Screening Gotham: Criterion Preparing Films from Bergman's Fabled "Bargain Era"

Some of today's (slow) movie news of note from around New York:

--The Criterion Collection announced this week that it plans a line of inexpensive DVD box sets upholding its restoration standard while going lighter on the packaging. The new series will feature work by Malle, Naruse, Mizoguchi and a quintet of Bergman's earliest films including Torment and Thirst; the sets should retail around $30 or $40, making that pinch on the unemployment check that much less oppressive for film bloggers.

--A few of last month's NYC-based Sundance filmmakers were named Wednesday among the Institute's Documentary Film Program grantees: Daniel Gold and Judith Helfand (Everything's Cool) and Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg (The Devil Came on Horseback) each scored work-in-progress funds, while a dozen or so additional titles collected the remainder of this year's $600,000 disbursement. Congrats to all, back to work they go.

--Baffling quote attributed to Deborah Harry about her two films in 2007: "I am considering plastic surgery that would make me Asian. I am crazy, what can I say?" Wow. That would be some fucking surgery. Not that it would help much anyway.

Posted at February 8, 2007 8:58 AM