Criterion Collection Announces January Releases, Including 4K UHD Debut of “The Piano,” “A Hard Day’s Night,” and More
The Criterion Collection announced five new titles to join the collection on 4K UHD and Blu-Ray in January: Celebration (1998), Time (2020), A hard day’s Night (1964), Dick Johnson is dead (2020) and The piano (1993). These feature a chamber drama by Thomas Vinterberg, Garrett Bradley’s poetic examination of the justice system, Richard Lester’s highly entertaining Beatles showcase, Kirsten Johnson’s inventive and deeply moving love letter to her father and the Jane Campion’s Oscar-winning drama. Details on these films can be found below:
Street date: January 11, 2022
Synopsis: The Danish Dogma 95 movement that struck world cinema like love at first sight began with The Celebration, Thomas Vinterberg’s international breakthrough (Another Round), a heart-wrenching chamber drama that uses the economic and aesthetic freedoms of digital video to achieve an overwhelming emotional intensity. On the 60th birthday of a wealthy man, a sprawling group of family and friends gather at his country estate for a celebration that soon escalates into a mess, as explosive revelations threaten to tear the varnish of the bourgeois respectability and exposing the traumas lurking underneath. The dynamic handheld camera work, grainy natural lighting, cacophonous diegetic sound, and raw performance style that would become the hallmark of Dogma reinforce the heart-shattering visceral impact of this caustic indictment of patriarchal failures, which oscillates between the darkest comedy and the darkest tragedy as he turns the sick soul of a family upside down.
- 2K digital restoration, approved by director Thomas Vinterberg, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- 2005 audio commentary with Vinterberg
- New interview with Vinterberg
- Two first short films by Vinterberg: Last round (1993) and The boy who walked backwards (1995)
- The Purified, a 2002 documentary on Dogme 95, with interviews with Vinterberg and filmmakers Søren Kragh-Jacobsen, Kristian Levring and Lars von Trier
- Program in which Vinterberg discusses the real inspiration of the film
- Documentaries featuring cast and crew at the film’s Copenhagen premiere and reflecting on the production
- SMA: DOP, a 2003 documentary profile of cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle
- Deleted scenes, with optional audio commentary from Vinterberg
- Trailer
- MORE: An Essay by Critic and Author Michael Koresky
Release Date: January 18, 2022
Synopsis: How does the weight of passing time feel for a family caught in the clutches of a brutal prison system? Both a breathtaking cinematic love story and a murderous indictment of American injustice, Garrett Bradley’s first Oscar-nominated feature documentary chronicles the decades-long quest of Sibil Fox Richardson, a mother. tireless six children and a fiercely outspoken prison abolitionist, to free her husband from Louisiana State Penitentiary, where he is serving a sixty-year sentence for robbery. Gracefully interweaving twenty years of Richardson’s personal intimate films with monochrome sequences that are luminously expressive of his current joys and struggles, Bradley creates in Time a transcendent poetic and moving look at the devastating toll of mass incarceration and the extraordinary efforts of a family to remain whole.
- New 4K digital master, with DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround soundtrack on Blu-ray
- New audio commentary with director Garrett Bradley
- New interview with Time subjects Sibil Fox and Robert Richardson
- New conversation between Bradley and critic and author Hilton Als
- Alone (2017), a short documentary by Bradley, with an optional 2021 commentary by the subject of the film, Aloné Watts
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- English descriptive audio
- MORE: An essay by critic Doreen St. Félix
Release Date: January 18, 2022
Synopsis: Meet the Beatles! Just a month after exploding onto the American scene with their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, John, Paul, George and Ringo began working on a project that would bring their revolutionary talent to the big screen. This film, in which the band members perform burlesque versions of themselves, captured the astonishing moment when they officially became the singular and irreverent idols of their generation and changed music forever. Directed with hoarse, verve à tout va by Richard Lester (The talent. . . and how to get it) and featuring a host of iconic pop anthems, including the title track “Can’t Buy Me Love”, “I Should Have Known Better” and “If I Fell” –A hard day’s Night, which reimagined the musical and had an untold influence on the music video, is one of the most entertaining movies of all time.
- New 4K digital restoration, approved by director Richard Lester, with three audio options – a monaural soundtrack as well as stereo and 5.1 surround mixes overseen by sound producer Giles Martin at Abbey Road Studios – presented in uncompressed monaural, non-stereo compressed and DTS-HD Master Audio on 4K UHD and Blu-ray
- In the 4K UHD edition: A 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and a Blu-ray with the film and the features
- Audio commentary with cast and crew (dual format and 4K UHD only)
- In their own voices, a program featuring 1964 interviews with The Beatles with backstage footage and photos
- “You can’t do that”: the filming of “A hard day at night” a 1994 documentary by producer Walter Shenson featuring a performance by The Beatles
- What they said today a 2002 documentary on the film starring Lester, music producer George Martin, screenwriter Alun Owen and cinematographer Gilbert Taylor (dual format and 4K UHD only)
- Image side, a program on Lester’s early work, with a 2014 audio interview with the director (dual format and 4K UHD only)
- The Running Jump & Standing Still Film (1960), Oscar nominated short film by Lester (dual format and 4K UHD only)
- Anatomy of a style, a 2014 program on Lester’s methods (dual format and 4K UHD only)
- 2014 interview with Beatles biographer Mark Lewisohn (dual format and 4K UHD only)
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- MORE: An essay by critic Howard Hampton and excerpts from a 1970 interview with Lester (dual format and 4K UHD only)
Dillon is more comfortable sitting in a movie theater all day watching both big budget and independent films.
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