Criterion Watch: ‘Brand Upon the Brain’

Here’s the details (from  the Criterion website)  for the upcoming first Criterion release of a Guy Maddin film, ‘Brand Upon the Brain’. Great DVD cover art for this one …

Release Date: August 12, 2008

Synopsis:

In the weird and wonderful supercinematic world of Canadian cult filmmaker Guy Maddin, personal memory collides with movie lore for a radical sensory overload. This eerie excursion into the Gothic recesses of Maddin’s mad, imaginary childhood is a silent, black-and-white comic science-fiction nightmare set in a lighthouse on grim Black Notch Island, where fictional protagonist Guy Maddin was raised by an ironfisted, puritanical mother. Originally mounted as a theatrical event (accompanied by live orchestra, Foley artists, and assorted narrators), Brand upon the Brain! is an irreverent, delirious trip into the mind of one of current cinema’s true eccentrics.

DVD Special Features:

New high-definition digital transfer
Narration tracks by Isabella Rossellini, Laurie Anderson, John Ashbery, Guy Maddin, Louis Negin, and Eli Wallach
97 Percent True, a new documentary featuring interviews with the director and his collaborators
Two new short films directed by Maddin exclusively for this release: It’s My Mother’s Birthday Today and Footsteps
Deleted scene
Trailer
PLUS: A new essay by film critic Dennis Lim