Press Release Criterion Press Release: All About My Mother (Blu-ray) (1 Viewer)

[Robert Crawford]

This Oscar-winning melodrama, one of Pedro Almodóvar’s most beloved films, provides a dizzying, moving exploration of the meaning of motherhood. In an instant, nurse Manuela (Cecilia Roth) loses the teenage son she raised on her own. Grief-stricken, she sets out to search for the boy’s long-lost father in Barcelona, where she reawakens into a new maternal role, at the head of a surrogate family that includes a pregnant, HIV-positive nun (Penélope Cruz); an illustrious star of the stage (Marisa Paredes); and a transgender sex worker (Antonia San Juan). Beautifully performed and bursting with cinematic references, All About My Mother is a vibrant tribute to female fortitude, a one-of-a-kind family portrait, and a work of boundless compassion.

FILM INFO

• Pedro Almodóvar
• Spain
• 1999
• 101 minutes
• Color
• 2.35:1
• Spanish
• Spine #1112

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 2K digital restoration, supervised by executive producer Agustín Almodóvar and approved by director Pedro Almodóvar, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Fifty-two-minute documentary from 2012 on the making of the film, featuring interviews with Pedro Almodóvar; Agustín Almodóvar; actors Penélope Cruz, Marisa Paredes, Cecilia Roth, and Antonia San Juan; production manager Esther García; and author Didier Eribon
• Television program from 1999 featuring Pedro Almodóvar and his mother, Francisca Caballero, along with Cruz, San Juan, Paredes, and Roth
• Forty-eight-minute post-screening Q&A in Madrid from 2019, featuring Pedro Almodóvar, Agustín Almodóvar, and Paredes
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by film scholar Emma Wilson, along with (Blu-ray only) an interview with Pedro Almodóvar and a tribute he wrote to his mother, both from 1999

January 28, 2020

 

[Robert Crawford]

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[titch]

This iconic director has been making his own singular, wonderful, movies for 40 years. For my money, this is Pedro Almodóvar's best film - a sublime masterpiece - the best foreign film of 1999. I've been waiting forever for hi-def versions of this and Talk To Her, the second masterpiece he made immediately afterwards. I thought StudioCanal would eventually get round to releasing a region B edition; what a treat that Criterion got there first. I highly recommend Almodóvar's latest, Pain and Glory, currently playing in arthouse theatres.

 

[David Wilkins]

Matador is another that I hope Criterion will release. Maybe I'm making too much of it, but it seems that Criterion is releasing more titles with 2K masterings (as opposed to 4K) than was the case two or three years ago. In some cases they're not even being specific, just calling it a "high-definition restoration".

 

[titch]

Matador is another that I hope Criterion will release. Maybe I'm making too much of it, but it seems that Criterion is releasing more titles with 2K masterings (as opposed to 4K) than was the case two or three years ago. In some cases they're not even being specific, just calling it a "high-definition restoration".

Pathé released a box set in France with 18 of Almodóvar's films, the restored films were done in 2K so Criterion has just used these masters

https://www.amazon.fr/Cinéma-dAlmod...fret+almodovar+18+films&qid=1571466685&sr=8-1

Matador has not been restored - this was the first film I saw of Almodóvar. In 1986 I found the combination of sex, humour, set design and the introduction of Antonio Banderas completely irresistible! I only have it on laserdisc. Hopefully, Criterion will release Talk To Her during the next year.