Jean-Jacques Beineix on DVD (Updated)

Cinema Libre announced the first two DVD releases of their Jean-Jacques Beineix collection, Roselyne and the Lions [Roselyne et les lions] on 14 July and IP5: The Island of Pachyderms [IP5: L'île aux pachydermes] on 18 August. As Eric pointed out, the studio is re-releasing Beineix's most famous film Betty Blue, with Béatrice Dalle and Jean-Hughes Anglade, in theatres before a DVD release next year.

As for other DVD announcements, PeaceArch will release Marianna Palka's Good Dick on 1 September, as well as Valentino: The Last Emperor, on DVD and Blu-ray, 15 September. MPI is releasing Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel's Deadgirl on both formats 15 September. James Cotton's La linea, with Andy Garcia and Ray Liotta, will be out through Maya on 10 November. Facets is set to re-release Wojciech Has' trippy Saragossa Manuscript on 28 July. Oscilloscope will add Treeless Mountain to the already crowded 15 September street date. And sometime in October, Water Bearer Films will be releasing Philippe Vallois' We Were One Man [Nous étions un seul homme] for the first time on DVD in the US.

On the Blu-ray horizon, a couple of noteworthy titles have been announced. Shout! Factory will have Takashi Miike's Audition on 7 October; from Sony, The Craft on 13 October; and from Dark Sky, John McNaughton's Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer on 29 September... all in time for Halloween. That's all for now. I'll resume the Decade List soon. I've taken a needed break from it by revisiting Six Feet Under.

UPDATE: Thanks to Jeremy at, of course, The Moon in the Gutter for finding this. Cinema Libre has the dates set for all of their Beineix releases, including a box-set with all of them on 1 December. According to their site, a DVD of Beineix's Locked-In Syndrome [Assigné à résidence], a documentary about Jean-Dominique Bauby who was the subject of Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Otaku and his first short Mr. Michel's Dog [Le chien de Monsieur Michel] was released today, but I didn't find it on Amazon.com. Mortal Tranfer [Mortel transfert], also with Jean-Hughes Anglade, will hit shelves on 22 September, and The Moon in the Gutter [La lune dans le caniveau], with Nastassja Kinski, Gérard Depardieu and Victoria Abril, will be out 20 October. It also didn't dawn on me that the studio's theatrical release of Betty Blue would be the first time it's officially been shown in its full version in the US. Betty Blue will be on DVD on 17 November.

Oh, Betty!

Also thanks to IndieWire, the studio CinemaLibre has acquired the rights to just about all of the films of Jean-Jacques Beineix (not including Diva). Their deal includes the rights to the director's cut of Betty Blue (with Jean-Hughes Anglade and Béatrice Dalle in her star-making performance), which went out-of-print shortly after Sony released it a few years back; Mortel transfert (with Anglade and Miki Manojlovic); La lune dans le caniveau (with Gérard Depardieu, Nastassja Kinski, Victoria Abril and Vittorio Mezzogiorno); Roselyne et les lions; IP5: L'île aux pachydrermes (with Yves Montand and Olivier Martinez); and his doc/shorts: Locked-In Syndrome, Otaku and Le chien de Monsieur Michel. Other than Betty Blue, this will be the first time these titles will be available in the US; no word on when these films will become available.

Jeanne Moreau and other divas...

blaq out will be releasing Marguerite Duras' Nathalie Granger, from 1972 and starring Jeanne Moreau and Gérard Depardieu, in both single disc and double-disc editions on 27 May. Both editions run pretty steep (the single disc is $39.95, the deluxe edition is $69.98) for a film I doubt many people have heard of. For that matter, I doubt many people even know Duras directed films, as the most famous of her directing work, India Song, is only available in Japan.

New Yorker will release Manoel de Oliveira's Belle toujours, starring Bulle Ogier and Michel Piccoli, on 3 June.

In other news, it looks like Criterion will not be releasing Jean-Jacques Beiniex's Diva on DVD, but Lionsgate instead, under a collection entitled Meridian. Neither Eric at Filmbo's Chick Magnet nor I have any idea what this label is all about, except that they will also be releasing The Red Violin on 6 June. More info as I find out.

Lynchian Overkill

I usually try to keep close tabs on what's being released around the country, so I found it much to my surprise that a film entitled Lynch, about - you guessed it - David Lynch's "creative process," is making its round in New York City. As I've stated before, Lynch just ceases to thrill me after all these years... and Inland Empire, along with More Things That Happened, have been the nail in the coffin. Naturally, I can't resist him completely (my ennui was spared just two weeks ago by a return to Twin Peaks), but I think the digital format has steered him far away from even my smallest of interests... and with Peaks still fresh in my memory, maybe what's been lost in the transfer from film to video is truly Lynch's charm.

I also was shocked, and pleased, to see that Rialto, who've most recently released Melville's Army of Shadows, is presenting a new print of Jean-Jacques Beineix's lovely Diva. Being that it was under Beineix's eye that I not only fell in love with Béatrice Dalle but perhaps French cinema in general, I can only hope that Diva will be coming my way soon. If not, I can at least be sure that a Criterion release will follow sometime next year.