APRIL ON THE CRITERION CHANNEL ON FILMSTRUCK… CONTINUES!

Just added to the calendar:

 

Japanese icon Tatsuya Nakadai stopped by Criterion to discuss his storied career, sharing some of the lessons he learned from working with luminaries Akira Kurosawa, Mikio Naruse, Masaki Kobayashi, Kihachi Okamoto, and Hiroshi Teshigahara. Alongside the interview, we present a genre-hopping selection of films that feature his most pivotal roles: Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954), Yojimbo(1961), and Sanjuro (1962), Kobayashi's Black River (1956), The Human Condition(1959), and Harakiri (1962), Okamoto's The Sword of Doom (1966), and Naruse's When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960).

On the heels of Tax Day, this week's Short + Feature pairs two playful films that follow the money: Charlie Chaplin's 1922 Pay Day, a silent short about the wage-related bickering of a bricklayer and his wife, and Juzo Itami's 1987 A Taxing Woman, a tax-collector comedy that the Tampopo director was inspired to make after joining a higher tax bracket himself.

 

Take in Lars von Trier's Antichrist in all its controversial glory, as the graphic psychodrama arrives on the Channel with the complete supplements from the edition, including several behind-the-scenes videos and a documentary on the film's now-legendary premiere at Cannes.

*Premiering on the Channel this month. 

 

As part of our ongoing presentation of episodes from Cinéastes de notre temps(1964-72), a French television series that profiled filmmakers from around the world, we're spotlighting one of the show's first installments. In this 1964 documentary, French New Wave director Jacques Rozier chronicles the life of one of cinema's great enfants terribles, Jean Vigo, who died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-nine after making just a handful of films, including the redoubtable masterpiece L'Atalante(1934). Compiling interviews with a variety of friends and collaborators of Vigo's, this program attests to the rebellious and poetic spirit the director brought to his work.

 

Environmental threats hang over these two atmospheric mood pieces, featured on the Channel just in time for Earth Day. Antonioni's first color film evokes the creeping malaise that comes with industrialization, while the apocalypse itself looms nigh in Peter Weir's beguiling mystery, a dreamlike investigation of the fissures between colonial and aboriginal Australia.

In the latest installment of our Adventures in Moviegoing series, the star of Juno, Superbad, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World stops by our office to tell us how he became a cinephile and to share some of his favorite films, including Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Fox and His Friends (1975) and Nagisa Oshima's Empire of Passion(1978). Past contributors to the series include Bill Hader, Jonathan Lethem, Mary Karr, and Roger Corman.

It's all about point of view in this week's Short + Feature, which pairs Akira Kurosawa's 1950 psychological thriller Rashomon with the 2012 French short J. M. Mondésir, about a man who dies after an encounter with the police. Taking a cue from Kurosawa's hallowed classic, writer-director Alice Colomer-Kang examines the elusive nature of truth and interpretation by telling her story from multiple perspectives.

*Premiering on the Channel this month. 

Director Ermanno Olmi (Il posto) evokes the rhythms of a bygone way of life in this 1978 Palme d'Or winner, tracing the lives and labors of northern Italian peasants through the seasons. This newly restored masterpiece makes its debut on the Channel complete with all of the special features that appear on its recently released disc edition, including a television program that pays a visit to the farm where the film was shot and an introduction by Mike Leigh, whose own films reflect the naturalistic rigor of Olmi's craft.

*Premiering on the Channel this month. 

In our ongoing, Channel-exclusive series Observations on Film Art, film scholars David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, and Jeff Smith explore the nuts and bolts of cinematic style through individual works by great auteurs. In the latest episode, Smith walks us through the eerie metaphysics of Three Colors: Red, demonstrating how director Krzysztof Kieślowski uses camera movements to establish mysterious connections between two characters who are largely unaware of each other. Previous entries in this series have examined topics like Sanshiro Sugata's lightning-fast editing and Abbas Kiarostami's evocative use of landscape.

"Gentlemen to bed, for we rise at 9:30

-ish!" Now on the Criterion Channel, the first two hysterically funny entries in Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon's epicurean travel series. With wine, food, and celebrity impersonations galore, the UK's sharpest comedy duo make their way through England and Italy. Soon they'll hit the road again in The Trip to Spain, premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival.

*Premiering on the Channel this month. 

The Trip: limited engagement, ends October 27

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The Trip to Italy: limited engagement, ends October 27

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Your wild ride through the indie film world-by filmmakers, for everyone. From 1997 to 2001, producer and author John Pierson and his band of cinephiles roved the U.S., seeking pockets of movie madness for this irreverent, sixty-episode IFC series. The result is an indispensible portrait of the American independent film scene at the turn of the millennium. Seasons one through three are already on the Channel, and this month, we debut season four!