Import Week 2025, Day 6: Cheri 2009

Sorry for the delay in Day 6, folks!  I had to fix the Latest Comments column, which went belly up on us and turned out to be a lot trickier to repair than it was to implement in the first place.  Anyway, it's pumpin' away, knock on wood.  So let's get into today's film, which is Cheri from 2009, a neglected little gem still relegated to DVD-only status here in the US.

I get it if you guys are looking at me a little askance for this pick.  I'd avoided this movie for a long time, too.  This came at a bad time in Michelle Pfeiffer's career: after her peak, but before audiences might've grown interested in seeing her make a comeback.  I only got around to it eventually because it's Stephen Frears, who I'd hardly consider consistent, but who always at least has potential; so it got stuck on my very long "one of these days" list.  To my surprise, it was great, and I had to have the blu-ray.  It's a smart adaptation of a pair of 1920s novels by the mononymous French author Collette.  Pfeiffer's on point here, but she's bolstered a lot by a killer supporting cast including the haunting Rupert Friend, sure thing Kathy Bates and a pre-Star Wars Felicity Jones.  Cheri is its own thing, but you can definitely sense that this is by the same filmmaker as the great Dangerous Liaisons, which also starred Pfeiffer, of course.  And indeed, playwright Christopher Hampton adapted them both, so this is a bit of a reunion.  Unfortunately, there was no blu-ray.  At least here in the States, it was a DVD-only release. 

Miramax released it a new release in 2009.  But this film really deserves a blu, and sadly, Miramax holding the rights is a bad sign.  For a long time, I was trying to find an affordable copy of the Australian blu-ray from Icon, because Australia's the one naturally English-friendly country that released it in HD.  But it's been out of print for so long, all I could find were $100 copies or some beat up ex-library disc.  The only other edition is from a company called Lumiere in the Netherlands, and I couldn't find any reliable reports on it.  Does it have forced subs or even a dub?  Is it 1080i?  Does it have the extras from the DVD?  Well, eventually I gave up and rolled the dice.  Worst case scenario, it would make for a good post on my site to warn you guys against it.  So, is it any good?  Let's see.

2009 US Miramax DVD top; 2009 Icon NL BD bottom.

Miramax presents Cheri in 2.36:1, while Lumiere gives it to us in 2.35:1.  The shift in AR results in a tiny sliver extra picture along the top and bottom of the blu.  Otherwise, it's another standard case of the same master being used for both discs, which especially makes sense this time, as they're concurrent releases.  Same colors, contrast, brightness, etc.  But the HD boost is real.  To the people in that carriage have lips?  Only on the blu-ray.  Clicking back and forth between screenshots, you can see the film pop to life.  You can tell Pfeiffer's wearing earnings on the blu, but not the DVD.

The DVD gives us the English 5.1 mix in Dolby Digital with optional English, French and Spanish subtitles.  Lumiere bumps that mix up to DTS-HD, but drops the optional subs if you needed 'em, only offering Dutch ones.  That's one benefit the Australian disc would've had.

The DVD actually had a couple light special features.  There are two brief deleted scenes and a short but otherwise rather good 'making of' featurette that interviews the cast and crew on location.  There's no film clips, so there's not a lot, but it's all quality stuff.  Fortunately, the blu has 'em, too (and yes, so does that Icon BD), albeit still in SD.  It also has the theatrical trailer, which the DVD neglects, and a couple of bonus trailers.

So it turns out this Dutch disc is perfectly viable.  I've been burned before, but not this time.  And it's a lot easier to find that that Aussie disc.  So I'll conclude Import Week 2025 with this firm recommendation.  But don't worry, I've got a couple big boutique new releases for ya next.

Import Week, Day 1: Vatel

Our planet may be incinerating in an unprecedented climate crisis while we suffer through war, economic crisis and burgeoning new diseases, but if you're here to read this, congratulations, you've lived to Import Week.  Import Week is a rather self-explanatory stretch of roughly six (still to be decided) posts where we look at blu-ray releases of films that are only available overseas.  I know the internet is worldwide, so apologies for writing from an exclusively American perspective, but hopefully all our foreign readers can take this "week" to cherish the moments where we here in the United States didn't get all the luck, because these essential releases are all only available overseas,

And as you're about to see, you'd be hard pressed to find a more necessary import that 2000's Vatel.  I mean, just to rattle off its credentials, Vatel is a gorgeous, Academy Award-nominated period drama by Roland Joffé (The Killing Fields and the original Oppenheimer film, Fat Man and Little Boy), written by the ingenious playwright Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz & Guidenstern Are Dead, Brazil).
Gérard Depardieu plays the titular, real-life 17th century French chef who served under Louis XIV (played expertly here by the late Julian Sands), famous for putting on the most outlandishly extravagant festivities.  But operating beneath the wild spectacle are torrid love affairs, diplomatic intrigue, betrayals and one of history's most famous suicides.  The costumes and production design are show stoppers, beautifully photographed, but it's a witty yet dark drama underneath.  The supporting cast includes first rate performances by Tim Roth, Uma Thurman, Timothy Spall and Julian Glover.  It's surprising this film isn't better known and appreciated in the US, but we can kind of thank two infamous film villains for that.

R.I.P., your majesty.

Because before we go any further, it is essential we talk about the alternate cuts.  By which I mean, the proper complete cut and the absolutely to-be-avoided hacked up version.  Unfortunately, the latter is the only one available here in the US.  As they were wont to do, Vatel's American distributor Miramax crassly cut the film for the US market (thank you, Weinsteins) by about fifteen minutes, so only the original European version is complete.  It has more scenes of the preparation, the lavish spectacle itself, a nude scene and a whole subplot with Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, now of Emily In Paris fame.  You can spot if you're watching the US version right away - it adds a voice-over scene of Spall writing an expositional letter between Roth's introduction and the opening credits.  Curiously, you won't find much info online about the US release being abridged, but yeah, it's a problem.  So that's already a pretty definitive argument for importing this title.  But it's not the only one.

Vatel first came out from Columbia Tri-Star as a new release DVD in France in 2000.  That was quickly followed up in the US by Miramax in 2001, but it didn't have quite as many features (more on that below).  And more importantly, of course, it's the cut version.  It's also, apart from an identical Lions Gate reissue, still the only release Vatel's ever gotten in America.  Eventually, in 2015, we got it on blu, but only in France from Gaumont.  Luckily, it's the complete uncut version; and yes I checked, it's region free.

1) 2000 Columbia Tri-Star DVD; 2) 2001 Miramax DVD; 3) 2015 Gaumont BD.
(This shot is missing from the US cut.)

The good news is that all three discs are anamorphic, in at least close to the correct aspect ratio, and properly progressive.  Geometrically, the French DVD is closer to the proper AR than the US: 2.37:1 compared to 2.28:1.  But you can see the French disc zooms in tighter, cropping more of the image, especially along the top.  The BD widens the frame back out to 2.35:1, while actually pulling out to reveal more of the image than either prior DVD.  It also kind of splits the difference between the two DVDs color timings: the US is warmer, the French is cooler, and the BD is the most natural of all, and considerably brighter (though not overly so; the night scenes are still full of solid blacks).  It's also a substantial boost in clarity, bringing fine detail into focus, though it still feels like an old master, with film grain ranging from soft to absent.

The Columbia DVD gives us both the proper English track and a French dub, both in 5.1, with optional English and French subtitles.  The US DVD just, naturally, shaves off the French options, giving us the English 5.1 with optional English subtitles.  And the blu-ray gives us the best possible collection of options, including both the English and French audio, restored in their original stereo tracks, now in DTS-HD, plus the 5.1 mixes also now in DTS-HD.  And they give us both English and French subtitles - everything you could want.

First off, the French release offers us an untranslated audio commentary by the production designer and costumer.  Sounds neat, but unless you're fluent, you can factor that out of your equation.  It also has a half-hour 'making of' doc, which is more of a mixed bag.  It's kind of a promotional piece, but at that length manages to get pretty deep, interviewing not just the stars but a lot of the key cast members and giving you more than your standard soundbites.  But the problem is, the English people speak English (including Joffé and most of the stars), and the French people speak French (including most of the crew), sans subtitles.  So there's a lot of good stuff and I'm glad we get it, but you have to sit through some frustratingly untranslated moments.  Anyway, there's also a brief look at the scoring of the film, and the trailer.

The US DVD doesn't have any of that, not even the trailer.  But it does have it's only, very brief (3.5 minutes) featurette, which is clearly using the same EPK interview and B-roll footage as the French doc.  But it includes multiple clips not used in on the French disc, so it does retain some value even if you have the French disc.  At three and a half minutes, though, that's some pretty thin gruel.

Finally, the blu-ray maintains all of the same extras as the French DVD, with no additions, subtractions or additional translations, though they did update the trailer to anamorphic.

So it's a shame about the untranslated extras, but it's still an absolute must-import.  Even the only partially-English friendly extras are better than the paltry US DVD.  More importantly, it's the only HD option, with a substantially improved transfer that's a lot more than just the same master on a bigger disc.  It also restores the original stereo track and overall has easily the most and best language/ audio options.  And, oh yeah, you have to import to see the complete, uncut version of the film.  You can't ask for more of a compelling mandate than that.

The Angriest Man Alive

The post office has proven a cruel mistress this month.  A couple exciting new releases I've been planning to cover have had a difficult time finding their way to me.  But that's okay; they're close now.  And anyway, I have an M.I.A. post I've been meaning to write, ideally before the end of Pride Month.  So here we go, let's do it today.  This is about the all too brief filmography of Wally White.

White comes out of NYU, and got his first feature film picked up for distribution by Miramax, which was quite a coup for the time, but also why it's still a DVD-only release in 2023.  He produced, wrote, directed and starred in Lie Down With Dogs, a relatively early entry in queer cinema.  It's from 1995, so it's not like a groundbreaking forerunner, but it's on the crest of that queer indie tidal wave.  Especially since we're told in-film that this isn't intended to be an "important" Longtime Companion type of film, but just a fun, comic presentation of one gay man's story.

And look, responses to this film have always been all over the map, from raves to pans.  The hosts of the Bad Gay Movies podcast unanimously agreed that this was "84 minutes of brutal torture."  Which, I mean, come on, guys...  They raise some legit points, and some flaws are obvious enough they didn't need to be raised.  Putting that cute little dog on the top of the poster is a cheap trick, too, considering it never appears in the movie.  But this is still a delightful, scrappy little indie comedy that was a minor breakout success because of its legit charms, even if it hasn't aged perfectly well.

Let's start with the negatives, I guess, so we can end on the positives.  This is the story of White's summer in Provincetown, known for being a seasonally gay vacation hot spot.  It's all told from his point of view, he is front and center of every scene, and even frequently breaks the fourth wall.  So a lot, lot, lot of your response to this film will be based squarely on your reaction to this man, personally.  If you find him likeable, you'll coast right over all the bumps in the road.  If you find him annoying, you'll surely be entrenching yourself deeper and deeper into an irreversible hate-fest.

For my part, and clearly a lot of fans out there, I think he succeeds as an affable, relatable guy.  But he's the kind of writer who puts his flaws into his comedy, so there's a lot to dislike about him.  He makes fun of people, he's on a self-absorbed quest to find himself and he's self pitying despite living a hot, romantically charged life in a resort town most viewers at home could probably only dream of.  If you're bothered by unspoken class issues in Sofia Coppola films, or can't get past how the women in Pride & Prejudice complain about their poverty despite living in a huge sea-side cottage with servants, this movie will probably rub you the wrong way, too.  There's also a scene where he does an impression of a Jamaican woman that's hard not to read as at least a little racist.

The pros?  It's constantly inventive, with animated sequences, creative photography and successfully manages to juggle different styles of humor, from silly to naturalistic.  The relationship drama is genuine enough to really draw you in to the character's plight.  It tackles AIDS in an authentic, subtle way that manages not to feel preachy or avoidant.  And it's got this great vérité approach, with its stolen shots and authentic locations, where you really get a sense of the actual Provincetown scene as it was in 1995.  Some scenes have a real Hollywood throwback artifice, but at other times it's like White is stepping through a participatory documentary.  It all comes to a head in moments like when he reads through the classifieds and breaks down the letter codes in guest house listings.

2003 Miramax DVD.

Since Miramax's DVD is likely to be the only presentation we ever get of this, we can be thankful it's at least anamorphic widescreen (a pillarboxed 1.66:1) and properly progressive (not interlaced).  It's fairly soft and murky, but a lot of that is surely down to this being a shoestring 16mm film that was blown up to 35.  It really makes you wonder what could be done with this if it were restored in HD.  Would it look vastly transformed with bold colors and clean lines, or almost the same?  I wish we could find out.

The Dolby Digital stereo track is clean, and though the case only mentions Spanish subtitles, happily it also includes English ones. There are no extras, not even the trailer, just a general ad for Miramax films.

Now, as far as most of the world is concerned, Lie Down With Dogs is White's one and only film, although apparently he'd also made some short films beforehand.  But Dogs is the only film that was ever released, and sadly, he committed suicide in 2004.  But that's not the whole story.  In 1998, White wrote, produced, directed and starred in a second feature called Waldo Walker.  It was completed but never released.  However it was leaked onto the internet a long time ago, so the world's been able to see it.  It was fairly low res, and it feels like a rough cut, but it's a pretty wild and original film, taking the sparks of creativity and originality in Dogs and taking things even further.  It co-stars Bash Halow from Dogs, along with Rainn Wilson, Sylvia Miles and Louisse Lasser.

Wally White plays Waldo White, who's plagued by the recent discovery of a lost film called "The Angriest Man Alive," about Waldo Walker, who White also plays.  The film bounces back and forth between Waldo White's story and the film within a film.  Waldo White's problem, besides getting fired and being henpecked by a shrill fiance (yes, Wally's playing straight this time) is that everyone he meets conflates him and the movie character they see on TV and expect him to burst out in rage.  Superficially, Waldo's path crosses with an eccentric young artist, who he of course falls head over heels for, and he enlists his personal assistant (Wilson) to help him find her.  Subtextually, the effects films have on people is a movies have on people.  A Bar Mitzvah is held up by two criminals imitating Amanda Plummer and Tim Roth in Pulp Fiction, we see news reports of a woman who shot a glee club after seeing a movie called Mama Wanna Get the Glee Club, and another about the (very real) incident where teenagers got themselves killed reenacting the famous laying in traffic scene from The Program.  White's transformation into the angriest man alive, illustrated by him shaving his head and sitting naked on the floor of his empty apartment hints at some of the issues the real White was contending with in his last years, which adds another meta layer to the story.

If you haven't gathered yet, this film is super eccentric.  It's an even broader comedy (our hero stays at the "Damfino" hotel, leading to constantly recurring Abbot & Costello-style puns) with even loftier art film aspirations that Lie Down With Dogs.  There's a Grease-inspired musical number on a subway car.  Lasser throws a wheelchair at White because she's decided he's really "Dr Kent" and responsible for all her medical problems.  She has a screaming rant at a desk clerk about how she never won an Emmy.  Scenes segue between each other by cutting to a trio of unrelated Fly Girl-style dancers, apropos of nothing.  The lines blur between the Walker's world and White's world.  An apocalyptic cult afraid of the pending millennium meet up in Walker's hotel.  To be perfectly honest, this is not half as funny or charming as Dogs, which is probably why it never found a release, but White himself is as likeable an on-camera presence as ever, and the story sure is ambitious and wild.  It deserves some kind of an audience, if only as a crazy spectacle.

So yes, I'd love to see blu-ray restorations of both (and his short films, too), though I acknowledge that's an obviously long shot.  But I can imagine re-scanning the negatives, organizing a retrospective interviewing the cast and crew who worked with White... I believe people would want to see that.  I know I would, as an honest to goodness Wally White fan.

Flying The Wings Of the Dove Home

Wasn't The Wings Of the Dove a rather successful and highly critically regarded feature with, like, four Oscar noms and a bunch of BAFTAs?  How is it still only available as an ancient non-anamorphic Miramax DVD and a Lions Gate DV-R here in its home country?  ::flips the DVD over and looks at the Miramax logo::  Oh, yeah.  I guess it wouldn't really work as part of a 4-pack with Prophecy 4-5 and Hellraiser 8.  I suppose we'll have to import.  It's available in a couple regions; I went with Japan.

The Wings Of a Dove is a surprisingly potent Henry James adaptation from the late 90s.  I say surprising only because of the period and, well, look at the director's filmography.  On the one hand, it's beautifully shot, with elegant locations and costuming.  But it's also so much more deeper and more humane than just a frilly costume drama.  The cast is spot on, with stars Helena Bonham Carter, Charlotte Rampling, Ordinary People's Elizabeth McGovern and the great Michael Gambon.  They took a big chance casting the relatively unknown Linus Roache as the male lead, but he completely lives up to his role.  Every element succeeds, from the music to the editing, to putting James up on the screen the way he should be.

1998 US Miramax DVD top; 2012 JP Warner Bros BD bottom.

So, sure, this isn't some fancy 4k restoration, but Warner's disc is a strong boost to HD for an older BD.  Of course, it helps that it's being compared to a lower res, non-anamorphic DVD, but still.  Just look at that close-up; what a difference.  This is a fully respectable image from a major studio, and one a film this lavish deserves.  The aspect ratio has been corrected from 2.29:1 to 2.35:1 (although the DVD actually retains a bit more image around the edges), and the colors/ contrast have been corrected to be less stark.  So this isn't just the same old master given the proper BD treatment.  It's a not a brand new transfer, given this BD is a decade old now, but it's newer than the DVD's, making this a very satisfying upgrade.

Both discs present the film in 5.1, which is lossless on the BD's DTS-HD.  Only the US DVD includes optional English subtitles, though, if you need those.  Warner Bros' naturally includes a Japanese dub (2.0 DTS-HD) and completely optional Japanese subtitles.

At least Miramax's DVD isn't completely barebones.  It has a decent but clip-heavy 17-minute featurette, which starts off as your typical EPK piece including a bit of B-roll and interviews with the director, producer David Parfitt and stars Carter, Roache, Rampling & Alison Elliot.  But then it opens things up, bringing in Mark Rance from Criterion (even though, no, even on laserdisc, this film was never in the Criterion Collection) and English Professors from Princeton, Colorado and UCLA to address the James stuff.  Even Peter Bogdanovich pops up at the end ...I guess because he did Daisy Miller.  So you can see it gets deeper than your standard promo piece, but it's no full-on documentary or anything.  Anyway, there's that and the theatrical trailer.  And no, the blu-ray hasn't come up with any new special features, it has at least hung onto the featurette and the trailer.  Though, as you can see, they've burnt Japanese subtitles onto both.

We shouldn't have to update this title, but we really do.  The blu-ray really transforms this film from its old DVD transfer.  Thankfully, it's a major studio handling it, so they've done it right (dual-layered, properly lossless audio, retaining the extras).  The Wings Of the Dove really should look beautiful, and it does if you're willing to put in the effort for it.

DVD/BDExotica

Years ago, all of Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan's films got nice, special edition DVDs with commentaries and stuff. Even his rare, early films were packaged as part of The Essential Egoyan series and given a larger audience than they'd ever had before. The exception being Exotica (and I guess The Adjuster, too; but that's a post for another day), as it wound up being picked up by Miramax just as Egoyan was beginning to take off with international audiences... So it couldn't be included with the rest of his back catalog, but also wasn't a big enough hit like Sweet Hereafter and Felecia's Journey to get a special edition on its own rights. So we just had this generic, barebones release, with a photo of some lady who wasn't even in the movie on the cover, making it look like a softcore porn. And to this day, in the United States, that's still the best we've got.

Update 12/30/14 - 5/8/17: Less of an update and more of a complete article overhaul.  This was one my early posts, where I hadn't quite gotten into the swing of things.  And my Exotica article's gotta be up to snuff on DVDExotica, right?  So I'm replacing .jpg screenshots with .pngs, adding the original Miramax DVD and doing a little basic rewriting.

Update 2/24/20: Again, this being DVDExotica, I feel uniquely obligated to make this page as relevant as possible. And seeing as how there's two competing blu-rays for this title in the world, I couldn't leave this page sitting without both of them.  So here we go, the 2014 UK from Artificial Eye's Atom Egoyan Collection boxed set is now in the mix.

Update 9/26/22: Nominative determinism dictates that I update this post with Criterion's new 4k BD restoration of Exotica.  Plus, I really wanted to.

Like many of Egoyan's films, Exotica plays with the conventions of story structure, often showing scenes out of chronology, and cutting to different characters narratives without letting us know how they're going to link up. His films become mysteries, but not of the traditional whodunit murder variety. You're just pulled into slowly learning why these characters are behaving as they are and what moment they're heading to. Getting into the plot at all, then, feels pretty spoilerish, so I'll just set up the terrific cast of characters. Bruce Greenwood is an accountant who spends his days at an artsy strip club called Exotica, owned by a lovelorn Elias Koteas and Mia Kirshner, Egoyan's wife who's in every one of his films. Writer/ director Don McKellar plays a pet shop owner illegally smuggling exotic eggs into the country, and Sarah Polley comes in as a babysitter very similar to her character in Sweet Hereafter. Finally, Mia Kirshner stars as a dancer who performs as a schoolgirl in honor of a tragic secret they all share.

You don't hear much about it, but the film was finally able to be wrested away from Miramax's iron grasp for blu-rays first in Canada (Alliance Films, 2012) and then the UK (2013, then repackaged as part of Artificial Eye's The Atom Egoyan Collection in 2014). As Exotica is possibly my favorite Egoyan film (it's a tough call), the Canadian blu was a Day One pick-up for me. And to this day, there still has been barely any reviews or coverage of this disc, so that plus - you know; look at the name of the site we're on - put it on the short list to review here.  This is a combo pack, so we've got a DVD and blu to look at here, plus the original Miramax DVD from 1999.  And now, it's finally making its US HD debut thanks to Criterion, who've made a new 4k restoration, plus some new special features.

1) 1999 Miramax DVD; 2) 2012 Alliance DVD;
3) 2012 Alliance BD; 4) 2014 AE BD; 5) 2022 Criterion BD.

Woof at the Miramax DVD being non-anamorphic, but then again it is pretty ancient.  Also, look how wildly different the framing is.  I mean, yeah the Miramax is 1.85:1 (despite the case claiming 1.66:1) and the old blu-rays are 1.78:1, but the vertical shift is so far off.  Clearly, there are two film technicians in the world who strongly disagree with each other.  Alliance has Egoyan's signature of being director approved, but then so does Criterion (he's also credited as a supervisor along with DoP Paul Sarossy), and you can see that one's quite different, too. The colors on the DVD look way too purple, edge enhancement is visible and it's pretty soft and muddy even for standard def.  Compare that to foreign blus, which already look a lot better.  Grain is a little soft and the contrast is definitely on the flat side.  Oh and the brights flare out a little bit at times (look at the note over McKellar's shoulder above); but these are still huge, huge upgrades compared to the old DVD.

2014 AE BD inside; 2022 Criterion BD outside.

Criterion's transfer is back to 1.85:1, but as you can see, some shots are considerably reframed.  The above shot pulls back to reveal so much more, even though the previous shot of them in the car does not, that I kept thinking I was looking at the wrong frame.  And now, scanned in 4k from the OCN, Exotica looks so much more beautiful.  The brights no longer flare out, the encode is strong and specific, restoring its filmic look and replacing fuzziness with genuine grain.  Plus, the picture itself has been widened a bit, which does look more natural.  The image really draws you in much more than even the old blus could, and all the little detail really pops.

Every release features the stereo track, but the Alliance blu also includes a French dub (with both tracks in DTS-HD), as well as French and English subtitles.  And here's where Artificial Eye really comes up short, with no subtitles and worse yet: just the English stereo track in lossy Dolby Digital (despite promising LPCM on the case).  It's back to DTS-HD on the Criterion, and we get optional English subs again, too.

In terms of extras, the old Miramax DVD has absolutely nothing, but the two import blus each have one big, and unique, feature. The Artificial Eye disc has a 54 minute documentary entitled Formulas for Seduction: The Cinema of Atom Egoyan, which is pretty good though it's more a vague coverage of Egoyan's film career rather than being very Exotica-specific. It honestly could've been placed on any disc in the boxed set and just happens to have settled on this one. And it has been released before, on the US and Canadian DVD releases of Calendar. So there's a good chance you already own it. The Alliance disc, on the other hand, has an audio commentary with Egoyan and composer Mychael Danna. It's a good commentary but very soundtrack focused. Seriously, it's not a director's commentary with the composer occasionally chiming in about the score; they're both there to talk primarily about the music. Maybe not 100% of the time, but a great deal of it. I'd rate this commentary as excellent, but it really feels like it should be paired with a second commentary track with Egoyan talking about the rest of the film. As it is, you're left feeling like, "that's all?" Especially since it's the only feature for the work of a filmmaker we're used to having great extras for.  But nope, not even a trailer more.

There's still no trailer on the Criterion, but that's okay, because they've given us plenty of other treats.  First of all, they retain the Alliance commentary, so that's nice.  They also include a great new on-camera conversation between Egoyan and Sarah Polley (wait 'till you hear what the original conception of this film was!).  And there's an audio commentary of a film festival Q&A with Egoyan, Greenwood and a few others, which is quite good.  Often those festival press junkets just consist of insipid softball questions like, "in this film, your character dates a very handsome man.  Do you find your co-star as handsome as we do?"  But here it's all good questions and insightful answers.  Don't skip it.

And they give us several other Egoyan films: the feature-length Calendar and three short films: Peepshow, En Passant and Artaud Double Bill.  The first three are all already covered on my Atom Egoyan Collection page, which I've updated to include these new transfers.  But in brief, if you don't feel like clicking over, En Passant is a slight improvement in PQ, Calendar is a slight step backwards (and the audio is still lossy) and Peepshow is virtually indistinguishable from the previous discs.  Egoyan also gives us a new little interview about Calendar, which is nice if you don't have the more robust special features the DVD came with. 

The last short is making its home video debut here: Artaud Double Bill.  It's very brief, clocking in at three and a half minutes, originally commissioned as part of a larger anthology for the Cannes Film Festival in 2007.  It's about two friends who plan to go see Godard’s Vivre sa vie, but one of them decides to go see The Adjuster instead.  So they text each other from their respective screenings, and then the credits roll.  It's a bit shocking a film festival would endorse being on your phone in a movie theater, but you can see how mixing the forms of media (one of the girls films a bit of her movie to show the other girl what she's missing) would appeal to Egoyan all his early films.  So, you know, it's nothing amazing, but nice to help flesh out our Egoyan collections that much further.

Criterion's release also includes a fold-out insert with notes by Jason Wood of the BFI, who co-directed Formulas of Seduction.

Previously, I concluded this post by saying, "I wouldn't mind Criterion or somebody rolling up and blowing all of these options out of the water with a new, revelatory 4k scan and perhaps even more importantly at this stage, a heap of new extras."  And they pretty much have.  I do feel like they only came up with a couple new extras, and are trying to cover up that fact by throwing in Calendar, which really deserves its own separate, proper release.  I was hoping for a second, more comprehensive commentary, and interviews with more of the cast and crew.  But I can't be mad at what we've got.  This is a decidedly superior edition of Exotica, and we did get a couple nice, new bonuses.  Thanks, Criterion!