criterionforum.org

A Room with a View



Merchant Ivory Productions, led by director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant, became a household name with A Room with a View, the first of their extraordinary adaptations of E. M. Forster novels. A cherubic nineteen-year-old Helena Bonham Carter plays Lucy Honeychurch, a young, independent-minded, upper-class Edwardian woman who is trying to sort out her burgeoning romantic feelings, divided between an enigmatic free spirit (Julian Sands) she meets on vacation in Florence and the priggish bookworm (Daniel Day-Lewis) to whom she becomes engaged back in the more corseted Surrey. Funny, sexy, and sophisticated, this gargantuan art-house hit features a sublime supporting cast—including Simon Callow, Judi Dench, Denholm Elliott, Maggie Smith—and remains a touchstone of intelligent romantic cinema.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION:

• New 4K digital restoration, supervised by cinematographer Tony Pierce-Roberts, with 2.0 surround Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New interviews with director James Ivory, Pierce-Roberts, costume designer John Bright, and actors Helena Bonham Carter, Simon Callow, and Julian Sands
• Segment about Merchant Ivory Productions from a 1985 NBC television program
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by film critic Farran Smith Nehme

Looks like they sorted things out with Merchant Ivory. That's good to know. Hopefully this means Howards End will come back.

manicsounds wrote:Looks like they sorted things out with Merchant Ivory. That's good to know. Hopefully this means Howards End will come back.

Maybe whoever was causing trouble had a bookcase fall on them

domino harvey wrote:

manicsounds wrote:Looks like they sorted things out with Merchant Ivory. That's good to know. Hopefully this means Howards End will come back.

Maybe whoever was causing trouble had a bookcase fall on them

That's what that *other* closet is for

I have not seen this film and was kind of surprised to hear it announced. What are your opinions of it?

Some previous forum discussion on A Room With a View starting here in the Alt Oscars thread. tl;dr: It's pretty good

manicsounds wrote:Looks like they sorted things out with Merchant Ivory.

Not if this is true.

That's correct. According to the sell sheets it has been licenced from Westchester Films. So I doubt anything was sorted out.

cdnchris wrote:That's correct. According to the sell sheets it has been licenced from Westchester Films. So I doubt anything was sorted out.

So why the new interview?

(I am perfectly aware that supplements are subject to change before its release date. But I would imagine if there was still the slightest bit of acrimony, this feature would not be a feature at the very least.)

djproject wrote:

cdnchris wrote:That's correct. According to the sell sheets it has been licenced from Westchester Films. So I doubt anything was sorted out.

So why the new interview?

(I am perfectly aware that supplements are subject to change before its release date. But I would imagine if there was still the slightest bit of acrimony, this feature would not be a feature at the very least.)

I'm fairly certain none of the people interviewed work for the bond company that bought out all of those M-I films from under Criterion, so what animosity would there be here?

djproject wrote:

cdnchris wrote:That's correct. According to the sell sheets it has been licenced from Westchester Films. So I doubt anything was sorted out.

So why the new interview?

As mentioned above the issue is with whomever actually owns the rights and I'm going to guess Ivory himself never had an issue. I don't know the background to the production company and who owns what but just because "Merchant Ivory Productions" has his name in it doesn't mean he owns all or even part of it (i hope he at least owns part of it).

Whatever the case may be it was licenced from a completely different company so I still wouldn't bet they sorted things out.

cdnchris wrote:

djproject wrote:

cdnchris wrote:That's correct. According to the sell sheets it has been licenced from Westchester Films. So I doubt anything was sorted out.

So why the new interview?

As mentioned above the issue is with whomever actually owns the rights and I'm going to guess Ivory himself never had an issue. I don't know the background to the production company and who owns what but just because "Merchant Ivory Productions" has his name in it doesn't mean he owns all or even part of it (i hope he at least owns part of it).

Whatever the case may be it was licenced from a completely different company so I still wouldn't bet they sorted things out.

In other words, business not personal =]

I was just wondering what the nature of that relationship was and I thought it was something acrimonious between Criterion and Ivory. Going forward, I will be more thorough in my research if that was previously discussed elsewhere =].

DVDBeaver

Too bad the older extras like the commentary were not carried over.