The Criterion Current

What’s Happening on Hulu: Criterion’s 101 Days of Summer

2013-05-24T12:46:00-04:00

This summer on Hulu, we’re offering something a little different from our usual weekly festivals. For 101 Days of Summer, we will be highlighting a new title every day, starting today and continuing through Labor Day; each film will remain free (with ads) to non Hulu Plus subscribers for forty-eight hours. The selections will be a mix of classic titles and brand-new uploads to Hulu—and many of these titles will be unavailable on DVD or Blu-ray.

To kick off this exciting summer of cinema, we’ve chosen a Harold Lloyd classic: Harold Lloyd’s Speedy. This silent comedy, in which Lloyd plays a go-getter whose many jobs include cabdriver and soda jerk, is the only Oscar-nominated film in the slapstick icon’s oeuvre. It features some incredible on-location New York shooting (including a scene set at Coney Island and a car chase through the Washington Square Park arch) and a cameo by none other than Babe Ruth. Watch it in its entirety below or at Hulu. And remember that if you sign up for Hulu Plus for just $7.99 a month, you can see this and hundreds of other Criterion films commercial-free anytime.

As a special bonus, today we’ve also made six more classic titles free. These are Samuel Fuller’s The Naked Kiss, Robert Altman’s Secret Honor, Pietro Germi’s Seduced and Abandoned, Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, and two unavailable on disc: Yasujiro Ozu’s A Hen in the Wind and François Truffaut’s Two English Girls. Check back at Hulu every day to see the latest film!

Did You See This?

2013-05-24T12:10:35-04:00

• It’s a Richard Linklater kind of week: chatting with the man today . . .

• . . . and yesterday (in 1995, with Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke)

• Plus, another nineties revival: Dazed and Confused 2?

Three Reasons: Life Is Sweet

2013-05-24T11:05:08-04:00

Repertory Pick: Into the Wild

2013-05-23T16:33:15-04:00

Audiences in New York have a chance to see a rarely screened cinematic spellbinder on the big screen this Memorial Day weekend. On Sunday, František Vláčil’s singular Czech triumph Marketa Lazarová will be playing at Anthology Film Archives as part of the theater’s series The Middle Ages on Film (along with other medieval masterworks like Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring, Kenji Mizoguchi’s Sansho the Bailiff, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Decameron, and Kaneto Shindo’s Kuroneko and Onibaba). For those not in New York, this engrossing and revelatory experience, concerning an epic battle between rival clans, will be available on Criterion Blu-ray and DVD for the first time next month. Watch the film’s stark, striking opening images for a taste of Vláčil’s poetic imagery and Zdenek Liška’s haunting score.

Cattle Call

2013-05-22T16:30:06-04:00

10 Things I Learned: Medium Cool

2013-05-21T12:19:58-04:00

Haskell Wexler on Medium Cool

2013-05-21T14:17:34-04:00

Having shot films like Norman Jewison’s In the Heat of the Night and Mike Nichols’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (for which he won an Oscar), Haskell Wexler had already established himself as a foremost Hollywood cinematographer by the time he directed Medium Cool. For this, his first feature, Wexler was both plunging into the politics of the moment and relating to audiences the strange power and excitement of looking at the world through a camera lens. In this excerpt from a new interview with Wexler included in the Criterion release, the filmmaker describes his passion for the medium itself, the origins of Medium Cool, and his own history of political activism.

Medium Cool: Preserving Disorder

2013-05-21T11:38:04-04:00

It’s tough to tell where reality ends and fiction begins in Haskell Wexler’s deft chronicle of a turbulent era.

Drawings by Delmer Daves

2013-05-17T14:58:44-04:00

What’s Happening on Hulu

2013-05-17T11:07:45-04:00

The cultural thaw that came to the Soviet Union in the 1950s produced a generation of directors who are among the most virtuosic of all time. This week’s festival of free Criterion films on Hulu, Back in the USSR, puts nine films from this era of great innovation in the spotlight. We have three titles from Andrei Tarkovsky (Ivan’s Childhood, Andrei Rublev, and Solaris), two from Mikhail Kalatozov (The Cranes Are Flying, Letter Never Sent), and two from Larisa Shepitko (Wings, The Ascent). Each is emotionally stirring and visually inventive.

Our rarest title on offer is Nine Days of One Year, a 1962 film directed by Mikhail Romm, about two male physicists carrying out nuclear research while stationed in Siberia and the woman who comes between them. An enormous hit in its homeland, Nine Days has never been on DVD or Blu-ray in the U.S., but you can watch it in its entirety below or at Hulu. And remember that if you sign up for Hulu Plus for just $7.99 a month, you can see these and hundreds of other Criterion films commercial-free anytime.