Posted Wed Nov 15, 2023 at 05:42 PM PST by Tom Landy
Look forward to a 4K UHD Blu-ray upgrade of Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller; Blu-rays of Michael Roemer's Nothing But a Man and Eric Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons; and Raoul Walsh's The Roaring Twenties as well as Johnnie To and action choreographer Ching Siu-tung's double-feature The Heroic Trio / Executioners on both formats.
Leading the charge on February 6 is a 4K UHD Blu-ray + Blu-ray of Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller - The Criterion Collection 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
This unorthodox dream western by Robert Altman may be the most radically beautiful film to come out of the New American Cinema. It stars Warren Beatty and Julie Christie as two newcomers to the raw Pacific Northwest mining town of Presbyterian Church, who join forces to provide the miners with a superior kind of whorehouse experience. The appearance of representatives for a powerful mining company with interests of its own, however, threatens to be the undoing of their plans. With its fascinating, flawed characters, evocative cinematography by the great Vilmos Zsigmond, innovative overlapping dialogue, and haunting use of Leonard Cohen songs, McCabe & Mrs. Miller brilliantly deglamorized and revitalized the most American of genres.
4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
Next on February 13 comes Eric Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons containing four films on Blu-ray.
Eric Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons - The Criterion Collection
The seasons may change, but the follies of the heart are constant in this ineffably lovely quartet of films by Eric Rohmer, one of cinema’s most perceptive chroniclers of the pangs and perils of romance. Set throughout France, Tales of the Four Seasons is a cycle to stand alongside the director’s two earlier acclaimed film series, Six Moral Tales and Comedies and Proverbs. By turns comic and melancholic, breezy and richly philosophical, these bittersweet tales of love, longing, and the inevitable misunderstandings that shape human relationships probe the most complex of emotions with the utmost grace.
FOUR-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
On February 20, Michael Roemer's Nothing But a Man will arrive on Blu-ray.
Nothing But a Man - The Criterion Collection
Michael Roemer’s groundbreaking first feature, sensitively shot by his close collaborator Robert M. Young, is a still-resonant expression of humanity in the face of virulent prejudice. Made at the height of the civil rights movement, Nothing but a Man reveals the toll of systemic racism through its honest portrait of a southern Black railroad worker (Ivan Dixon) confronting the daily challenges of discrimination and economic precarity, as he attempts to settle down with his new wife (jazz great Abbey Lincoln) and track down his father (Julius Harris). Admired by Malcolm X and now recognized as a landmark of American cinema, this tender film grounds its social critique in characters of unforgettable complexity and truth.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
Also on February 20, Johnnie To and action choreographer Ching Siu-tung's The Heroic Trio / Executioners will be available on 4K UHD Blu-ray and Blu-ray.
The Heroic Trio / Executioners - The Criterion Collection 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
The star power of cinema icons Maggie Cheung, Anita Mui, and Michelle Yeoh fuels these gloriously unrestrained action joyrides from auteur Johnnie To and action choreographer Ching Siu-tung. The Heroic Trio and its sequel, Executioners, follow a new kind of justice league: a team of blade-throwing, shotgun-toting, kung fu–fighting heroines who join forces to battle evildoers in a dystopian, noirish city. Blending dazzling martial-arts mayhem with exhilarating blasts of comic-book lunacy, these beloved superhero movies reimagine the genre through the giddy genius of the Hong Kong film industry at its height.
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
And closing the month on February 27 is Raoul Walsh's The Roaring Twenties arriving on 4K UHD Blu-ray. A Blu-ray edition will be also be available.
The Roaring Twenties - The Criterion Collection 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
Ripped from the headlines of the turbulent era between the Great War and the Great Depression, this dynamic, nostalgia-tinged crime drama balances tommy-gun action with epic historical sweep. Legends James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart star as army buddies whose fortunes rise and fall as their fates intersect, first in a foxhole on the front lines of World War I, then in Manhattan’s Prohibition-era underworld. Directed by Hollywood master Raoul Walsh, and based on a story by prolific journalist turned screenwriter and producer Mark Hellinger, The Roaring Twenties brought to a close the celebrated Warner Bros. gangster cycle of the 1930s, and it remains one of the greatest and most influential crime films of all time.
4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
Pre-orders should be available any day now, until then - Happy Collecting!
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