DVD NEWS

1/29/01
The Year 2001 promises to be exciting year for DVD fans among classic film lovers. Some major movies coming this year are:
2/6 - The Lost Weekend (Universal)
2/13 - The Wild Reeds (Fox Lorber), Ulysses' Gaze (Fox Lorber)
2/20 - Broken Blossoms (Kino), Eisenstein: Sound Years (Criterion), City of Women (New Yorker)
2/27 - Dr. Strangelove (Columbia)
3/6 - bonanza of Universal Hitchcocks including highly-anticipated and newly restored Rear Window as well as The Trouble with Harry, Rope, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Topaz, Saboteur, A Shadow of Doubt, Torn Curtain, Family Plot, and Frenzy. Hooray!
3/13 - Coup de Torchon (Criterion), Mona Lisa (Criterion), Madadayo (Fox Lorber), Ben-Hur, The Legend of Drunken Master
3/20 - Passage to India
4/3 - Lawrence of Arabia, Cleopatra (3 discs!)
4/10 - a couple of MGM Fellinis - Satyricon and Roma
5/22 - Some Like It Hot!

10/18/00
MGM Foreign Films are coming to DVD!
According to the Digital Bits, the following titles will hit street on 1/23:
American Buffalo
Babette's Feast
Bride Wore Black
Camille Claudel
I Shot Andy Warhol
Jean De Florette
Longtime Companion
the 1977 Truffaut version of The Man Who Loved Women (1977 Truffaut)
Manon Of The Spring
Mississippi Mermaid
Small Change
Story Of Adele H.
Suture

And I think we can expect more things to come from MGM Foreign Films collection. However, unfortunately only American Buffalo and I Shot Andy Warhol are going to be anamorphic.

9/17/00
Criterion's new promotional booklet list the following movies as coming soon (Criterion being Criterion, they are not probably coming soon, but hopefully by next year.)

Big Deal on Madonna Street (Mibucelli)
Children of Paradise (Carne)
Cocktail Molotov (Kurys)
Coup de torchon (Tavernier)
Cousin, Cousine (Tacchella)
Dodes' ka-den (Kurosawa)
Double Suicide (Shinoda)
Haxan (Christensen)
The Hidden Fortress (Kurosawa)
The Horse's Mouth (Neame)
Ivan's Childhood (Tarkovsky)
Knife in the Water (Polanski)
Mon Oncle (Tati)
Mona Lisa (Jordan)
Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (Tati)
My Man Godfrey (La Cava)
Playtime (Tati)
Rashomon (Kurosawa)
The Rock (Bay)
The Ruling Class (Medak)
The Scarlet Empress (von Sternberg)
The Shop on Main Street (Kadar, Klos)
Spartacus (Kubrick)
La Strada (Fellini)
The Tales of Hoffmann (Powell, Pressburger)
Le Trou (Becker)
Wild Strawberries (Bergman)

9/4/00
Not exactly a new news, but here is a preview of upcoming Criterion titles by their spine number:

80. The Element of Crime
81. Variety Lights
82. Hamlet
83. The Harder They Come
84. Good Morning
85. Pygmalion
86. Eisenstein: The Sound Years
87. Alexander Nevsky
88. Ivan The Terrible, parts I and II
89. Sisters
90. Kwaidan
91. The Blob
92. Fiend Without A Face
93. Black Narcissus
94. I Know Where I'm Going!
95. All That Heaven Allows
96. Written on the Wind
97. Do The Right Thing
98. L'Avventura
99. Gimme Shelter
100. Beastie Boys Video Anthology
101. Cries and Whispers
102. The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoisie
103. The Lady Eve

In addition, the Criterion representatives in the HTF chat also said that the following were in the works for next year:
The Rules of the Game (Renoir), 8 1/2 (Fellini), La Strada (Fellini), Vampyr (Dreyer), Master of the House (Dreyer), Wild Strawberries (Bergman), Through A Glass Darkly (Bergman), Winter Light (Bergman), The Silence (Bergman). Thanks to Al Brown, who posted this info at HTF.

8/30/00
Disney's Miramax is going to release Kiewslowski's Color Trilogy. Not much details, but the following is an excerpt from an interview with DVD production company, 3 Legged Cat by www.ptdanderson.com

What future DVD projects can we expect from 3 Legged Cat productions?

We're working on the Seven Platinum Series, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me & a John Waters box set for New Line. A Crow box set & Red, White & Blue for Miramax. I really want to do more work on foreign films but the market still isn't there yet. The market is still heavy into the science fiction films because they are the big sellers.

Yes, I am a great fan of DVD! When the soon-to-be-a-museum-piece laserdisc first came out, I was aching to buy one, but I restrained myself to wait for something like DVD. I simply found LD too cumbersome to handle when I tried it. But the DVD is a dream-come-true for cinephiles because it is more collectible than VHS with longer shelf-life, easier to locate the individual scenes that you want to concentrate on, easier to handle, having the same size as CD's, and most of all, it presents the best image and sound quality possible of all video formats. However, one sad development is: while LD was geared to the great movies that truly deserved digital treatment (think of great LD selection of Criterion Collection, classical music, to name a few!), DVD seems to be catered decidedly to horror/euro-trash fans and even more to porno fans (who love multi-angle feature of DVD). Just look at the DVD titles now available - so many of them with such colorful titles like "I Spit at Your Grave" and so on.
This DVD News is intended to give a few info on the classic/ foreign DVD's.