IRMA VEP BLU

New release: I'm very happy to announce the Criterion Collection will be releasing a Blu-ray edition of Irma Vep in April. Spy Vibers might recognize the name, which originated from the amazing crime serial, Les Vampires, made by Feuillade (Fantomas). The film has a wonderful mix of a movie-within-a-movie narrative, homage shot to Feuillade,  and some avant-garde experimental segments. It's one of my faves! From the press release: "The live-wire international breakthrough of Olivier Assayas stars a magnetic Maggie Cheung as a version of herself: a Hong Kong action-movie star who arrives in Paris to play the latex-clad lead in a remake of Louis Feuillade’s classic silent crime serial Les vampires. What she finds is a behind-the-scenes tangle of barely controlled chaos as egos clash, romantic attractions simmer, and an obsessive director (a cannily cast Jean-Pierre Léaud) drives himself to the brink to realize his vision. Blending blasts of silent cinema, martial-arts flicks, and the music of Sonic Youth and Luna into a hallucinatory swirl of postmodern cool, Assayas composes a witty critique of the nineties French film industry and the eternal tension between art and commercial entertainment." Special features include: New 2K digital restoration from the original camera negative, approved by director Olivier Assayas, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray, New interview with Assayas, On the Set of “Irma Vep,” a behind-the-scenes featurette, Interview from 2003 with Assayas and critic Charles Tesson, Interview from 2003 with actors Maggie Cheung and Nathalie Richard, Musidora, the Tenth Muse (2013), a documentary on the actor who originated the role of Irma Vep, Les vampires: Hypnotic Eyes (1916), the sixth episode in Louis Feuillade’s silent-film serial, Man Yuk: A Portrait of Maggie Cheung, a 1997 short film by Assayas, Black-and-white rushes. More info at Criterion. Enjoy!

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