May Criterions and Paramount Catalogues in 2010!

Criterion announced their May titles earlier today, which includes a second volume of films by Stan Brakhage, and both collections on Blu-ray. In addition to that excitement, the Eclipse box set for May is Nagisa Oshima's Outlaw Sixties, including the films Japanese Summer: Double Suicide, Pleasures of the Flesh, Violence at Noon, Sing a Song of Sex and Three Resurrected Drunkards. With the Akerman and now Oshima sets this year, I'm more excited for the Eclipse box sets than the mainline releases it seems. Also in store for May are a remastered edition of Nicolas Roeg's great Walkabout (DVD and Blu-ray), John Ford's Stagecoach (DVD and Blu-ray) and Fritz Lang's M (on Blu-ray).

I also was doing some browsing on the IMDb and saw that on the page for Joseph Strick's maligned adaptation of Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer that Olive Films Opus is listed as the DVD publisher for 2010. So I did a little more investigating, and it seems Olive Films have snatched up a number of Paramount's catalogue titles (kind of like Legend Films did in summer of '08. Aside from Tropic of Cancer, the other titles listed as upcoming DVD releases from Olive Films include Ingmar Bergman's Face to Face [Ansikte mot ansikte] with Liv Ullmann; Guy Green's adaptation of Jacqueline Susann's Once Is Not Enough with Kirk Douglas, Melina Mercouri and George Hamilton; the Raquel Welch western Hannie Caulder; Stuart Rosenberg's WUSA with Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward and Anthony Perkins; Otto Preminger's Skidoo, Hurry Sundown and Such Good Friends; William Dieterle's Dark City with Charlton Heston and Rope of Sand with Burt Lancaster; the Jean Harlow biopic Harlow with Carroll Baker; Nicholas Ray's The Savage Innocents; Edward Dmytryk's Where Love Has Gone with Susan Hayward and Bette Davis and The Mountain with Spencer Tracy.

In addition to those Paramount titles, it looks like they've also got the rights to some recent films from Scandinavia, including the gay neo-Nazi film Brotherhood [Broderskab], which won the Best Film prize at last year's Rome Film Festival, and Letters to Father Jacob [Postia pappi Jaakobille], Finland's Oscar submission from 2009. Way to go, Olive Films.

4 Rare Oshima Films in France This March

Carlotta has announced four hard-to-come-across films from Nagisa Oshima from the 1960s for 4 March 2009 in France. The four films are À propos des chansons paillardes au Japon [or Sing a Song of Sex or A Treatise on Japanese Bawdy Songs] from 1967, Été japonais: Double Suicide [or Japanese Summer: Double Suicide] from 1967, L'obsédé en plein jour [or Violence at Noon or Violence at High Noon] from 1966 and Le retour des trois saoulards [or Three Resurrected Drunkards] from 1968. Carlotta released five other Oshima films, all of which are unavailable in the US, last summer: La Trilogie de la jeunesse [Trilogy of Youth] (which includes Contes cruels de la jeunesse [Cruel Story of Youth], Une ville d'amour et d'espoir [A Street of Love and Hope] and L'enterrement du soleil [The Sun's Burial]), Nuit et brouillard au Japon [Night and Fog in Japan] and Les plaisirs de la chair [Pleasures of the Flesh]. As far as I know, the DVDs only include a French subtitle option (which is pretty commonplace with French DVDs), but several of the titles have also been released through Yume Pictures in the UK with English subs (Violence at High Noon, The Sun's Burial, Night and Fog in Japan, Pleasures of the Flesh and Cruel Story of Youth [under the title Naked Youth]).

DVD Release Update - 16 January

Although I was a little disappointed to see that Last Year at Marienbad wasn't on the list, Criterion named their April releases; and although they weren't the Nagisa Oshima films I would have liked to have seen put out, I do look forward to rewatching both In the Realm of the Senses and Empire of Passion (formerly known in the US as In the Realm of Passion). Unfortunately, as Criterion doesn't put quotes on their DVD titles, In the Realm of the Sesnes will be without Madonna's glowing review: "It turns me on because it's real." In addition to those two, Stephen Frears' The Hit, starring John Hurt, Terence Stamp, Tim Roth, Bill Hunter and Fernando Rey, and 23 short films from director Jean Painlevé.

New Yorker announced Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub's Class Relations [Klassenverhältnisse] for 17 March. MGM will be releasing three musicals on 7 April: Goldwyn Follies (which is also available in their big musical box-set), It's a Pleasure with Sonja Henie and Howard Hawks' A Song Is Born.

Watchmaker Films, though Koch Vision, are releasing Profit motive and the whispering wind and Mississippi Chicken on 7 April. And finally, Kino will have Raphaël Nadjari's Tehilim on 31 March.

Koch Lorber in September + Others

I had previously announced that Koch Lorber will be releasing Céline Sciamma's Water Lilies [Naissance des pieuvres] on 2 September, but they will also be releasing Rodolphe Marconi's documentary Lagerfeld Confidential on the same day.

Additionally, Lionsgate has announced a Special Edition of Jeunet et Caro's Delicatessen for 26 August, though the shift of rights from Miramax to them is not something I'm aware of. They will also release a film called Kitchen Privileges, formally titled Housebound, starring Peter Sarsgaard, on the same day; the film is an update of Roman Polanski's Repulsion with Catherine Deneuve.

The Weinsteins have tentatively announced a special edition of Jet Li's Fist of Legend for 9 September, but I wouldn't hold my breath on this one, as the Weinsteins, particularly when under the Dragon Dynasty label, have delayed numerous releases. It should be the first time the film is available uncut and undubbed in the United States. Rhino is also set to release for the first time on DVD Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains starring a very young Diane Lane and Laura Dern on 30 September.

As mentioned by Eric, MGM will release their special edition of Night of the Hunter on 9 September. No additional material has been announced yet. Porchlight Entertainment will release the Canadian drama Normal, starring Carrie-Anne Moss, Callum Keith Rennie and Kevin Zegers on 7 October. Image will release the Pang brothers' Re-Cycle on 23 September, and HBO will have their original movie Recount, with Kevin Spacey, Laura Dern, Bob Balaban, Denis Leary and John Hurt, on 19 August. Miramax will have Joachim Trier's wonderful Reprise out on 2 September.

On the international front, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi's Actrices [Actresses], which is owned by IFC in the US, will be released in France by Wild Side Vidéo on 26 June. France Télévisions will release Alexander Sokurov's Alexandra in France on 9 July. TF1 Vidéo released David Oelhoffen's Nos retrouvailles [In Your Wake] on 7 May. Lee Chang-dong's Cannes-winning Secret Sunshine was released on the same day from TF1. I cannot vouch for subtitles on any of these discs.

In the UK, Axiom Films released the unavailable-in-the-US Alice in the Cities from 1974 and directed by Wim Wenders. Arrow Films will have a special edition of Andrew Birkin's The Cement Garden, starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, on 23 June. Two months after Gaumont releases it in France, Yume Pictures brings Nagisa Oshima's Pleasures of the Flesh onto DVD on 25 August. Mr. Bongo Films has Antonioni's Identification of a Woman [Identificazione di una donna] on 30 June.

Soda Pictures will release the acclaimed La léon, from director Santiago Otheguy, on 25 August; Water Bearer Films should have the film available in the US later this year. Artificial Eye will release Catherine Breillat's The Last Mistress on the same day. Artificial Eye will also have Roy Andersson's You the Living on 14 July. BFI will also have two films from Terence Davies, whose documentary Of Time and the City was widely regarded as one of the finest films to play at this year's Cannes Film Festival, on 21 July: The Long Day Closes and The Terence Davies Trilogy.

For those without a region-free player, you can find Denys Arcand's L'âge des ténèbres [The Age of Ignorance] from Alliance Atlantis on 30 June. The film stars Diane Kruger and Rufus Wainwright, among others, concludes Arcand's trilogy which began with The Decline of the American Empire and The Barbarian Invasions, and still has no US distributor.