Blu-ray Release: The Last Temptation of Christ

Blu-ray Release Date: March 13, 2012
Price: Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion


The Last Temptation of Christ movie scene

Willem Dafoe stars in The Last Temptation of Christ.

Though it initially engendered enormous controversy when it was released in 1988, drama film The Last Temptation of Christ, by Martin Scorsese (Shutter Island), is now viewed by many as a remarkable, profoundly personal work of faith.

An adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel that imagines an alternate fate for Jesus Christ, the movie stars Willem Dafoe (Platoon), Barbara Hershey (Black Swan), Harvey Keitel (The Last Godfather), Harry Dean Stanton (Alice) and David Bowie (The Hunger).

Featuring striking cinematography by the Michael Ballhaus (Broadcast News) and a memorable score by Peter Gabriel (Live in London), The Last Temptation of Christ was first released on DVD by Criterion back in 2000 (and it’s still available).

Criterion’s Blu-ray edition includes the following special features (all ported over from the DVD):

  • audio commentary featuring director Martin Scorsese, actor Willem Dafoe and writers Paul Schrader and Jay Cocks
  • galleries of production stills, research materials, and costume designs
  • location production footage shot by Scorsese
  • interview with composer Peter Gabriel, with a stills gallery of traditional instruments used in the score
  • essay by film critic David Ehrenstein

For the Blu-ray, the movie got a restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by cinematographer Michael Ballhaus and editor Thelma Schoonmaker, with a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack by supervising sound editor Skip Lievsay.

 

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About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.