So are the announcements this Friday or Monday?

There is only one Criterion.

They said Friday, according to their fb post last Friday.

The artwork is bilingual, I believe that's the only difference there is. And I am not sure if that's for all their titles.

The only Criterion with bilingual artwork is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Beaver says Island of Lost Souls is presumably in the public domain - so why the *!?K do they have to region lock EVERYTHING?

Apparently, Criterion prefers to cater chiefly to the North American (read: United States) market. I also wish region-free coding was adopted as standard by all the studios for all titles. There's certainly no technical hurdle against that.

In case a company from the other regions wants to release it (Masters of Cinema, who were putting out a dvd around the same time, but has since delayed it to decide if it would be viable to do a dual format for the film).

Don't forget that a release includes things other than the feature. Even if the movie itself is in the public domain, they still have to get the rights to all the supplements.

Unless someone cites a source to contradict me, I maintain that this is one of the pre-1948 Paramount titles that Universal bought in the 1950s, and that Universal maintains a valid copyright on the film.

Aside from that, as others have said, Criterion doesn't own their films (none that I know of anyway) so the region coding is usually dictated by the liscensors, who may have rights only for region A. And even if region coding isn't set by the owners of the film, Criterion may have a policy of region coding everything for consistency's sake.

Odd, because Masters of Cinema opts for releasing all of their Blu-rays region free, unless the studio they license from doesn't want to. If both studios release theirs region free, how can it hurt either of them? Unless one is inferior, but it would seem that that would give a company a bigger incentive to do better releases.

That's what my concern was. I'm thinking about getting The Man Who Fell To Earth from someone in Canada, just wasn't sure if the Criterions over there get bilingual covers or not.

Thanks guys for the region coding thoughts. Luckily I am region B and A. But for me, since my region B player is my main player it's allways a waiting game to see if I can get the Criterions somewhere from Europe. That is now the only thing that makes me tired.

Most MoC releases are locked to B. I think their last region-free title was The World, quite a while ago.

Keep in mind that the costs for rights also probably varies by region. I would think region free would cost Criterion more, which would probably limit the number of releases they could do. Of course, that might be offset by greater sales. And, of course, this is all just speculation.

Well if both released region free, the company that get gets theirs out first obviously has the advantage.

Sort of pointless since there are no French subtitles on the discs. If anyone has a picture of one of these bilingual cases I would be interested in seeing it. (Not at all saying I don't believe you!)

Though The World is their latest region free release, MoC absolutely does not region code their releases unless they are reqiuired to.

I don't think Criterion has separate Canadian releases. I always assumed that's why they are so expensive in Canada, because they are imported from the US.

Again, not because the guys at Eureka want to. Only because the studios want to.

Not if the other released the better version. The company that releases theirs first might also have to work with source material that's not up to par, compared to a later release. At least it would be giving consumers the choice, instead of making it for them. I'm glad my BD player is region free, but I'm sure there are countless people who are frustrated because of the region locking.

I'm going through my collection for 2nd views.

SECRET OF THE GRAIN is really an excellent release that doesn't get talked about much. Hafsia Herzi steals nearly every scene she's in :)