Our friends at The Criterion Collection have revealed their upcoming releases for January, and while it’s another small month (3 new releases, 1 upgrade), it does feature a multiple Oscar winner as well as the “mother of all monster movies,” making it another incredible month of releases.
First up is the surprise upgrade of Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, a multiple storyline look at the “war on drugs” that won four Oscars in 2000, including Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor for Benicio Del Toro.
On to the new additions to the collection, there’s Belle Du Jour, Luis Bunuel’s 1967 examination of desire and pleasure starring Catherine Denueve in a role that pits her as equal parts housewife and prostitute. Next up is The Moment of Truth, Director Francesco Rosi’s 1964 in-depth look at the stressful, yet thrilling life of a torero, or bullfighter.
Lastly, and most assuredly not least, is the much rumored release of the 1964 Japanese monster classic, Godzilla. This is going to be an unbelievable release, and will also include the 1967 Americanized version, Godzilla, King of the Monsters, on the disc as well.
All of these films come with Criterion’s typical MSRP of $39.99, except The Moment of Truth, which falls into Criterion’s recent pricing of $29.99 when there are little to no supplements available. All special features and release dates are listed below.
Belle Du Jour (Release Date: January 17, 2012)
- New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
- Audio commentary featuring Michael Wood, author of the BFI Film Classics book Belle de jour
- New video piece featuring writer and sexual-politics activist Susie Bright and film scholar Linda Williams
- New interview with screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere
- Excerpt from the French television program Cinema, featuring interviews with Carrière and actress Catherine Deneuve
- Original and American release trailers
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Melissa Anderson and a 1970s interview with director Luis Buñuel
Traffic (Release Date: January 17, 2012)
- Restored digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Steven Soderbergh and supervising sound editor and rerecording mixer Larry Blake, with 5.1 and 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks
- Three audio commentaries, featuring Soderbergh and writer Stephen Gaghan; producers Laura Bickford, Edward Zwick, and Marshall Herskovitz and consultants Tim Golden and Craig Chretien; and composer Cliff Martinez
- Twenty-five deleted scenes, with optional commentary by Soderbergh and Gaghan
- Three sets of demonstrations: one on film processing and the look of the Mexico sequences; one on film editing, with commentary by editor Stephen Mirrione; and one on dialogue editing
- Additional unused footage of various scenes, from multiple angles
- Theatrical trailers and television spots
- Gallery of trading cards depicting the U.S. Customs canine squad used to detect narcotics and illegal substances
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Manohla Dargis
The Moment of Truth (Release Date: January 24, 2012)
- New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
- Interview with director Francesco Rosi from 2004
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Peter Matthews
Godzilla Release Date: January 24, 2012)
- New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
- Audio commentary by David Kalat (A Critical History and Filmography of Toho’s Godzilla Series)
- New high-definition digital restoration of Godzilla: King of the Monsters!, Terry Morse’s 1956 reworking of the original, starring Raymond Burr
- Audio commentary for Godzilla: King of the Monsters! by Kalat
- New interviews with actor Akira Takarada (Hideto Ogata), Godzilla performer Haruo Nakajima, and effects technicians Yoshio Irie and Eizo Kaimai
- Interview with legendary Godzilla score composer Akira Ifukube
- Featurette detailing Godzilla’s photographic effects
- New interview with Japanese-film critic Tadao Sato
- The Unluckiest Dragon, an illustrated audio essay featuring historian Greg Pflugfelder describing the tragic fate of the fishing vessel Daigo fukuryu maru, a real-life event that inspired Godzilla
- Theatrical trailers
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic J. Hoberman
