05 June 2009

Le mépris, Ran and Others on Blu-ray in the UK This Fall

Despite the bad news that Criterion's planned Blu-rays of Jean-Luc Godard' Contempt [Le mépris] and Akira Kurosawa's Ran were scrapped due to the loss of rights, Optimum Releasing in the UK has both, plus a bunch of other exciting titles, set for a Blu-ray release in September. The other titles include: David Lynch's The Elephant Man, Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad [L'année dernière à Marienbad], Luis Buñuel's Belle de jour, Joseph Losey's The Go-Between (which isn't even out on DVD in the US), Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter, Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta's The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum [Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum oder: Wie Gewalt entstehen und wohin sie führen kann], Luc Besson's Le dernier combat, Angel-A, Léon: The Professional, Le grand bleu [The Big Blue], Atlantis, Subway and Nikita [La femme Nikita].

In August, Optimum will be releasing Blu-rays of Mathieu Kassovitz's La haine, Alan Parker's Angel Heart and Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark; in July, Alexandre Aja's Haute tension (which is called Switchblade Romance in the UK), Roman Polanski's The Pianist, Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs, Rian Johnson's Brick, Gus Van Sant's Elephant and Stephen Frears' The Grifters. Apparently, the UK is the place for great international cinema in high def.

Also, thanks to Eric for the heads up, Artificial Eye in the UK is releasing a Jacques Rivette box-set, which includes La belle noiseuse, Secret défense and Jeanne la Pucelle I and II. This may be the first official release of the uncut version of Jeanne, but that has yet to be confirmed.

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