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Is it too late to ask Criterion not to picture box this?

Luke M wrote:Is it too late to ask Criterion not to picture box this?

Yup.

The picture has been slightly window-boxed to ensure that the maximum image is visible on all monitors.

Rats!

But I'm sure the transfer will be amazing.

I actually like the Richard Gere re-make...although not as good as the original..I was kind of hoping they would release it as a double set...

Beaverlooks great.

Gigi M. wrote:Beaverlooks great.

It really does. Might well be a contender for release of the year. Really looking forward to getting this!

Digipack!! I mean, yes the transfer looks beautiful.

They could have picture boxed it in 75% and I'd still be all over that bad boy. Huge improvement. This is the one I'm anticipating most the next few months (along with Days of Heaven.)

Gigi M. wrote:Beaverlooks great.

Too slow!

It is great though...

I thought it was releasing on October 9th. And now it's October 23rd.

Was I imagining things?

funkcisco wrote:Was I imagining things?

I think you were. It's always been October 23 as far as I can tell.

Matt wrote:

funkcisco wrote:Was I imagining things?

I think you were. It's always been October 23 as far as I can tell.

It was probably the Criterion site, which listed the three Oct. 23 releases as (wrongly) coming out on the 9th, similarly to the way that the dates for Crusoe and Threepenny were incorrect on Criterion's site.

//

jonah.77 wrote:I'm lecturing on this film soon, and would like to show a clip from a Monogram crime film (BREATHLESS is dedicated to Monogram). Does anyone know of a particularly juicy Monogram that's available on DVD? (Presumably they'd be on an Alpha Video-type PD release.)

Dillinger... the studio's biggest hit I believe, and which alone justifies the dedication in Breathless. In a fine edition from the Warner Film Noir Classics Collection.

The decision to use voiceover artists for the Seberg and Rosenbaum pieces is weird and doesn't quite work. The Seberg extra is the best in the set, and the DA piece talking about the film as a documentary is a complete waste of time.

The Rappaport piece was very good, but was I the only one disappointed by it? It's a very tame reduction of From the Journals of Jean Seberg, as if he was asked to jettison any material that would be too frisky for your standard DVD extra. I expected licensing concerns to neuter the work to some degree, but Rappaport seems to have brought a lot of his livelier critical observations into line as well. We didn't even get to see the Kuleshov / Mozhukhin / Seberg riff (which could surely have been achieved with stock footage and Breathless extracts).

As someone who hasn't seen the Seberg movie, I sort of accepted that this was as good as I was going to get it. I am sure if I'd seen the fleshed out version first, the version here would make little impact on me.

We didn't even get to see the Kuleshov / Mozhukhin / Seberg riff (which could surely have been achieved with stock footage and Breathless extracts).

Zedz, do you think you could flesh this out a bit? (says someone who doesn't have access to the full Rappaport film)

jonah.77 wrote:

We didn't even get to see the Kuleshov / Mozhukhin / Seberg riff (which could surely have been achieved with stock footage and Breathless extracts).

Zedz, do you think you could flesh this out a bit? (says someone who doesn't have access to the full Rappaport film)

It's been about ten years since I saw From the Journals of Jean Seberg, but it followed a similar format to Rock Hudson's Home Movies, with copious illegal clips illustrating a critical biography of Jean, with plenty of spiky, unexpected diversions along the way. Generally, it wasn't quite up to the level of the Hudson film, maybe because the biographical dimension of the film was so compelling that it followed that more closely than in the previous star-essay.

As I recall, one of her several partners was a relative of Mozhukin's, and Rappaport used this as an excuse to illustrate the Kuleshov effect (using, as Kuleshov had originally done, footage of Mozhukin with the standard inserts - baby, bread etc.). He then made the intriguing leap of restaging the same demonstration with Seberg as a way of exploring her passive / opaque screen persona. The famous shot from Bonjour, tristesse was a signature image of the film and may have been used here, but I think it was an extract from the last shot of Breathless that Rappaport used for the demonstration. And Seberg proved herself to be an eminently 'Kuleshovian' performer.

Somebody who's seen the film more recently may be able to give a more definitive account.

I thought the 'redux' version on the Breathless disc would have benefitted from a bit more of Rappaport's lateral thinking. As it is, it's still an exemplary biographical sketch.

WOW!, this set looks amazing. Just came in from Amazon and I can't wait to dig in to it.

Side note: I ordered from amazon for two reasons, great price with free shipping and the expectation that it would come in a box since all my past orders have done so. So what happens, it comes in a bubble pack, good thing the outer case was in pristine condition.

DVD Times Review

Apart from their continued commitment to the idiotic practice of window-boxing the image, Criterion's edition of Breathless looks marvellous.

Does anyone know if there is an official release of the soundtrack?

Antoine Doinel wrote:Does anyone know if there is an official release of the soundtrack?

Yup

Great, thanks!