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Real Life



Decades before reality television reigned supreme, there was Albert Brooks's debut feature, Real Life, a brilliantly deadpan, stylistically innovative satire about the perils and pitfalls of trying to capture the truth on film. The writer-director plays "Albert Brooks," a narcissistic Hollywood filmmaker who plans to spend the year in Phoenix embedded with Warren and Jeanette Yeager (Charles Grodin and Frances Lee McCain) and their two children, deploying an arsenal of cutting-edge equipment (including the over-the-head Ettinaur 226XL camera) to capture an American family's ordinary day-to-day. Chronicling the project's disastrous fallout, as the meddlesome Albert can't help getting too close to his subjects, this pioneering mockumentary is more relevant than ever amid today's media landscape.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Albert Brooks, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• New interview with Brooks
• New interview with actor Frances Lee McCain
• 3D trailer directed by Brooks
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing


Mother



Reeling after his second divorce and struggling with writer's block, sci-fi novelist John Henderson (Albert Brooks) resolves to figure out where his life went wrong, and hits on an unorthodox solution: moving back in with his relentlessly disapproving, cheerfully passive-aggressive mother (Debbie Reynolds), whose favorite son has always been John's younger brother, Jeff (Rob Morrow). It's an experiment that, however harebrained, delivers surprising results. Brooks's film perfectly blends the writer-director-star's biting wit with insight and inviting warmth, while giving him a formidable foil in the delightful Reynolds, triumphant in a comeback role that's equal parts caustic and charming.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Albert Brooks, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• New interview with Brooks
• New interview with actor Rob Morrow
• Teaser directed by Brooks
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by critic Carrie Rickey

let me be the first to say: extremely, extremely overdue but the 4K makes it all worth it

Can’t say I had Mother on 4K UHD on my Bingo card

Strange Real Life doesn't show an essay being included. Maybe just a typo?

domino harvey wrote: Wed May 15, 2024 5:40 pm Can’t say I had Mother on 4K UHD on my Bingo card

I did but for a very different film.

I wonder how 3D compatible the Real Life trailer will be

Worth noting that the trailer for Real Life is the funniest thing Brooks ever did (and my vote for the best trailer of all time), so thank god that managed to show up even with the paucity of extras on these releases

Might've been nice to have a piece about An American Family as it's not readily available and ancient history at this point. But I guess Brooks can talk about it for ten seconds or if they decide to bother with an essay that writer can devote a sentence or two to it.

swo17 wrote: Wed May 15, 2024 5:45 pm I wonder how 3D compatible the Real Life trailer will be

Was it shot in 3D? If it’s short enough, it may be easy enough to include both a 2D and 3D version, which would be ideal.

denti alligator wrote: Wed May 15, 2024 6:08 pm

swo17 wrote: Wed May 15, 2024 5:45 pm I wonder how 3D compatible the Real Life trailer will be

Was it shot in 3D? If it’s short enough, it may be easy enough to include both a 2D and 3D version, which would be ideal.

That's part of the gag.

brundlefly wrote: Wed May 15, 2024 6:06 pm Might've been nice to have a piece about An American Family as it's not readily available and ancient history at this point. But I guess Brooks can talk about it for ten seconds or if they decide to bother with an essay that writer can devote a sentence or two to it.

It recently became available again.

Criterion has finally rectified the lack of Rob Morrow in the Collection. Let the floodgates open. Actually, just give us Quiz Show ASAP and stop there.

I like Mother, but it is kind of a weird choice for the Collection.

hearthesilence wrote: Wed May 15, 2024 10:55 pm

brundlefly wrote: Wed May 15, 2024 6:06 pm Might've been nice to have a piece about An American Family as it's not readily available and ancient history at this point. But I guess Brooks can talk about it for ten seconds or if they decide to bother with an essay that writer can devote a sentence or two to it.

It recently became available again.

Should note, the transfers won't look great because PBS foolishly discarded the original film elements so per Alan Raymond no new scan will likely be possible, but at least it's all available in some form.

hearthesilence wrote: Wed May 15, 2024 10:55 pm

brundlefly wrote: Wed May 15, 2024 6:06 pm Might've been nice to have a piece about An American Family as it's not readily available and ancient history at this point. But I guess Brooks can talk about it for ten seconds or if they decide to bother with an essay that writer can devote a sentence or two to it.

It recently became available again.

That's great! Thank you.

But if there were no rights problems keeping it from view, one less hurdle for Criterion to coordinate with PBS and the Louds and the Raymonds for some sort of contextual feature.

brundlefly wrote: Thu May 16, 2024 5:20 am

hearthesilence wrote: Wed May 15, 2024 10:55 pm

brundlefly wrote: Wed May 15, 2024 6:06 pm Might've been nice to have a piece about An American Family as it's not readily available and ancient history at this point. But I guess Brooks can talk about it for ten seconds or if they decide to bother with an essay that writer can devote a sentence or two to it.

It recently became available again.

That's great! Thank you.

But if there were no rights problems keeping it from view, one less hurdle for Criterion to coordinate with PBS and the Louds and the Raymonds for some sort of contextual feature.

Raymond is active on Facebook so it's tempting to suggest that idea to him...but he comes off as a bit cantankerous sometimes so I would be reluctant to do so!

Roger Ryan wrote: Wed May 15, 2024 7:43 pm

denti alligator wrote: Wed May 15, 2024 6:08 pm

swo17 wrote: Wed May 15, 2024 5:45 pm I wonder how 3D compatible the Real Life trailer will be

Was it shot in 3D? If it’s short enough, it may be easy enough to include both a 2D and 3D version, which would be ideal.

That's part of the gag.

I think I can safely say the Real Life "3D" trailer, as funny as it is, was not actually shot in 3D. I located a pair of old-school 3D glasses (red cellophane over the left lens, blue cellophane over the right), and tried a couple versions of the trailer on-line (including the one currently on the relevant Criterion Collection page). No perceptible depth is achieved, so I think Brooks just had two versions of the same image (one dyed blue, one dyed red) superimposed with the registration a few millimeters off between them to give the impression the viewer was looking at a 3D image without glasses. In other words, the correct way to enjoy the trailer is without 3D glasses.

I always forget how funny Brooks is, so each new film comes as a nice surprise. Mother isn’t the deepest of his films with a pretty obvious set up and follow through, but each second is so deeply funny. Brooks has possibly never been so unpleasant with his narcissism cranked through the roof. The relationship between him and Reynolds is so delightfully sick like a real world variant of Kinds of Kindness’ second episode as each person’s mutual love is sort of canceled out by just not wanting to be here.

Back to funny though, when I got the Simon and Garfunkel joke I could not stop laughing. That’s top tier silliness.

Now I’ve just got The Muse to go to finish with Brooks bingo.

Andrew Sarris named Mother the best English-language film of 1996, so maybe this was licensed in his memory