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Woody Allen joins the Arrow Academy collection with Six Films 1971-1978, featuring Bananas, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask, Sleeper, Love and Death, Annie Hall and Interiors.

Exclusive to this collection: Annie Hall and a 100-page hardback book featuring new and archive writing on all the films by Woody Allen, Michael Brooke, Johnny Mains, Kat Ellinger, John Leman Riley, Hannah Hamad and Brad Stevens.

Bananas and Everything You Always Want to Know About Sex will also be receiving standalone releases.

Sweet, only half of these are out in the states on Blu already and those will be easily resellable (the TT will prob pay for half of the set alone!)

That's unexpected. But pretty cool, I won't have to go through the expensive TT releases, now.

Only one of those is TT, I'm not sure they have the rest of this period's MGM titles. There's been long speculation that Criterion has Bananas, but that's been floated forever

Superb news, and glad I only picked up Annie Hall thus far.

domino harvey wrote:Only one of those is TT, I'm not sure they have the rest of this period's MGM titles. There's been long speculation that Criterion has Bananas, but that's been floated forever

I do think that they would have released at some of these at some point, which is why I wrote that, but true, it's speculation on my part.

It is already listed at the Arrow store with a September 5th release date, but it doesn't mention how limited the set is or if the 40% off is an early bird price.
Let's hope Arrow will run a June sale so I can get this for 48 GBP!

So I guess we're not getting a Rohmer set anytime soon?

Great news; on the one hand it's a bummer to rebuy a TT title and on the other hand its my absolute favorite Woody Allen film and hey they managed to pack a set of six with five they didn't put out.

Super interesting how the no-extras thing is still playing out aside from writing accompanying the film(s).

Arrow has just confirmed the following on Facebook:

• Two more volumes of similar size, to be released towards the end of 2016/start of 2017;
• All titles that haven't already got a separate UK release to be released individually;
• 1971-1991 date range;
• Seventeen individual releases in total.

Which I suspect is enough info for you to work everything out apart from exactly where the divide between volumes 2 and 3 will fall.

Well, sounds like it's time to sell all of the TT discs! Wish Arrow could be more specific with titles so we could be sure now, but man, talk about a sunk cost for most of us so far if so!

Nevermind, it has to be like this:

Manhattan
Stardust Memories
A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy
Zelig
Broadway Danny Rose
the Purple Rose of Cairo

Hannah and Her Sisters
Radio Days
September
Another Woman
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Alice
Shadows and Fog

They also say they'll release the complete films from that period eventually, which is a bit odd as by my count that should be 19 films!

Mildly heartbroken to have spent all the money on these TT releases thus far, but on the other hand at $30/pop I've probably already sunk in the amount I'd have spent on these sets anyway, almost exactly (given there's six already released).

So given Michael has confirmed over on FB that Allen's releases do specifically contractually mandate no bonus features on the disc, could Criterion just be sitting on the US rights for Take the Money and Run (whose cast has phantom pages in the numbers immediately around Allen) with no idea what to do considering they don't want to just invest in a healthy-sized booklet as the sole feature?

Ribs wrote:They also say they'll release the complete films from that period eventually, which is a bit odd as by my count that should be 19 films!

Re-read my post. Specifically the second bullet point.

Do you mean seventeen individual releases as in films inside the boxes, or individual as in each title released separate from the box (like Bananas but not Annie Hall)?

Your wording is more clear than that they used on the FB - they said they had 17 films to get through but it wasn't clear they meant in total or individually, whereas you make it clear they meant through single releases (and both sources are ignoring New York Stories unsurprisingly)

Manhattan has been released in the UK, so if they meant titles released separate (ie not Annie Hall), that'd bring the total up to 19 if they're not counting the box exclusives in the seventeen

EDIT: More or less confirmed by Arrow on Facebook

They will all get individual releases eventually (except Annie Hall and Manhattan, which contractually must only be within their respective boxsets). Improvements, not really unless you count encoding!

I suppose it was never going to happen, but Men of Crisis would have been a nice addition.

Great news. Just in time to put off buying Zelig from TT.

I would like to see Play It Again, Sam released on Blu at some point. He didn't direct it but it's one of my all-time favorites of his.

The 1991 cut off date is a tiny bit frustrating. Husbands and Wives from 1992 is one of his better films and feels like a more logical cut off given how it's the last one he made with Mia Farrow.

Ribs wrote:So given Michael has confirmed over on FB that Allen's releases do specifically contractually mandate no bonus features on the disc, could Criterion just be sitting on the US rights for Take the Money and Run (whose cast has phantom pages in the numbers immediately around Allen) with no idea what to do considering they don't want to just invest in a healthy-sized booklet as the sole feature?

I'd asked Twilight Time about this issue before (whether it was contractually mandated or just out of respect for the filmmaker and could be disregarded a la Arrow's inclusion of Thief's theatrical cut) and they didn't answer so I'm pleased to see Arrow confirm this via Michael. There have been a few interviews on his recent films, but presumably he has less control over their home video release.

This has been a dream Arrow Academy release of mine, as I thought that only they could do it justice with the printed material and I'm glad to see that this appears to be the case!

I'm glad I won't have to go through Twilight Time again, I'm glad I'll be able to sell off my other Allen titles, and most of all, I'm glad I'll be able to get rid of the remaining DVDs of these titles (in particular, the one for Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex looks goddamn awful).

hearthesilence wrote:The 1991 cut off date is a tiny bit frustrating. Husbands and Wives from 1992 is one of his better films and feels like a more logical cut off given how it's the last one he made with Mia Farrow.

It's not an MGM-held movie like all of the rest

I wonder if Arrow could 'correct' the rooftop scene in Annie Hall by restoring the original burned-in subtitles? Or, at the very least, not having them in yellow.

hearthesilence wrote:The 1991 cut off date is a tiny bit frustrating. Husbands and Wives from 1992 is one of his better films and feels like a more logical cut off given how it's the last one he made with Mia Farrow.

As Domino says, the nineteen films from 1971-91 are all part of the same catalogue. MGM acquired both the United Artists (1971-80) and Orion (1981-91) libraries, so they can all be licensed as a job lot. (Even Annie Hall and Manhattan, which are already out on BD in the UK, but MGM allowed Arrow to include them as box-set exclusives.)

But throwing anything else into the mix would be contractually much fiddlier - it's a shame that Take the Money and Run isn't included at the other end, for instance, but that's also got a different rightsholder.

Calvin wrote:I'd asked Twilight Time about this issue before (whether it was contractually mandated or just out of respect for the filmmaker and could be disregarded a la Arrow's inclusion of Thief's theatrical cut) and they didn't answer so I'm pleased to see Arrow confirm this via Michael. There have been a few interviews on his recent films, but presumably he has less control over their home video release.

I can't speak for the later Woody Allen films, but he famously had an incredibly generous contract with UA and Orion (who were effectively the same people, since Arthur Krim and colleagues left UA to form Orion) that allowed him huge control over the distribution of the 1971-91 titles. And he's famously vetoed any video extras bar theatrical trailers.

In fact, we weren't at all sure whether he'd be happy sanctioning the book (over which he also had contractually mandated personal approval), but now it's had the go-ahead, volumes two and three are being produced in parallel to the same formula.

Calvin wrote:I wonder if Arrow could 'correct' the rooftop scene in Annie Hall by restoring the original burned-in subtitles? Or, at the very least, not having them in yellow.

I'll make sure the disc's producer is aware of this.

And to say I almost bought Crimes and misdemeanors an hour ago from TT !