Displaying items by tag: Cohen Film Collection

All right, ladies and gentlemen... we’re back! Thanks again for your patience while we took a little bit of time off here at The Digital Bits last week. All of us here at the site have had a lot going on this past month or so, so we definitely needed and appreciated the chance to recharge a bit. But we’re diving right back into the thick of things today, which means catching you up on all the interesting release news of the past several days.

First, though, we have a quick new disc review... Tim has taken a look at Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men (1957) in 4K Ultra HD from Kino Lorber Studio Classics. This is classic black-and-white courtroom drama starring the great Henry Fonda, along with Lee Cobb, E.G. Marshall, Jack Klugman—it’s a real gem.

Now then, the big breaking news today is that The Criterion Collection has just unveiled their August slate, which is set to include an upgrade of Akira Kurosawa’s legendary Dreams (Spine #842 – 4K Ultra HD) on 8/8, Wayne Wang’s Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart (Spine #1188 – Blu-ray and DVD) on 8/15, Bo Widerberg’s New Swedish Cinema (Spine #1189 – includes The Baby Carriage, Raven’s End, Elvira Madigan, and Ådalen 31 – Blu-ray) on 8/22, and Cauleen Smith’s Drylongso (Spine #1190 – Blu-ray and DVD) on 8/29. [Read on here...]

While we’re waiting for Warner Bros. to announce their Superman: 5-Film Collection 4K release, which we expect to happen anytime now, we’ve got some more release news for you today and a couple new disc reviews as well.

Starting with the reviews, Stephen has taken a look at Patrice Leconte’s Monsieur Hire (1989) on Blu-ray from Cohen Film Collection.

Stephen has also reviewed Dale Fabrigar’s They Crawl Beneath (2022) on Blu-ray from Well Go USA Entertainment.

Now then, back on the topic of Superman 4K for a moment, it’s starting to look as if there will not be 4K singles of the films in the new collection here in the States, but rather simply the box set in deluxe Steelbook and standard Amaray packaging (you can see the Amazon US listings here and here). There are 4K singles available in the UK if you want them (we have them linked in our 4K Ultra HD Release List here at The Bits now, but curiously not Superman: The Movie—just the sequels—which could indicate that the new remaster of Superman: The Movie may be exclusive to the box set for a while. We’ll have to wait for Warner’s official press release to be sure.

As I said, that could drop at anytime, so we’ll be sure to post all the details when it arrives. [Read on here...]

I had to sit on maybe the biggest movie story in America. For a long time. And now that it’s been completed and is over, I’m shocked that the whole thing hasn’t been on the front page of The New York Times.

I’ve perhaps casually mentioned that I helped create (didn’t get in the way of) a film school here in Oklahoma City, actually at Oklahoma City Community College. The idea was, unlike film degrees that are based on watching and studying themes and points of view and reading scripts, the creative side, so to speak, to offer a technical, hands on degree program, why a community college was selected in the first place. And to enhance the experience, we got the finest equipment in the world – Avid editors and cameras and lenses and lights and then, through a lot of hard work from a lot of good people, here came the ultimate – a full end studio, built to the specs of an actual Hollywood soundstage. If another state funded school has a facility like this, I’d like to see it.  [Read on here...]

(Photo by Robin Holland Photography)

Robert Altman said his last “that’s a wrap,” can you believe it, some eight or nine years ago and it seems as though any hope of mainstream studio films with emotional weight, sharp characters, social satire and natural, cliché free dialogue was buried right next to him.

Every Hollywood director since the beginning of the medium owes a debt to Robert Altman. His style was so distinctive, so fresh and so natural that people would say to themselves, “Oh that’s what directors do.”  [Read on here...]