Criterion Cast: Main Episodes

To celebrate The Criterion Collection’s 2016 releases — and there’s a lot to celebrate — Arik Devens, David Blakeslee, Keith Enright, Scott Nye, and Trevor Berrett gather to talk about the past year in Criterion, including their favorite three Criterion releases of 2016.

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– Favorite Cover: A Brighter Summer Day

– Favorite Cover: Lady Snowblood

– Favorite Cover: Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams

– Favorite Cover: The Emigrants/The New Land

– Favorite Cover: La chienne

Here’s a list of currently available CC 4K transfers

Music for the show is from Fatboy Roberts’ Geek Remixed project.

This time on the podcast, Ryan is joined by Arik Devens to discuss Fritz Lang’s The Testament of Dr. Mabuse.

Locked away in an asylum for a decade and teetering between life and death, the criminal mastermind Doctor Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) has scribbled his last will and testament: a manifesto establishing a future empire of crime. When the document’s nefarious writings start leading to terrifying parallels in reality, it’s up to Berlin’s star detective, Inspector Lohmann (Otto Wernicke, reprising his role from M) to connect the most fragmented, maddening clues in a case unlike any other.

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This time on the podcast, Ryan is joined by West Anthony to discuss George Franju’s Eyes Without a Face.

At his secluded chateau in the French countryside, a brilliant, obsessive doctor (Pierre Brasseur) attempts a radical plastic surgery to restore the beauty of his daughter’s disfigured countenance—at a horrifying price.

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This time on the podcast, Scott is joined by David Blakeslee and Ryan Gallagher to discuss Kenji Mizoguchi’s The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum.

This heartrending masterpiece by Kenji Mizoguchi about the give-and-take between life and art marked the first full realization of the hypnotic long takes and eloquent camera movements that would come to define the director’s films. Kikunosuke (Shotaro Hanayagi), the adopted son of a legendary kabuki actor who is striving to achieve stardom by mastering female roles, turns to his infant brother’s wet nurse for support and affection—and she soon gives up everything for her beloved’s creative glory. Offering a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes of kabuki theater in the late nineteenth century, The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum provides a critique of the oppression of women and the sacrifices required of them, and represents the pinnacle of Mizoguchi’s early career.

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Music from this episode is by Simon & Garfunkel.

This time on the podcast, Scott is joined by David Blakeslee, Trevor Berrett, and Arik Devens to discuss Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night.

About the film:

After fifteen films that received mostly local acclaim, the 1955 comedy Smiles of a Summer Night (Sommarnattens leende) at last ushered in an international audience for Ingmar Bergman. In turn-of-the-century Sweden, four men and four women attempt to navigate the laws of attraction. During a weekend in the country, the women collude to force the men’s hands in matters of the heart, exposing their pretensions and insecurities along the way. Chock-full of flirtatious propositions and sharp witticisms delivered by such Swedish screen legends as Gunnar Björnstrand and Harriet Andersson, Smiles of a Summer Night is one of cinema’s great erotic comedies.

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Music from this episode is by John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John and Robbie Williams.

This time on the podcast, Scott is joined by David Blakeslee, Trevor Berrett, and Arik Devens to discuss Ingmar Bergman’s Summer with Monika.

About the film:

Inspired by the earthy eroticism of Harriet Andersson, in the first of her many roles for him, Ingmar Bergman had a major international breakthrough with this sensual and ultimately ravaging tale of young love. A girl (Andersson) and boy (Lars Ekborg) from working-class families in Stockholm run away from home to spend a secluded, romantic summer at the beach, far from parents and responsibilities. Inevitably, it is not long before the pair are forced to return to reality. The version initially released in the U.S. was reedited by its distributor into something more salacious, but the original Summer with Monika (Sommaren med Monika), presented here, is a work of stunning maturity and one of Bergman’s most important films.

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Music from this episode is by The Beach Boys.

This time on the podcast, Scott is joined by David Blakeslee, Trevor Berrett, and Arik Devens to discuss Ingmar Bergman’s Summer Interlude.

About the film:

Touching on many of the themes that would define the rest of his legendary career—isolation, performance, the inescapability of the past—Ingmar Bergman’s tenth film was a gentle drift toward true mastery. In one of the director’s great early female roles, Maj-Britt Nilsson beguiles as an accomplished ballet dancer haunted by her tragic youthful affair with a shy, handsome student (Birger Malmsten). Her memories of the sunny, rocky shores of Stockholm’s outer archipelago mingle with scenes from her gloomy present, most of them set in the dark backstage environs of the theater where she works. A film that the director considered a creative turning point, Summer Interlude (Sommarlek) is a reverie about life and death that unites Bergman’s love of theater and cinema.

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Music from this episode is by Chad & Jeremy and Sam Cooke.

This time on the podcast, Scott is joined by David Blakeslee, Ryan Gallagher, and James McCormick to discuss Michael Bay’s Armageddon.

About the film:

Bruce Willis and an all-star cast of roughneck oil drillers blast off on a mission to save the planet in Michael Bay’s doomsday space epic.

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Siskel & Ebert Review:

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Music from this episode is by Peter, Paul, & Mary and Aerosmith.

This time on the podcast, Scott is joined by David Blakeslee and James McCormick to discuss Vilgot Sjöman’s I Am Curious (Yellow) and I Am Curious (Blue).

About the film:

Seized by customs upon entry to the United States, subject of a heated court battle, banned in cities across the United States, Vilgot Sjöman’s I Am Curious—Yellow is one of the most controversial films of all time. This landmark document of Swedish society during the sexual revolution has been declared both obscene and revolutionary. It tells the story of Lena (Lena Nyman), a searching and rebellious young woman, and her personal quest to understand the social and political conditions in 1960s Sweden, as well as her bold exploration of her own sexual identity. Shattering taboos as it freely traverses the lines between fact and fiction, I Am Curious—Yellow is presented here for the first time with its companion piece I Am Curious—Blue, a parallel film featuring the same characters and in which the lines between documentary and fiction are even further blurred.

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Music from this episode is by Coldplay and Eiffel 65.