Quote:
Originally Posted by dvining
I ultimately want the movies in HD. I don't care about the brand or the extras. A complete Kobayashi set of bare bones releases on the Eclipse line would be fine by me. No booklets, simple artwork. I'd have the films.
The problem is that they sit on stuff we know about for years. They probably have other stuff we don't know about that they sit on forever, and we don't get the films that we are already interested in. Are there gems in the things we haven't heard of? Surely, there are, but in comparison to the promise of something like a Mean Streets or Duke's Cure, it pales.
I'll take a complete Kobayashi from Mill Creek (it's not like Criterion does most of the restorations themselves), but still, there's no HD physical release of Samurai Rebellion in America. "Hey, here's some minor work from the Safdie brothers," would be akin to Criterion releasing Who's that Knocking at my Door? instead of Mean Streets to me.
|
I'm with you on this. I love Criterion, but they are probably the label that infuriates me the most at the same time. A few months ago I talked to a rep for another label and they mentioned that there are movies they want to acquire, but can't because Criterion has them. The insane part, Criterion has had those films for over 15 years and hasn't even released them on DVD let alone Blu-ray.
As a business I can understand that Criterion is more focused on their streaming, but as a physical collector first and foremost, they suck for hoarding so many films.
At the end of the day, I'm sure I won't see a lot of my favorites ever come out on Blu-ray. It's something I have to accept. Still, what's really frustrating, is that a lot of these films would actually have gotten releases if Criterion didn't have the license.