Another month, another Criterion announcement. Technically, none of the titles this month come as a surprise, all having been hinted at some fashion (although one was hinted at obliquely enough that it may very well be a surprise to many). But still, we got some more goodies coming in May (and one that you should probably already own from them by now, but whatever), including a long-awaited box set of three Wim Wenders gems, a release of Robert Altman’s big comeback picture, a classic Nicholas Ray noir, and a totally silent study of a family by Kaneto Shindo (Kuroneko, Onibaba). Specs and covers are below.
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director of photography László Kovács, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack and optional DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
- Two audio commentaries, one featuring actor-director-writer Dennis Hopper, the other Hopper, actor-writer Peter Fonda, and production manager Paul Lewis
- Born to Be Wild (1995) and “Easy Rider”: Shaking the Cage, (1999), documentaries about the making and history of the film
- Television excerpts showing Hopper and Fonda at the Cannes Film Festival
- New video interview with BBS cofounder Steve Blauner
- Theatrical trailers
- New, high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Video introduction by director Kaneto Shindo, recorded for a 2011 retrospective of his work
- Audio commentary recorded in 2000, featuring Shindo and composer Hikaru Hayashi
- New appreciation of the film by actor Benicio Del Toro
- New interview with film scholar Akira Mizuta Lippit
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by film scholar Haden Guest
- New 4K digital restoration, with DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 surround soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Audio commentary from 1992 featuring director Robert Altman, writer Michael Tolkin, and cinematographer Jean Lépine
- Interview with Altman from 1992
- New interviews with Tolkin and production designer Stephen Altman
- Cannes Film Festival press conference from 1992 with cast and crew
- “The Player” at LACMA, a short documentary about the shooting of the film’s fund-raiser scene
- Map to the Stars, a gallery dedicated to the cameo appearances in the film
- Deleted scenes and outtakes
- The film’s opening shot, with alternate commentaries by Altman, Lépine, and Tolkin
- Trailers
- More
- PLUS: An essay by author Sam Wasson
- New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New audio commentary featuring film scholar Dana Polan
- I’m a Stranger Here Myself, a 1975 documentary about director Nicholas Ray, slightly condensed for this release
- New interview with biographer Vincent Curcio about actor Gloria Grahame
- Piece from 2002 featuring filmmaker Curtis Hanson
- Radio adaptation from 1948 of the original Dorothy B. Hughes novel, broadcast on the programSuspense
- Trailer
- PLUS: An essay by critic Imogen Sara Smith
- New, restored 4K digital transfers of all three films, commissioned by the Wim Wenders Foundation and supervised by director Wim Wenders
- Audio commentaries for all three films, featuring Wenders and actors Rüdiger Vogler and Yella Rottländer on Alice in the Cities, and featuring Wenders on Wrong Move and Kings of the Road
- New interview with Wenders, directed and conducted by filmmaker Michael Almereyda
- New interviews with Vogler, Kreuzer, Rottländer, and actors Hanna Schygulla and Hanns Zischler
- Outtakes and Super 8 home movies
- Restoring Time, a 2015 short about the restoration work done by the Wim Wenders Foundation
- Same Player Shoots Again (1967) and Silver City Revisited (1968), two newly restored early short films by Wenders
- New English subtitle translations
- PLUS: A book featuring essays on the films by filmmaker Allison Anders, author James Robison, and critic Nick Roddick