Next, our friends at the Criterion Collection have announced their September slate, and it’s an interesting batch of titles to say the least. Included are Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men (1957) in 4K UHD on 9/8, Sergei Loznitsa’s Two Prosecutors (2025) and Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985) on Blu-ray only on 9/15, Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague (2025) in 4K and Blu-ray and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent (2025) on 4K and Blu-ray both on 9/22, and finally Three Films by Leos Caraz (1984-1991) in 4K and Blu-ray as well as Satyajit Ray’s Days and Nights in the Forest (1970) in 4K and Blu-ray both on 9/29.
Here’s a nice surprise, though we’ve told you they were coming way back in January here at The Bits (click here for that)—it just took Paramount and Alliance Entertainment time to get the production done: Phillip Noyce’s The Saint (1997) and Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Enemy at the Gates (2001) are both coming to 4K Ultra HD Steelbook on 8/25. You can pre-order them now (here and here) on Amazon. They’ll each include Dolby Vision HDR, plus Blu-rays with legacy content.
And coming a week earlier on 8/18 from Paramount and Alliance is Robert Altman’s Popeye (1980) in 4K Ultra HD. You can pre-order that here. Again, it will have Dolby Vision HDR, and the Blu-ray in the package will carry over all of the legacy features.
It will be very interesting to see what Paramount catalog 4K titles follow these as Alliance ramps up production this year.
Also today, Kino Lorber Studio Classics has revealed that George Sherman’s Big Jake (1971) is coming soon to 4K Ultra HD, and that Michael Curtiz’s King Creole (1958) is coming to 4K UHD on 7/28. The former is a John Wayne Western, while the latter is an Elvis Presley musical drama.
And on 8/11, KLSC will deliver Jean Aurel’s Manon 70 (1968) and Robin Davis’ Le Choc (1982) on Blu-ray only.
Last month I also told you that both Philip Kaufman’s The Right Stuff (1983) and Fred M. Wilcox’s Forbidden Planet (1956) are on track for 4K Ultra HD release later this year, and things continue to look very good for that to happen as expected.
Finally today, here’s something exciting: Arrow Video’s new Toy Robot Video sub-label is getting ready to make its first official announcements on Friday morning (at 7 AM Pacific) on their Facebook page at least (Toy Robot does not yet have an X page, but news may appear on the Arrow page). In any case, you can definitely count on their September slate to include Gary Goddard’s Masters of the Universe (1987) in 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray (along with some of the other titles we revealed a few weeks ago—click here).
That’s all for now. Back with more soon.
Stay tuned…
- Bill Hunt
(You can follow Bill on social media on Twitter/X, BlueSky, and Facebook, and also here on Patreon)