Criterion Collection has announced their January titles and there are a few that may very well peak the interest of Bloody Disgusting readers. And of course, in the usual Criterion fashion, these releases will come with plenty of special features and the highest quality transfer you are likely to see.
Kicking things off on January 5, 2016 will be the complete Lady Snowblood series with both Lady Snowblood and Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance receiving a dual pack release. Both films were directed by Toshiya Fujita and star the lovely Meiko Kaji who you may remember from Blind Woman’s Curse.
Synopsis:
A young woman (Meiko Kaji), trained from childhood as an assassin and hell-bent on revenge for her father’s murder and her mother’s rape, hacks and slashes her way to gory satisfaction. Rampant with inventive violence and spectacularly choreographed swordplay, Toshiya Fujita’s pair of influential cult classics Lady Snowblood and Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance, set in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Japan, respectively, are bloody, beautiful extravaganzas composed of one elegant widescreen composition after another. The first Lady Snowblood was a major inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill saga, and both of Fujita’s films remain cornerstones of Asian action cinema.
Lady Snowblood1973 • 97 minutes • Color • Monaural • In Japanese with English subtitles • 2.35:1 aspect ratio
Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance1974 • 89 minutes • Color • Monaural • In Japanese with English subtitles • 2.35:1 aspect ratio
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New 2K digital restorations of both films, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-rays
• New interviews with Kazuo Koike, the writer of the manga on which the films are based, and screenwriter Norio Osada
• Trailers
• New English subtitle translations
• PLUS: An essay by critic Howard Hampton
Lady Snowblood will be followed up by Wim Wenders’ The American Friend starring Dennis Hopper and Bruno Ganz. As far as I know this will be the Blu-ray debut and it’s always exciting when a film makes it’s Blu-ray debut courtesy of Criterion. The film is set to hit streets on January 12, 2016.
Synopsis:
Wim Wenders (Paris, Texas) pays loving homage to rough-and-tumble Hollywood film noir with The American Friend, a loose adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel Ripley’s Game. Dennis Hopper (Easy Rider) oozes quirky menace as an amoral American art dealer who entangles a terminally ill German everyman, played by Bruno Ganz (Wings of Desire), in a seedy criminal underworld as revenge for a personal slight—but when the two become embroiled in an ever-deepening murder plot, they form an unlikely bond. Filmed on location in Hamburg and Paris, with some scenes shot in grimy, late-seventies New York City, Wenders’s international breakout is a stripped-down crime story that mixes West German and American film flavors, and it features cameos by filmmakers Jean Eustache (The Mother and the Whore), Samuel Fuller (Shock Corridor), and Nicholas Ray (Bigger Than Life).1977 • 127 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • In English, French, and German with English subtitles • 1.66:1 aspect ratio
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by director Wim Wenders, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Audio commentary from 2002 featuring Wenders and actor Dennis Hopper
• New interview with Wenders
• New interview with actor Bruno Ganz
• Deleted scenes with audio commentary by Wenders
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by author Francine Prose
