The Criterion Collection

[Yami]

Originally Posted by EricJ

Or, does it just come back to that old question about why no Fox releases on Criterion?

Other than Naked Lunch, Pickup on South Street, 3 Women, The Leopard, Kagemusha, Thieves' Highway, Night and the City, Heaven Can Wait, Unfaithfully Yours, Young Mr. Lincoln, The Ice Storm, Bigger Than Life, Night Train to Munich, The Thin Red Line, The Darjeeling Limited, Broadcast News and, now, Fantastic Mr. Fox?

[ravenus]

Originally Posted by mdonovan

Why are there no Cohen Brothers films on Criterion ??

Raising Arizona
The Big Lebowksi
Miller's Crossing
True Grit
Blood Simple
O Brother Where Art Thou
Fargo
No Country for Old Men

Most of the above films have damn good BD releases already (I know TBL is DNR'ed, but I personally don't get the love that film gets, so not bothered). Also, the Coen brothers are not as pretty as Wes Anderson and probably don't give too much of a damn about being featured in "The Collection"

[jw007]

From the final sentence on the "about us" page on Criterion.com:

"To date, more than 150 filmmakers have made our library of Director Approved DVDs, Blu-ray discs, and laserdiscs the most significant archive of contemporary filmmaking available to the home viewer."

More than 150 filmmakers, eh? I can think of a few big directors that have still yet to be featured on Criterion DVD or BD. Let's see......David Lynch, Coen Bros., John Sayles, P.T. Anderson, Francis Coppola, Clint Eastwood, Peter Jackson, Sergio Leone, John Carpenter, Michel Gondry, Quentin Tarantino, James Cameron, Woody Allen, George Romero, Steven Spielberg, John Waters, Pedro Almodovar, Atom Egoyan, Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu, Michael Haneke, Robert Zemeckis, Peter Greenaway, Emir Kusturica, Darren Aronofsky, Russ Meyer, Roger Corman, Bela Tarr, Frank Capra, Guy Maddin, Ken Russell, John Boorman, William Friedkin, Luc Besson, John Landis, Abel Ferrara, Oliver Stone, Zhang Yimou, Harmony Korine, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Sam Raimi, Sam Mendes, Sofia Coppola, and the list goes on and on!

Did I forget to mention anyone else who's a "big" director and is not in the Criterion Collection? Please add to this list if you want.

[ravenus]

^Guy Maddin's Brand upon the Brain! is on Criterion DVD. Also, what is the point you're making? Is Criterion obliged to feature every big film-maker on its roster? Hyperbole aside, at the end of the day they are another studio with very practical limitations on what they have access to and how much they can achieve.

[jw007]

Originally Posted by ravenus

^Guy Maddin's Brand upon the Brain! is on Criterion DVD. Also, what is the point you're making? Is Criterion obliged to feature every big film-maker on its roster? Hyperbole aside, at the end of the day they are another studio with very practical limitations on what they have access to and how much they can achieve.

Well, I just enjoy seeing just how many filmmakers Criterion can add to their collection. I love that they added a Danny Boyle film not too long ago as well as Hal Ashby and most recently Michael Mann. I am going to keep crossing directors off my list as Criterion keeps adding new ones. It's fun!

[mdonovan]

Originally Posted by jw007

From the final sentence on the "about us" page on Criterion.com:

"To date, more than 150 filmmakers have made our library of Director Approved DVDs, Blu-ray discs, and laserdiscs the most significant archive of contemporary filmmaking available to the home viewer."

More than 150 filmmakers, eh? I can think of a few big directors that have still yet to be featured on Criterion DVD or BD. Let's see......David Lynch, Coen Bros., John Sayles, P.T. Anderson, Francis Coppola, Clint Eastwood, Peter Jackson, Sergio Leone, John Carpenter, Michel Gondry, Quentin Tarantino, James Cameron, Woody Allen, George Romero, Steven Spielberg, John Waters, Pedro Almodovar, Atom Egoyan, Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu, Michael Haneke, Robert Zemeckis, Peter Greenaway, Emir Kusturica, Darren Aronofsky, Russ Meyer, Roger Corman, Bela Tarr, Frank Capra, Guy Maddin, Ken Russell, John Boorman, William Friedkin, Luc Besson, John Landis, Abel Ferrara, Oliver Stone, Zhang Yimou, Harmony Korine, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Sam Raimi, Sam Mendes, Sofia Coppola, and the list goes on and on!

Did I forget to mention anyone else who's a "big" director and is not in the Criterion Collection? Please add to this list if you want.

John Boorman would be an astounding addition.

[ravenus]

^OK that way, I thought you were critiquing them for not having "X" moviemaker on their list

Me, I like the idea of different labels giving us different things. The UK seems to have several very interesting dedicated boutique labels Eureka, Arrow, Second Run, Second Sight, Artificial Eye etc. Please do correct me if I'm wrong, but the US has much less of them, once you cut out the cult horror labels. Cohen Film Collection seems to be a solid neighbor to CC.

[mdonovan]

Originally Posted by ravenus

^Guy Maddin's Brand upon the Brain! is on Criterion DVD. Also, what is the point you're making? Is Criterion obliged to feature every big film-maker on its roster? Hyperbole aside, at the end of the day they are another studio with very practical limitations on what they have access to and how much they can achieve.

Hey .. My point was simply this ... I love the what Criterion does with their releases ... I just would like to see additional important films released by them instead of another Wes Andersen loved fest.

The Coen brothers are the most obvious off the beaten track omission I could come up with.

But J Boorman should definitely be in there ... Or how about a Criterion release of the original Wicker Man ... maybe an unaltered version of Walter Hill's The Warriors ?

Deliverance or Life Aquatic .... Hmmmmmm.

[Nighteyes]

Originally Posted by mdonovan

Wes Andersen gets three or more and these guys get zero ? Hmmmmmm.

Criterion are notorious fanboys of his.

[smoss469]

Originally Posted by mdonovan

But J Boorman should definitely be in there ... Or how about a Criterion release of the original Wicker Man ... maybe an unaltered version of Walter Hill's The Warriors ?

Deliverance or Life Aquatic .... Hmmmmmm.

I'd love for a CC release of The Warriors, Hill's best movie IMO.

[octagon]

Originally Posted by jw007

...and the list goes on and on!

Well of course it does. To my knowlege Criterion has never claimed to represent all important filmmakers or even most important filmmakers. They certainly don't make that claim in the mission statement you've referenced.

I suppose one could quibble with the claim that their library of laser discs, dvds and blu-rays is 'the most significant archive of contemporary filmmaking available to the home viewer' but I'm not sure why one would care one way or the other. They're talking up their company...so what?

And not for nothing, 150 refers to the number of directors who have director approved releases. According to the 'directors' tab of their advanced search function the total number of directors is a little over three times that.

[joie]

Originally Posted by octagon

Well of course it does. To my knowlege Criterion has never claimed to represent all important filmmakers or even most important filmmakers. They certainly don't make that claim in the mission statement you've referenced.

I suppose one could quibble with the claim that their library of laser discs, dvds and blu-rays is 'the most significant archive of contemporary filmmaking available to the home viewer' but I'm not sure why one would care one way or the other. They're talking up their company...so what?

And not for nothing, 150 refers to the number of directors who have director approved releases. According to the 'directors' tab of their advanced search function the total number of directors is a little over three times that.

Are they counting out-of-print and laser disc titles?

[octagon]

Originally Posted by mdonovan

Why are there no Cohen Brothers films on Criterion ??

Raising Arizona
The Big Lebowksi
Miller's Crossing
True Grit
Blood Simple
O Brother Where Art Thou
Fargo
No Country for Old Men

Is there so e sort of bias against them ???

Wes Andersen gets three or more and these guys get zero ? Hmmmmmm.

It's actually more of a bias in their favor. Every one of the titles you've listed has been released by the studio that owns/controls it. I'm sure Criterion would love to have the Coens but Fox/MGM and Universal and Paramount aren't exactly begging other distributers to take Coen films off their hands.

(I do wonder what the story is with The Man Who Wasn't There though. I don't know who owns what with that one but that would be a pretty good fit).

[octagon]

Originally Posted by joie

Are they counting out-of-print and laser disc titles?

Well, Michael Bay is listed as having two titles so probably, yeah.

And they specifically mentioned laser disc in the mission statement line we were discussing.

[jayembee]

Originally Posted by ravenus

The DVD edition of Vampyr came with a book that contained Dreyer's original screenplay AND Le Fanu's story Carmilla, which loosely inspired the film. I doubt they're going to re-do the book for a BD edition.

Yes, I noticed that when I was looking at the package. Of course, being a long-standing SF/fantasy book collector, I have more than one book that contains "Carmilla" already. So that isn't as big a draw for me as it might be for someone else, although the screenplay would be.

(On the other hand, I had not already had a copy of Walter Tevis's The Man Who Fell to Earth when I got the Criterion DVD of that, so I was happy that that DVD included it.)

[ravenus]

I suppose one could quibble with the claim that their library of laser discs, dvds and blu-rays is 'the most significant archive of contemporary filmmaking available to the home viewer' but I'm not sure why one would care one way or the other. They're talking up their company...so what?

^And that statement was probably conceived in the days when they were one of the few shows in town about presenting movies in a respectful fashion. The fact is, that thanks to the actions of Criterion and other pioneering labels, several of the studios have themselves realized the value of properly archiving their catalog and providing definitive home video presentations. We should be happy that good releases are coming from many sources, and not the monopoly of a single company.

What they really need to do is do away with the spine numbers nonsense...or jumble them up just to drive the obsessives up the wall

[jayembee]

Originally Posted by hoytereden

True. But Warner doesn't seem interested in it.

I'm not sure I'd say that they don't seem interested. I think it's more that they have an insanely large catalog of classic films (the RKO and pre-1986 MGM libraries, as well as their own) and simply can't get out everything that a lot of us would like to have.

But that's neither here nor there. As long as Warner owns it, and doesn't feel inclined to license it out to someone else, we're not going to see it.

As an aside, there was an interesting Easter Egg on the Image/RKO Classic Collection laserdisc of the film. The extras included a CAV-format (still-frame advance) copy of John W. Campbell's original novella. But that wasn't the Easter Egg. The Easter Egg was that when you were at the first screen of the story, and instead of advancing through it a frame at a time you hit "play". As the pages zipped by at high-speed, you got the audio from the trailer of Carpenter's remake. It's still the only time I've come across an Easter Egg on an LD.

[jayembee]

Originally Posted by RyanPom

Would love to get a special Forbidden Planet or War of the Worlds Criterion set.

Like The Thing from Another World, Forbidden Planet is a Warner title, so it'll probably never come out from Criterion (though Criterion did a really nice edition of it on laserdisc back in the day). The Warner Blu-ray is a perfectly good edition of it, so it's not like we have to have a Criterion edition.

War of the Worlds is a Paramount title, and they aren't license-unfriendly (they supply most, if not all, of Olive's catalog), so it's not beyond the realm of possibility that Criterion could release it. They did release Robinson Crusoe on Mars, another Paramount title, after all.

[ravenus]

WTF?! Forbidden Planet has a freaking awesome release from Warner. Damn good transfer even if it is dated, an entire feature film and two TV episodes as a bonus along with tonnes of terrific in-depth featurettes.

[jayembee]

Originally Posted by mdonovan

I have not been interested in Criterion long enough to understand the politics behind their selections. I was not aware that they have never released a FOX title, thanks for the info. Sucks because in general I love the criterion 'treatment'

There are no "politics" involved. Criterion is a company that doesn't actually own any films that they release. They have to license the right to release a given title from the company/studio that does own it, whether it be Universal or Paramount or Sony or Gaumont, or whoever. If a given company doesn't want to license a film of theirs to Criterion, or can't because they've licensed it out to someone else, then Criterion simply cannot release it.

The films that Criterion has released that are now OOP are exactly that because Criterion's license expired, and the original studio made a new licensing deal with someone else.

The only other factors guiding Criterion's decisions about what to release would probably be (1) what (available) films do they want to release, and (2) in what condition are the available source materials.