This week is all about the catalog titles. Sure, there are some new titles of note (the reportedly excellent Faults, the reportedly solid The Man From U.N.C.L.E.), but the big ones are the older titles. Criterion kind of owns this week, what with the mic-drop that is their restoration and resurrection of Satyajit Ray’s The Apu Trilogy, which should be top on the list of many cinephiles’ Christmas lists. There’s also their release of Richard Brooks’ excellent true-crime noir In Cold Blood, with gorgeous Conrad Hall cinematography, great lead performances by Robert Blake and Scott Wilson, and a brilliant score by Quincy Jones. In addition to a wealth of interviews and a brand-spanking-new 4K restoration of the film, you also get the Maysles’ short film about Truman Capote, With Love from Truman.
But it’s not like other labels are lying down and playing dead in response. Flicker Alley is releasing more of Charlie Chaplin’s short films to Blu-Ray, Arrow Academy is shining its spotlight on the Czech New Wave classic Closely Observed Trains, Tom DiCillo’s breakthrough Living in Oblivion gets a special edition for its 20th anniversary (one whose cover seems to suggest that Peter Dinklage’s character, the actor annoyed by dwarfs always being part of movie dream sequences, is the main focus), the schlock classic (and RedLetterMedia/Best of the Worst favorite) Deadly Prey and its sequel get Blu-Rays, Scream Factory releases both Troll movies and Donald Cammell’s White of the Eye (guess which one of the two is actually good), and Sony finally makes Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s The City of Lost Children available in high-def, a move almost certainly designed solely to appease Darius Khondji fanatics such as myself (we must be a larger group than I’d expect given that Sony is releasing this themselves, as opposed to farming it out to another label). It will come in handy for this Khondji article I’m working on for this very website…
The Apu Trilogy (Pather Panchali / Aparajito / The World of Apu) (Criterion)
A Bullet for Joey (Kino Lorber)
Chaplin’s Essanay Comedies (Flicker Alley)
The City of Lost Children (Sony)
Closely Observed Trains (Arrow, UK-only, region-free)
The Collected Works of Hayao Miyazaki (Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro / Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind / Castle in the Sky / My Neighbor Totoro / Kiki’s Delivery Service / Porco Rosso / Princess Mononoke / Spirited Away / Howl’s Moving Castle / Ponyo / The Wind Rises) (Disney)
Dangerous Game (Olive Films)
The Deadliest Prey (Slasher // Video)
Deadly Prey (Slasher // Video)
Faults (Screen Media)
Faust (Kino Lorber) (WARNING: The transfer on this disc is stretched beyond what it should be. If you want the definitive Blu-Ray of this film, buy Masters of Cinema’s Region-B Blu-Ray of it.)
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (Extended Edition) (Warner)
The House on Carroll Street (Kino Lorber)
In Cold Blood (Criterion)
Jimmy’s Hall (Sony)
Living in Oblivion (Shout Factory)
Lost Lost Lost & Walden: Two Diary Films by Jonas Mekas (Diaries, Notes & Sketches: Walden / Lost, Lost, Lost) (Kino Lorber)
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (Warner)
Meru (Music Box)
Pitfall (Kino Lorber)
Requiescant (Arrow)
Trash (Universal)
Troll / Troll 2 (Shout Factory)
We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story (Universal)
White of the Eye (Shout Factory)