Happy Christmas Eve! And what better way for MMC! to extend its season’s greetings than by sharing Chowboys: An American Folktale (2018), the final work of Winnipeg’s irreverent Astron-6. Here, three stupid cowboys struggle to survive in the frigid mountains on the coldest night of the year. Beautiful hands, sheet cakes, St. Nicholas, and cannibalism make for a wacky and gory holiday short set on Christmas Eve. God bless us, everyone (although maybe not Wendigo Santa).
Filmmaker at Work
Knife + Heart (Yann Gonzalez, 2018) – Ithaca Fantastik 2018
The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films presents Knife + Heart.
In the neon glow of 1979 Paris, Anne (Vanessa Paradis) makes her living producing low-budget gay pornography and struggles with the heartbreaking rejection of her longtime lover and current film editor Loïs (Kate Moran). She aims to inspire Loïs back into loving her with increasingly ambitious productions, even using the murders of her actors by a leather clad killer as inspiration, but as the killings continue and her troupe becomes increasingly cautious, Anne assumes the role of amateur sleuth investigating the secret of the mysterious figure that stalks her company. Deftly blending Parisian porn silliness and Italian slasher conventions with a pulsing score by electronic music group M83 and a perfect period production design, Knife + Heart is an affectionately queer tribute to cinema’s body genres and to love in its many forms.
Disc Features:
- 4K digital master, approved by director Yann Gonzalez and director of photography Simon Beaufils, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Two audio commentaries, one featuring Gonzalez and actors Vanessa Paradis, Kate Moran, and Nicolas Maury, and the other featuring Gonzalez, Beaufils, co-writer Cristiano Mangione, and production designer Sidney Dubois
- New interview on the film’s soundtrack with Yann Gonzalez and his brother Anthony Gonzalez
- New interview with historical advisor Hervé Joseph Lebrun on the 1970s Parisian porn scene
- Mondo Homo: A Study of Gay French Porn in the ’70s, Lebrun’s 2009 feature-length documentary
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by Anthony Nocera
Tougher Than Leather (Rick Rubin, 1988)
UNCONCEIVABLE! UNBELIEVABLE!
Trouble is just a beat away in this action-packed ’80s classic starring the Kings of Rock, Run DMC. The up-and-coming hip-hop trio of Run, DMC, and Jam Master Jay are signed to Strut Productions, a crooked booking agency laundering drug money for gangsters and aiming to exploit the group’s growing popularity to further their criminal schemes. When their close friend and roadie Runny Ray stumbles upon the illegal operation and is murdered in cold blood, the devastated musicians take the law into their own hands to avenge their friend’s death, facing racist thugs and armed gangsters in their pursuit of justice.
Co-written, co-produced, and directed by superstar record producer Rick Rubin and supported by a hard-hitting soundtrack featuring music by Run DMC, the Beastie Boys, Slick Rick, the Junk Yard Band, and Public Enemy, Tougher Than Leather is an urban Western that’s too tough to miss.
Special Features:
- New High Definition digital transfer
- High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
- Original Stereo 2.0 and 5.1 Dolby Surround Options
- Optional English SDH subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- Grammar Like a Hammer: The Making of Tougher Than Leather, a new documentary containing interviews with Darryl McDaniels, Rev Run, Rick Rubin, Russell Simmons, Chuck D, and Eddie Murphy
- Run DMC music videos for “Run’s House,” “Mary, Mary,” and “Christmas in Hollis”
- Theatrical trailer
- Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring an interview with photographer Glen E. Friedman and a collection of his on-set photographs
American Movie (Chris Smith, 1999)
The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of classic important and contemporary films presents American Movie.
Menomonee Falls may be a long way from Hollywood, but quick-talking filmmaker Mark Borchardt has a cinematic dream and he aims to finance his magnum opus, Northwestern, through a direct-to-market, no-budget horror short titled Coven. Filmmakers Chris Smith and Sarah Price filmed Borchardt and his team of hometown thespians and semi-willing family members through two years of financial crisis and emotional turmoil. The result was a bizarrely heartfelt and hilariously poignant documentary that became the award-winning hit of the 1999 Sundance Film Festival and a uniquely arresting portrait of Midwestern eccentricity, determination and character.
Disc Features:
- Restored 2K digital transfer approved by filmmakers Chris Smith and Sarah Price, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Audio commentary with filmmakers Smith and Price, star Borchardt, and co-star Mike Schank
- Coven, the short film of Borchardt
- New interview with filmmakers Smith and Price
- New interview with documentary subjects Borchardt and Schank
- Twenty-two deleted scenes
- All five appearances by Borchardt on Late Show with David Letterman
- NFL commercial starring Borchardt and Schank
- Mark and Mike, a zerotv.com series featuring Borchardt and Schank
- Theatrical trailer
- PLUS: An essay by filmmaker Ti West
Master of the Flying Guillotine (Jimmy Wang Yu, 1976)
IT’S A MEAN MACHINE – CUTS YOUR HEAD OFF CLEAN!
This classic martial arts death match pits two wuxia icons against each other – the famed One-Armed Boxer (Hong Kong superstar Jimmy Wang Yu) versus a blind assassin (veteran character actor Kam Kong) and his legendary Flying Guillotine. Set in 1730, during the early part of the Ching dynasty, ethnic Chinese Hans formed bands of rebels to fight their Manchurian oppressors. After the One-Armed Boxer, a stoic kung fu expert and Han revolutionary, disposes of two would-be assassins, their master, a formidable blind emissary of the Ching posing as a Buddhist monk, swears revenge, searching out every one-armed martial artist and snatching their heads with his tethered decapitation device called the Flying Guillotine.
Arguably the most famous Hong Kong martial arts film of the post-Bruce Lee, pre-Jackie Chan period, this independently-produced classic is more popular than ever, with a legacy extending to films like Kill Bill and video games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. With its wild, fantasy face-offs and its cosmic Krautrock soundtrack, Master of the Flying Guillotine is undoubtedly a film worthy of losing your head over!
Special Features:
- New High Definition digital transfer
- High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
- Original Mandarin version and English dub track (uncompressed on the Blu-ray Disc)
- New optional English subtitle translation
- Audio commentary with film critics Andy Klein, Wade Major, and Alex Luu
- Interviews with star/director Jimmy Wang Yu
- Spinning Vengeance – director Quentin Tarantino on Master of the Flying Guillotine
- Design for Decapitation – Grant Imahara on the mechanics of the Flying Guillotine
- Trailers
- Reversible sleeve featuring newly commissioned artwork
- Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing by Craig Lines
Little Murders (Alan Arkin, 1971)
The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films presents Little Murders.
After directing the successful off-Broadway revival of Jules Feiffer’s acclaimed play, Alan Arkin made his feature film directing debut translating the senseless, hysterical world of Little Murders to the screen. Apathetic photographer Alfred (Elliott Gould) and feisty optimist Patsy (Marcia Rodd) are a young mismatched couple in a frantic metropolis where sniper attacks, power outages, and obscene phone calls are commonplace. With riotous supporting performances by Vincent Gardenia, Elizabeth Wilson, Jon Korkes, Lou Jacobi, Donald Sutherland, and Arkin himself, Feiffer’s satirical screenplay takes absurdist aim at the meaningless violence and spreading disenchantment in American life and produces a blackly hilarious comedy classic.
Disc Features:
- New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Audio commentary from 2004 featuring actor Elliott Gould and writer Jules Feiffer
- New interview program with director Alan Arkin, stars Elliott Gould and Marcia Rodd, and writer Jules Feiffer
- Short films directed by Arkin – T.G.I.F. (1967), People Soup (1969), Samuel Beckett is Coming Soon (1993), and Blood (Thinner Than Water) (2004)
- Gene Deitch’s Academy Award-winning short film Munro, written by Feiffer
- Theatrical trailer and TV spots
- PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by film scholar Jim Emerson and Roger Ebert’s original 1971 review
Make Mine Criterion! 