Criterion Collection goes Blu...

from the Digital Bits website:

There's more significant Blu-ray news to report this afternoon. The Criterion Collection has just officially revealed (in their latest newsletter) that they're going Blu later this year, and that their first dozen or so titles on the format will begin to arrive in stores in October. All will feature new high-def restorations and will include ALL of the extras from the DVD editions. They'll even be priced to match the DVDs. Among the first titles will be the likes of The Third Man, Bottle Rocket, Chungking Express, The Man Who Fell to Earth, The Last Emperor (available both as a special edition box set and standalone theatrical version, each on both Blu-ray and DVD), El Norte, The 400 Blows, Gimme Shelter, The Complete Monterey Pop, Contempt, Walkabout (an updated edition, also on both Blu-ray and standard DVD), For All Mankind and The Wages of Fear. Great news indeed!

There's links to both Digital Bits and Criterion over to your right.

This makes me insanely happy....

After last summer's Woody Woodpecker success, Universal will bring out The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoons Collection: Volume Two on April 15th. The three-disc set will contain 75 vintage Walter Lantz cartoons, completely uncut and as originally seen in theatres, including 45 Woody Woodpecker cartoons from 1952-1958. Universal also has welcome news with the release of a new wave of its Cinema Classics series on April 22nd, subtitled Screwball Comedies. Titles will be Easy Living (1937, with Jean Arthur), The Major and the Minor (1942, with Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland), Midnight (1939, with Claudette Colbert), and She Done Him Wrong (1933, with Mae West).

--Barrie Maxwell/Classic Coming Attractions at The Digital Bits Website. (http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/barriemaxwell/maxwell012308b.html)

NO, not the part about fucking Woody Woodpecker; I hate that noisy, ugly motherfucker...the joyous news concerns the DVD release of 4 great screwballish comedies from the 30's and early 40's. Easy Living has a script by Preston Sturges and Midnight was written by Billy Wilder and Charlie Brackett and both these films were directed by the under-rated Mitch Leisen. The Major and the Minor is Billy Wilder's FIRST American film he directed and while I'm less crazy about the Mae West film, (isn't it already on DVD?), it's nice to see that Universal has finally gotten off it's ass to release these great films from it's Paramount catalogue. Now, they just need to release Wilder's SECOND film, Five Graves to Cairo, some more Leisen films, but especially Hold Back the Dawn, (another Billy Wilder script) and Lubitsch's Bluebeards Eighth Wife (yet another Wilder script) and I'd be a pretty happy camper.

The pictures are of Ginger Rogers, who has to pretend she's a kid in The Major and the Minor, (for 1942, it's a pretty dirty movie; lots of innuendo) and what I'm guessing to be a Spanish or Italian poster for Midnight.