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Watership Down



With this passion project, screenwriter-producer-director Martin Rosen brilliantly achieved what was thought difficult, if not impossible: a faithful big-screen adaptation of Richard Adams's classic British dystopian novel about a community of rabbits seeking safety and happiness after their warren comes under terrible threat. With its naturalistic hand-drawn animation, dreamily expressionistic touches, gorgeously bucolic background design, and elegant voice work from such superb English actors as John Hurt, Ralph Richardson, Richard Briers, and Denholm Elliott, Watership Down is an emotionally arresting, dark-toned allegory about freedom amid political turmoil.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New interview with director Martin Rosen
• New appreciation of the film by director Guillermo del Toro
• Picture-in-picture storyboard for the entire film (Blu-ray); four film-to-storyboard scene comparisons (DVD)
• Defining a Style, a 2008 featurette about the film's aesthetic
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by comic book writer Gerard Jones

dx23 wrote:From dvdactive.com:

Title: Watership Down
Starring: N/A (Animation)
Released: 7th October 2008
SRP: $19.97

Further Details:
Warner Home Video has announced a deluxe edition of the 1978 movie Watership Down which features the voices of John Hurt, Richard Briers, and Michael Graham Cox. The 30th Anniversary release will be available to own from the 7th October, and should retail at around $19.97. The full details have yet to be revealed, although we can confirm that the disc will include featurettes, and a storyboard comparison

I'll buy it...

It'd be great if Warners used the original poster art. But that'll never happen because they're surely trying to market it as a family film and it's probably too dark for children.

Actually, this is already available in an excellent Australian release, with a reversible cover (featuring the original poster art,) anamorphic picture and a commentary.

I've actually ended up with two copies myself (bought it years ago, then bought a special edition of "The Plague Dogs" (in a double-feature with WD) on sale a few weeks ago for $14)

OliverB wrote:It'd be great if Warners used the original poster art.

They did!

...but the tagline was the best part.

"All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and when they catch you, they will kill you... but first they must catch you."

Watership Down is coming to Criterion on August 5th via their iTunes channel. A step towards a Blu-Ray release I hope!

So did Warner Brothers lose the distribution rights? I know it changed to Universal in the UK.

I don't know how this came about. Perhaps the rights went back to director Martin Rosen? :-k

acroyear wrote:Watership Down is coming to Criterion on August 5th via their iTunes channel. A step towards a Blu-Ray release I hope!

Wow, I didn't think Criterion would have the rights to the film. Yeah, will this get a Blu-Ray release?

The rights for WATERSHIP DOWN reverted from WB to its writer/director/producer Martin Rosen. I wouldn't be
surprised at all if his 1982 animated feature THE PLAGUE DOGS (which he owns outright, too) makes it to Criterion as well,
as it would be stunning to see his original cut of it in HD. Brad Bird (THE IRON GIANT, RATATOUILLE) was an animator on the latter, and it would be great to have an interview with him, too.

beamish13 wrote:The rights for WATERSHIP DOWN reverted from WB to its writer/director/producer Martin Rosen.

Let's hope the rights to Women in Love reverted back to him as well.

criterion10 wrote:

beamish13 wrote:The rights for WATERSHIP DOWN reverted from WB to its writer/director/producer Martin Rosen.

Let's hope the rights to Women in Love reverted back to him as well.

According to his website, they did not

beamish13 wrote:

criterion10 wrote:

beamish13 wrote:The rights for WATERSHIP DOWN reverted from WB to its writer/director/producer Martin Rosen.

Let's hope the rights to Women in Love reverted back to him as well.

According to his website, they did not

Hmm, interesting. Guess it's still with MGM.

It's been a very long time since Criterion releases a cell-animated movie.
(Was "Akira" really the last one?)
Looks like one interview featurette from the Warner DVD has been dropped, but the new interview probably makes up for it.

My prediction was that The Plague Dogs was going to be released concurrently with this announcement, perhaps as a bare-bones/lower-price disc. It would have even worked as a bonus on Watership's extras.

Is this the first Blu-ray exclusive extra for the label?

Slacker has some blu-ray exclusive extras (as well as some DVD exclusive extras that were not carried over) and 8½ has The Last Sequence doc

Ditto for In the Mood for Love.

But is it the only one where the Blu-ray and DVD editions were released concurrently?

Actually, that honor goes to The Devil's Backbone.

I like the description of the film as a "dark-toned allegory about freedom amid political turmoil" and indeed much of the first half of the film can be seen as that with its petty squabbling between factions, futile attempts at convincing others of danger ahead, and the sense of larger forces about to ride roughshod across the landscape (and there is an obvious Holocaust metaphor there, with the warren about to be engulfed by premeditated slaughter on an industrial scale). Yet it also, especially in its bookend scenes, is just as much about wider existential issues of the circle of life, community and (echoing domino's comments on Don't Look Now) an exploration of notions of religion, or at least of creation myths.

It's a brutal and often devastating piece of work, but also an honest and compassionate one, and even though it has been years since I last saw it I'm tearing up remembering some scenes from it even now! And that's not just because the film has Art Garfunkle singing Bright Eyes in it, although that doesn't help me to hold back the tears!

(Very strange that with this and Don't Look Now we have two films released in February about characters having deadly premonitions! It might be early, but perhaps this will be the Criterion theme for 2015 much as gas station destruction was for this year!)

EDIT: Having said all of the praise for the film, I should admit that I love the old joke about it in which in response to all of the publicity for Watership Down a local butcher's shop puts a sign in its window saying:

"You've read the book! You've seen the film! Now eat the cast!"

I adore this film and I'm so glad Criterion is releasing it, and with the gorgeous poster art no less, but I'm slightly disappointed they were unable to acquire the director's commentary on the R4 DVD. When I went to Australia in 2008 it was one of the only souvenirs I bought for myself, primarily for that supplement and for the uncut Plague Dogs on the second disc, and I recall the track was quite interesting.

I wonder if John Hubley's contribution (the opening sequence mostly) and firing will be discussed in Crit's extras.

Yeesh, that makes three movies with extant commentaries that are coming out without them this month. I probably harp about this too much, but it's my favorite form of extra- it's maddening enough that they so rarely commission new ones anymore, but not bothering to license an existing commentary from the director seems hard to justify.

Do you know for certain that it was a case of "not bothering"? Sometimes third-party extras simply aren't available, either because the rightsholder doesn't want to give them up, or because they want an unrealistic amount of money.

(A recent case in point: the absence of the Tarkovsky short from Arrow's The Killers, which I most certainly did bother to try to acquire, but was unable to reach a mutually satisfactory agreement regarding a fair price for an elderly SD master.)