Ryan’s Criterion Link Collection: Monday, December 8th 2014

Here is your daily digest of Criterion-related links.

Toho is going to produce another Godzilla film!

Budget, cast and director for what will be the 29th installment from Toho have yet to be decided, according to the studio. Production is slated to begin in summer 2015 and the film will be aimed at the global market. Although Toho concedes it can’t match $200 million Hollywood-size budget, advances in CG will allow it to create a film that can stand alongside such productions, according to a release from the studio.

Richard Linklater’s Boyhood has won a few more awards this weekend

The New York Film Critics Online named Richard Linklater’s Boyhood best picture of the year Sunday. It also voted its award for best director to Linklater and chose the movie’s Patricia Arquette as best supporting actress.

REVIEWS

Several review of Criterion’s Night Porter Blu-ray hit this weekend. Here’s Noel Murray for the Dissolve:

But a surface reading doesn’t really account for how effectively discomfiting and even beautiful so much of The Night Porter is … At its best, the film layers Lucia’s and Maximilian’s flashbacks in such a way that that the lines between memory, fantasy, and nightmare get blurred—much as they often do in real life.

And here’s Chris’ review, for the CriterionForum

The new Blu-ray certainly improves over the old DVD in every way, with better audio and video, as well as some supplementary material, but the presentation still looks a little off, at least in blacks, and the film still seems to be open to more scholarly materials. Worth the upgrade for sure, but still a bit disappointing.

And our friend, Rebecca Wright, for Movie Gazette Online

The Night Porter isn’t a film to enjoy, but it’s certainly one that will leave you thinking.

For Collider, Andre Dellamorte (Damon Houx), has published his review of It Happened One Night

It Happened One Night is a great movie, so it’s weird that Columbia licensed the film out to Criterion. We are all better off for it, but it also points out the state of home video right now.

Also at the Criterion Forum, Chris has published his review of the Time Bandits Blu-ray, out this Tuesday

A huge improvement over Criterion’s previous DVD edition, this new Blu-ray sports a stunner of a transfer (the same one used for Arrow’s Blu-ray edition) and is the best I’ve ever seen the film. With some excellent supplements that cover the production and Gilliam’s career rather thoroughly it makes it one of the better releases for the film (of the numerous amount out there) I’ve yet come across.

Also out this week from Criterion is Todd Haynes’ Safe. Here is Scott Tobias’ review on the Dissolve

As a piece of filmmaking, Safe is brilliant for the way Haynes, in concert with cinematographer Alex Nepomniaschy and composer Ed Tomney, blankets the mundane in the eerie tone of science fiction and horror, especially in the first half.

INTERESTING

Gena Rowlands on Cassavetes

Whether in edgy indies or slick studio product, Rowlands traverses the emotional high wire of life-and-death stakes with Cassavetes-bred confidence. Once she asked Cassavetes for help interpreting a scene. “He said, ‘I wrote this with you in mind. You read it. You accepted it. Now do it.’”

NOW AVAILABLE TO STREAM

On Netflix