STUDIO: Warner | DIRECTOR: Stanley Kubrick | CAST: Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Warren Clarke, Adrienne Corri, Aubrey Morris
RELEASE DATE: 5/31/11 | PRICE: Blu-ray$34.99
BONUSES: commentary, documentary, featurettes, more
SPECS: R | 136 min. | Foreign language thriller | 1.66:1 widescreen | DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 | English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish subtitlesRATINGS (out of 5): Movie
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Malcolm McDowell readies himself for a bit of the old "ultra-violence" in A Clockwork Orange.
The 40th Anniversary Blu-ray of A Clockwork Orange, packaged in a handsome hardcover Digibook filled with color photos and an essay, features the same fine transfer that was used in Warner’s 2007 Blu-ray of Stanley Kubrick’s landmark 1971 science fiction/crime/drama film. That said, I’ll use this opportunity to talk about the equally respectable collection of bonus features that supplement this new release.
Leading off is a Turning Like Clockwork, a new 26-minute featurette directed by Gary Leva. It’s a lively piece that featurettes interview snippets from star Malcolm McDowell (Easy A) and such prominent filmmakers as Paul Greengrass (Green Zone), James Mangold (Knight and Day) and TV writer/producer David Simon (HBO’s Treme). Oliver Stone (Platoon) is also on hand to talk about how the criticism Kubrick received over Clockwork’s supposed “glorification” of violence rivaled the problems he had when his own Natural Born Killers was released in 1994.
Of Clockwork’s well-known sexual assault scene (set to McDowell’s warbling of “Singing in the Rain”), Stone comments that, “The rape sequences were fascinating. I had seen rapes in Vietnam and they looked nothing like that.” Leave it to Stone to manage to bring up Vietnam…
Also new to Blu-ray is Malcolm McDowell Looks Back, a 10-minute video short that focuses on McDowell as he flips through a stack of vintage photos, posters and reviews of the film, sparking some impromptu memories about the production and its creator.
“I know when I die, it will be “Malcolm ‘Clockwork Orange’ McDowell passed away,” he sighs at one point. “But what an incredible piece of work to go down with!”
The balance of the extras originally appeared on the 2007 Blu-ray edition. They include a Channel Four documentary on the film’s legacy, a making-of featurette, a commentary by McDowell and film historian Nick Redman, a theatrical trailer and Oh Lucky Malcolm!, a feature-length documentary on McDowell’s life and career directed by Jan Harlan.
Also included in the 40th Anniversary Blu-ray is a standard definition version of the excellent 2001 documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures.
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