Ryan’s Criterion News Collection For October 8th 2012

Since Josh is away celebrating his honeymoon this week (congratulations Josh!), I guess I’m responsible for posting some news related content on the site. I don’t quite have Josh’s ability to write about each bit of news that comes across the wire, but I thought I’d collect a few links here for you all to check out and maybe add to your Instapaper collection.

Head over to David Ehrlich’s Criterion Corner to check out the new trailer for Paul Schraeder’s (Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters) new film, The Canyons.

… yet i cannot deny that this looks like a giant piece of shit, and the idea of another Bret Easton Ellis script mewling to life makes my skin crawl.

David Blakeslee just posted his review of Truffaut’s Antoine And Colette over on his Criterion Reflections blog:

The delights to be found here include an amazing realization of the fact that once upon a time, teenagers wore sharply tailored sporting jackets and met up with their actual or potential girlfriends at classical music recitals. Truffaut’s casually brilliant incorporation of New Wave elements only adds to the pleasures – his boxed framing devices, cool voice-over narration, stylish smoking gestures, populist cinephilia, incidental vinyl fetish porn and the requisite winsome Parisian street scenes spill over with a verdant amplitude that easily outweighs the brief half-hour run time.

David Bordwell has a great piece on long takes.

In certain contexts, a long-take trend can, as Vachon mentions, exude a certain bragadoccio. Competition among artists, though, even with some bravado, isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as 1940s and 1980s Hollywood suggests. Sometimes as well the long take is an exigency demanded by time and money. It can yield artistic advantages, too, by  building suspense (as in A Mere Life) or surprise (as in The Charm of Others) or both (as in People’s Park). It can also be a mark of virtuosity, a quality prized in most artistic traditions. A well-done long take can be like a sustained aria in an opera; its confident audacity can make you smile.

Yahoo has a new trailer for the upcoming Tarantino XX Blu-ray box set, but I found it via the Miramax blog.

Eric Kohn has a fun interview with Abbas Kiarostami, featuring this thought on his use of digital filmmaking technology:

Cinema doesn’t need any specific medium or any specific way to exist, and it can go on existing through any technical evolution, so for myself, yes, I use digital. I have to tell you that, 40 years ago when I started making films, I would use film with a digital approach. So this is a way of working, a concept of filming, rather than the tool itself. Tools change, but then you have your own way of working regardless of the tools that you’re given.

Do you hate the over use of the word “exclusive” online? So does Jonathan Poritsky:

At worst, the world of the exclusive is a dirty one in which media moguls use their brands and their checkbooks to battle it out publicly. In the entertainment world, a world I generally consider my beat, this plays itself out ludicrously on a daily basis, with outlets constantly reporting the same news as exclusives. No paper, tabloid or Web site seems ready to sit down and agree to terms for détente. And so the war trudges on, as outlets duke it out for readers and pageviews.

Lena Dunham scored a $3.5 million book deal, and Gawker had this little gem:

TWITTER TWITTER FACEBOOK INTERNET IPHONE TEXTING.

From The Playlist: “Olivier Assayas To Reteam With Juliette Binoche For ‘Since Maria'”

While he hadn’t officially announced his next project, the former Cahiers du cinéma critic told The Playlist in an exclusive interview that he plans to reteam with Juliette Binoche for the tentatively titled “Since Maria” which he’s expected to shoot next spring.

Starved for attention, Michael Fassbender will be working with Terrance Malick:

Untitled for now, the film follows two intersecting love triangles and is a story of sexual obsession and betrayal set against Austin’s vibrant and colorful music scene.

Style Wars is available on Netflix Watch Instantly now. Add it to your queue, it’s fantastic.

First broadcast in 1983, this hourlong documentary opened the world’s eyes to a phenomenon taking over New York City, where graffiti artists who invented a new visual language to express themselves transformed the urban landscape.

I’m loving these in-depth pieces that Blu-ray.com is running lately, leading up to the big home video releases. Today they posted one for the Making Of E.T.:

Happily, the original version of E.T. The Extra Terrestrial Is what is included on the new Blu-ray, sure to be a best-seller from the day it is released through the holiday season and thereafter. E.T. The Extra Terrestrial Is a once-in-a-lifetime achievement for Spielberg and we now have the marvelous opportunity to see it completely restored on Blu-ray disc.

Warner Bros will be distributing hundreds of MGM titles. No word yet on specific films involved, or how this will affect Criterion’s relationship with MGM going forward:

These Paramount catalog titles are the perfect complement to the Warner Bros. library; they will allow us to offer consumers new multi-feature film packages and debut many titles on Blu-ray for the first time,” says Warner Home Video president Ron Sanders. “The deal also adds a new energy to our Warner Archive Collection initiative, broadening the selection of rare titles available to consumers on demand.

Maria Popova has a great collection of R Crumb drawings of Bukowski’s works:

In the early 1990s, two titans of the artfully cynical and subversive joined forces in an extraordinary collaboration: Legendary cartoonist and album cover artist R. Crumb illustrated two short books by Charles Bukowski, Bring Me Your Love and There’s No Business.

New York will soon have a theater devoted to documentaries

The Downtown Community Television Center, a nonprofit organization devoted to documentary film education, will begin construction in March on a $3.2 million documentary-only movie theater, center officials said. The theater, in the center’s Chinatown home, will show first-run nonfiction films throughout the year, providing a meeting place for established and emerging filmmakers and their audiences.

If you love Chris Ware, you’ll want to head over to Salon to see a preview of his upcoming collection Building Stories. I have a copy and it is absolutely incredible.

There simply will not be a more beautifully packaged book this year than Chris Ware’s ‘Building Stories,’ the latest from the master graphic novelist. It even surpasses the mind-blowing issue of modern cartoon art that Ware edited for McSweeney’s almost a decade ago.

While we wait until next week to see what Criterion has in store for us for January 2013, the folks at the Masters Of Cinema announced their January / February titles:

The Blue Angel

• New 1080p HD presentation of both the German-language and English-language versions of the film
• Newly translated optional subtitles on the German-language version, and SDH on the English-language version.
• New and exclusive video essay on the films by critic and scholar Tag Gallagher.
• New and exclusive feature-length audio commentary by critic and scholar Tony Rayns on the German-language version.
• Original screen test with Marlene Dietrich.
• Archival interview clips with Dietrich.
• More features to be announced closer to release date!

La Poison

• Glorious new HD restoration of the film, presented in 1080p on the Blu-ray.
• Newly translated optional subtitles.
• Substantial booklet containing writing on the film, vintage excerpts, and rare archival imagery.
• More features to be announced closer to the release date!

City of Women

• Glorious new HD restoration of the film, presented in 1080p on the Blu-ray.
• Newly translated optional subtitles.
• Substantial booklet containing writing on the film, vintage excerpts, and rare archival imagery.
• More features to be announced closer to the release date!

Onibaba

• Gorgeous new 1080p HD transfer
• Full-length director’s audio commentary by director Kaneto Shindō and the stars of the film, Kei Satō, and Jitsuko Yoshimura
• Video introduction by Alex Cox
• 8mm footage (40-minutes) shot on location by lead actor Kei Satō
• Optional English subtitles
• Original theatrical trailer
• Production stills and promotional art gallery
• 36-PAGE BOOKLET with a new essay by Doug Cummings, an English translation of the original short Buddhist fable that inspired the film and a statement from writer/director Kaneto Shindō about why he made Onibaba

Fear and Desire

• New HD restoration of the film by The Library of Congress, presented in 1080p on the Blu-ray.
• Optional English SDH subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing.
• Stanley Kubrick’s early short film, The Seafarers, in a new HD restoration.
• New and exclusive video discussion of the film by critic and Stanley Kubrick author Bill Krohn.
• Substantial booklet containing writing on the film, vintage excerpts, and rare archival imagery.
• More features to be announced closer to the release date!

Not to be outdone, Kino announced their January / February titles as well:

Kino Classics:

• January 15 – King: A Filmed Record… From Montgomery to Memphis (1970, Sidney Lumet & Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 2-DVD set)
• January 15 – Rules for School (Classic Educational Shorts Vol. 5) & Troubled Teens (Vol. 6) (DVD only)
• January 29 – White Zombie: Remastered Edition (1932, Victor Halperin, Blu-ray)

Kino Lorber:

• January 8 – Whores’ Glory (2012, Michael Glawogger, DVD only)
• January 15 – 5 Broken Cameras (2012, Emad Burnat & Guy Davidi, DVD only)
• January 22 – Breathing (2012, Karl Makovics, DVD only)
• January 29 – A History of Israeli Cinema (2009, Raphaël Nadjari, 2-DVD set)

Jezebel:

• January 22 – The Sex Thief: Remastered Edition (1974, Martin Campbell, Blu-ray)

Horizon Movies:

• January 8 – After Fall, Winter (2011, Eric Schaeffer, DVD only)
• January 22 – A Thousand Cuts (2011, Charles Evered, Blu-ray)

That’s about all I have for tonight. Thanks for making it all the way to the end, and hopefully I’ll be able to get these published in a more timely fashion this week (not likely).