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This podcast focuses on Criterion’s Eclipse Series of DVDs. Hosts David Blakeslee and Trevor Berrett give an overview of each box and offer their perspectives on the unique treasures they find inside. In this episode, David and Trevor discuss Eclipse Series 29: Aki Kaurismäki’s Leningrad Cowboys.

About the films:

In the late eighties, Aki Kaurismäki, a master of the deadpan, fashioned a waggish fish-out-of-water tale about a U.S. tour by “the worst rock-and-roll band in the world.” Leningrad Cowboys Go America’s posse of fur-coated, outrageously pompadoured hipsters struck such a chord with international audiences that the fictional band became a genuine attraction, touring the world. Later, Kaurismäki created a sequel, Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses,and filmed a gigantic outdoor concert that the band put on in Helsinki, for the rollicking documentary Total Balalaika Show. With this Eclipse series, we present all three crackpot musical and comic odysseys,...

"In his mid-50s and a festival favorite since the 80s, [Aki] Kaurismäki has joined the ranks of the master auteurs," writes Dennis Lim in the Los Angeles Times, "but in the Us at least, he has remained somewhat overlooked. Le Havre is being released by Janus Films, the sister company of the Criterion Collection, and for those looking to catch up, a pair of DVD boxed sets are available on Criterion's midprice line Eclipse. Compassionate chronicles of the romantic, economic and existential plights of blue-collar outsiders, the films in the Proletariat Trilogy set [Shadows in Paradise, Ariel and The Match Factory Girl], made between 1986 and 1990, put Kaurismäki on the international map. The Leningrad Cowboys set (out this week) shows off his goofier side, not to mention his taste for Soviet kitsch and American rockabilly."

This second trilogy — Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989), Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses (1994) and Total Balalaika Show (1994) — "chronicles eight years in the group's history, from their ramshackle...

Release Date: Oct. 18, 2011

Price: DVD $44.95

Studio: Criterion

The Leningrad Cowboys prepare for another hair-raising show.

Criterion‘s Eclipse Series 29 features the inimitable work of Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismäki (The Match Factory Girl), the master of the deadpan comedy, and his weirdest creation: the band Leningrad Cowboys, billed by their inventor as “the worst rock-and-roll band in the world.”

A bizarre posse of fur-coated, outrageously pompadoured Siberian hipsters, the band struck a chord with international audiences via their debut star turn in the 1989 Kaurismäki film Leningrad Cowboys Go America. The fictional band was so popular that it became a genuine attraction, touring the world and appearing in a handful of subsequent Kaurismäki movies.

This Eclipse series presents these crackpot musical and comic odysseys, all Finnish films, along with five Leningrad Cowboys music videos directed by Kaurismäki.

Here’s what’s included in the DVD:

Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989)

The struggling Siberian...