Also, more Ozu. Still waiting for DVD releases of THE FLAVOR OF GREEN TEA OVER RICE, THE BROTHERS AND SISTERS OF THE TODA FAMILY, I GRADUATED, BUT…, and COLLEGE IS A NICE PLACE.
I would dearly love to see Masaki Kobayashi’s “The Human Condition” trilogy.
The films of Lisandro Alonso
The three most recent Pedro Costa films (I know it’s happening, but they need to hurry up)
I second the request for unreleased Herzog docs
I second the Ritwik Ghatak suggestion. Are there any more of his films available beyond the two released by the BFI?
The best candidates for an Eclipse set, it seems, are those filmmakers with distinctive bodies of work that can easily be divided into groups of five or less (as in Silent Ozu Comedies, Louis Malle Documentaries or the first films of Bergman and Fuller), but whose commercial prospects for a box set may be less sexy to the average Criterion consumer than, say, Rohmer’s Moral Tales. Hopefully it wouldn’t be unreaistic to someday see a set of Louis Garrel films or maybe one devoted to the German or French language films by Straub and Huillet, as has been done by Édition Montparnasse.
That’s good news about Pedro Costa, although, apperently, Criterion’s hogging of the film materials has thrown off Films We Like’s plans for a Canadian DVD of Colossial Youth.
they could do the films of dusan makavejev, since they already released “sweet movie” and “wr”. he hasn’t made that many films anyway. so they could encapsulate the whole rest of his career in a small eclipse set. he’s a filmmaker that needs to be re-discovered (and many of his films actually need to be discovered for the first time). especially since he’s still alive, but getting very old.
There are certainly a number of neglected director’s out there but none has been treated as shabbily as the great Satyajit Ray.
The Apu Trilogy and The Music Room at the very least, please.
Bunuel ’s Mexican films.
Dovzhenko and Pudovkin.
More silent films in general.
More silents is a good call. Maybe some of King Vidor’s stuff—THE BIG PARADE and THE CROWD are still without a release (although those two films could each warrant an individual edition).
more early soviet montage cinema is a better call. eisenstein has plenty of early films that could stand a good treatment.
Early Cronenberg
David Lynch rekeased his short films and early works why not the weird man from canada? a collection of his earliest features and one disk of his shorts would be a fantastic addition to the eclipse series
Ken Russell-sorely neglected on DVD-at least on region 1
Yilmaz Guney the great director from Turkey
Glauber Rocha box set with all the features.
Ruy Guerra box set including The Hustlers (1962), The Guns (1964), The Gods and the Dead (1970), The Fall (1976), and Mudea, Memory and Massacre.
Orson Welles and Shakespeare
Falstaff (a.k.a. Chimes at Midnight)
Macbeth
King Lear
Othello
Filming ‘Othello’
Good call, Raysquirrel.
Gus van Sant’s “Death Series.” I think a collection of Gerry(2002), Elephant(2003), Last Days(2005), and Paranoid Park(2007) would make a good eclipse release. Van Sant is a well respected director and these four films were his return to art house following mainstream releases Good Will Hunting, the Psycho remake, and Finding Forrester.
I think this as an Eclipse Series release is just fantasy though.
i’d always rather see eclipse and criterion in general focus on unearthing classics, not new films. not just because i’m most interested in film history. but because these are truly the lost gems of cinema. i believe that’s what criterion was created for, in support of. i’m much more excited about the possibility of seeing a pristine dvd print of a film i’ve always known in a scratchy, bad version. or better yet, a film that’s for the most part been nonexistant in any print at all for most of its history.
I’d like to see a 3 pack of Monte Hellman films including Ride in the Whirlwind, The Shooting, and China 9, Liberty 37.
China 9 is only available in a butchered version and the other two are also only available in horrific transfers for big bucks on ebay. Seeing as how they released two-lane blacktop, i think they are ripe for a trip down american psychological western territory, hellman style.
A Tod Browning-Lon Chaney collection, maybe ‘The Unholy Three’ (1925), ‘The Unknown’ (1927), and ‘West of Zanzibar’ (1928).
Since we have a Larissa Shepitko set why not one for her husband, Elem Klimov? I’d go for “Welcome or No Trespassing”, “Rasputin” and the short about Shepitko.
Haskel Wexler’s Documentaries
Anthony Mann’s noir pictures (a few of which seem to be in the public domain and beg to be remastered)
Bruce Conner shorts
Miklos Jancso (he’s been steadily releasing films for decades, yet only four or five are available in Region 1)
Emilio Fernandez
Chantel Akerman (anything!)
Kuchar Brothers’ works, it’d be nice to catch these as clean as possible, especially considering their rough source materials.
Rene Vienet: Can Dialectics Break Bricks? and The Girls of Kamare…. maybe Debords works as well?
“medium cool” by wexler would be a great criterion. but i dont think paramount is giving it up. besides, they released a nice widescreen print with commentary tracks of their own.
Nate I would also include Monte Hellman’s Cockfighter in that set.
Bobby: Agreed that Medium Cool would be a great addiction…. but I was refering more to the other, less-heralded, films that he’s directed regarding labor unions and social movements. To the best of my knowledge they haven’t seen the light of the day in a while.
i havent seen any of wexler’s other documentary films. so that really would be a great eclipse series.
Fassbinder, Kenneth Anger would be sweet..
Blood of a Poet from Cocteau
Agnes Varda
Exploitation films
Phantoma has already released a nifty two volume set of all of Kenneth Anger’s films.
I started collecting these the first day they came out with the Bergman set. Already a huge fan, I gobbled it up the day of release thinking “what a bargain!” for all these great movies. Then I semi-paid attention to the next release thinking…Louis Malle Documentaries (?). I mean, I adore his films…but the documentaries didn’t really snatch my attention. I bought it and since then, I have avidly awaited each new release. I pace back and forth around my computer each month waiting for Criterion to update its releases. It’s almost ruined my life. I can barely work and live anymore. I’m just kidding of course…but I really do get anxious to see what’s coming up soon. Then that long epic march from the time it’s announced to the time you can hold it in your hands seems so crazy. But then when it’s over, it’s so nice. Of course if you’re in NYC you can usually find the CC movies about 2-4 weeks early on shelves in a couple of stores anyone who lives here and is into films would already know about. But hey. That’s all I have to say.
Hopefully in the near future CC will expand their interest in Asian cinema beyond Ozu, Kurosawa, and the like. These are just some suggestions…
80’s Hong Kong gangster movies – A Better Tomorrow, Bullet in the Head, As Tears Go By, Police Story, God of Gamblers, etc.
Pre-war Shanghai – The Goddess, New Woman, Street Angel, Spring Silkworms, The Big Road
90s Zhang Yimou – Qiu Ju, Not One Less, Raise the Red Lantern, To Live, Shanghai Triad
Chang-Dong Lee: Green Fish, Peppermint Candy, Oasis, Secret Sunshine
Lost in Beijing: The Summer Palace, The World, Beijing Bicycle, Lost in Beijing, Beijing Bastards, East Palace West Palace
And generally, stuff by Kim Ki-Duk, Takeshi Miike, Tsui Hark, Johnnie To, Tetsuya Nakashima, Edward Yang,
Amen to the Monte Hellman suggestions. I think that the first mentioned westerns should get an eclipse release together, while Cockfighter needs its own Criterion treatment. It’s so good and I need to see some good extras on the making of such a unique film.
Musycks
Soidmak…. nice call Antoine. They are available in reasonable budget DVD packs…. but Universal are hard to get good stuff out of here… I should know, I worked with them for years!