Criterion February 2010
Fassbender's Hunger strike, Ophuls' last movie, Criterion's own Revanche (which looks amazing) and a 1937 silent American drama.
I'm a little late on writing up details of the latest set of Criterion Blu-Ray/DVD upcoming titles, mainly because Brian Carmody, the guy who deals with the CC press release, didn't wish to send out a newsletter to me this month. Maybe he thought we had shut down when we went quiet for a month or so. Anyway, for now I've had to go off what The Playlist tell me. The big release that really caught my eye for February was Steve McQueen's debut film, the 2008 British Cannes selection Hunger, starring Inglourious Basterds actor Michael Fassbender which gets a Blu-Ray and DVD release. Set in the Thatcherite Britain of 1981, the movie tells the final 66 days of Provisional IRA member Bobby Sands' life, when he starved himself to death in a media frenzied hunger strike, protesting against the prison conditions he was being kept under at HM Prison Maze. He died aged 27.
Next up is Revanche (Blu-Ray and DVD release), an Austrian revenge movie that was nominated for Best Foreign Language Picture at the most recent Oscars ceremony. Johannes Krisch stars as a man plagued by ideas of vengeance during the aftermath of a crime that promised a new life for him and his girlfriend.
The release was always planned as amazingly, Criterion actually distributed the film themselves.
The gorgeous artwork (above) and the trailer (below) hints towards a methodically paced cerebral picture that boasts amazing cinematography, and you can see why Criterion got behind this one. Looks like a Bonnie and Clyde, if it were made by the French New Wave... by a Godard. My order is placed...
Third release of February and yet another duel Blu-Ray and DVD release is Lola Montes, the final movie directed by Max Ophuls before his sad heart attack two years later in 1957, when he was just 54.