Criterion Showbiz and Celebrity Breaking News

While the movie industry seemingly buckles, Disney’s seemingly cutting back on any physical media anymore, and Best Buy is apparently ending its run of selling DVDs and Blu-Rays, companies like the Criterion Collection are staying the course. As usual, the boutique, cinephile-friendly company always aims to release and rediscover classic movies in the annals of film history, and they’re doing much the same with their May 2024 announcements.

Tom Cruise has finally entered The Criterion Collection. While technically, “Cocktail” has been available on the Criterion Channel in the past (no, really), in announcing its July titles today, Criterion made Cruise’s inclusion with a DVD/Blu-Ray title official today with the addition of 1983’s classic comedy, “Risky Business,” the actor’s breakthrough film.

While Criterion devotes itself to essential classics and contemporary films, in a rare but not unprecedented move, the boutique DVD/Blu-Ray cinephile label is adding some TV to its collection in June. Just announced, Barry Jenkins’ ten-episode “Underground Railroad” mini-series, originally having premiered on Prime Video in 2021, is coming to the Criterion Collection this summer.

The Criterion Collection is constantly curating and adding the best and brightest of cinema to its collection, but its April 2024 is pretty stellar and adds two classic films that haven’t been in the collection previously that really deserved to be there. The first film added to the collection in April is notable because of Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr.

You know what time it is: time for a Criterion Collection update with their newly announced November releases. Two significant highlights anchor November: a six-film Jackie Chan box-set, “Jackie Chan: Emergence Of A Superstar,” and Martin Scorsese’s classic low-level gangster film “Mean Streets.” “Mean Streets” needs little introduction.

Every month, The Criterion Collection announces a new batch of films that are getting the special edition treatment. And for the upcoming month of August, you can’t do much better than a new release of an Akira Kurosawa film.

Each month, Criterion does its best to entice cinephiles to spend their money on a variety of new releases that are being added to their collection. For May 2023, the Criterion Collection is doing a great job about offering an eclectic mix of old and new, mainstream and underrated with its list of film offerings being added to the Collection.

We are fast approaching the holiday season, with Thanksgiving around the corner and Christmas creeping up behind it, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look toward the end of winter, right? And if you want to have something to look forward to in February 2023, the Criterion Collection is adding quite a few great titles that film fans will want to pick up. READ MORE: Richard Linklater To Direct Glenn Powell & Adria Arjona In Action-Comedy ‘Hitman’ The month is led by the 4K UHD release of “Dazed and Confused,” the iconic teen comedy film by director Richard Linklater.

While you’re still trying to figure out exactly what your Thanksgiving and Christmas plans are, the Criterion Collection is already looking at 2023. Yes, with their 2022 schedule already locked, the boutique DVD/Blu-Ray label has finalized its January 2023 release, and as usual, it’s a terrific crop of films.

Cinephiles take note, it’s that good cineaste time of the month: The Criterion Collection has unveiled its latest line-up, this time for December to wrap up 2022. The boutique DVD-Blu-Ray label is ending the year with quite a bang, including two trilogy box sets—one from Austrian fear-meister Michael Haneke and one from the lesser-known Mai Zetterling, a Swedish actor turned director who worked with Ingmar Bergman and then started making her own films in the 1960s.

If you live in the US, November is a time for feasting and excess. Obviously, you have the joy of Thanksgiving, which is a feast that makes you literally pass out from food exhaustion.

October is a time for scares. And this Halloween season, the Criterion Collection is set to serve up one of the best horror films of all time, “Night of the Living Dead,” along with an incredibly creepy thriller from David Lynch, a recent Guatemalan folk horror feature, a Southern-gothic tale, a new Japanese horror classic, and more.

Someone on Film Twitter was recently asking, what’s all the fuss about the upcoming Criterion Collection July announcement, and why are they building it up to be such a thing? Well, it’s because we’re all going broke in July and the Criterion Collection is going to make it rain with cinephile classics this summer, both modern masterpieces, and good ol’ legendary goats. The Collection is really going for it in July.

It is too easy to throw superlatives around when talking about filmmakers. Many directors with a decent enough filmography, who have been around long enough to be forgotten about can attain such a status.

Even though there are a number of award-winning films being released through streaming platforms, that isn’t stopping The Criterion Collection from making sure they get added to the esteemed library.

Last week, it was revealed that The Criterion Collection would add a new disc format to its release schedule, announcing its first batch of 4K UHD titles. And in November, the first wave of those titles, as well as a highly-anticipated box set, aim to lighten your wallets.

Almost 40 years ago, “Citizen Kane” became the first Criterion Collection release on LaserDisc. (I assume the furious clicking sound I now hear is from many millennials and Zoomers googling what the hell LaserDisc was.) And as Criterion moves into the realm of the latest and greatest physical media, 4K UHD, “Citizen Kane” is making its triumphant return.

The Criterion Collection prides itself on curating fantastic classic cinephile-friendly films that may have gone under-the-radar in the home release market and their upcoming Blu-Ray release won’t be any different. Criterion has announced that they’ll be putting together an essential collection of Melvin Van Peebles movies with their latest offering, “Melvin Van Peebles: Four Films” set to be released on September 28.

Another month, another array of Criterion Collection releases, and it’s a particularly great month of releases. First up, a crown jewel from the Howard Hawks’ oeuvre, the legendary screwball comedy “Bringing Up Baby” with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn.

Filmmaker Wong Kar Wai exists in liminal spaces— the pauses between words, the gaps between cultures, the chance encounters between strangers who will become lovers or almost become lovers before they’re strangers again. His films are about potential, not expiation; his characters are each “about to,” and that they don’t know that is heartbreaking.

While 2020 forced many of us to rely on streaming more than ever before, due to cinemas shutting down, physical media remains both relevant, and the best way to acquire and watch films. This is to say that the monthly release announcements by The Criterion Collection are always worth being excited about, and April 2021 is no different.

It feels like every month we come to you, dear reader, and explain why The Criterion Collection is going to take more money from you. Each and every month, Criterion announces new releases that truly feel like “must-haves.” And March 2021 is definitely no different.

Alberto Lattuada, the Italian filmmaker who generously supplied Federico Fellini’s first director’s credit for 1950’s “Variety Lights,” once claimed that he “invented Fellini.” His peer, Massimo Mida, disputed this, noting that if anyone invented il Maestro, it was legendary Italian auteur Roberto Rossellini. Respectfully, they’re both wrong.

Another month begins, another announcement from the Criterion Collection, with all the wares they’ll be hocking in the new year. The company has released thousands of classic films over the years, but even deep into their massive collection, still find more masterpieces to add.

The pandemic might be killing us and all our businesses, but you know who seems unaffected? The Criterion Collection who are having a killer 2020 so far. Not only have they made moves like scoring Neon’s Academy Award Best Picture winner “Parasite” just a few short months after it won the Oscar, but they’re having a field day with box sets like the Agnes Varda complete set and the upcoming Federico Fellini set.

Evoking realism, hyperrealism, and the surreal, Elem Klimov’s nightmarish, technically marvelous 1985 movie “Come and See,” is a mesmerizing and legendary, if little-seen, WWII masterpiece that finally received its due earlier this summer thanks to the Criterion Collection.

39 movies and 200 pages of words from Amy Taubin, Michael Koresky, So Mayer, Alexandra Hidalgo, Ginette Vincendeau, and Rebecca Bengal, accompanied by scores of photographs and decorated with a palette befitting of its honoree, still feels inadequate for celebrating the life, art, and beatific spirit of Left Bank icon and art world legend, Agnès Varda.

Over the past several days, we’ve seen a number of big companies respond to the death of George Floyd and the continued protests that have occurred all over the country in response to yet another unarmed Black person being killed by a police officer. And now, Criterion has joined the discussion.