(This feature takes a look at recent Blu-Ray announcements from various studios.)

Criterion: Hey, remember when the Boyhood Criterion was confirmed, and then debunked about a week later due to a deal with Paramount? Well, you can’t quite get off this emotional rollercoaster yet, there’s still another loop to be explored. According to a figure at Richard Linklater’s Detour Filmproduction, Paramount agreed to only handle the first, general release of Boyhood while Criterion would come later with the special edition. This isn’t a new practice (look at every Wes Anderson movie since Darjeeling Limited), but Paramount being involved still led to doubt amongst many that Criterion would release it, despite Linklater outright confirming that in an interview. So what have we learned from this, class? I’ll give you a hint; the director is usually right.

Lionsgate: You’d think a studio would want to keep a tight grip on their Christopher Nolan properties. Especially now that he’s got a new movie coming out, providing a perfect opportunity for “Moderately Special Edition” double-dips. And yet, Lionsgate has confirmed that it has lost the rights to Memento. You may be thinking, “Gee, did Criterion get ahold of it?” In most of any other case, I would rush to this possibility myself, but Memento got a perfectly good Blu-Ray (other than the absence of the chronological cut, but still), and I don’t know what Criterion could add to it besides a little extra prestige (pun very much intended). But of course, Criterion is only good when they’re releasing movies by filmmakers who are obsessed over by the internet, which is why I’m sure someone has already created an “Avengers 2 straight 2 Criterion!!!!!” campaign. I’m hoping for an analytical commentary while David Kalat deconstructs the big thing crashing into a bigger thing.

Masters of Cinema: MoC, previously referred to by people who may not even share my name as “the British Criterion”, has entered something of a lull. Most of their new titles are things that the US has already been blessed with, and the on-disc features have taken a fairly dramatic hit in favor of attention to the booklets. To give you a case for the Decline of MoC, I present to you the copy on two of their newest releases, Fellini’s I Clowns and Suzuki’s Youth of the Beast. No changes have been made except for one comment.

One of the Fellini films which has been out of circulation for many years, I clowns [The Clowns] has long been revered by Fellini enthusiasts for the last several decades since its release as among the Maestro’s finest works — a thrilling spectacle once seen for the first time, and a picture which after multiple viewings easily takes its place alongside such classics as La strada, Le notti di Cabiria, La dolce vita, Satyricon, Amarcord… but in a register all its own.

I clowns plays out in dazzling colour and in episodic cascade, just as in Fellini’s late-60s-and-beyond films. As the circus rolls into town, and the big-tent is erected, the clowns execute their acts with feverish can-you-believe-it bravado. It’s all true — and yet not a “documentary” per se; rather, something inbetween a dramatic-comedic portrayal of gags-at-play and the memoria of all that makes the spark for childhood inspiration to ignite into creative virtuosity… and/or into something like Federico Fellini.

One of the great and underacknowledged treasures of the cinema, I clowns takes its place alongside such films as Bergman’s Carnies’ Twilight [Sawdust and Tinsel, as it has absolutely never been known or referred as. -The Narrator], Ophuls’ Lola Montès, Étaix’s Yoyo, and Tati’s Parade as one of the grand portraits of the clowning circus, of a bygone era of the wandering entertainer. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Federico Fellini’s I clowns in a special Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD) edition for the first time in the UK.

 

Right on the heels of the riotous Go to Hell, Bastards: Detective Bureau 2 3, Seijun Suzuki unleashed what would come to be seen as his true breakthrough, the film that would cement “the Suzuki sensibility”: Youth of the Beast [Yajû no seishun]. A kaleidoscopic fantasia that contains “youth” and “beast” onlly [sic] insofar as 1963 pop/youth culture was that violently upstart thing, not unlike the yakuza?

And so Youth of the Beast is a yakuza tale with a premise like Akira Kurosawa’s Yôjinbô, but denuded of an easy definition of which side is which. It stars Suzuki’s iconic ’60s regular Jô Shishido, with his dare-you-to-call-them-out artificial cheek implants like new acting blasphemy. There are drug-addled whores, gunfights in a new colour apocalypse, and at least one alien landscape — the sudden mind-searing eruption of a sulphur yellow desert like an action-figure playset with overspill of unbridled lust.

Suzuki’s infectious go-for-broke energy is assisted by a telephoto lens that serves at once phallus and yoni in the masterful, Minnelli-worthy ‘Scope framing. His film would go on to inspire John Woo’s forthcoming remake titled Day of the Beast; Nikkatsu have in recent times deemed this one of their treasures. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Youth of the Beast in a Dual Format (Blu-ray + DVD) edition based on their new HD master.

Now class, what was wrong with those two write-ups? There will be a quiz on this later.

Arrow Video: Compare that to Arrow Video. They just announced Withnail & I, the classic British cult comedy which had been previously ill-served by DVD and Blu-Ray. Here are the specifications of their release.

• New 2K restoration of Withnail & I from the original camera negative, supervised and approved by director of photography Peter Hannan;

• Bruce Robinson’s follow-up feature, How to Get Ahead in Advertising, newly transferred from original film elements and approved by director of photography Peter Hannan;

• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD Presentation of both films;

• Original uncompressed mono 1.0 PCM audio for both films;

• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing;

• Audio commentary by writer-director Bruce Robinson;

• Audio commentary by critic and writer Kevin Jackson, author of the BFI Modern Classic on Withnail & I;

• All four original ‘Withnail Weekend’ documentaries, first screened on Channel 4 in 1999, including The Peculiar Memories of Bruce Robinson, which looks at the director’s career, Withnail & Us, which focuses on the film’s making, and two shorter documentaries, I Demand to Have Some Booze and Withnail on the Pier;

• Newly filmed interviews with key members of Withnail & I’s behind-the-scenes team;

• Theatrical trailers for both films;

• Exclusive limited edition hardback book packaging (2,000 copies) containing new writing on the films, reprints of key articles on Withnail & I, deleted scenes and more across 200 pages, illustrated with original production stills;

• More to be announced!

That’s how you do it. They should have called it Alkies’ Twilight, though.