The Criterion Collection has announced five titles for Blu-ray release in July. On July 9th, the studio will release Kenji Mizoguchi's The Life of Oharu (1952). On July 16th, it will release Peter Brook's Lord of the Flies (1963). On July 23rd, it will release Gabriel Axel's Babette's Feast (1987) and Ang Lee's The Ice Storm (1997). And on July 30th, it will release Guillermo del Toro's The Devil's Backbone (2001).
The Life of Oharu -
A peerless chronicler of the soul who specialized in supremely emotional, visually exquisite films about the circumstances of women in Japanese society throughout its history, Kenji Mizoguchi had already been directing movies for decades when he made The Life of Oharu in 1952. But this epic portrait of an inexorable fall from grace, starring the incredibly talented Kinuyo Tanaka as an imperial lady-in-waiting who gradually descends to street prostitution, was the movie that gained its director international attention, ushering in a new golden period for him.
Special Features:
New high-definition digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Introductory commentary by scholar Dudley Andrew
Mizoguchi's Art and the Demimonde, an illustrated audio essay featuring Andrew
Kinuyo Tanaka's New Departure, a 2009 film by Koko Kajiyama documenting the actor's 1949 goodwill tour of the United States
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Gilberto Perez
Lord of the Flies -
In the hands of the renowned experimental theater director Peter Brook, William Golding's legendary novel on the primitivism lurking beneath civilization becomes a film as raw and ragged as the lost boys at its center. Taking an innovative documentary-like approach, Brook shot Lord of the Flies with an off-the-cuff naturalism, seeming to record a spontaneous eruption of its characters' ids. The result is a rattling masterpiece, as provocative as its source material.
Special Features:
New, restored 4K digital film transfer, supervised by cameraman and editor Gerald Feil, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Audio commentary featuring director Peter Brook, producer Lewis Allen, director of photography Tom Hollyman, and Feil
Audio recordings of William Golding reading from his novel Lord of the Flies, accompanied by the corresponding scenes from the film
Deleted scene, with optional commentary and reading by Golding
Interview with Brook from 2008
Collection of behind-the-scenes material, featuring home movies, screen tests, outtakes, and stills
New interview with Feil
Excerpt from Feil's 1972 documentary The Empty Space, showcasing Brook's theater methods
Something Queer in the Warehouse, a piece composed of never-before-seen footage shot by the boy actors during production, with new voice-over by Tom Gaman, who played Simon
Trailer
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Geoffrey Macnab and an excerpt from Brook's book The Shifting Point
Babette's Feast -
At once a rousing paean to artistic creation, a delicate evocation of divine grace, and the ultimate film about food, the Oscar-winning Babette's Feast is a deeply beloved cinematic treasure. Directed by Gabriel Axel and adapted from a story by Isak Dinesen, this is the layered tale of a French housekeeper with a mysterious past who brings quiet revolution in the form of one exquisite meal to a circle of starkly pious villagers in late nineteenth-century Denmark. Babette's Feast combines earthiness and reverence in an indescribably moving depiction of pleasure that goes to your head like fine champagne.
Special Features:
New 2K digital film restoration, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
New interview with actor Stéphane Audran
Karen Blixen: Storyteller, a 1995 documentary about the author of the film's source story, who wrote under the pen name Isak Dinesen
New visual essay by filmmaker Michael Almereyda
New interview with sociologist Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson about the significance of cuisine in French culture
Trailer
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Mark Le Fanu and Dinesen's 1950 story
The Ice Storm -
Suburban Connecticut, 1973. While Richard Nixon's "I am not a crook" speech drones from the TV, the Hood and Carver families try to navigate a Thanksgiving break simmering with unspoken resentment, sexual tension, and cultural confusion. With clarity, subtlety, and a dose of wicked humor, Academy Award–winning director Ang Lee renders Rick Moody's acclaimed novel of upper-middle-class American malaise as a trenchant, tragic cinematic portrait of lost souls. Featuring a tremendous cast of established actors (Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver) and rising stars (Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, Katie Holmes) The Ice Storm is among the finest films of the 1990s.
Special Features:
Restored high-definition digital film transfer, supervised and approved by director Ang Lee and director of photography Frederick Elmes, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
Audio commentary featuring Lee and producer-screenwriter James Schamus
Documentary featuring interviews with actors Joan Allen, Kevin Kline, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Sigourney Weaver, and Elijah Wood
Interview with novelist Rick Moody
Deleted scenes
Footage from a 2007 event honoring Lee and Schamus at New York's Museum of the Moving Image
Visual essays featuring interviews with the film's cinematographer and production and costume designers
Theatrical trailer
PLUS: An essay by critic Bill Krohn
The Devil's Backbone -
The most personal film by Guillermo del Toro is also among his most frightening and emotionally layered. Set during the final week of the Spanish Civil War, The Devil's Backbone tells the tale of a ten-year-old boy who, after his freedom-fighting father is killed, is sent to a haunted rural orphanage full of terrible secrets. Del Toro effectively combines gothic ghost story, murder mystery, and historical melodrama in a stylish concoction that reminds us—as would his later Pan's Labyrinth—that the scariest monsters are often the human ones.
Special Features:
New 2K digital film restoration, approved by director Guillermo del Toro and cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Audio commentary featuring Del Toro
Video introduction by Del Toro from 2010
New interviews with Del Toro about the process of creating the ghost Santi and the drawings and designs made in preparation for the film
¿Que es un fantasma?, a 2004 making-of documentary
Spanish Gothic, a 2010 interview with Del Toro about the genre and its influence on his work
Interactive director's notebook, with Del Toro's drawings and handwritten notes, along with interviews with the filmmaker
Four deleted scenes, with optional commentary
New featurette about the Spanish Civil War as evoked in the film
Program comparing Del Toro's thumbnail sketches and Carlos Giménez's storyboards with the final film
Selected on-screen presentation of Del Toro's thumbnail sketches alongside the sections of the final film they represent (Blu-ray edition only)
Trailer
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Mark Kermode
