"Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" added to the Criterion Collection

by Chris MaGee

It was at the beginning of this month that a a maddening tease was dropped on the Criterion Collection's Twitter feed. In response to the question "When can we see Mr. Christmas Mr. Lawrence on Criterion?", the answer from Criterion was "This year..." Only a couple weeks later and Criterion has come through for us all. On the heels of the Eclipse "Oshima's Outlaw Sixties" set that was released in May the Collection has just announced that Nagisa Oshima's 1983 WW2 drama starring David Bowie, Tom Conti, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Takeshi Kitano is finally making its way to DVD. Fans of Oshima can pick up "Merry Christmas. Mr. Lawrence" on September 28th.

While this release is very good news some folks are a bit peeved that Nobuhiko Obayashi's "House", that was supposed to be released on September 7th was not announced for the Criterion Collection's September releases. I guess we'll have to have a bit more patience before we get everything on our 2010 Criterion wish list. For now let's console ourselves with the trailer for Nagisa Oshima's "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence".