Spirit Entertainment has announced the February 2025 UK Blu-ray and UHD releases from the Criterion Collections as director Anthony Mann's Winchester '73, Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love, and Joan Micklin Silver's Crossing Delancey. Full details below.
WINCHESTER '73 (USA 1950)
UHD | Blu-ray | 3 February 2025
Noirish shadows spread across the frontier in this landmark western, the first of the celebrated collaborations between director Anthony Mann and actor James Stewart that redefined the genre with their moral and psychological intensity. Beginning his midcareer transition into increasingly edgy roles, Stewart portrays an avenging sharpshooter whose stolen rifle becomes a harbinger of death as it is passed from one doomed hand to the next.
Featuring a stellar cast that includes a touching Shelley Winters, a sensationally sleazy Dan Duryea, and a pre-stardom Rock Hudson, this elemental tale of violence begetting violence broke new ground with its evocation of the West as a no-man’s-land of antiheroes and villains.
4K UHD & BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
- New 4K digital restoration, undertaken by Universal Pictures in collaboration with The Film Foundation, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- [UHD ONLY] One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Audio commentary featuring actor James Stewart and film historian Paul Lindenschmidt
- New interview with film programmer Adam Piron on the portrayal of Native Americans in the western genre
- Forces of Nature: Anthony Mann at Universal, a program on a key chapter in the director’s career
- Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of the film from 1951
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- Plus: An essay by critic Imogen Sara Smith
- New cover by Gregory Manchess
PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE (USA 2002)
UHD | Blu-ray | 10 February 2025
Chaos lurks in every corner of this giddily off-kilter foray into romantic comedy by Paul Thomas Anderson. Struggling to cope with his erratic temper, novelty-toilet-plunger salesman Barry Egan (Adam Sandler, demonstrating remarkable versatility in his first dramatic role) spends his days collecting frequent-flier-mile coupons and dodging the insults of his seven sisters. The promise of a new life emerges when Barry inadvertently attracts the affection of a mysterious woman named Lena (Emily Watson), but their budding relationship is threatened when he falls prey to the swindling operator of a phone sex line and her deranged boss (played with maniacal brio by Philip Seymour Hoffman).
Fueled by the careening momentum of a baroque-futurist score by Jon Brion, the Cannes-award-winning Punch-Drunk Love channels the spirit of classic Hollywood and the whimsy of Jacques Tati into an idiosyncratic ode to the delirium of new romance.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD & BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
- 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Paul Thomas Anderson, with Dolby Atmos soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Blossoms & Blood, a short 2002 piece by Anderson featuring Adam Sandler and Emily Watson, along with music by Jon Brion
- Interview with Brion
- Program featuring behind-the-scenes footage of a recording session for the film’s soundtrack
- Conversation between curators Michael Connor and Lia Gangitano about the art of Jeremy Blake, used in the film
- Additional artwork by Blake
- Cannes Film Festival press conference from 2002
- NBC News interview from 2000 with David Phillips, the “pudding guy”
- Twelve Scopitones
- Deleted scenes
- Mattress Man commercial
- Trailers
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by filmmaker, author, and artist Miranda July
- Cover by Dustin Stanton
CROSSING DELANCEY (USA 1988)
UHD | Blu-ray | 24 February 2025
Joan Micklin Silver’s wonderfully affectionate spin on the romantic comedy infuses the genre with a fresh, personal perspective, following an unmarried Jewish woman’s search for fulfillment in New York City. Happily independent bookstore manager Izzy (a luminous Amy Irving) isn’t looking for love, but she’s forced to reevaluate her desires when she catches the eye of two very different men: a self-centered novelist (Jeroen Krabbé) and the mild-mannered Lower East Side pickle seller (Peter Riegert) with whom her old-fashioned bubbie (scene-stealing Yiddish-theater star Reizl Bozyk) sets her up.
A love letter to 1980s Manhattan shot in beautifully burnished, autumnal tones, Crossing Delancey gracefully captures the magic of a city where disparate cultures, generations, and traditions both clash and connect.
4K UHD & BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by cinematographer Theo van de Sande, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- [UHD ONLY] One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- New program on the making of the film featuring actors Amy Irving and Peter Riegert and screenwriter Susan Sandler
- Audio interview from 1988 with director Joan Micklin Silver
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic Rachel Syme
- New cover by Samantha Dion Baker
|
