January Criterions and More!

January always poses an exciting month for Criterion releases, as it (hopefully) kick-starts the year with a bang, especially after their typically slow month of December. And with the January 2010 titles, Criterion crossed the 500 threshold, with Robert Rossellini's War Trilogy box set marking spine number 500, the trilogy being Rome, Open City [Roma, città aperta], Paisan [Paisà] and Germany Year Zero [Germania anno zero]. Steven Soderbergh's Che will finally bow on DVD and Blu-ray, as well as a resorted version of Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas (on DVD and Blu-ray). Federico Fellini's 8½ will premiere on Blu-ray, which might be the first release of the film in high-definition anywhere.

More exciting than the mainline Criterion titles though is their new Eclipse set, available 19 January: Chantal Akerman in the Seventies. The set includes La chambre, Hotel Monterey, News from Home, Je tu il elle and Les rendez-vous d'Anna.

IFC also announced several titles for January. Jean-Claude Brisseau's À l'aventure, Paco Cabezas' The Appeared [Aparecidos], David Zellner's Goliath, Spike Lee's Passing Strange, Alan Brown's Superheroes and Armando Iannucci's hysterical In the Loop, which will also come in Blu-ray. All are set for 12 January. MPI, who releases IFC's titles, set a new date for The House of the Devil for 2 February, for those concerned.

IFC Films on DVD, Round 2 + Akerman + Petzold - Michael Jackson

Though you might have other things on your mind, I thought I'd post another DVD update. Through their new deal with MPI, IFC Films announced their second round of DVD releases after that Blockbuster/Genius drought. Unfortunately, all of their titles so far have been part of their Festival Direct package and not their theatrical releases (The Last Mistress, The Duchess of Langeais, A Christmas Tale, Hunger, Gomorrah, My Winnipeg, etc). On 15 September, look for Spiros Stathoulopoulos' single-take thriller PVC-1 and Baltasar Kormákur's White Night Wedding [Brúðguminn], which stars the Icelandic director's frequent actor Hilmir Snær Guðnason. On 29 September, Madonna's wretched directorial debut Filth and Wisdom and the Spanish thriller Fermat's Room [La habitación de Fermat] will be released.

Icarus Films has set a release date for Chantal Akerman's acclaimed, little seen From the East [D'Est] for 6 October, as well as David Barison and Daniel Ross' documentary The Ister for 3 November. Kino will release a double-feature of sci-fi/horror films from director Graham Reznick, I Can See You and The Viewer, on 28 September.

Cinema Guild will follow Project X's July release of Christian Petzold's The State I Am In [Die Innere Sicherheit] with his latest Jerichow on 27 August. And finally, it appears as if the elusive Phantasm II will make its way onto DVD on 15 September (though I can't back this up) from Universal. I know you've been waiting.

Drive, He Said, Husbands and Fuller from Sony (plus Jeanne Dielman and more)

Partially due to my weekend cold and also in hopes they'd throw an additional something exciting our way today, I'm a little late in posting the August Criterions. Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, starring Delphine Seyrig, will make its home video debut in the US on DVD 25 August. Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco, with Chloë Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale, hits on the same date, as well as Blu-rays of Kurosawa's Kagemusha (18 Aug) and Tati's Playtime (18 Aug). The Eclipse set for August sounds promising, a collection of five Nikkatsu noirs (25 Aug): Koreyoshi Kurahara's I Am Waiting, Toshio Masuda's Rusty Knife, Seijun Suzuki's Take Aim at the Police Van, Takumi Furukawa's Cruel Gun Story and Takashi Nomura's A Colt Is My Passport. Eric has a few other titles that might be part of a later Nikkatsu set from Eclipse.

Sony's got a huge line-up for the late-summer and fall, which Eric has already pointed out. A Sam Fuller box set (29 Sep) which includes Crimson Kimono, Underworld USA and Scandal Sheet; Cassaevetes' Husbands (18 Aug), which doesn't appear to be part of their "Martini Movies" set any more; 2 film noir sets, one with a re-release of The Big Heat, and a Rita Hayworth box (all 3 November).

Not mentioned on Filmbo's blog are a few other Sony releases. They've got a set called The New Hollywood Box Set for 15 September. The set includes Jack Nicholson's Drive, He Said, with Karen Black, Robert Towne, Bruce Dern and Henry Jaglom; Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces; Rafelson's The King of Marvin Gardens with Nicholson, Dern and Ellen Burstyn; Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show; Jaglom's A Safe Place, with Tuesday Weld, Nicholson and Orson Welles; Rafelson's Head with The Monkees; and Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider. This is the R1 debut of both Drive, He Said and A Safe Place. Sony also has Fred Dekker's Night of the Creeps (20 October) and James Hill's A Study in Terror (10 November) premiering on DVD.

Strand is releasing Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau's Born in 68 [Nés en 68], with Laetitia Casta, Yannick Renier and Yann Trégouët, on 11 August. Facets' website has been doing a remodel for the past few weeks, so I've only been able to uncover one of their August releases, another Ning Ying film For Fun on the 25th. PeaceArch has the supposedly dreadful Mysteries of Pittsburgh on 4 August.

Water Bearer is releasing two films in July. Christian Moris Müller's Four Windows [Vier Fenster] and Alessandro Avellis' Ma saison super 8 premiered at the 2006 Berlinale and will street on the 7th. If 80s T&A is your cup-of-tea, Severin will have Screwballs out on 25 August on DVD and Blu-ray, and Anchor Bay is releasing Spring Break, which I talked about in a previous blog about the films available on iTunes.

And finally, here are a few Blu-ray titles coming soon: Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys (28 July, Universal); John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China (4 August, Fox); Brian De Palma's Casualties of War (21 July, Sony); George A. Romero's Creepshow (8 September, Warner); Jim Henson and Franz Oz's The Dark Crystal (1 September, Sony); Phillip Noyce's Dead Calm (8 September, Warner); Peter Yates' The Deep (7 July, Sony); Takashi Miike's Ichi the Killer (11 August, Tokyo Shock); Henson's Labyrinth (1 Septmber, Sony); Alan Parker's Midnight Express (21 July, Sony); Patty Jenkins' Monster (1 September, First Look); Jonathan Lynn's My Cousin Vinny (4 August, Fox); the director's cut of Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (25 August, Warner); the extended cut of Terrence Malick's The New World (8 September, New Line); John Carpenter's Starman (11 August, Sony); Rob Reiner's This Is Spinal Tap (14 July, MGM); and Irwin Allen and John Guillermin's The Towering Inferno (14 July, Fox). The UK update should be coming at you later this week.