1307 John Singleton’s Hood Trilogy

[Finch]

With his electrifying debut feature, Boyz n the Hood, John Singleton brought his South Central Los Angeles community to the screen with a bracing immediacy that rocked 1990s American cinema and popular culture. Poetic Justice and Baby Boy completed what the director considered his Hood Trilogy, a series of richly nuanced films that constitute a dramatic universe all their own. Featuring remarkable performances from supernova talents like Cuba Gooding Jr., Angela Bassett, Regina King, Janet Jackson, Tupac Shakur, and Taraji P. Henson, these indelible tales of urban life explore the experience of growing up Black and searching for one’s place in the world.

Boyz n the Hood 1991
One of the greatest debuts in American cinema, John Singleton’s first feature is a harrowing and compassionate immersion into the lives of three Black teenage boys grappling with the uncertainty of their futures. Growing up in South Central Los Angeles, the precocious Tre (Cuba Gooding Jr.), the street-smart Doughboy (Ice Cube), and the athletically gifted Ricky (Morris Chestnut) navigate friendship, first love, the hopes and dreams of their families, and the realities of gang violence in a society where the odds are stacked against them. Nominated for Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay at the age of twenty-four, Singleton established himself as a vital new auteur already in breathtaking command of his craft.

Poetic Justice
Poetic Justice 1993
Once upon a time in South Central LA . . . For his follow-up to Boyz n the Hood, John Singleton again turned the camera on his hometown to create a stirring exploration of grief, love, and creativity. Built around the electric chemistry between superstars Janet Jackson and Tupac Shakur, the film follows two young Angelenos—Justice, a sensitive hairdresser and poet mourning the death of her boyfriend, and Lucky, a dashingly charismatic postal clerk—as they fall in love over the course of a liberating road trip. Featuring soul-nourishing poetry by Maya Angelou, and scene-stealing performances from Regina King and Joe Torry, Poetic Justice is one of the most irresistible romances of the 1990s.

Baby Boy
Baby Boy 2001
In this funny and fearlessly honest character study, John Singleton illuminates the pressures that Black men face as they make their way through early adulthood. Jody (Tyrese Gibson, in his feature-film debut) is a young native of South Central Los Angeles struggling to find direction in his life. At the same time, he tries to reconcile his volatile relationships with his loving but conflicted girlfriend (a revelatory Taraji P. Henson), who bears much of the burden of raising their son, and his strong-willed mother (AJ Johnson), whose imposing ex-con beau (Ving Rhames) is a thorn in Jody’s side. Confronting complicated questions about sex, violence, and parent-child dynamics, the final installment in Singleton’s Hood Trilogy showcases the deep humanism of a celebrated filmmaker working at the height of his powers.

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
4K digital restoration of Boyz n the Hood, supervised and approved by director John Singleton, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack and alternate Dolby Atmos soundtrack
New 4K digital restorations of Poetic Justice (with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack) and Baby Boy (with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack)
In the 4K UHD edition: Three 4K UHD discs of the films presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the special features
Audio commentaries on all three films featuring Singleton
New conversation between filmmakers Ryan Coogler and Regina King
New documentary on Singleton’s filmmaking process featuring publicist Cassandra Butcher, casting director Kimberly Hardin, and collaborator Paul Hall
New audio interviews with actors Taraji P. Henson and Tyrese Gibson
Archival interviews with cast and crew
Press conference from 1991
Deleted scenes, audition footage, music videos, and trailers
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by critic Julian Kimble

New cover by Ngabo “El’Cesart” Desire Cesar

[The Narrator Returns]

I’d seen people guess this but I had no idea it was actually in the works. Really cool, all three are very good and Poetic Justice is great and so lovely, really makes you feel the theft of decades of Tupac-the-actor.

[yoloswegmaster]

Mr. Deltoid is currently shaking his fists in anger

[DRW.mov]

Is this the first 4K release to not be dual format? Appears to only include 4K discs of the features and a blu-ray of extras.

[CSM126]

Is this the first 4K release to not be dual format? Appears to only include 4K discs of the features and a blu-ray of extras.

Playtime is much the same.

[yoloswegmaster]

Life of Brian as well

[bearcuborg]

Thank heavens Higher Learning isn’t here. Easily his worst movie…

[mnmlist]

There's already a really good 4K+Blu-ray release of Boyz N the Hood from Sony. I wonder if we'll ever get a standalone release from Criterion?

[mfunk9786]

This'll be an easy buy during the July sale. Baby Boy, though I haven't seen it in a couple decades, is a memorably tender film.

[The Narrator Returns]

Thank heavens Higher Learning isn’t here. Easily his worst movie…

I don’t think Abduction can be beaten for that, though one has Sigourney Weaver deadpanning “I hate balloons” and the other has a lot of Nazi Michael Rapaport.

[ryannichols7]

There's already a really good 4K+Blu-ray release of Boyz N the Hood from Sony. I wonder if we'll ever get a standalone release from Criterion?

not likely, as I'm guessing the logic there is that anyone interested in that title would pick up the Sony single

this is Criterion's first non dual format box for 4K. admittedly I'll live with that, but it does suck for future proof-ers who aren't 4K ready yet

[Drucker]

Oh wow, splitting up the formats is disappointing as this affects me personally.

[cdnchris]

I'm surprised they didn't go the same route they did with the Ranown Westerns and just release the one set with both formats.

[andyli]

Quite excited for this! Been meaning to get the Sony editions of the first two films for ever. This close to pulling the trigger last week at DeepDiscount.

[Tuppence]

So a 4-disc UHD set and a 3-disc Blu-ray set would seem to imply that all the video extras will be featured as a separate Blu-ray in the 4K edition, but presented alongside each film on the Blu-ray set.

Also, I hope we get Singleton's original laserdisc commentary on Boyz.

[tenia]

What I find weirder is to place the extras aside for UHD, where HD extras will take a smaller chunk of the available space proportion-wise, but not for the BD, which is a more constrained format, all this while the movies aren't particularly long (and 2 out of 3 are 2.0 soundtracks only), and that it doesn't look like the video extras will be humpteen hours long.

I suppose Criterion won't be going to Fidelity in Motion on this one and/or the movies will be barebones on UHD-66 instead of UHD-100 including the extras, and that the BDs will get mediocre encodes like they still often do from Criterion.

[cdnchris]

Also, I hope we get Singleton's original laserdisc commentary on Boyz.

It has both tracks that Singleton recorded: the 1991 from the Criterion LaserDisc and the one he recorded in 2003 for the DVD.

[andyli]

With this set and Life of Brian (and the earlier Playtime), Criterion seems to be doing away with their hardcore combo model, skipping the feature-only Blu-ray disc(s). A nice move toward the right direction. But I guess this only affects two-disc Blu-ray editions with only the feature film on Disc One, as well as newly produced box set where they care to move all the extras to a separate disc for the 4K (which probably outweighs the extra cost of including more discs in the set). For example, if this policy were implemented sooner we'd end up with the Antoine Doinel 4K set with five discs instead of eight.