October Criterion Releases

THE FOLLOWING ARRIVE FROM CRITERION in OCTOBER

Breathless
Mala Noche
Under the Volcano
Days of Heaven

Criterion is pulling out of the FOX and Paramount libraries. Seeing "Under the Volcano" getting released is pleasing. It's a solid Albert Finney performance that marks one of the last three films that John Huston directed.

Then, there's the biggie release of Days of Heaven. I've heard a few distributors place that release around October 16th.

I'm not familiar with Gus Van Sant's Mala Noche, but I'll finally pick up Breathless on DVD.

Sorry, I was busy reading and I just wanted to make a quickie announcement.

Here's the meat of the article.

UNDER THE VOLCANO

Under the Volcano follows the final day in the life of self-destructive British consul Geoffrey Firmin (Albert Finney, in an Oscar-nominated tour de force) on the eve of World War II. Withering from alcoholism, Firmin stumbles through a small Mexican village amidst the Day of the Dead fiesta, attempting to reconnect with his estranged wife (Jacqueline Bisset) but only further alienating himself. John Huston's ambitious tackling of Malcolm Lowry's towering "unadaptable" novel gave the incomparable Finney one of his grandest roles and was the legendary The Treasure of the Sierra Madre director's triumphant return to filmmaking in Mexico.

Special Features

SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES

New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by film editor Roberto Silvi

Audio commentary featuring executive producer Michael Fitzgerald and producers Wieland Schulz-Keil and Moritz Borman

Theatrical trailers

New video interview with Jacqueline Bisset

New audio interview with screenwriter Guy Gallo

1984 audio interview with John Huston conducted by French film critic Michel Ciment

Notes from "Under the Volcano" (1984), a 59-minute documentary by Gary Conklin shot on the set during the film's production, featuring interviews with Huston, cast, and crew

Volcano: An Inquiry into the Life and Death of Malcolm Lowry (1976), filmmaker Donald Brittain's 99-minute, Academy Award–nominated documentary, narrated by Richard Burton, examining the connections between Under the Volcano author Malcolm Lowry's life and that of his novel's main character

PLUS: A new essay by film critic Christian Viviani

DAYS OF HEAVEN

One-of-a-kind filmmaker-philosopher Terrence Malick has created some of the most visually arresting movies of the twentieth century, and his glorious period tragedy Days of Heaven, featuring Oscar-winning cinematography by Nestor Almendros, stands out among them. In 1910, a Chicago steel worker (Richard Gere) accidentally kills his supervisor and flees to the Texas panhandle with his girlfriend (Brooke Adams) and little sister (Linda Manz) to work harvesting wheat in the fields of a stoic farmer (Sam Shepard). A love triangle, a swarm of locusts, a hellish fire—Malick captures it all with dreamlike authenticity, creating at once a timeless American idyll and a gritty evocation of turn-of-the-century labor.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

-New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Terrence Malick, editor Billy Weber, and camera operator John Bailey
-New Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack
-Audio commentary featuring Weber, art director Jack Fisk, costume designer Patricia Norris, and casting director Dianne Crittenden
-New video interviews with cinematographers Haskell Wexler and Bailey
-PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by critic Adrian Martin and director of photography Nestor Almendros
-More!

MALA NOCHE

With its low budget and lush black-and-white imagery, Gus Van Sant's debut feature Mala Noche heralded an idiosyncratic, provocative new voice in American independent film. Set in Van Sant's hometown of Portland, Oregon, the film evokes a world of transient workers, dead-end day-shifters, and bars and seedy apartments bathed in a profound nighttime, as it follows a romantic deadbeat with a wayward crush on a handsome Mexican immigrant. Mala Noche was an important prelude to the New Queer Cinema of the nineties and is a fascinating time capsule from a time and place that continues to haunt its director's work.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

-New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Gus Van Sant
-New interview with Van Sant
-Walt Curtis, the Peckerneck Poet: a documentary about the author of the book Mala Noche, directed by animator and friend Bill Plympton
-Storyboard gallery
-Original trailer edited by Van Sant
-PLUS: A new essay by film critic Dennis Lim

BREATHLESS

There was before Breathless, and there was after Breathless. With its lack of polish, surplus of attitude, crackling personalities of rising stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, and anything-goes crime narrative, Jean-Luc Godard's debut fashioned a simultaneous homage to and critique of the American film genres that influenced and rocked him as a film writer for Cahiers du cinema. Jazzy, free-form, and sexy, Breathless (A bout de souffle) helped launch the French new wave and ensured cinema would never be the same.

SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES

-New, restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by director of photography Raoul Coutard
-Archival interviews with director Jean-Luc Godard, and actors Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, and Jean-Pierre Melville
-New video interviews with Coutard, assistant director Pierre Rissient, and filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker
-New video essays: filmmaker and critic Mark Rappaport's "Jean Seberg" and critic Jonathan Rosenbaum's "Breathless as Film Criticism"
-Chambre 12, Hotel de suede, an eighty-minute French documentary about the making of Breathless, with members of the cast and crew
-Charlotte et son Jules, a 1959 short film by Godard, starring Belmondo
-French theatrical trailer
-New and improved English subtitle translation
-PLUS: A booklet featuring writings from Godard, film historian Dudley Andrew, Francois Truffaut's original film treatment, and Godard's scenario