Criterion is really stepping up its Blu-Ray releases now that the HD format war has been decided.
Check this out.
SYNOPSIS: Like the rest of America, Hollywood was ripe for revolution in the late sixties. Cinema attendance was down; what had once worked seemed broken. Enter Bob Rafelson, Bert Schneider, and Steve Blauner, who knew that what Hollywood needed was new audiences—namely, young people—and that meant cultivating new talent and new ideas. Fueled by money made from their invention of the superstar TV pop group the Monkees, they set off on a film-industry journey that would lead them to form BBS Productions, a company that was also a community. The innovative films produced by this team between 1968 and 1972 are collected in this box set—works created within the studio system but lifted right out of the countercultural id, and that now range from the iconic (Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Last Picture Show) to the acclaimed (The King of Marvin Gardens) to the obscure (Head; Drive, He Said; A Safe Place).
Disc Features
Head
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer (with DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-ray edition)
- Audio commentary featuring Monkees Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, and Peter Tork
- New video interview with director Bob Rafelson
- New documentary about BBS, featuring critic David Thomson and historian Douglas Brinkley
- More!
Easy Rider
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer (with DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
- Audio commentary featuring director Dennis Hopper
- Easy Rider: Shaking the Cage, a 1999 documentary featuring behind-the-scenes footage
- Footage of Hopper and star Peter Fonda at Cannes in 1969
- New video interview with BBS’s Steve Blauner
- More!
Five Easy Pieces
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
- Audio commentary featuring director Bob Rafelson and interior designer Toby Rafelson
- Soul Searching in Five Easy Pieces, a 2009 video piece in which Rafelson discusses the film
- BBStory, a 2009 documentary
- Excerpts from an audio recording of Rafelson at the American Film Institute in 1976
Drive, He Said
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
- A Cautionary Tale of Campus Revolution and Sexual Freedom, a 2009 video piece in which director Jack Nicholson discusses the experience of making this film
- Theatrical trailer
- More!
A Safe Place
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
- Audio commentary featuring director Henry Jaglom
- Henry Jaglom Finds “A Safe Place,” a 2009 video piece in which the director discusses the film
- Notes on the New York Film Festival, a 1971 video piece featuring an interview conducted by critic Molly Haskell with directors Peter Bogdanovich and Jaglom about their films The Last Picture Show and A Safe Place
- Deleted scene and screen tests
- Theatrical trailer
The Last Picture Show
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
- Two audio commentaries, one featuring director Peter Bogdanovich and the other featuring Bogdanovich and actors Cybill Shepherd, Randy Quaid, Cloris Leachman, and Frank Marshall
- Picture This, a 1990 documentary by George Hickenlooper
- “The Last Picture Show”: A Look Back, an hour-long 1999 documentary
- 2009 interview with Bogdanovich
- Screen tests and location footage
- Theatrical trailers and more!
The King of Marvin Gardens
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
- Selected-scene audio commentary featuring director Bob Rafelson
- Reflections of a Philosopher King, a 2009 documentary about the making of the film
- Afterthoughts, a short 2002 documentary about the film, produced by Rafelson
- Theatrical trailer
