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MALKOVICH MALKOVICH MALKOVICH

Restored from a 4K scan of the original camera negative and approved by director Spike Jonze
High Definition Blu-Ray (1080p) presentation
Original 5.1 DTS-HD master audio
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
Select scene audio commentary by Jonze’s friend and competitor, the filmmaker Michel Gondry
John Malkovich and John Hodgman, a conversation between the film’s star and the actor, writer and humourist
Strung Along, a new featurette exploring the marionettes made for the film, featuring newly shot interviews with puppeteer Phillip Huber and puppeteer/designer/fabricators Kamela Portuges and Lee Armstrong
The 7½ Floor, the full corporate orientation video seen in the film
John Horatio Malkovich: Dance of Despair and Disillusionment, the full pseudo-documentary seen in the film
An Interview with Director Spike Jonze, a brief chat with the director filmed under duress by Lance Bangs
An Intimate Portrait of the Art of Puppeteering, an archival interview with Phillip Huber filmed on set by Lance Bangs
An Intimate Portrait of the Art of Background Driving, an on-set look at filming the New Jersey Turnpike sequence by Lance Bangs
Don’t Enter Here, There Is Nothing Here
Theatrical trailer and TV spots
Image gallery
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Vero Navarro

FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Booklet featuring new writing on the film by Roger Keen and archive publicity materials

Least surprising arrow clue in a while

dda1996a wrote:Least surprising arrow clue in a while

Quite a few people were guessing Boccaccio ‘70, as I suspect they intended.

So if I'm comparing correctly it has all of the Criterion supplements plus the stuff on the original DVD (even the "nothing here" one)? I assume same restoration as well.

Also cover art that doesn't look like a neglected toilet bowl

cdnchris wrote: Fri May 17, 2019 3:46 pm So if I'm comparing correctly it has all of the Criterion supplements plus the stuff on the original DVD (even the "nothing here" one)? I assume same restoration as well.

Currently missing the two Lance Bangs featurettes (All Noncombatants Please Clear The Set and Spike's Photos) produced for the Criterion, but am doing my very best to change that.

swo17 wrote:Also cover art that doesn't look like a neglected toilet bowl

Well that just went without saying.

MichaelB wrote: Fri May 17, 2019 3:35 pm

dda1996a wrote:Least surprising arrow clue in a while

Quite a few people were guessing Boccaccio ‘70, as I suspect they intended.

idk, seems like the 7 1/2 to be precisely about this film. Also Boccaccio isn't even only a Fellini movie

JamesF wrote: Fri May 17, 2019 3:54 pm

cdnchris wrote: Fri May 17, 2019 3:46 pm So if I'm comparing correctly it has all of the Criterion supplements plus the stuff on the original DVD (even the "nothing here" one)? I assume same restoration as well.

Currently missing the two Lance Bangs featurettes (All Noncombatants Please Clear The Set and Spike's Photos) produced for the Criterion, but am doing my very best to change that.

Ooh yes James, thanks for pushing this one (I assume you were vocal in getting it onto Arrow's slate). Any chance of Adaptation next, through your Sony deal? That's my favourite of the two Kaufman-Jonze collaborations to date (and my second favourite Kaufman-scripted film after Synecdoche). Also might be the only chance to get a Nic Cage title into Arrow Academy...

I'm still amazed that for all of the discussion of different themes of Get Out that nobody yet seemed to have made the Catherine Keener connection back to Being John Malkovich, especially as that has pretty much the same motivations for a privileged cabal of people wanting to inhabit a different body to prolong their lifespans. OK, so here it involves everyone jumping into a single vessel (which must get very crowded! Though John Cusack shows how tragically lonely and yearning for company it can be when you are in there on your own!) but really the two films are quite similar!

I feel like we covered that connection here. It certainly came to my mind while watching Get Out

A big reason of why I didn't find Get Out's screenplay all that brilliant was that it was for me Being John Malkovich + Stepford Wives filtered through racism and white privilege.

I can now confirm some changes to the extras specs above:
- The title of the new extra on the creation of the marionettes was changed to Illusion of Life
- The disc now includes the two Lance Bangs featurettes (All Noncombatants Please Clear The Set and Spike’s Photos) from the Criterion release, so all the extras from previous Criterion and Universal extras are represented, in addition to the new extra.

JamesF wrote: Sat Jul 13, 2019 9:35 am I can now confirm some changes to the extras specs above:
- The title of the new extra on the creation of the marionettes was changed to Illusion of Life
- The disc now includes the two Lance Bangs featurettes (All Noncombatants Please Clear The Set and Spike’s Photos) from the Criterion release, so all the extras from previous Criterion and Universal extras are represented, in addition to the new extra.

Great news, James! Will be picking this up on release. Any chance you've tried asking Sony if you can license Adaptation? Very much in need of a decent Blu-ray release. Probably my favourite Kaufman collaboration (and second favourite of his works after Synecdoche).

I always thought the Tom Cruise story involved an executive saying that ("Why does it have to be John Malkovich? Why not Being Tom Cruise?")

Turns it out it was (or also) John Malkovich:

Perhaps Malkovich’s best-known film is Being John Malkovich – the brilliant absurdist comedy in which a puppeteer discovers a portal into the actor’s head and then flogs tickets for it to the public. Malkovich plays Malkovich, or the Malkovich we think we know from his parts – serious-minded, arty, sleazy, with a volcanic temper. “I don’t consider it to be so much about me as about the future and about the nature of celebrity.” He says that when he read the script, he loved it, but he asked the screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, if he could direct it and Kaufman could make it about Tom Cruise. Kaufman gave him a firm no.

EDIT: So it was two different parties. From Wikipedia:

Single Cell producers Michael Stipe and Sandy Stern pitched the film to numerous studios, including New Line Cinema, who dropped the project after chairman Robert Shaye asked: "Why the fuck can't it be Being Tom Cruise?" Jonze recalled that Malkovich asked the same question, and that Malkovich had felt that "Either the movie's a bomb and it's got not only my name above the title but my name in the title, so I'm fucked that way; or it does well and I'm just forever associated with this character."