Criterion Announcement & Tree of Life

August seems to be a good month for Criterion. Though I haven't seen it, The Killing seems like it will be right up my alley and it has maybe the best cover in the collection. I don't know much about the Eclipse set other than that the director worked with Nikkatsu and is part of the Japanese New Wave (and really that's good enough for me). Secret Sunshine is getting excited reactions, so I might try that one later on. I already have L'Atalante on DVD, but I might be drawn into double dipping on the Vigo set for the other films.

Then, in case that wasn't exciting enough, The Tree of Life finally screened at the Cannes film festival. Reviews are mixed but mostly positive. The negative reviews were expected given Malick's style (the word "pretenious" gets thrown around a lot) but those don't seem to be the norm. Good news.

OMG Dinosaur

In the middle, two rows after the title (one row under the director credit. I'm really excited to see this. I finally got around to watching The Thin Red Line and it was as good as its reputation suggests. Tree of Life seems to be even more ambitious, but Malick has shown he can pull something like this off). Apparently the film will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May, so we'll get to find out then. Here's the trailer to give you a better idea:

What I like the best, or rather what excites me the most, about thie film is that I read an article about the special effects and it said that he (Malick) has been working on this film since the 1970's.

Oh, here's the new official website for the film (with a better picture).