Looks like I’ll be selling my SD copy of Robinson Crusoe on Mars in the next few weeks in favor of a brand new Blu-ray transfer. Criterion has launched an all out assault on the senses with its January releases. With Hausu and Antichrist available later on this month, Criterion is already knocking down the doors of 2011 in a big way. We’re getting four titles reworked for Blu-ray and two of these will also be released again in SD with brand new transfers, new artwork and even more bonus features. Beyond that, Criterion is announcing two new titles to the collection with James L. Brooks’ Broadcast News (available on both SD and BD) and and a new Eclipse Set, 25: Basil Dearden’s London Underground which includes Sapphire, a dissection of a hate crime; The League of Gentlemen, a deft heist adventure suffused with postwar melancholy; Victim, a landmark gay character study, starring Dirk Bogarde; and All Night Long, a provocative transposition of “Othello” to the swinging London jazz scene.

You can check out an overview of each title underneath the seats…

 

 

ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS (Spine #404)

Special effects wunderkind and genre master Byron Haskin (The War of the Worlds, The Outer Limits) won a place in the hearts of fantasy film lovers everywhere with this gorgeously designed journey into the unknown. Robinson Crusoe on Mars tells the story of U.S. astronaut Commander “Kit” Draper (Paul Mantee), who must fight for survival when his spaceship crash-lands on the barren waste of Mars, a pet monkey his only companion. But is he actually alone? Shot in vast Techniscope and blazing color, this is an imaginative and beloved marvel of classic science fiction.

• Restored high-definition digital transfer (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
• Audio commentary featuring screenwriter Ib Melchior, actors Paul Mantee and Victor Lundin, production designer Al Nozaki, Oscar-winning special effects designer and Robinson Crusoe on Mars historian Robert Skotak, and excerpts from a 1979 audio interview with director Byron Haskin
• Destination Mars, a video featurette by filmmaker and space historian Michael Lennick detailing the science behind the film
• Music video for Lundin’s song “Robinson Crusoe on Mars”
• Stills gallery
• Theatrical trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by Lennick as well as Melchior’s “Brief Yargorian Vocabulary” (a glossary of original alien dialect) and a list of facts about Mars, both from his original screenplay

 

 

 

ARMY OF SHADOWS (Spine #385)

This masterpiece by Jean-Pierre Melville about the French Resistance went unreleased in the United States for thirty-seven years, until its triumphant theatrical debut in 2006. Atmospheric and gripping, Army of Shadows is Melville’s most personal film, featuring Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel, and the incomparable Simone Signoret as intrepid underground fighters who must grapple with their conception of honor in their battle against Hitler’s regime.

• High-definition digital transfer of the 2004 restoration, supervised by director of photography Pierre Lhomme (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
• Optional DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• Audio commentary featuring film historian Ginette Vincendeau
• Interviews with Lhomme and editor Françoise Bonnot
• On-set footage and excerpts from archival interviews with director Jean-Pierre Melville, cast members, writer Joseph Kessel, and real-life Resistance fighters
• Jean-Pierre Melville et “L’armée des ombres” (2002), a short program on the director and his film
• Le journal de la Résistance (1944), a rare short documentary shot on the front lines during the final days of German-occupied France
• Film restoration demonstration by Lhomme
• Theatrical trailers
• PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by critic Amy Taubin and historian Robert O. Paxton, as well as excerpts from Rui Nogueira’s Melville on Melville

 

 

 

SHOCK CORRIDOR (Spine #19)

In Shock Corridor, the great American writer-director-producer Samuel Fuller masterfully charts the uneasy terrain between sanity and dementia. Seeking a Pulitzer Prize, reporter Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) has himself committed to a mental hospital to investigate a murder. As he closes in on the killer, madness closes in on him. Constance Towers costars as Johnny’s coolheaded stripper girlfriend. With its startling commentary on race in sixties America and daring photography by Stanley Cortez, Shock Corridor is now recognized for its far-reaching influence.

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
• New video interview with star Constance Towers by film historian and filmmaker
  Charles Dennis
• The Typewriter, the Rifle and the Movie Camera, Adam Simon’s 1996 documentary on director Samuel Fuller
• Original theatrical trailer
• PLUS: Illustrations by cartoonist Daniel Clowes (Eightball, Ghost World) and a booklet featuring an essay by critic and poet Robert Polito and excerpts from Fuller’s autobiography, A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting, and Filmmaking

 

 

 

NAKED KISS (Spine #18)

The setup is pure pulp: A former prostitute (a crackerjack Constance Towers) relocates to a buttoned-down suburb, determined to fit in with mainstream society. But in the strange, hallucinatory territory of writer-director-producer Samuel Fuller, perverse secrets inevitably simmer beneath a seemingly wholesome surface. Featuring radical visual touches, full-throttle performances, brilliant cinematography by Stanley Cortez, and one bizarrely beautiful musical number, The Naked Kiss is among Fuller’s greatest, boldest entertainments.

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on
  the Blu-ray edition)

• New video interview with star Constance Towers by film historian and filmmaker Charles Dennis
• Excerpts from a 1983 episode of the BBC’s The South Bank Show dedicated to director Samuel Fuller
• Interview with Fuller from a 1967 episode of the French television series Cinéastes de notre temps
• Interview with Fuller from a 1987 episode of the French television series
  Cinéma cinémas
• Original theatrical trailer
• Illustrations by cartoonist Daniel Clowes (Eightball, Ghost World) and a booklet featuring an essay by critic and poet Robert Polito and excerpts from Fuller’s autobiography, A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting, and Filmmaking

 

 

 

BORADCAST NEWS (Spine #552)

In the 1970s, the name James L. Brooks was synonymous with intelligent television comedy—his shows were insightful about work and love and always tapped into the zeitgeist. With his transition to film in the 1980s, he became a master Hollywood storyteller, and none of his films was more quintessentially Brooks than Broadcast News. This caustic inside look at the Washington news media stars Holly Hunter, in her breakout role, as a feisty television producer torn between an ambitious yet dim anchorman (William Hurt) and her closest confidant, a cynical veteran reporter (Albert Brooks). Brooks’s witty, gently prophetic entertain ment is a captivating transmission from an era in which ideas on love and media were rapidly changing.

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director James L. Brooks and editor Richard Marks (with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
• New audio commentary featuring Brooks and Marks
• New documentary on Brooks’s career in television and film, featuring actors Marilu Henner (Taxi) and Julie Kavner (Rhoda, The Simpsons) and several other of Brooks’s collaborators
• Deleted scenes and an alternate ending, with commentary by Brooks
• New video interview with veteran CBS news producer Susan Zirinsky, one of the models for actress Holly Hunter’s character and an associate producer on the film
• Featurette containing on-set footage and interviews with Brooks, Hunter, and actor Albert Brooks
• Original theatrical trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Carrie Rickey

 

 

 

ECLIPSE SERIES 25:
BASIL DEARDEN’S LONDON UNDERGROUND (Spine #552)

After mastering the mix of comedy, suspense, and horror that helped define the golden age of British cinema, Basil Dearden (along with his producing partner Michael Relph) left the legendary Ealing Studios and, in the late fifties and early sixties, created a series of gripping, groundbreaking, even controversial films. In dealing with racism, homophobia, and the lingering effects of World War II, these noir-tinged dramas burrowed into corners of London rarely seen on-screen. This set of elegantly crafted films—Sapphire, a dissection of a hate crime; The League of Gentlemen, a deft heist adventure suffused with postwar melancholy; Victim, a landmark gay character study, starring Dirk Bogarde; and All Night Long, a provocative transposition of Othello to the swinging London jazz scene—brings this quintessential figure of British cinema out of the shadows.

SAPPHIRE
1959
Basil Dearden’s bold, direct police procedural, starring Nigel Patrick as the detective in charge of the investigation, is a devastating look at the way bigotry crosses class divides, and a snapshot of late-fifties England’s increasingly interracial culture.
TRAILER

THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN
1960
A delightful cast of British all-stars, including Richard Attenborough, Bryan Forbes, and Roger Livesey, brings to life this precisely cali brated caper, which was immensely popular and influenced countless Hollywood heist films.
TRAILER

VICTIM
1961
Basil Dearden’s unmistakably political taboo buster was one of the first films to address homophobia head-on, a cry of protest against British laws forbidding homosexuality.
TRAILER

ALL NIGHT LONG
1962
Othello is translated to the world of sixties London jazz clubs in Basil Dearden’s smoky and sensational All Night Long. This daring psychodrama is also remarkable for its on-screen appearances by such jazz legends as Charles Mingus, Dave Brubeck, and Tubby Hayes.
TRAILER

 

all supplement information and imagery taken from Criterion.com, Blu-ray.com and Criterioncast.com.