Youssef Chahine, Paul Thomas Anderson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Photographer Cinema, and More Are Featured in The Criterion Channel’s August Schedule
The August program on the Criterion Channel honors auteurs of all stripes, including filmmakers, performers, and photographers—fictional or not. They are going to stream 20 films directed by the legendary Richard Peña, who introduced Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine, in a remarkable gesture of advocacy and preservation. Not as well-known, but still entertaining, are the five Paul Thomas Anderson titles, which include the exclusive Licorice Pizza stream; additionally, there is a Philip Seymour Hoffman series that includes Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love (which is being released on Criterion this month), The Master, Love Liza, 25th Hour, and his own directing project, Jack Goes Boating. Preston Sturges receives five film credits, including Christmas in July, The Lady Eve, The Great McGinty, Hail the Conquering Hero, The Palm Beach Story, and Sullivan’s Travels will be released in October.
The photographic series “Vacation Noir” comprises The Lady from Shanghai, Brighton Rock, Kansas City Confidential, Purple Noon, and La piscine; the theme series includes Rear Window, Peeping Tom, Blow-up, Close-Up, and Clouzot’s La prisonnière. August’s Criterion Editions feature the recently restored Victims of Sin in addition to the previously mentioned PTA and Antonioni images. The streaming debuts of Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Pictures of Ghosts and restorations of My Heart Is That Eternal Rose by Patrick Tam and Lumumba: Death of a Prophet by Raoul Peck. Meanwhile, the underappreciated Haywire by Steven Soderbergh is a pleasant surprise.
