Last Picture Show (Criterion) 11/23 Blu-ray (Rental)

One of the key films of the American seventies cinema renaissance, The Last Picture Show is set in the early fifties, in the loneliest Texas nowheresville to ever dust up a movie screen. This aching portrait of a dying West, adapted from Larry McMurtry’s novel, focuses on the daily shuffles of three futureless teens—enigmatic Sonny (Timothy Bottoms), wayward jock Duane (Jeff Bridges), and desperate-to-be-adored rich girl Jacy (Cybill Shepherd)—and the aging lost souls who bump up against them in the night like drifting tumbleweeds. Featuring evocative black-and-white imagery and profoundly felt performances, this hushed depiction of crumbling American values remains the pivotal work in the career of invaluable film historian and director Peter Bogdanovich. TWO-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES High-definition digital restoration of the director’s cut, supervised by director Peter Bogdanovich, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack Texasville (1990), the sequel to The Last Picture Show, presented in both the original theatrical version and a black-and-white version of the director’s cut, produced in collaboration with cinematographer Nicholas von Sternberg Two audio commentaries, featuring director Peter Bogdanovich and actors Cybill Shepherd, Randy Quaid, Cloris Leachman, and Frank Marshall Three documentaries about the making of the film Screen tests and location footage Introduction to Texasville featuring Bogdanovich, Shepherd, and actor Jeff Bridges Excerpts from a 1972 television interview with filmmaker François Truffaut about the New Hollywood Trailers English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing PLUS: An essay by film critic Graham Fuller and excerpts from an interview with Bogdanovich about Texasville, with a new introduction by Bogdanovich biographer Peter Tonguette