The Criterion Collection and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment have confirmed the titles to be released on Blu-ray in the UK in August 2020. 24 August sees the release of the highly acclaimed Marriage Story, Noah Baumbach's hilarious and harrowing, sharply observed, and deeply compassionate film starring Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson in tour-de-force performances as Charlie and Nicole. On 10 August the comedic masterpiece The Lady Eve arrives. Written, directed and produced by Preston Sturges, this gender-flipped battle-of-wits farce stars Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda. Following on 24 August, the first Iranian film to win the Palme d'Or, Abbas Kiarostami's emotionally complex Taste of Cherry. Operating at once as a closely observed, realistic story and a fable populated by archetypal figures, the film challenges the viewer to consider what often goes unexamined in everyday life.
MARRIAGE STORY (USA 2019) | Blu-ray | 24 August 2020
A love story about divorce. A marriage coming apart and a family coming together. Marriage Story is a hilarious and harrowing, sharply observed, and deeply compassionate film from the acclaimed writer-director Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale). Adam Driver (BlacKkKlansman) and Scarlett Johansson (Under the Skin) deliver tour-de-force performances as Charlie, a charismatic New York theatre director wedded to his work, and Nicole, an actor who is ready to change her own life. Their hopes for an amicable divorce fade as they are drawn into a system that pits them against each other and forces them to redefine their relationship and their family. Featuring bravura, finely drawn supporting turns from Alan Alda (M*A*S*H), Ray Liotta (Goodfellas), and Laura Dern (Certain Women) – who won an Academy Award for her performance here – as the trio of lawyers who preside over the legal battle, Marriage Story (nominated for six Academy Awards, including best picture) is a work of both intimacy and scope that ultimately invokes hope amid the ruins.
DIRECTOR APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
- New 4K digital transfer, supervised by director Noah Baumbach, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- New interview with Baumbach
- The Players, a new programme featuring interviews with actors Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Julie Hagerty, and Ray Liotta
- The Filmmakers, a new programme about the production of the film, featuring interviews with Baumbach, editor Jennifer Lame, production designer Jade Healy, costume designer Mark Bridges, and producer David Heyman
- The Making of Marriage Story, a new programme featuring behind-the-scenes footage
- New interviews with composer Randy Newman and Baumbach about the film’s score
- New programme featuring Baumbach walking the viewer through a key location from the film
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: Notes on the film by novelist Linn Ullmann
THE LADY EVE (USA 1941) | Blu-ray | 10 August 2020
Barbara Stanwyck (Sorry, Wrong Number) sizzles, Henry Fonda (12 Angry Men) bumbles, and Preston Sturges (The Palm Beach Story) runs riot in one of the all-time great screwballs, a pitch-perfect blend of comic zing and woonworthy romance. Aboard a cruise liner sailing up the coast of South America, Stanwyck’s conniving card sharp sets her sights on Fonda’s nerdy snake researcher, who happens to be the heir to a brewery fortune. But when the con artist falls for her mark, her grift becomes a game of hearts – and she is determined to win it all. One in a string of matchless comedic marvels that Sturges wrote, directed, and produced as part of a dazzling 1940s run, this gender-flipped battle-of-wits farce is perhaps his most emotionally satisfying work, tempering its sparkling wit with a streak of tender poignancy supplied by the sensational Stanwyck at her peak.
SPECIAL EDITION BLU-RAY FEATURES:
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Audio commentary from 2001 featuring film professor Marian Keane
- Introduction from 2001 by filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich
- Interview from 2020 with writer-director Preston Sturges’s biographer and son Tom Sturges and friends
- New video essay by film critic David Cairns
- Costume designs by Edith Head
- Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of the film from 1942 featuring Barbara Stanwyck and Ray Milland
- Audio recording of “Up the Amazon,” a song from an unproduced stage musical based on the film
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien and a 1946 profile of Preston Sturges from LIFE magazine
TASTE OF CHERRY [ TA'M E GUILASS] (Iran 1997) | Blu-ray | 24 August 2020
The first Iranian film to win the Palme d’Or, this austere, emotionally complex drama by the great Abbas Kiarostami (Close-up) follows the middle-aged Mr. Badii (The Kite Runner’s Homayoun Ershadi) as he drives around the hilly outskirts of Tehran looking for someone who will agree to dispose of his body after he commits suicide, a taboo under Islam. Extended conversations with three passengers (a soldier, a seminarian, and a taxidermist) elicit different views of mortality and individual choice. Operating at once as a closely observed, realistic story and a fable populated by archetypal figures, Taste of Cherry challenges the viewer to consider what often goes unexamined in everyday life.
SPECIAL EDITION BLU-RAY FEATURES:
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Project, Abbas Kiarostami’s 39-minute 1997 sketch film for Taste of Cherry, made with the director’s son Bahman Kiarostami
- New interview with Iranian film scholar Hamid Naficy
- Rare 1997 interview with Abbas Kiarostami, conducted by Iranian film scholar Jamsheed Akrami
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by critic A. S. Hamrah
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