William H. Macy and Joe Mantegna in Homicide (1991)
I got my September Criterion press release late last night and there are a few reasons to be excited, the first being that David Mamet's Homicide is finally coming to DVD the second week of September. No Blu-ray is fine for now as long as I can finally just have the damn thing. Mantegna, Macy, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Pidgeon, and the entire supporting cast knock it out of the park. Extras are to include Commentary with Mamet and William H. Macy, a piece on recurring Mamet actors, as well as a Gag Reel and TV Spots.
In addition to the long-requested crime film is Alexander Korda's That Hamilton Woman, starring Vivian Leigh and Laurence Olivier. Alleged to be Winston Churchill's favorite film partly due to the fact he wrote some of its speeches, Hamilton Woman is drenched in thinly-veiled propaganda. Olivier plays a Royal Navy officer and Leigh the wife of a British Ambassador during the Napoleonic Wars. They both play married people having affairs, which wasn't hard for them to "act" at the time. Extras include a Commentary by Ian Christie, an Interview with Michael Korda (dir.'s nephew), and Alexander Korda Presents (vintage promo for the movie).
Vivian Leigh in That Hamilton Woman (1941, Lady Hamilton in UK)
Tatsuya Nakadai in The Human Condition (1959)
Masaki Kobayashi's The Human Condition, originally scheduled for this month, got pushed back when better audio elements were found. It's nine and a half hours long, and was originally released in 3 parts. That'll count some out right off the bat. It's based on a six-volume Japanese novel chronicling the wartime experiences of a young man who goes from labor camp supervisor to soldier to POW, wrestling with corruption at every step and questioning human nature itself. Star Tatsuya Nakadai was also in Yojimbo and Ran.
Extras include a rare Directors Guild of Japan interview with Kobayashi done by Masahiro Shinoda (Double Suicide), a "video appreciation" of the movie & director by Shinoda, and an all-new interview with star Nakadai. The English subtitles are also apparently greatly-improved. This is easily the one this month I'm most intrigued by. All three titles are DVD-only and hit on Sept. 8th.
Clement's Gervaise
A week later (9/15), the next wave of Essential Art House DVD titles arrive, three of which are brand new to disc: Marcel Carne's Le jour se leve, Rene Clement's Emile Zola adaptation Gervaise, and Anatole Litvak's Mayerling. The other three are The 39 Steps, Powell and Pressburger's The Tales of Hoffmann, and Throne of Blood. To the uninitiated, these discs carry no extras, just the movie in highest DVD quality possible with liner notes tucked inside.
Two previously-released DVD titles are getting the Blu-ray upgrade, and they're about as radically different as two Criterion discs could get: Godard's Pierrot Le Fou and The Complete Monterey Pop, which both come out on Sept. 22nd. All told, it's a pretty solid month.