2014 is shaping up to be an exciting year for moviegoers. From films like The LEGO Movie and The Monuments Men, to the endless list of big budget summer releases, I’m sure that we’ll all be kept very busy at the multiplexes. But for me the most exciting part of any new movie year is when the Criterion Collection announces their monthly titles. As they did the year before, Criterion recently published a charming drawing teasing some of their 2014 releases. Let the debates begin!
The people over at Criterion Cast and Criterion Forum (via The Playlist) have their own ideas about what the picture represents. Some of the doodles are self-explanatory: an exploding head is likely to be David Cronenberg’s Scanners and the gentleman in a box smoking a pipe looks very much like Jacques Tati. The picnic scene could be any number of films, including Picnic At Hanging Rock and Ringu. The four beetles can only be our favorite mop-tops, but are we looking at a Criterion release of A Hard Day’s Night, or perhaps Let It Be? And what about that angel flying away into a red sun, armed with a bell? Well, maybe we’ll finally get a Criterion Blu-Ray of It’s A Wonderful Life. Other guesses have included Howard Hawks’s Red River (the red river), Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter (deer hiding behind a bush), and a number of Jacques Demy films (all those angels).
Criterion is not telling, of course, but it’s fun to guess (and to hope). What we do know from this drawing is that we can expect some truly stellar classical and foreign films to finally come to Criterion DVD and Blu-Ray. At a time when I’ve grown bored with contemporary releases, and cannot muster much excitement for the parade of sequels and reboots, it’s nice to know that there are still some good things coming up in 2014.
Check out the drawing below and let us know what you think the Criterion Collection has in store for us.
