BLUE VELVET and FUNNY GAMES Joining the Criterion Collection This May

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Feb 16, 2019

A couple of seminal horror movies will be joining the Criterion Collection this May. David Lynch’s unnerving meditation on the horrors of suburbia, Blue Velvet, will get a 4K restoration and include a feature-length documentary on the making of the film. Also, Michael Haneke’s meta, accusatory home invasion horror Funny Games will get a 2K restoration.

Check out synopses, trailers, and special features below.

Blue Velvet Synopsis:
Home from college, Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) makes an unsettling discovery: a severed human ear, lying in a field. In the mystery that follows, by turns terrifying and darkly funny, David Lynch burrows deep beneath the picturesque surfaces of small-town life. Driven to investigate, Jeffrey finds himself drawing closer to his fellow amateur sleuth, Sandy Williams (Laura Dern), as well as their prime suspect, lounge singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini)-and facing the fury of Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), a psychopath who will stop at nothing to keep Dorothy in his grasp. With intense performances and hauntingly powerful scenes and images, Blue Velvet is an unforgettable vision of innocence lost, and one of the most influential American films of the past few decades.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

* New 4K digital restoration, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray, both supervised by director David Lynch

* Alternate original stereo soundtrack

* “Blue Velvet” Revisited, a feature-length meditation on the making of the film by Peter Braatz, filmed on-set during the production

* The Lost Footage, fifty-one minutes of deleted scenes and alternate takes assembled by Lynch

* Mysteries of Love, a seventy-minute documentary from 2002 on the making of the film

* Trailer

* More!

Release Date: May 28th, 2019

Funny Games Synopsis:
Michael Haneke’s most notorious provocation, Funny Games spares no detail in its depiction of the agony of a bourgeois family held captive at their vacation home by a pair of white-gloved young men. In a series of escalating “games,” the sadistic duo subject their victims to unspeakable physical and psychological torture over the course of a night. A home-invasion thriller in which the genre’s threat of bloodshed is made stomach-churningly real, the film ratchets up shocks even as its executioners interrupt the action to address the audience, drawing queasy attention to the way that cinema milks pleasure from pain and stokes our appetite for atrocity. With this controversial treatise on violence and entertainment, Haneke issued a summation of his cinematic philosophy, implicating his audience in a spectacle of unbearable cruelty.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

* New 2K digital restoration, supervised by director Michael Haneke, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray

* New interviews with Haneke and actor Arno Frisch

* New interview with film historian Alexander Horwath

* Press conference from the 1997 Cannes Film Festival featuring Haneke and actors Susanne Lothar and Ulrich Mühe

* Trailer

* New English subtitle translation

* PLUS: An essay by critic Bilge Ebiri

Release Date: May 14th, 2019

Are you a fan of Blue Velvet and/or Funny Games? Are you excited to pick up Criterion editions for one or both in May? Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram!

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