The Monkees' 'HEAD' (AMERICA LOST AND FOUND: THE BBS STORY ) on Criterion Blu-ray

Cool stuff!

 

This looks great. I look forward to all the special features...

BTW, does anyone know what Rafelson thinks of the individual Monkees these days? I seem to remember his commentary on the Season One box talked a lot about his film influences and techniques but not much of anything about the Monkees themselves. Is there still lingering bad blood post-Head?

 

Monkees aside.....I'm especially impressed that they apparently found audio elements to give EASY RIDER a 5.1 surround mix. THAT shoud be pretty cool!

Looks like this may be the set that breaks me down and makes me buy a BR Player.

 

Wow! A Criterion blu-ray release of "Head" -- that is too good to be true! I like the other movies in that set, too, so this is a no-brainer. Thanks, OP!

Jamie

 

The Monkees HEAD Coming to Blu-Ray on Criterion!!!

As part of an INCREDIBLE Raferlson/Schneider Box set:

AMERICA LOST AND FOUND: THE BBS STORY – BD out on 11/23 & DVD out on 12/14

HEAD
Hey, hey, it’s the Monkees . . . being catapulted through one of American cinema’s
most surreal sixties odysseys. In it, Mickey Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith,
and Peter Tork become trapped in a kaleidoscopic satire that’s movie homage,
media send-up, concert movie, and antiwar cry all at once. Head escaped
commercial success on its release but has since been reclaimed as one of the great
cult objects of its era.

1968 • 85 minutes • Color • Monaural/Surround • 1.78:1 aspect ratio

Special Features
• New, restored high-definition digital transfer, with DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and
uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-ray edition
• Audio commentary featuring Monkees Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, and Peter Tork
• New video interview with director Bob Rafelson
• New documentary about BBS, featuring critic David Thomson and historian
Douglas Brinkley
• More!

EASY RIDER
This is the definitive counterculture blockbuster. The former clean-cut teen star
Dennis Hopper’s down-and-dirty directorial debut, Easy Rider heralded the arrival of
a new voice in film, one planted firmly, angrily against the mainstream. After Easy
Rider’s cross-country journey—with its radical, New Wave–style editing, outsider-
rock soundtrack, revelatory performance by a young Jack Nicholson, and explosive
ending—the American road trip would never be the same.

1969 • 96 minutes • Color • Surround • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

Special Features
• New, restored high-definition digital transfer, with DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Audio commentary featuring director Dennis Hopper
• Easy Rider: Shaking the Cage, a 1999 documentary featuring behind-the-scenes
footage
• Footage of Hopper and star Peter Fonda at Cannes in 1969
• New video interview with BBS’s Steve Blauner
• More!

FIVE EASY PIECES
Jack Nicholson plays the now iconic cad Bobby Dupea, a shiftless thirtysomething
oil rigger and former piano prodigy immune to any sense of romantic or familial
responsibility, who returns to his childhood home to see his ailing estranged father,
his blue-collar girlfriend (Karen Black, like Nicholson nominated for an Oscar) in tow.
Moving in its simplicity and gritty in its textures, Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces is a
lasting example of early 1970s American alienation.

1970 • 98 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

Special Features
• New, restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural
soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Audio commentary featuring director Bob Rafelson and interior designer Toby
Rafelson
• Soul Searching in Five Easy Pieces, a 2009 video piece in which Rafelson discusses
the film
• BBStory, a 2009 documentary
• Excerpts from an audio recording of Rafelson at the American Film Institute in 1976

DRIVE, HE SAID
Based on the best-selling novel by Jeremy Larner, Drive, He Said is free-spirited and
sobering by turns, a sketch of the exploits of a disaffected college basketball player
and his increasingly radical roommate, a feverishly shot and edited snapshot of the
early seventies (some of it was filmed during an actual campus protest). Jack
Nicholson’s audacious comedy (starring Bruce Dern and Karen Black) is a startling
howl direct from the zeitgeist.

1970 • 90 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

Special Features
• New, restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural
soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• A Cautionary Tale of Campus Revolution and Sexual Freedom, a 2009 video piece
in which director Jack Nicholson discusses the experience of making this film
• Theatrical trailer
• More!

A SAFE PLACE
In this delicate, introspective drama, laced with fantasy elements, Tuesday Weld
stars as a fragile young woman in New York unable to reconcile her ambiguous past
with her unmoored present; Orson Welles as an enchanting Central Park magician
and Jack Nicholson as a mysterious ex-lover round out the cast. A Safe Place was
directed by independent cinema icon Henry Jaglom.

1971 • 92 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

Special Features
• New, restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural
soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Audio commentary featuring director Henry Jaglom
• Henry Jaglom Finds “A Safe Place,” a 2009 video piece in which the director
discusses the film
• Notes on the New York Film Festival, a 1971 video piece featuring an interview
conducted by critic Molly Haskell with directors Peter Bogdanovich and Jaglom
about their films The Last Picture Show and A Safe Place
• Deleted scene and screen tests
• Theatrical trailer

THE LAST PICTURE SHOW
The Last Picture Show is one of the key films of the American cinema renaissance of
the seventies. Set during the early fifties in the loneliest Texas nowheresville to ever
dust up a movie screen, this aching portrait of a dying West, adapted from Larry
McMurtry’s novel, focuses on the daily shuffles of three futureless teens—enigmatic
Sonny (Timothy Bottoms), wayward jock Duane (Jeff Bridges), and desperate-to-
be-adored rich girl Jacy (Cybil Shepherd)—and the aging lost souls who bump up
against them in the night like drifting tumbleweeds. This hushed depiction of
crumbling American values remains the pivotal film in the career of the invaluable
director and film historian Peter Bogdanovich.

1971 • 126 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

Special Features
• New, restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural
soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Two audio commentaries, one featuring director Peter Bogdanovich and the other
featuring Bogdanovich and actors Cybill Shepherd, Randy Quaid, Cloris Leachman,
and Frank Marshall
• Picture This, a 1990 documentary by George Hickenlooper
• “The Last Picture Show”: A Look Back, an hour-long 1999 documentary
• 2009 interview with Bogdanovich
• Screen tests and location footage
• Theatrical trailers and more!

THE KING OF MARVIN GARDENS
For his electrifying follow-up to the smash success of Five Easy Pieces, Bob
Rafelson dug even deeper into the crushed dreams of wayward America. Jack
Nicholson and Bruce Dern play estranged siblings David and Jason, the former a
depressive late-night radio talk show host, the latter an extroverted con man; when
Jason drags his younger brother to a dreary Atlantic City and into a real-estate
scam, events spiral into tragedy.

1972 • 104 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

Special Features
• New, restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural
soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Selected-scene audio commentary featuring director Bob Rafelson
• Reflections of a Philosopher King, a 2009 documentary about the making of the film
• Afterthoughts, a short 2002 documentary about the film, produced by Rafelson
• Theatrical trailer

TITLE: America Lost and Found: The BBS Story (BLU-RAY EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC1948BD
UPC: 7-15515-06441-5
ISBN: 978-1-60465-348-9
SRP: $124.95
PREBOOK: 10/26/10
STREET: 11/23/10

TITLE: America Lost and Found: The BBS Story (DVD EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC1959D
UPC: 7-15515-06581-8
ISBN: 978-1-60465-361-8
SRP: $99.95
PREBOOK: 11/16/10 *please note the later date for DVD only
STREET: 12/14/10 *please note the later date for DVD only

 

More than a decade ago, "HEAD" was the first DVD I ever bought. Today, the "America Lost and Found" box set was my first ever Blu-Ray purchase! Now I have three months to buy a Blu-Ray player!

 

Shame they couldn't get Nesmith to participate in the commentary track recording session. Another missed reunion opportunity!

 

Being discussed here:
http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=225111

and here:
http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=154390&page=31

 

Great news!

 

I'm thinking the colors during the underwater sequences should blow the Rhino release away. It should be truly beautiful again.


I would also be nice if Criterion included the deleted scene stuff that's floating around on the internet.

 

Not meaning to rehash a much discussed subject, but the only alternate stuff that exists are the trailers (especially the NY Action Trailer), and those appeared on the DVD that we already have. Unless someone involved mysteriously finds some artifacts in their personal film libraries, then that's probably all we're gonna get, since everything else was seeming trashed by Columbia.

Which makes the 5.1 mix for EASY RIDER a nice surprise!

 

No one is freaking over the 5.1 Head Surround Sound mix!!
I don't have equip to play it, but that tears the top right off my head!!

 

I have a lot to say on this release, I worked extensively on it, will speak soon...

 

The fact that Andrew Sandoval worked on this release makes me very happy because I think he always does his best to keep the fans in mind.

It is a shame that no extra footage was included, and I think it probably means that none exists, because this definitely would have been the time to included it. In fact Seems like none of the films have outtake footage.

Why oh why was Columbia Picture so careless and short sighted and trashed the outtakes!

 

I should have clarified myself. I was referring to the photos (like the Monkees in their various costumes, etc) and script stuff.

 

...so they could lose the rights to the Monkees catalog and we could get loads of outtakes and a 3-CD deluxe Birds/Bees.

 

I have the equipment to play it, but usually prefer the original mix (whether mono or surround).
HOWEVER, I am cautiously optimistic on this 5.1 .

 

And should it not turn out so well, the original mono will still be there! Yay, Criterion!

 

I'd LOVE to be wrong about this, but considering the purge of elements related to this title, I'm thinking it may be one of those reverbed-mono-to-fake-5.1 jobs that the TV episodes were when they made it to DVD...

 

This is the most reassuring post of all. Thanks Andrew!

 

Ditto for Jack Nicholson. He did a commentary for The Passenger