Word: criterion
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...just about owning the latest Pixar movie or Star Wars reissue. The DVD format has created a connoisseur class that values taste in title selection, pristine print quality, peerless extras and lavish production. For those collectors, the Chanel of DVD outfits is Criterion, spawned by the pre-eminent '50s art-house distributor Janus Films. From the 350 titles issued thus far in the Criterion Collection, here's a sampling of its classy wares...
...Royal Tenenbaums Wes Anderson The emphasis at Criterion is on classic foreign films, but the folks there do select U.S. movies, and they do love Anderson--they offer three of his four features. His deadpan comic sense gives his work a retro-European feel that suits the collection. Tenenbaums, his most agreeable offering, boasts a stellar cast and the emotional edginess of a real-life domestic epic. Among the extras is a revealing documentary portrait of Anderson by cinema verité pioneer Albert Maysles...
...improve their records on civil liberties and human rights, which have grown worse on Bush's watch. A senior Administration official tells TIME that the White House wants to set up new systems that will use efforts at democracy building as a condition for foreign aid and as a criterion for judging the work of U.S. ambassadors. But some officials inside the White House admit that the Administration's attention appears sporadic, limited to calling for elections but then failing to follow through on the tougher, more costly and less glamorous work of building institutions that can sustain democracies. Michael...
...charisma of young Léaud also begged to be used again. What followed was a lovely short film (Antoine and Colette) and three features (Stolen Kisses, Bed and Board and Love on the Run) that fleshed out Antoine's early maturity--or, rather, his prolonged, love-addled adolescence. This Criterion boxed set exhaustively documents the bond between an endearingly quirky actor and the most likable great director in movie history...
...chemistry between actor and director--the expression of one person's vision through another's physical force--was primal in the work of Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, whose lithe, feral magnetism animated the great Japanese director's most vigorous parables. The titles in this Criterion package are legendary: The Seven Samurai, The Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo and Sanjuro. These ferocious epics were often adapted into better-known films in the West--The Magnificent Seven, A Fistful of Dollars, Star Wars--none of which matched the artistry and machismo of the originals...