Hi Bryan Here….

Criterion has announced eight titles to be released for the month of November with a couple of additions for late October.  It will be a great month for Criterion.  Below you can see all the extras and synopsis of each film.  Enjoy.

ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (BLURAY) – OCTOBER 25, 2011

SYNOPSIS: A twisted treasure from Hollywood’s pre-Code horror heyday,Island of Lost Souls is a cautionary tale of science run amok adapted from H. G. Wells’s novel The Island of Dr. Moreau. In one of his first major movie roles, Charles Laughton is a mad doctor conducting ghastly genetic experiments on a remote island in the South Seas, much to the fear and disgust of the shipwrecked sailor (Richard Arlen) who finds himself trapped there. Erle C. Kenton’s touchstone of movie terror is elegantly shot by Karl Struss, features groundbreaking makeup effects that inspired generations of monster-movie artists, and costars Bela Lugosi in one his most gruesome roles.

DISC FEATURES

• New high-definition digital restoration of the uncut theatrical version (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
• Audio commentary by film historian Gregory Mank, author of Bela Lugosi and Boris
  Karloff and Hollywood’s Maddest Doctors
• New video conversation among filmmaker John Landis (An American Werewolf in
  London), Oscar-winning makeup artist Rick Baker (An American Werewolf in London,
  Videodrome), and genre expert Bob Burns
• New interviews with horror film historian David J. Skal (The Monster Show: A Cultural
  History of Horror); filmmaker Richard Stanley (Hardware, original director of the ill-fated
  1996 remake of The Island of Dr. Moreau)
• New interviews with Devo founding members Gerald Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh,
  whose manifesto is rooted in themes from Island of Lost Souls
• The Beginning Was the End: The Complete Truth About De-evolution, a 1976 short film from Devo featuring the songs “Secret Agent Man” and “Jocko Homo”
• Theatrical trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by critic Christine Smallwood

IDENTIFICATION OF A WOMAN (BLURAY) – OCTOBER 25, 2011

SYNOPSIS: Michelangelo Antonioni’s Identification of a Woman is a body- and soul-baring voyage into one man’s artistic and erotic consciousness. After his wife leaves him, a film director finds himself drawn into affairs with two enigmatic women: at the same time, he searches for the right subject and actress for his next film. This spellbinding antiromance was a late-career coup for the legendary Italian filmmaker, and is renowned for its sexual explicitness and an extended scene on a fog-enshrouded highway that stands with the director’s greatest set pieces.

DISC FEATURES

• New high-definition digital restoration (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the
  Blu-ray edition)
• Theatrical trailer
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic John Powers and a 1982 interview with director Michelangelo Antonioni by critic Gideon Bachmann

FANNY AND ALEXANDER BOX SET (BLURAY) – NOVEMBER 8, 2011

SYNOPSIS: Through the eyes of ten-year-old Alexander, we witness the delights and conflicts of the Ekdahl family, a sprawling bourgeois clan in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Sweden. Ingmar Bergman intended Fanny and Alexander as his swan song, and it is the legendary director’s warmest and most autobiographical film, a four-time Academy Award–winning triumph that combines his trademark melancholy and emotional intensity with immense joy and sensuality. The Criterion Collection is proud to present both the theatrical release and the original five-hour television version of this great work. Also included in the box set is Bergman’s own feature-length documentary The Making of “Fanny and Alexander,” a unique glimpse into his creative process.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FIVE-DISC BOX SET:

• High-definition digital restorations of the television and theatrical versions of Fanny and Alexander
• High-definition digital restoration of Ingmar Bergman’s feature-length documentary The Making of “Fanny and Alexander”
• Ingmar Bergman Bids Farewell to Film, a sixty-minute conversation between Bergman and film critic Nils Petter Sundgren recorded for Swedish television in 1984
• Audio commentary on the theatrical version by film scholar Peter Cowie
• A Bergman Tapestry, a documentary featuring interviews with cast and crew
• Costume sketches and footage of the models for the film’s sets
• Stills gallery
• Theatrical trailer
• Optional English-dubbed soundtrack for the theatrical version
• PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by documentarian and film historian Stig Björkman, novelist Rick Moody, and film scholar Paul Arthur

THE RULES OF THE GAME (BLURAY) – NOVEMBER 15, 2011

SYNOPSIS: Considered one of the greatest films ever made, The Rules of the Game (La règle du jeu), by Jean Renoir, is a scathing critique of corrupt French society cloaked in a comedy of manners, in which a weekend at a marquis’s countryside chateau lays bare some ugly truths about a group of haute bourgeois acquaintances. The film was a victim of tumultuous history—it was subjected to cuts after premiere audiences rejected it in 1939, and the original negative was destroyed during World War II; it wasn’t reconstructed until 1959. That version, which has stunned viewers for decades, is presented here.

DISC FEATURES

• Restored high-definition digital transfer
• Introduction to the film by Jean Renoir
• Audio commentary written by film scholar Alexander Sesonske and read by filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich
• Version comparison: side-by-side analysis of the film’s two endings, and an illustrated study of Renoir’s shooting script
• Selected-scene analysis by Renoir historian Christopher Faulkner
• Excerpts from Jean Renoir, le patron: La Règle et l’exception (1966), a French television program directed by Jacques Rivette
• Part one of Jean Renoir, a two-part 1993 BBC documentary by David Thompson
• Video essay about the film’s production, release, and later reconstruction
• Jean Gaborit and Jacques Durand discuss their reconstruction and rerelease of the film
• Interviews with Renoir’s son and assistant cameraman Alain Renoir, set designer Max Douy, and actress Mila Parély
• Written tributes to the film and Renoir by J. Hoberman, Kent Jones,Paul Schrader, Wim Wenders and others
• Improved English subtitle translation
• Plus: A booklet featuring writings by Sesonske, Renoir, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bertrand Tavernier, and François Truffaut

THREE COLORS TRILOGY : RED, WHITE, BLUE (BLURAY) – NOVEMBER 15, 2011

SYNOPSIS: This boldly cinematic trio of stories about love and loss from Krzysztof Kieślowski was a defining event of the art-house boom of the 1990s. The films were named for the colors of the French flag and stand for the tenets of the French Revolution—liberty, equality, and fraternity—but this hardly begins to explain their enigmatic beauty and rich humanity. Set in Paris, Warsaw, and Geneva, and ranging from tragedy to comedy, Blue, White, and Red (Kieślowski’s final film) examine with artistic clarity a group of ambiguously interconnected people experiencing profound personal disruptions. Marked by intoxicating cinematography and stirring performances by such actors as Juliette Binoche, Julie Delpy, Irène Jacob, and Jean-Louis Trintignant, Kieślowski’s Three Colors is a benchmark of contemporary cinema.

DISC FEATURES

• New high-definition digital restorations (with DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray editions)
• Three cinema lessons with director Krzysztof Kieślowski
• New interviews with composer Zbigniew Preisner; writer Krzysztof Piesiewicz; and actors Julie Delpy, Zbigniew Zamachowski, and Irène Jacob
• Selected-scene commentary for Blue with actress Juliette Binoche
• Three new video essays, by film writers Annette Insdorf, Tony Rayns, and Dennis Lim
• Kieślowski’s student short The Tram (1966) and his fellow student’s short from the same year The Face, which features Kieślowski in a solo performance
• Two short documentaries by Kieślowski: Seven Women of Different Ages (1978) and Talking Heads (1980)
• Krzysztof Kieślowski: I’m So-So . . . (1995), a feature-length documentary in which the filmmaker discusses his life and work
• Two multi-interview programs, Reflections on “Blue” and Kieślowski: The Early Years, with film critic Geoff Andrew, Binoche, filmmaker Agnieszka Holland, cinematographer Sławomir Idziak, Insdorf, Jacob, and editor Jacques Witta
• Interviews with producer Marin Karmitz and Witta
• Behind-the-scenes programs for White and Red, and Kieślowski Cannes 1994, a short documentary on Red’s world premiere
• Original theatrical trailers
• New and improved English subtitle translations
• PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by critics Colin MacCabe, Nick James, Stuart Klawans, and Georgina Evans, an excerpt from Kieślowski on Kieślowski, and reprinted interviews with cinematographers Sławomir Idziak, Edward Klosinski, and Piotr Sobocinski

RUSHMORE (BLURAY) – NOVEMBER 22, 2011

SYNOPSIS: The dazzling sophomore film from Wes Anderson is equal parts coming-of-age story, French New Wave homage, and screwball comedy. Tenth grader Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) is Rushmore Academy’s most extracurricular student—and its least scholarly. He faces expulsion, and enters into unlikely friendships with both a lovely first-grade teacher (Olivia Williams) and a melancholy self-made millionaire (Bill Murray, in an award-winning performance). Set to a soundtrack of classic British Invasion tunes,Rushmore defies categorization; it captures the pain and exuberance of adolescence with wit, emotional depth, and cinematic panache.

DISC FEATURES

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION:

• New high-definition digital transfer of the director’s cut supervised by director Wes Anderson
• Audio commentary by Anderson, cowriter Owen Wilson, and actor Jason Schwartzman
• The Making of “Rushmore,” an exclusive behind-the-scenes documentary by Eric Chase Anderson
• Max Fischer Players Present: Theatrical “adaptations” of Armageddon, Out of Sight, and The Truman Show, staged for the 1999 MTV Movie Awards
• Episode of The Charlie Rose Show featuring Anderson and actor Bill Murray
• Cast audition footage
• Wes Anderson’s hand-drawn storyboards, plus a film-to-storyboard comparison
• Props, posters, behind-the-scenes photos, and other graphic ephemera
• Original theatrical trailer
• Collectible poster
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Dave Kehr

12 ANGRY MEN (BLURAY) – NOVEMBER 22, 2011

SYNOPSIS: 12 Angry Men, by Sidney Lumet, may be the most radical big-screen courtroom drama in cinema history. A behind-closed-doors look at the American legal system as riveting as it is spare, the iconic adaptation of Reginald Rose’s teleplay stars Henry Fonda as the initially dissenting member of a jury of white men ready to pass judgment on a Puerto Rican teenager charged with murdering his father. What results is a saga of epic proportions that plays out in real time over ninety minutes in one sweltering room. Lumet’s electrifying snapshot of 1950s America on the verge of change is one of the great feature-film debuts.

DISC FEATURES

• New high-definition digital restoration (with uncom pressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
• Frank Schaffner’s 1955 television version, with an introduction by Ron Simon, director of the Paley Center for Media Studies
• “Twelve Angry Men”: From Television to the Big Screen, a video essay by film scholar Vance Kepley comparing the Sidney Lumet and Schaffner versions
• Archival interviews with Lumet
• New interview about the director with writer Walter Bernstein
• New interview with Simon about television writer Reginald Rose
• New interview with cinematographer John Bailey in which he discusses cinematographer Boris Kaufman
• Tragedy in a Temporary Town (1956), a teleplay directed by Lumet and written by Rose
• Original theatrical trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by writer and law professor Thane Rosenbaum

ECLIPSE SERIES 30: SABU (BLURAY) – NOVEMBER 29, 2011

SYNOPSIS: In the thirties and forties, the Indian actor known as Sabu (born Selar Shaik) captured the hearts of moviegoers in Britain and the United States as a completely new kind of big-screen icon. Sabu was a maharaja’s elephant driver when he was discovered by documentary trailblazer Robert Flaherty, who cast him as the lead in Elephant Boy, a Kipling adaptation Flaherty directed with Zoltán Korda that would prove to be enormously popular. Sabu went on to headline a series of fantasies and adventures, transcending the exoticism projected onto him by commanding the screen with effortless grace and humor. This series collects three of the lavish productions Sabu starred in for the British film titans the Korda brothers:Elephant Boy, the colonialist battle adventure The Drum, and the timelessJungle Book.