Yesterday, at the end Criterion’s newsletter touting its peerless April line-up (which includes Olivier Assayas’ “Summer Hours” and a new director’s cut of Ang Lee’s western “Ride with the Devil”), they provided us with another one of their “wacky clues.” This time, it looked like a fox eating its own entrails and the caption said “This fall, a truly gutsy release.” The clues of late have been pretty easy but this one takes the cake — how many talking fox-eating-their-own-entrails movies are there? Or, should we say, how many fox-eating-their-own-entrails movies are there that Criterion would release?
Yes, it seems the mighty Criterion, thanks to their recent deal with IFC, will be putting out Las von Trier’s shocking “Antichrist” on DVD and Blu-ray this fall (in time for Halloween? We think so!). When IFC and Criterion announced their partnership, and mapped out the films that they would be releasing together, Las von Trier’s film was nowhere to be found. When we asked them directly about it last year, it didn’t seem to be the cards even though Criterion has a relationship with Von Trier, having released a great version of his early thriller “Element of Crime” and a nice edition of his breakthrough, “Europa.” And while they do love putting out hot button movies (“Salo” anyone?), it looked like this one just wasn’t on the docket.
But then on March 30th, the first clue arrived when they put a Twitpic up on their Facebook page and although its pretty indistinguishable, looks to be one of the earthy, forest-bound shots from von Trier’s psychological horror tale. And how with the not-so-cryptic clue it seems to be pretty much a sure thing.
While a lot of us at The Playlist felt mixed about the movie (or at least the movie’s gruesome and polarizing third act), this is undoubtedly going to be an exciting release from Criterion. At the very least, the movie’s unquestionably amazing digital cinematography, by “Slumdog Millionaire”‘s Anthony Dod Mantle, will looking cracking on Blu-ray.
I was really hoping Criterion would release this!
I get that this film is not every one's cup of tea so I don't often bother to make an argument over it but I really love the film. It's so ridiculous, beautiful, so disgusting, so silly, and disturbing.