English-language dialogue, including actor Burt Lancaster's own voice, and the following extras:

  • Audio commentary by film scholar Peter Cowie;
  • A Dying Breed: The Making of 'The Leopard', an hour-long documentary featuring interviews with actress Claudia Cardinale, screenwriter Suso Ceccho D'Amico, Rotunno, filmmaker Sydney Pollack, and many others;
  • Video interview with producer Goffredo Lombardo;
  • Video interview with film scholar Millicent Marcus on the history behind The Leopard;
  • Original theatrical trailers and newsreels;
  • Stills gallery of rare behind-the-scenes production photos;
  • A booklet featuring an essay by film historian Michael Wood.