criterionforum.org

Coming to the Masters of Cinema Series in January... THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE will be released on 25 January 2016

As a footnote, this will contain the last published piece by Mike Sutton, whose booklet essay was submitted mere days before his untimely death last week.

MichaelB wrote:As a footnote, this will contain the last published piece by Mike Sutton, whose booklet essay was submitted mere days before his untimely death last week.

Thought that might be the case. Which reminds me, I haven't read the Seconds booklet yet.

Great announcement! Hopefully it will surpass the Criterion in the extra department. I will be waiting for the final specs to arrive.

I'm the unlucky one this time. Just bought the Criterion two weeks ago

Amazon.co.uk has the specs listed:

SPECIAL FEATURES including:

-Restored, high-definition digital transfer
-English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
-PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Mike Sutton

It looks like it will not contain any on-disk extra's. Criterion has the audio commentary with director Peter Yates as an advantage.

Mel wrote:Amazon.co.uk has the specs listed:

SPECIAL FEATURES including:

-Restored, high-definition digital transfer
-English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
-PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Mike Sutton

It looks like it will not contain any on-disk extra's. Criterion has the audio commentary with director Peter Yates as an advantage.

These are most certainly not the final specs, just the only ones confirmed so far. Eureka have been posting extras like that on Amazon listings and on their own site, but a week or few weeks before the release (sometimes a month or more) have updated us with finalised extras.

The only time they failed to do this was with Fellini Satyricon, where they had to explain why there was a lack of extras (I seem to remember there was trouble with rights, or Criterion withholding their exclusive extras), but did add an optional English dub track that wasn't on the Criterion disc.

So yeah, with that being the exception, I think it's safe to say you should prepare for some other extras to be added to that list closer to the release date.

blu-ray.com review

The 78 minute Yates on stage interview sounds like an excellent addition.

I suspect it will be a more than adequate substitute for the Criterion commentary.

I'm very glad these old BFI interviews are getting more airplay, as there are some real gems there - I was particularly delighted to find a 1991 Roger Corman interview on Signal One's Gassss because I was actually in the audience and remember it very fondly. And the Sam Fuller interview that Eureka dug out for Forty Guns played beautifully against the film.

MichaelB wrote:I suspect it will be a more than adequate substitute for the Criterion commentary.

I will probably get both. That Criterion commentary with Yates is so good... I watch this particular film nearly once every couple of months and mostly with his commentary on. Used to live up outside of Boston and he definitely is spot on with what he captured, along with the performances and information. His umm "friend" /advisor he references was likely one of the Martorano brothers from Winter Hill gang (Whitey).

I actually wasn't expecting such a somber and understated movie, though there was little that I knew about the film outside of the poster and its sinister tagline. I almost want to say that if you made a character study based on one of the peripheral characters of a popular crime movie (one of the more disposable figures in said movie's world), it would be something similar to this. Mitchum is magnificent. Having become much more familiar with the Boston area in the past 10 years, I think I appreciated this more than I would have before. And it's not just the location but the era that's perfect - the drab banks remind me of the suburban banks I knew as a child, before Bank One/Chase gobbled them all up and regurgitated them into glass enclosures.

I can see why someone like Michael Atkinson would knock Yates's work here - no, he's not in the same class as Cassavetes or even Lumet, but even with a few missteps, he still does a fine job. The most bothersome element may be Grusin's score, which was more appropriate for a TV cop show from that era. Honestly, of all the prolific big-studio-film composers out there, he may be the worst.