April's Criterion Collection Slate Brings Us Ray, Leigh And Anderson

April might be the month we start to embrace the incoming ‘warmer’ weather as Spring says hello, over at The Criterion Collection, it’s all about fragility, catharsis and soul searching .

This (5th) April will bring us Satyajit Ray‘s exquisite and delicate tale, subtlety textural CHARULATA.A tale of a marriage in jeopardy and a woman taking the first steps toward establishing her own voice.

Then on 26th April, atonement reigns in Mike Leigh‘s classic SECRETS & LIES. A Palme d’Or–winning tour de force of sustained tension and catharsis that lays bare the emotional fault lines running beneath the surface of everyday lives.

Finally also on 26th April, Wes Anderson‘s visually dazzling and hilarious film THE DARJEELING LIMITED is released, that takes his work to richer, deeper places than ever before.

CHARULATA DRAMA,ROMANCE

This film about a woman’s artistic and romantic yearning by SATYAJIT RAY (The Music Room) is set in late nineteenth-century, pre-independence India. It takes place in the gracious home of a liberal-minded, workaholic newspaper editor and his lonely, stifled wife, Charulata (The Big City’s MADHABI MUKHERJEE), whose exquisitely composed features mask a burning creativity. When her husband’s poet cousin comes to stay with them, Charulata finds herself both inspired by him to pursue her own writing and dangerously drawn to him physically. Based on a novella by the great Rabindranath Tagore, Charulata is a work of subtle textures, a delicate tale of a marriage in jeopardy and a woman taking the first steps toward establishing her own voice.

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
New 2K digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
New interview program with actors Madhabi Mukherjee and SoumitraChatterjee
Adapting Tagore, a new interview program featuring Indian film scholar Moinak Biswas and Bengali literature historian Supriya Chaudhuri
Archival audio interview with director Satyajit Ray by film historian Gideon Bachmann
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Philip Kemp and a 1980s interview with Ray by his biographer Andrew Robinson

SECRETS & LIES COMEDY, DRAMA

Writer-director MIKE LEIGH (Naked) reached new levels of expressive power and intricacy in his ongoing contemplation of unembellished humanity with this resonant exploration of the deceptions, small and large, that shape our relationships to those we love. When Hortense (RoboCop’s MARIANNE JEAN-BAPTISTE), a Black optometrist who was adopted as a child, begins the search for her birth mother, she doesn’t expect that it will lead her to Cynthia (Pride & Prejudice’s BRENDA BLETHYN, winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s best actress award), a desperately lonely white factory worker whose tentative embrace of her long-lost daughter sends shock waves through the rest of her already fragile family. Born from a painstaking process of rehearsal and improvisation with a powerhouse ensemble cast, Secrets & Lies is a Palme d’Or–winning tour de force of sustained tension and catharsis that lays bare the emotional fault lines running beneath the surface of everyday lives.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

New 2K digital restoration, supervised by director Mike Leigh and director of photography Dick Pope, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
New conversation with Leigh and composer Gary Yershon
New interview with actor Marianne Jean-Baptiste
Audio interview with Leigh from 1996 conducted by film critic Michel Ciment
Trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

UK | 1996 | 142 MINUTES | COLOUR | 1.85:1 | ENGLISH

THE DARJEELING LIMITED ADVENTURE, COMEDY

In The Darjeeling Limited, from director WES ANDERSON (Rushmore, Fantastic Mr. Fox), three estranged American brothers reunite for a meticulously planned, soul-searching train voyage across India, one year after the death of their father. For reasons involving over-the-counter painkillers, Indian cough syrup, and pepper spray, the brothers eventually find themselves stranded alone in the middle of the desert—where a new, unplanned chapter of their journey begins. Featuring a sensational cast, including OWEN WILSON (Armageddon, Wedding Crashers), ADRIEN BRODY (The Thin Red Line, The Pianist), JASON SCHWARTZMAN (Rushmore, HBO’s Bored to Death), and ANJELICA HUSTON (Prizzi’s Honor, The Grifters), The Darjeeling Limited is a visually dazzling and hilarious film that takes Anderson’s work to richer, deeper places than ever before.

DIRECTOR APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
New high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Wes Anderson, with DTS-HD Master Audio
Anderson’s short film Hotel Chevalier (part one of The Darjeeling Limited), starring Natalie Portman, with commentary by Anderson
Audio commentary featuring Anderson and co-writers Jason Schwartzman and Roman Coppola
Behind-the-scenes documentary by Barry Braverman
Anderson and filmmaker James Ivory discussing the film’s music
Anderson’s American Express commercial
On-set footage shot by Coppola and actor Waris Ahluwalia
Audition footage, deleted and alternate scenes, and stills galleries
Original theatrical trailer

PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Richard Brody and original illustrations by Eric Anderson