The Criterion Collection Announces June 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray and Blu-ray Slate

Coming this summer are The Rules of the Game and Time Bandits on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, as well as The Servant, Medicine for Melancholy, and Pasolini 101 on Blu-ray.

Coming in June: Medicine for Melancholy, the sublime San Francisco–set feature debut of love and connection by Barry Jenkins, rubs shoulders with The Servant, Joseph Losey's savagely witty British class-war classic, while two favorites—The Rules of the Game, Jean Renoir's merciless critique of French society, and Time Bandits, Terry Gilliam's fantastic odyssey to the limits of the imagination—arrive on 4K UHD. Plus, our recently announced nine-film box set Pasolini 101!

First up on June 6 is a 4K UHD upgrade of Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game coming June 6th

The Rules of the Game - The Criterion Collection 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

Considered one of the greatest films ever made, Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game is a scathing critique of corrupt French society cloaked in a comedy of manners in which a weekend at a marquis’s country château lays bare some ugly truths about a group of haut bourgeois acquaintances. The film has had a tumultuous history: it was subjected to cuts after the violent response of the audience at its 1939 premiere, and the original negative was destroyed during World War II; it wasn’t reconstructed until 1959. That version, which has stunned viewers for decades, is presented here.

1939 • 106 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In French with English subtitles • 1.37:1 aspect ratio

4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack

• One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray of the film with special features

• Introduction to the film by director Jean Renoir

• Audio commentary written by film scholar Alexander Sesonske and read by filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich

• Comparison of the film’s two endings

• Selected-scene analysis by Renoir historian Chris Faulkner

• Excerpts from a 1966 French television program by filmmaker Jacques Rivette

• Part one of Jean Renoir, a two-part 1993 documentary by film critic David Thompson

• Video essay about the film’s production, release, and 1959 reconstruction

• Interview with film critic Olivier Curchod

• Interview from a 1965 episode of the French television series Les écrans de la ville with Jean Gaborit and Jacques Durand

• Interviews with set designer Max Douy; Renoir’s son, Alain; and actor Mila Parély

• PLUS: An essay by Sesonske; writings by Jean Renoir, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bertrand Tavernier, and François Truffaut; and tributes to the film by J. Hoberman, Kent Jones, Paul Schrader, Wim Wenders, Robert Altman, and others

Following that is a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray edition of Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits on June 13.

Time Bandits - The Criterion Collection
4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 

In this fantastic voyage through time and space from Terry Gilliam, a boy named Kevin (Craig Warnock) escapes his gadget-obsessed parents to join a band of time travelers. Armed with a map stolen from the Supreme Being (Ralph Richardson), they plunder treasure from Napoleon (Ian Holm) and Agamemnon (Sean Connery)—but the Evil Genius (David Warner) is watching their every move. Featuring a darkly playful script by Gilliam and his Monty Python cohort Michael Palin (who also appears in the film), Time Bandits is at once a giddy fairy tale, a revisionist history lesson, and a satire of technology gone awry.

1981 • 116 minutes • Color • Stereo • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K restoration, supervised by director Terry Gilliam, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack

• One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray of the film with special features

• Audio commentary featuring Gilliam, cowriter-actor Michael Palin, and actors John Cleese, David Warner, and Craig Warnock

• Program on the creation of the film’s various historical periods and fantasy worlds, narrated by film writer David Morgan and featuring production designer Milly Burns and costume designer James Acheson

• Conversation between Gilliam and film scholar Peter von Bagh, recorded at the 1998 Midnight Sun Film Festival

• Appearance by actor Shelley Duvall on Tom Snyder’s Tomorrow show from 1981

• Gallery of rare photographs from the set

• Trailer

• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

• PLUS: An essay by critic David Sterritt

On June 20 is a Blu-ray release of Joseph Losey's The Servant.

The Servant - The Criterion Collection

The prolific, ever provocative Joseph Losey, blacklisted from Hollywood and living in England, delivered a coolly modernist shock to the system of that nation’s cinema with this mesmerizing dissection of class, sexuality, and power. A dissolute scion of the upper crust (James Fox) finds the seemingly perfect manservant (a diabolical Dirk Bogarde, during his transition from matinee idol to art-house icon) to oversee his new London town house. But not all is as it seems, as traditional social hierarchies are gradually, disturbingly destabilized. Lustrously disorienting cinematography and a masterful script by playwright Harold Pinter merge in The Servant, a tour de force of mounting psychosexual menace.

1963 • 115 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • 1.66:1 aspect ratio

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack

• New program on director Joseph Losey by film critic Imogen Sara Smith

• Rare interview from 1976 with Losey by critic Michel Ciment

• Interview from 1996 with screenwriter Harold Pinter

• Interviews with actors Dirk Bogarde, James Fox, Sarah Miles, and Wendy Craig

• Trailer

• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

• PLUS: An essay by author Colm Tóibín

Also on June 20 comes Medicine for Melancholy from filmmaker Barry Jenkins on Blu-ray.

Medicine for Melancholy - The Criterion Collection

One of the great debut features of the twenty-first century, Barry Jenkins’s captivating, lo-fi romance Medicine for Melancholy unfolds against the backdrop of a rapidly gentrifying San Francisco, where a one-night stand between two young bohemians, Micah (Wyatt Cenac) and Jo’ (Tracey Heggins), spins off into a woozy daylong affair marked by moments of tenderness, friction, joy, and intellectual sparring as they explore their relationships to each other, the city, and their own Blackness. Shooting on desaturated video, Jenkins crafts an intimate exploration of alienation and connection graced with the evocative visual palette and empathetic emotional charge that has come to define his work.

2008 • 88 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • 1.78:1 aspect ratio

DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New high-definition digital master, approved by director Barry Jenkins and director of photography James Laxton, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack

• New audio commentary featuring Jenkins

• Audio commentary from 2008 featuring Jenkins, producers Justin Barber and Cherie Saulter, and editor Nat Sanders

• New program about the making of the film, featuring Sanders and actor Wyatt Cenac

• Camera test footage and blooper reel

• Trailer

• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

• PLUS: An essay by critic Danielle Amir Jackson

And finally at the end of the month on June 27 arrives the Blu-ray boxed set, Pasolini 101, in celebration of the 101th anniversary of Pier Paolo Pasolini's birth.  

Pasolini 101 - The Criterion Collection

We've already covered Pasolini 101 in this article and as always, we will update with preorder links as soon as they are available.

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