Leadbelly (Gordon Parks, 1976)

The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films presents Leadbelly.

In his final theatrical film, celebrated director Gordon Parks cast Roger E. Mosley as the iconic blues and folk singer Huddie Ledbetter, better known to music history as Lead Belly, the King of the 12-String Guitar. Dramatizing the musician’s turbulent life from his early 20s to his mid-40s, Leadbelly follows Huddie as he performs at bars and sukey jumps, learns the blues from “Blind Lemon” Jefferson, faces violent racism and its deadly consequences, and twice finds himself incarcerated, labouring on back-breaking chain gangs and performing at the behest of white authorities. Combining pastoral simplicity with the resilient and rebellious spirit of the 1970s, all to the sounds of Lead Belly’s iconic songs, Leadbelly offers a vibrant and harrowing portrait of the segregated Jim Crow South and stood as the film Parks most admired amongst his own filmography.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New interview with filmmaker Spike Lee and music historians Kip Lornell and Charles Wolfe
• March of Time newsreel on Lead Belly
• Three Songs by Leadbelly, Blanding Shaw and Wah Mong Chang’s 1945 footage edited together two decades later by folk singer Pete Seeger
• Legend of Lead Belly, Alan Ravenscroft 52-minute documentary on the folk singer
• Selected performances from A Vision Shared: A Tribute to Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly
• Archival interview with folklorist Alan Lomax
• Theatrical trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: A new essay by scholar L. Roi Boyd III and novelist Richard Wright’s 1937 tribute to Lead Belly written for the Daily Worker

Orders (Michel Brault, 1974)

https://vimeo.com/325952008

The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films presents Orders.

Straddling fiction and documentary reconstruction, Michel Brault’s Orders is a gripping reenactment of the roundup and imprisonment of ordinary Québécois citizens during the October Crisis of 1970, when Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau imposed martial law following the political kidnappings of a British diplomat and a government minister by the secessionist Front de libération du Québec. Nearly 500 people were arrested, imprisoned, and questioned during this period before eventually being released without any charges ever being brought against them. Brault, who won the Best Director’s Award at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival for Orders, interviewed 12 detainees and recorded 50 hours of material to base this harrowing portrait of the Crisis, drawing upon his pivotal contributions to the direct cinema and cinema vérité movements during its filming. Now restored 40 years after its explosive debut at Cannes, Orders is an understated examination of the erosion of democratic values that foresees the rise of the permanent state of emergency.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

• Restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Interviews with director Michel Brault and actors Jean Lapointe, Claude Gauthier, and Louise Forestier
• On Screen – Les Ordres, a one hour television documentary on the film for Canadian television
• Les raquetteurs, Brault’s landmark short film that launched Quebec’s direct cinema movement
• Le direct avant la lettre, Denys Desjardins’ 2005 documentary on the direct cinema movement
• The October Crisis: 50 Years Onscreen, a discussion on Orders with actors Claude Gauthier and Louise Forestier, filmmaker Mathieu Denis, and documentarian Félix Rose (son of FLQ member Paul Rose)
• Action: The October Crisis of 1970 and Reaction: A Portrait of a Society in Crisis, two documentaries by Robin Spry utilizing extensive archival footage
• Trailers
• PLUS: New essays by Quebec film scholar André Loiselle and Canadian art critic and historian David Silcox

13 Steps of Maki: The Young Aristocrats (Makoto Naito, 1975)

KARATE LADY RETURNS!

Amid the success of The Street Fighter and Sister Street Fighter series, Toei Company had found a new star in Etsuko Shihomi and had created its first female martial arts hero, one that was tough, virtuous, and courageous. In 1975, Shihomi found herself in possibly her sleaziest film: 13 Steps of Maki: The Young Aristocrats, a pinky violence genre mash-up that mixed girl gangs, women in prison, yakuza, and martial arts action into a single sensational movie. As Maki Hyuga, Shihomi is the leader of the Stray Cats girl gang, fighting for justice against evil gangsters and stuck up rich girls. Though her karate skills are unsurpassed, Maki is framed and thrown into a sadistic women’s prison. Will she escape and take her revenge?

Making its worldwide Blu-ray debut, 13 Steps of Maki: The Young Aristocrats is paired here with Norifumi Suzuki’s The Great Chase, an oddball action flick released the same year and starring Etsuko Shihomi as a race car driver moonlighting as a secret agent. Filled with unceasing action, outlandish situations, and plenty of female resistance to male domination, 13 Steps to Maki and The Great Chase reveal new shades to Etsuko Shihomi’s stardom and stand as spectacular examples of Japanese exploitation in the 1970s.

Special Edition Contents:

• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation of 13 Steps of Maki: The Young Aristocrats and The Great Chase
• Original uncompressed Japanese mono audio on both films
• Optional newly translated English subtitles on both films
• New video interviews with actor Shinichi “Sonny” Chiba and director Makoto Naito
• Theatrical trailers for both films
• Stills and poster galleries for both films
• Reversible sleeve featuring newly commissioned artwork by Kungfubob O’Brien

The Vinni-Pukh Trilogy (Fyodor Khitruk, 1969/1971/1972)

Spring is here, Easter is this weekend, MMC!’s next imagined release is taking typically longer than expected, and it’s been some time since a post have gone up, so now seems like the perfect opportunity to offer something cute, furry, and vaguely off-centre. With that in mind, let’s take a moment to appreciate Fyodor Khitruk’s trilogy of short films adapting A. A. Milne’s beloved tales of Winnie-the-Pooh for Soviet audiences!

Khitruk’s trio of Vinni-Pukh films — Winnie-the-Pooh (1969), Winnie-the-Pooh Pays a Visit (1971), and Winnie-the-Pooh and a Busy Day (1972) — were made out of Soyuzmultfilm studios and without the director having seen Disney’s theatrical short Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (Wolfgang Reitherman, 1966). Khitruk’s initial interest in the character came from English editions of Milne’s stories and he was only exposed to Boris Zakhoder’s Russian translations later. Zakhoder served as screenwriter to the Trilogy and he frequently clashed with Khitruk as Zakhoder promoted an approach faithful to the original stories while Khitruk sought to transform the material. The films reflect Khitruk’s vision, doing away with the authority-figure of Christopher Robin and presenting Milne’s characters living forest creatures, not stuffed toys brought to life. Pooh remains rather dim, but he is far more assertive and boisterous than Disney’s bear. The animation is wonderful, merging the primitiveness of children’s drawings with the clean abstraction of mid-century modernism and the earth-toned colour palettes of the ’60s and ’70s. The films adapt three stories from Milne’s original 1926 book, avoiding stories from Milne’s 1928 sequel, The House at Pooh Corner, which introduced the Tigger character. If these adaptations are new to you, congrats! You are now free from the adorable hegemony of the Disney films!

Straight Time (Ulu Grosbard, 1978)

The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films presents Straight Time.

In this highly underrated classic of ’70s crime cinema, Dustin Hoffman shrewdly stars as Max Dembo, an ex-con just released from a six-year stretch in prison for armed robbery and struggling to go straight while under the oversight of his smug parole officer. Despite finding a job, a home, and even a girl of his own, Max remains trapped in an unrelenting criminal system until he breaks free with ruthless, criminal abandon and tragic consequences. Adapted from Edward Bunker’s No Beast So Fierce, featuring a score by David Shire, and boasting a terrific supporting cast including Theresa Russell, Harry Dean Stanton, Gary Busey, M. Emmet Walsh, and Kathy Bates, Ulu Grosbard’s Straight Time is a lean and bitter portrait of inevitable recidivism.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

• New 4K digital master with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Audio commentary from 2007 with director Ulu Grospard and actor Dustin Hoffman
• New interviews with actors Hoffman, Theresa Russell, and Kathy Bates
• Straight Time: He Wrote It For Criminals, a 1978 documentary on writer Edward Bunker and the making of the film
• Theatrical trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by novelist Jonathan Lethem

Ticket of No Return (Ulrike Ottinger, 1979)

The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films presents Ticket of No Return.

The it-girl of the West German art subculture, Tabea Blumenschein, stars as a nameless, silent stranger with a one-way ticket to Berlin and a plan to drink herself to death. While touring high class bars, queer nightspots, and seedy dives, she befriends a struggling homeless woman and runs across a trio of prim, judgemental women known as Social Question, Accurate Statistics, and Common Sense. With Blumenschein’s extravagant costumes and writer/director/cinematographer Ulrike Ottinger’s eye for a city still struggling to lift itself out of the bombed-out depression of World War II, Ticket of No Return is an unforgettably unique tour of Berlin and a deliciously shrewd example of feminist camp.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

• Restored 4K digital transfer, overseen by director Ulrike Ottinger, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• New interview with Ottinger
• Berlinfever – Wolf Vostell, Ottinger’s 16 minute short film of a 1973 Happening organized by artist and friend Wolf Vostell
• Gallery of Ottinger’s workbook used to develop and produce the film
• Gallery featuring rare behind-the-scenes production photos
• An excerpt from Gérard Courant’s Cinématon (2009) featuring Ottinger
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A new essay by critic Michael Koresky