January Criterions and More!

January always poses an exciting month for Criterion releases, as it (hopefully) kick-starts the year with a bang, especially after their typically slow month of December. And with the January 2010 titles, Criterion crossed the 500 threshold, with Robert Rossellini's War Trilogy box set marking spine number 500, the trilogy being Rome, Open City [Roma, città aperta], Paisan [Paisà] and Germany Year Zero [Germania anno zero]. Steven Soderbergh's Che will finally bow on DVD and Blu-ray, as well as a resorted version of Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas (on DVD and Blu-ray). Federico Fellini's 8½ will premiere on Blu-ray, which might be the first release of the film in high-definition anywhere.

More exciting than the mainline Criterion titles though is their new Eclipse set, available 19 January: Chantal Akerman in the Seventies. The set includes La chambre, Hotel Monterey, News from Home, Je tu il elle and Les rendez-vous d'Anna.

IFC also announced several titles for January. Jean-Claude Brisseau's À l'aventure, Paco Cabezas' The Appeared [Aparecidos], David Zellner's Goliath, Spike Lee's Passing Strange, Alan Brown's Superheroes and Armando Iannucci's hysterical In the Loop, which will also come in Blu-ray. All are set for 12 January. MPI, who releases IFC's titles, set a new date for The House of the Devil for 2 February, for those concerned.

S'more DVD Updates

Kino announced two more titles. Amos Gitai's One Day You'll Understand [Plus tard tu comprendras], starring Jeanne Moreau, Hippolyte Girardot and Emmanuelle Devos, will be out on the 2nd, and Erwin Wagenhofer's We Feed the World for 19 May. And Universal... I don't like what you're up to. First, We're Back: A Dinosaur's Story and now Pufnstuf, set for 19 May!? I see where you're priorities lie. The Weinstein Company announced that long-on-the-shelf Killshot, which stars Mickey Rourke, Diane Lane, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Thomas Jane and Rosario Dawson, for a 26 May DVD release (after a brief theatrical run earlier this year). Gee, the director of Shakespeare in Love has come so far! And finally, Axiom Pictures in the UK have set a new date for Jean-Claude Brisseau's À l'aventure for 25 May. À l'aventure will be released by IFC later this year.

And here are the Ryko titles for June: Robert Hartford-Davis' Black Torment (aka Estate of Insanity) from Redemption, Lucio Fulci's Door Into Silence [Le porte del silenzio] from Severin, three films from Giuseppe Andrews (In Our Garden, The Date Movie, Air Conditioning) from Troma, Joe D'Amato's Horrible [Rosso sangue] from MYA, Sergio Martino's The Island of the Fishmen [L'isola degli uomini pesce] from MYA, Stephen C. Apostolof's Lady Godiva Rides from S'more, Akio Jissoji's Marquis de Sade's Properties of Vice from Mondo Macabre, Mario Imperoli's Monika [La ragazzina] from MYA, Norman J. Warren's Prey (aka Alien Prey) from Redemption, Umberto Lenzi's So Sweet... So Perverse [Così dolce... così perversa] from Midnight Choir, Elliott Hung's They Call Me Bruce? from Liberation, Bong Joon-ho, Leos Carax and Michel Gondry's Tokyo! from Liberation, Alfredo Sternheim's Violence and Flesh [Violência na Carne] from Impulse. All street on 30 June.

Via IndieWire, The Cinema Guild will start their own DVD label, after New Yorker Films (who had released most of their titles recently) closed up shop. So, it looks like both Christian Petzold's Yella and Alexandr Sokurov's Alexandra have not been cancelled. Yella streets on 31 March, Alexandra on 28 April.

IFC Films in 2009, including Assayas, Ozon, Garrel, Sang-soo, Arcand, Tarr

In a press release, IFC Films laid out a number of films they'll be presenting through their various platforms of release, which includes theatrical, Festival Direct Video-On-Demand and their DVD rental partnership with Blockbuster (which seems to have stopped their releases of DVDs elsewhere, which is extremely disappointing). I use Netflix, and my cable provider doesn't offer Festival Direct... so I'm sort of fucked when it comes to their releases, but I have to hand it to them for getting so many films out there. Their 2009 release schedule includes:

Angel - dir. François Ozon - with Sam Neill, Charlotte Rampling, Michael Fassbender
Frontier of the Dawn [La frontière de l'aube] - dir. Philippe Garrel - with Louis Garrel, Laura Smet
Summer Hours [L'heure d'été] - dir. Olivier Assayas - with Charles Berling, Juliette Binoche, Jérémie Renier
La belle personne - dir. Christophe Honoré - with Louis Garrel, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet
Let It Rain [Parlez-moi de la pluie] - dir. Agnès Jaoui - with Agnès Jaoui
Days of Darkness [L'âge des ténèbres] - dir. Denys Arcand - with Diane Kruger, Rufus Wainwright, Emma de Caunes
Night and Day - dir. Hong Sang-soo
Disengagement [Désengagement] - dir. Amos Gitai - with Juliette Binoche, Jeanne Moreau
Dog Eat Dog [Perro come perro] - dir. Carlos Moreno
Everlasting Moments [Maria Larssons eviga ögonblick] - dir. Jan Troell
Fear Me Not [Den du frygter] - dir. Kristian Levring - with Ulrich Thomsen, Paprika Steen
I'm Going to Explode [Voy a explotar] - dir. Gerardo Naranjo - with Daniel Giménez Cacho
The Man from London [A Londoni férfi] - dir. Béla Tarr - with Tilda Swinton
The Necessities of Life [Ce qu'il fait pour vivre] - dir. Benoît Pilon
Paris - dir. Cédric Klapisch - with Juliette Binoche, Romain Duris, Fabrice Luchini, François Cluzet, Albert Dupontel, Karin Viard
When a Man Comes Home [En Mand kommer hjem] - dir. Thomas Vinterberg
White Night Wedding [Brúðguminn] - dir. Baltasar Kormákur - with Hilmir Snær Guðnason
A Year Ago in Winter [Im Winter ein Jahr] - dir. Caroline Link
Alexander the Last - dir. Joe Swanberg - with Jess Weixler, Justin Rice, Jane Adams, Josh Hamilton
Zift - dir. Javor Gardev

There are more titles at the link above, and I've also heard from elsewhere that Jean-Claude Brisseau's À l'aventure and Antti-Jussi Annila's Sauna are on the roster for 2009. I could be wrong, as I thought both Paris and Disengagement belonged to Samuel Goldwyn and Sony Pictures Classics, respectively. Expect plenty more acquisitions throughout the year following 2009's big film festivals.

If you're not in the mood for a Jewish cross-dressing musical...

I'm sure you're probably still reeling from that Yentl announcement, but I have a few more for you. blaq out/Facets continues with their collection of Jean-Claude Brisseau films in January with Workers for the Good Lord [Les savates du bon Dieu], starring Stanislas Merhar. Facets also continues their releases of Alexander Kluge's films with The Indomitable Leni Peikert [Die Unbezähmbare Leni Peickert]. Both street on 27 January. And in other Brisseau news, IFC has purchased the rights to his latest film, À l'aventure, when opens in France at the end of the month.

I've gotten word of a few of the Weinstein Company's February releases (which strangely do not include any IFC Films, just like January... more on that later). First is Marc Caro's first post-Jeunet feature Dante 01, a sci-fi flick with Lambert Wilson and Dominique Pinon, set for 3 Feb. The following week has Agnès Merlet's English-language Dorothy Mills, which stars the lovely Carice van Houten (Black Book). And look for Pascal Laugier's violent Martyrs on the 24th. According to the IMDb, Martyrs was originally hit with an 18 rating in France, a rating usually reserved for the sauciest of films.

New Yorker/Cinema Guild will release Christian Petzold's Yella on 10 February, which is currently on my short-list for the best films of 2008 (US release-wise). Koch Lorber's only title for February is Eric Rohmer's The Romance of Astrée and Céladon [Les amours d'Astrée et de Céladon], set for 10 February. And finally, Lionsgate/Studio Canal has the comedy I Do [Prête-moi ta main] with Charlotte Gainsbourg set for 13 January.

Facets, New Yorker, Weinstein, IFC in Dec

The Weinstein Company has announced a release of the British horror film Eden Lake from director James Watkins, who just wrote the script for the upcoming sequel to The Descent, for 30 December. IFC has also announced that Christopher Zalla's Sangre de mi sangre will be out on 16 December.

New Yorker has announced three short documentaries by Werner Herzog for 9 December. The films include The Dark Glow of the Mountains [Gasherbrum - Der leuchtende Berg] (1985), Ballad of the Little Solider [Ballade vom kleinen Soldaten] (1984) and Precautions Against Fanatics [Massnahmen gegen Fanatiker] (1969).

Facets will release another film from both Alexander Kluge and Helma Sanders-Brahms. Artists in the Big Top: Perplexed [Die Artisten in der Zirkuskuppel: Ratlos] will join Facet's releases of Part-Time Work of a Domestic Slave and Yesterday Girl for Kluge, just as My Heart Is Mine Alone [Mein Herz - Niemandem!] will join The Future of Emily, Germany Pale Mother, No Mercy No Future and Under the Pavement Lies the Strand for Sanders-Brahms. Facets will also be releasing Jean-Claude Brisseau's Céline on 23 December.

And I've heard from the grapevine that Criterion will release The Exterminating Angel this February. Could be a rumor, but that's all I got.

More of the Same for Jarman 08

The Year of Derek Jarman continues in November, with Kino's repackaging of their Jarman related films. Nothing new, but nice to have the titles condensed into a more affordable box. The titles are his first film, along with co-director Paul Humfress, Sebastiane, The Tempest, War Requiem and Isaac Julien's documentary Derek, written by Tilda Swinton, on 18 November. Now if only we can get someone to put out The Garden by New Year's, I'll be a happy boy.

Additionally, blaq out, through Facets, will release Jean-Claude Brisseau's made-for-TV film Life the Way It is [La vie comme ça], along with a documentary about the controversial filmmaker, hopefully covering his bout in prison for sexual harassment which came about during the filming of his film Secret Things [Choses secrètes]; available 25 November. Magnolia will release James Marsh's documentary Man on Wire about Philippe Petit on 9 December.

Sony will also be releasing María Lidón, aka Luna's, Moscow Zero, starring Vincent Gallo, Joaquim de Almeida, Rade Serbedzija, Val Kilmer and Oksana Akinshina (Lilya 4-ever), on 4 November. Also, just to keep you updated, Music Box's Tell No One has been pushed to January.