Coming in December: No Country for Old Men, Joel and Ethan Coen’s riveting West Texas borderlands noir, and Eastern Condors, Sammo Hung’s bazooka blast of Hong Kong action spectacle. Plus, now on 4K UHD: Paris, Texas, a visually exquisite study of a drifter in the American Southwest, directed by Wim Wenders, and Federico Fellini’s 8½, one of the greatest films about film ever made.
Paris, Texas (#501) out Dec 3
New German Cinema pioneer Wim Wenders brings his keen eye for landscape to the American Southwest in Paris, Texas, a profoundly moving character study written by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Sam Shepard. Paris, Texas follows the mysterious, nearly mute drifter Travis (a magnificent Harry Dean Stanton, whose face is a landscape all its own) as he tries to reconnect with his young son, living with his brother (Dean Stockwell) in Los Angeles, and his missing wife (Nastassja Kinski). From this simple setup, Wenders and Shepard produce a powerful statement on codes of masculinity and the myth of the American family, as well as an exquisite visual exploration of a vast, crumbling world of canyons and neon. The Director-Approved Special Edition Features are:
Buy Paris, Texas (The Criterion Collection) Blu-ray- New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Wim Wenders, presented in the aspect ratio of 1.66:1, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Audio commentary featuring Wenders
- Archival interviews with Wenders; cinematographer Robby Müller; composer Ry Cooder; actors Harry Dean Stanton, Dennis Hopper, Peter Falk, and Hanns Zischler; novelist Patricia Highsmith; and filmmaker Samuel Fuller
- Interviews with filmmakers Allison Anders and Claire Denis
- Deleted scenes and Super 8 home movies
- Gallery of Wenders’ location-scouting photos
- Behind-the-scenes photos by Robin Holland
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by film critic Nick Roddick; interviews with Stanton, writer Sam Shepard, and actors Nastassja Kinski and Dean Stockwell; and excerpts from Wenders’ book of photos Written in the West
No Country for Old Men (#1243) out Dec 10
A deadly game of chance and destiny plays out against the stark backdrop of early-1980s West Texas in Joel and Ethan Coen’s powerful adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel. When he happens upon more than two million dollars from a drug deal turned desert massacre, a retired welder and Vietnam veteran (Josh Brolin) sets into motion a wave of senseless, inexorable violence as he’s stalked across the plains by a soul-weary sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) and a psychopathic hit man (Javier Bardem). Winner of four Academy Awards—including Best Picture, and Best Supporting Actor for the indelibly disturbing Bardem—this darkly deadpan borderlands noir keeps both the tension and the existential unease mounting through each cruelly ironic twist of fate. The Director-Approved Special Edition Features are:
- New 4K digital master, supervised and approved by director of photography Roger Deakins, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- New conversation between filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen and author Megan Abbott
- New conversation between Deakins and associate producer David Diliberto, also featuring Abbott
- Archival interviews with actors Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, and Kelly Macdonald
- Behind-the-scenes documentary by Brolin
- Three documentaries about the making of the film featuring on-set footage and interviews with members of the cast and crew English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by author Francine Prose and a 2007 piece on the film by author Larry McMurtry
8 1/2 (#140) out Dec 10
Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido Anselmi, a director whose new project is collapsing around him, along with his life. One of the greatest films about film ever made, Federico Fellini’s 8½ turns one man’s artistic crisis into a grand epic of the cinema. An early working title for 8½ was The Beautiful Confusion, and Fellini’s masterpiece is exactly that: a shimmering dream, a circus, and a magic act. Also featured is Fellini’s rarely seen first film for television, Fellini: A Director’s Notebook (1969). Produced by Peter Goldfarb, this “imagined documentary” of Fellini on Fellini is a kaleidoscope of unfinished projects, all of which provide a fascinating and candid window into the director’s unique creative process. The Director-Approved Special Edition Features are:
Buy 8 1/2 (The Criterion Collection) Blu-ray- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- Introduction by filmmaker Terry Gilliam
- Audio commentary featuring film critics Gideon Bachmann and Antonio Monda
- Fellini: A Director’s Notebook, a short film by Federico Fellini
- The Last Sequence, a documentary on Fellini’s lost alternate ending for 8½
- Nino Rota: Between Cinema and Concert, a documentary about Fellini’s longtime composer
- Interviews with actor Sandra Milo, filmmaker Lina Wertmüller, and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro
- Rare photographs from Bachmann’s collection
- Gallery of behind-the-scenes and production photos
- Trailer
Eastern Condors (#1244) out Dec 17
Legendary actor-director Sammo Hung delivers a bazooka blast of pure adrenaline in this exemplar of Hong Kong action cinema at its most entertaining. Drawing inspiration from Hollywood war films like The Dirty Dozen, Eastern Condors follows a ragtag band of Asian American prisoners dropped into Vietnam on a secret suicide mission to prevent a cache of weapons from falling into the hands of the Viet Cong, who are more than ready for a fight. Propelled by a dynamic ensemble cast that includes the ever-charismatic Yuen Biao as a black-market trader and a superhuman Yuen Wah as a giggling martial-arts monster, this rip-roaring spectacle offers a nonstop barrage of turbocharged set pieces that defy death, logic, and gravity itself.
- 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- New audio commentary featuring film critic Tony Rayns
- 2K digital restoration of the English-dubbed “export cut” of the film
- Meet the Filmmakers, a new interview with director Sammo Hung
- Interviews from 2001 with Hung and actor Yuen Wah
- Eastern Condors Live!, an onstage performance from the 1987 Miss Hong Kong Pageant
- Teaser and trailers
- New English subtitle translation
