Hello, Dušan Makavejev!

Criterion announced their October titles, and naturally their Eclipse titles, Dušan Makavejev: Free Radical, are more exciting than their main-line releases. The Eclipse set, which streets on 13 October, includes three of the director's films from the late-1960s: Man Is Not a Bird [Covek nije tica], Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator [Ljubavni slucaj ili tragedija sluzbenice P.T.T.] and Innocence Unprotected [Nevinost bez zastite]. As for the other films: Wim Wenders' Wings of Deisre [Der Himmel über Berlin] on DVD and Blu-ray on the 20th, Costa-Gavras' Z on DVD on the 27th, James Ivory's Howards End on Blu-ray on the 20th and Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding on DVD and Blu-ray on the 13th.

For those disappointed with Criterion's decision to release Monsoon Wedding, a film that isn't especially remarkable and which already has an acceptable DVD out from Focus, they pulled out all the stops for the release, including most of Nair's shorts and documentaries, which I'm told are much, much better than her narrative features. The shorts include The Day the Mercedes Became a Hat, Migration, India (from 11'09''01 - September 11) and How Can It Be? (from 8); the docs include So Far from India, India Cabaret and The Laughing Club of India. If that alone doesn't thrill you, the Blu-ray should look amazing.

Pick Flick

While scoping the Amazon page for this movie's Blu-ray release, I noticed a promotion from The Criterion Collection in which users can vote for which, out of five choices, film you'd like to see Criterion release in high-def format. The films are all solid, deserving choices: Louis Malle's Au revoir les enfants, Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law, James Ivory's Howards End, Masaki Kobayashi's Kwaidan and Peter Weir's Picnic and Hanging Rock. It was strange to see Kwaidan among the picks, as its DVD release is one of the more notorious in the collection (the DVD is not the complete version of the film). So, happy voting to you.