After a bit of a light April, Criterion has come out of the gate roaring in May. For the first time this year(!!!), Criterion upgrades and reissues titles from its back catalog, in this case a Chantal Akerman classic and a Yasujiro Ozu title they never treated with much respect in the DVD era. And the new titles are even more exciting, from the release of another long-mistreated Orson Welles classic to the long-awaited special edition of an acclaimed 2000s comedy and the second box set in a series many had assumed stopped after the first. Specs and cover art are below.
- New 2K digital restoration undertaken by the Royal Belgian Film Archive, supervised by director of photography Babette Mangolte, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Autour de “Jeanne Dielman,” a 69-minute documentary—shot by actor Sami Frey and edited by Agnes Ravez and director Chantal Akerman—made during the filming of Jeanne Dielman
- Interviews from 2009 with Akerman and Mangolte
- Excerpt from “Chantal Akerman par Chantal Akerman,” a 1997 episode of the French television program Cinéma de notre temps
- Interview from 2007 with Akerman’s mother, Natalia
- Excerpt from a 1976 television interview featuring Akerman and actor Delphine Seyrig
- Saute ma ville (1968), Akerman’s first film, with an introduction by the director
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Ivone Margulies
- High-definition digital master, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Audio commentary from 2015 featuring director Jacques Audiard and coscreenwriter Noé Debré
- New interview with Audiard
- New interview with actor Antonythasan Jesuthasan
- Deleted scenes with audio commentary by Audiard and Debré
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by critic Michael Atkinson
- New, restored 4K digital transfers of two versions of the film, the 1952 European version and the 1955 U.S. version, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-ray
- Audio commentary featuring filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich and Orson Welles scholar Myron Meisel
- Return to Glennascaul, a 1953 short film made by MacLiammóir and actor Hilton Edwards during a hiatus from shooting Othello
- New interview with Welles biographer Simon Callow
- New interview with Welles scholar François Thomas on the differences between the two versions
- New interview with Ayanna Thompson, author of Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America
- Interview from 2014 with Welles scholar Joseph McBride
- More!
- PLUS: An essay by film critic Geoffrey O’Brien
- New 4K digital restoration from Shochiku Co., with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- I Was Born, But . . ., Yasujiro Ozu’s 1932 silent comedy masterpiece, with a score composed by Donald Sosin in 2008
- Surviving excerpt from A Straightforward Boy, a 1929 silent film by Ozu
- New video essay on Ozu’s use of humor by critic David Cairns
- New interview with film scholar David Bordwell
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by critic Jonathan Rosenbaum
- New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by writer-director Terry Zwigoff, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Audio commentary featuring Zwigoff, comic-book creator and screenwriter Daniel Clowes, and producer Lianne Halfon
- New interviews with and actors Thora Birch and Illeana Douglas
- Extended excerpt from Gumnaam (1965) featuring the Bollywood musical number that appears inGhost World’s opening title sequence
- Deleted scenes
- Trailer
- More!
- PLUS: An essay by critic Howard Hampton
- 2K, 3K, or 4K digital restorations of all six films, presented courtesy of the World Cinema Project in collaboration with the Cineteca di Bologna, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-rays
- Remastered digital soundtrack of Limite created almost entirely from archival recordings of the same musical performances director Mário Peixote and his musical arranger Brutus Pedreira originally selected to accompany the film, presented in uncompressed monaural sound on the Blu-ray
- New introductions to the films by World Cinema Project founder Martin Scorsese
- New interview programs featuring film historian Pierre Rissient (on Insiang), director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (on Mysterious Object at Noon), director Ermek Shinarbaev (on Revenge), filmmaker Walter Salles (on Limite), producer Mevlüt Akkaya (on Law of the Border), and actor and cowriter Hou Hsiao-hsien with filmmaker Edmond Wong (on Taipei Story)
- Updated English subtitle translations
- Three Blu-rays and six DVDs, with all content available in both formats
- PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by Phillip Lopate, Dennis Lim, Kent Jones, Fábio Andrade, Bilge Ebiri, and Andrew Chan