Cine Outsider header
Left bar Home button Disc reviews button Film review button Articles button Blogs button Interviews button Right bar
news archive
Older news stories have been archived by year and month, most recent first. They can be accessed by clicking on the links below.
2024 2023 2022
2021 2020 2019
2018 2017 2016
2015 2014 2013
2012 2011 2010
2009 2008 2007
2006 2005 2004
 
Cold Water & My Man Godfrey on Criterion UK Blu-ray in September

21 June 2018

The Criterion Collection and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment have confirmed their titles to be released on Blu-ray in the UK in September 2018. On the 10 September comes the newly restored Cold Water, an acclaimed early work by Olivier Assayas (Personal Shopper, Clouds of Sils Maria). Following on 17 September is My Man Godfrey. William Powell and Carole Lombard star in an outrageous screwball send-up of Depression-era America, which makes for a potent cocktail of romantic repartee and social critique.

 

Cold Water Blu-ray cover

Cold Water [L'eau froide] (France 1994)

This deeply felt coming-of-age drama by Olivier Assayas has until now been a missing link in one of contemporary cinema’s richest bodies of work. Drawing from his own youthful experiences, Assayas revisits the outskirts of Paris in the early 1970s, telling the story of teenage lovers Gilles (Cyprien Fouquet) and Christine (A Single Girl’s Virginie Ledoyen), whose rebellions against family and society threaten to tear them apart. The visceral realism of the movie’s narrative and the near experimentalism of its camera work come together effortlessly thanks to a rock soundtrack that vividly evokes the period. With one of the most memorable party sequences ever committed to film as a centrepiece, Cold Water is a heart-breaking immersion in the emotional tumult of being young.

Director-approved Blu-ray Special Edition Features:

  • New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director Olivier Assayas, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
  • New interview with Assayas
  • New interview with cinematographer Denis Lenoir
  • Excerpt from a 1994 French television programme on the film featuring Assayas and actors Virginie Ledoyen and Cyprien Fouquet
  • New English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Girish Shambu

 

My Man Godfrey Blu-ray cover

My Man Godfrey (USA 1936)

Carole Lombard (To Be or Not to Be) and William Powell (The Thin Man) dazzle in this definitive screwball comedy, directed by Gregory La Cava (Stage Door) – a potent cocktail of romantic repartee and Depression-era social critique. Irene (Lombard), an eccentric Manhattan socialite, wins a society-ball scavenger hunt after finding one of the "items" on the list, a "lost man" (Powell), at a dump. She gives the man she believes to be a down-and-out drifter work as the family butler, and soon falls head over heels in love. Her attempts to both woo Godfrey and indoctrinate him in the dysfunctional ways of the household make for an unbeatable series of madcap hijinks. La Cava’s deft film was the first to garner Oscar nominations in all four acting categories, and it is one of Hollywood’s greatest commentaries on class and the social unrest of its time.

Blu-ray Special Edition features:

  • New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • New piece about the film with jazz and film critic Gary Giddins
  • New discussion about director Gregory La Cava with critic Nick Pinkerton
  • Outtakes
  • Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of the film from 1938, starring actors William Powell, Carole Lombard, Gail Patrick, and Mischa Auer
  • Newsreels from the thirties documenting the class divide during the Great Depression
  • Trailer
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Farran Smith Nehme