Get Your Bodies Ready...

... it's Criterion Announcement Day! Per usual I completely lost track of time and didn't realize this monthly holiday has sneaked up on us already -- in my defense this time I have been buried in film fests, but that's hardly kept me from the same thing happening every single month now has it? Anyway a little earlier today Criterion announced their January 2024 release schedule and if that gif above of sheer junkie sexiness didn't let on Danny Boyle's 1996 masterpiece Trainspotting is among them! Hitting both 4K and regular old blu-ray the set is per usual jam-packed with extra special features up to and including...

... glow in the dark packaging! God I love this nerd shit. It brings me such pleasure. (As will seeing that shot of Ewan McGregor getting out of bed naked in glorious 4K.) Next up on the docket -- a boxed-set of Chantal Akerman movies! Titled "Chantal Akerman Masterpieces, 1968–1978" the set includes nine movies, from her 1968 debut Saute ma ville past the astonishing Jeanne Dielman (aka the current Greatest Film Of All Time according to Sight & Sound) up through 1978's The Meetings of Anna. Check out all the info at the link. That set hits the street on January 23rd. 

A week earlier on the 16th they're dropping John Sayles' great 1996 film Lone Star on 4K, which was one of my favorites back in college -- I haven't seen it since then so I've no idea how it holds up, but this new attention here seems to indicate it might. Starring Chris Cooper and Joe Morton and Elizabeth Peña and Kris Kristofferson, Lone Star is about a sheriff (Cooper) investigating the discovery of a skeleton in the desert outside his border town, and I remember it being unlike anything I'd seen at the time -- that said in 1996 I'd seen far fewer movies than I have now. But it stuck, so we'll see. 

Other January releases -- Dee Rees' Mudbound is finally getting a physical release (I feel like they've been promising this one for ages so it's good to finally have a date) while both Satyajit Ray’s The Apu Trilogy and the Coens' Blood Simple are getting upgraded to 4K. Just a cavalcade of masterpieces per usual from the best ones doing it!