Criteriosity Dept.

The best news first. Criterion has seen fit to grace us with a Blu-ray edition of Akira Kurosawa's Ran. (Depicted here is the conventional DVD edition; no ASIN has been assigned for the BD yet.) It's set to include all the materials found in the DVD edition, and will street on May 12th. Essential does not begin to describe this release. I strongly suspected this would be one of the first BDs in Criterion's catalog; I'm just surprised it wasn't the first.

Also coming soon is volume 12 in their Eclipse series of box-set reissues, this one being the films of Aki Kauriusmäki: Ariel, The Match Factory Girl and Shadows in Paradise. To the best of my knowledge these were never on DVD in English-language editions until now; I only saw Ariel years ago on VHS and never forgot it, so this is a must-review for when it hits.

Shohei Imamura (of The Pornographers) also has a box set on the way, featuring three movies again not seen on video here: Pigs and Battleships, The Insect Woman and Intentions of Murder.