The Criterion Collection is bringing us A Matter of Life and Death

The Criterion Collection and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment have confirmed the titles to be released on Blu-ray in July 2018.

On the 23 July comes Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s richly humanistic A Matter of Life and Death; a romance that traverses time and space to make a case for the transcendent value of love.

Following on the 30 July is Steven Soderbergh’s debut feature Sex, Lies and Videotape, the provocative Palme d’Or–winning drama that changed the landscape of American film in the modern age.

After miraculously surviving a jump from his burning plane, RAF pilot Peter Carter (David Niven) encounters the American radio operator (Kim Hunter) to whom he’s just delivered his dying wishes and, face-to-face on a tranquil English beach, the pair fall in love. When a messenger from the afterlife arrives to correct the clerical error that spared his life, Peter must mount a fierce defence for his right to stay on earth—painted by production designer Alfred Junge and cinematographer Jack Cardiff as a rich Technicolor Eden—climbing a wide staircase to stand trial in a starkly beautiful, black-and-white modernist heaven. Peppered by humorous jabs intended to smooth tensions between the wartime allies Britain and America, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s richly humanistic A Matter of Life and Death traverses time and space to make a case for the transcendent value of love.

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Introduction from 2009 with filmmaker Martin Scorsese
• Audio commentary from 2009 featuring film scholar Ian Christie
• New interview with editor Thelma Schoonmaker, director Michael Powell’s widow
• New interview with film historian Craig Barron on the film’s visual effects and production design
• The Colour Merchant, a 1998 short film by Craig McCall featuring cinematographer Jack Cardiff
• PLUS: An essay by critic Stephanie Zacharek

With his provocative feature debut, twenty-six-year-old Steven Soderbergh trained his focus on the complexities of human intimacy and deception in the modern age. Housewife Ann (Andie MacDowell) feels distant from her lawyer husband, John (Peter Gallagher), who is sleeping with her sister (Laura San Giacomo). When John’s old friend Graham (a magnetic, Cannes-award-winning James Spader) comes to town, Ann is drawn to the soft-spoken outsider, eventually uncovering his startling private obsession: videotaping women as they confess their deepest desires. A piercingly intelligent and flawlessly performed chamber piece, in which the video camera becomes a charged metaphor for the characters’ isolation, the Palme d’Or–winning sex, lies, and videotape changed the landscape of American film, helping pave the way for the thriving independent scene of the 1990s.

DIRECTOR–APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:

• New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by director Steven Soderbergh, with 5.1 surround DTS‑HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Audio commentary from 1998 featuring director Steven Soderbergh in conversation with filmmaker Neil LaBute
• New programme by Soderbergh, featuring responses to questions sent in by fans
• Interviews with Soderbergh from 1990 and 1992
• New documentary about the making of the film featuring actors Peter Gallagher, Andie MacDowell, and Laura San Giacomo
• New conversation with composer Cliff Martinez and supervising sound editor Larry Blake
• Deleted scene with commentary by Soderbergh
• Trailers
• More!
• PLUS: An essay by critic Amy Taubin and, in the Blu-ray release, excerpts from Soderbergh’s diaries written at the time of the film’s production