Mute Witness (Anthony Waller, 1995)

SHE CAN’T SPEAK. SHE CAN’T SCREAM. SHE CAN’T BEG FOR MERCY.

Working on a low-budget horror film in Russia, Billy Hughes (Marina Zudina), a mute American makeup artist, witnesses a brutal murder on a movie-set, however her claims are doubted by her friends and by Moscow police. Still, the killers know the truth and the instructions received from their underworld boss is clear: no witnesses. So begins a night of terror for Billy as she struggles to save her own life and trust a KGB agent (Oleg Yankovskiy) who claims to be her saviour.

Anthony Waller’s Mute Witness is an expertly made thriller comparable to the classic suspense of Alfred Hitchcock and Wait Until Dark and the contemporary shocks of Brian de Palma and Silence of the Lambs. Watch it and be left speechless.

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS

• Brand-new 2K restoration from the original camera negative, produced by Arrow Films exclusively for this release
• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
• Original 2.0 and 5.1 Dolby Surround Options
• Audio commentary with writer-director Anthony Waller
• Speaking Up, new interview with actress Marina Zudina
• Bearing Witness, new interviews with actors Fay Ripley and Evan Richards
• Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing by Steven Jay Schneider

Advertisements

The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki (Juho Kuosmanen, 2016)

The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films presents The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki.

In the summer of 1962, small town Finnish baker Olli Mäki (Jarkko Lahti) has a shot at the world featherweight boxing title held by dominating American champion Davey Moore. Olli is thrust from his countryside home into a fraught training camp with the pressures of national stardom and a draining publicity circuit, but he has bigger problem – he has just fallen in love with a sweet country girl (Oona Airola) and can think about little else. Based on a true story, Juho Kuosmanen’s exquisitely lyrical, verité-styled inversion of the sports biography won the Un Certain Regard Prize, charming Cannes audiences with its gentle humor and bittersweet romance.

Disc Features:

• High-definition digital master, supervised by cinematographer Jani-Petteri Passi, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New interview with director Juho Kuosmanen, production designer Kari Kankaanpää cinematographer Passi
• New interviews with actors Jarkko Lahti, Oona Airola, and Eero Milonoff
• Roadmarkers (2007), Citizens (2008), and The Painting Sellers (2010), three award-winning short films by Kuosmanen
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A new essay by critic Manohla Dargis

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

The Forbidden Room (Guy Maddin with Evan Johnson, 2015)

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

Overwhelmed with narrative and fearful that their brains might explode under its pressure, Canadian cult filmmaker Guy Maddin and his co-creator Evan Johnson offer the ultimate epic phantasmagoria from the ectoplasmic residue of early cinema’s lost films.  Two-Strip Technicolor havoc is created with the assistance of master poet John Ashbery, actor Udo Kier, and a host of French and Québécois stars who filmed on public sets at Paris’ Pompidou Center and Montreal’s Phi Center.  The Forbidden Room is a kaleidoscopic viewing experience borne from cinema’s past, present, and future where flapjacking eating submarine crews, forest bandits, skeleton women, and vampire bananas await!

Disc Features:

• New 4K digital master, with 5.1 digital DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Audio commentary with Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson
• Interviews and behind-the-scenes footage from the Phi Center shoots
• Endless Ectoloops
• Living posters
• Theatrical trailer
• Seven-episode series on Guy Maddin’s Seances from the Phi Center
• New interview with cinematographer Benjamin Kasulke
• New interview with production designer Galen Johnson on his design of the film’s more than 400 intertitle screens
• La chambre interdite, French version of The Forbidden Room with French intertitle screens
• The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Maddin, Yves Montmayeur’s 65-minute documentary on “the Canadian David Lynch”
• Once a Chicken, a séance with László Moholy-Nagy
• Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton, Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson’s short film on the making of Paul Gross’s Canadian war film, Hyena Road, with introduction by the filmmakers
• Footage from the Toronto Film Critics Association’s awards ceremony naming The Forbidden Room 2015’s Best Canadian Film
• PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by Guy Maddin and film critics Jonathan Rosenbaum and Hillary Weston

Hellzapoppin’ (H. C. Potter, 1941)

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

Make way for the nuttiest, zaniest, wackiest film this side of the loony-bin!  Comedy team Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson blast through the fourth wall and demolish the musical-comedy genre, playing Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson, production assistants to a fledgling stage revue.  Hellzapoppin’s screwball romance story takes a backseat to the daffy hijinks and absurdist gags that tear at breakneck speed through this play within a film within a film.  Inspired by the comedians’ highly successful Broadway show and adapted to mock the filmmaking process, Hellzapoppin’ is a singular work of celluloid irreverence where ANY SIMILARITY TO A MOTION PICTURE IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL!

Disc Features:

• New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Introduction by filmmaker and comedian Mel Brooks
• New interview on the Hellzapoppin’ Broadway musical with Jack Marshall, Artistic Director of The American Century Theater
• Crazy House, Olsen and Johnson’s 1943 feature film follow-up where the duo attempts to film an independent movie after being fired by Universal Pictures
• Kinescopes of Olsen and Johnson’s NBC variety show Fireball Fun for All
• PLUS: An essay by media scholar Henry Jenkins

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (Michael Winterbottom, 2005)

The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films presents Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story.

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story is Michael Winterbottom’s unorthodox adaptation of the unfilmable English literary masterpiece The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, written by Laurence Sterne.  Staying true to the manic spirit of the book, the film flips back and forth between the 18th century story and the hapless efforts of the 21st century filmmakers attempting to shoot the classic.  Tristram Shandy (Steve Coogan) narrates the filmed story of his life from conception onward, with numerous digressions and unfinished thoughts, while actor Steve Coogan serves his professional ego behind the scenes against the increasing prominence of his co-star, Rob Brydon.  Crammed with literary jokes and dark humor, and aided by stellar performances by Jeremy Northam, Stephen Fry, and Gillian Anderson, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story is a clever, postmodern take on the construction of a film from an intricate, hilariously autobiographical novel.

Disc Features:

• New, restored 2K digital film transfer, supervised by cinematographer Marcel Zyskind and approved by director Michael Winterbottom, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• A Womb with a View, a new interview with director Michael Winterbottom and actors Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon
• Audio commentary with Coogan and Brydon
• Helen Weinstein conversation with Winterbottom and producer Andrew Eaton for Historyworks
• Extended interview with Steve Coogan conducted by journalist Tony Wilson
• Deleted and extended scenes
• Behind-the-scenes footage
• Premiere footage
• Theatrical trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by film critic Mark Kermode and cartoonist Martin Rowson