The Criterion Collection

[Mansinthe]

is there a way to find out how many people and who in this forum has the most complete criterion collection? im just kinda interessted about how many criterion releases people have and in how many collections such movies can be found.

[smoss469]

Originally Posted by Mansinthe

is there a way to find out how many people and who in this forum has the most complete criterion collection? im just kinda interessted about how many criterion releases people have and in how many collections such movies can be found.

Criterion shows the # of collections a title is included with, but it's only limited to people that have taken the time to register and add the titles. I have a link in my sig. to my collection for example.

If you go to any title on the Criterion site and scroll down, you'll see a grey bar towards the bottom titled My Criterion. The right hand link is the # of user collections it's in.

[The Great Owl]

Originally Posted by Mansinthe

is there a way to find out how many people and who in this forum has the most complete criterion collection? im just kinda interessted about how many criterion releases people have and in how many collections such movies can be found.

There are a few peeps here who have all of the Criterion Blu-rays, I believe.

I've got just over a third of the current Criterion titles available on Blu-ray, and I'm quite content for now, although there will always be a few out there that I will suddenly have an inclination to buy at some point. There are quite a few titles that I will probably never have the desire to own, though. I love Criterion, but I'm definitely not a completist.

[hoytereden]

Originally Posted by Mansinthe

is there a way to find out how many people and who in this forum has the most complete criterion collection? im just kinda interessted about how many criterion releases people have and in how many collections such movies can be found.

I only have 109: 60 Blu-ray, 49 DVD.

[shadedpain4]

Originally Posted by Mansinthe

is there a way to find out how many people and who in this forum has the most complete criterion collection? im just kinda interessted about how many criterion releases people have and in how many collections such movies can be found.

As someone else said, a lot in these parts have the complete collection available on blu. If you add in DVD and Laserdisc, that's a whole other story.

[Infernal King]

I hope Criterion releases the movies I want them to release this year.

[Edward J Grug III]

Our Zatoichi set arrived!

The box it was packed in was huge, and it was loose, but it has arrived undamaged as far as I can see.

Can't wait to dig into it!

[brandon_260]

Just found out that Toronto is getting huge retrospectives of Pasolini and Godard's work this winter/spring. I'm really excited about these.

I also broke into my WCP box today with Touki Bouki. It's got me very eager to continue working through the box. I wish I could say it was my first great discovery of the year, but I watched Make Way For Tomorrow and The Lost Weekend before it for the first time this year, and both were equally as good, maybe even better.

[jrsl76]

Originally Posted by Mansinthe

is there a way to find out how many people and who in this forum has the most complete criterion collection? im just kinda interessted about how many criterion releases people have and in how many collections such movies can be found.

I seriously doubt I have the most complete collection here, but I do have a sizable Criterion Collection. I started collecting with the first DVDs and have sold and upgraded several titles along the way with Seven Samurai possibly being the Criterion title upgraded the most (1st release with removable subs, Remastered DVD, Blu). I have the full Blu-ray collection, all Eclipse, all Essential Art House titles not released as mainline titles (except the Saul J. Turrell one included only in the Janus Box Set), all OOPs and lots of the DVDs.

Breakdown:

Total - 442 releases
DVD - 142 (Counting Rebel Samurai as 1 instead of 4)
Blu - 248
Dual - 8
Eclipse - 39
EAH - 5

[Ausjdm]

OT:

Cool list of 2014 movies.

http://www.bbook.com/30-anticipated-films-2014/

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by 14728

I figured out what that raisin meant!

Thank you for making me feel a million years old for knowing it already.

[manunited1]

I think a Criterion release of 'Spun' would be sweet...

[jrsl76]

I'm ecstatic about the Demys, particularly Lola and Umbrellas.

[fdm]

Spent a chunk of today making room for and consolidating last couple years or so of Criterions into their dedicated resting place. Had been scattered various places far and wide (well in a bunch of different boxes anyway). Now I can get to them all easily again. (Although Repo Man is still residing in parts unknown at this point.)

Wish I could say the same for everything else...

[spanky87]

Originally Posted by brandon_260

Just found out that Toronto is getting huge retrospectives of Pasolini and Godard's work this winter/spring. I'm really excited about these.

I also broke into my WCP box today with Touki Bouki. It's got me very eager to continue working through the box. I wish I could say it was my first great discovery of the year, but I watched Make Way For Tomorrow and The Lost Weekend before it for the first time this year, and both were equally as good, maybe even better.

You moved back closer to Toronto?

[ravenus]

Originally Posted by fdm

Spent a chunk of today making room for and consolidating last couple years or so of Criterions into their dedicated resting place.

You're burying them?

[fdm]

Originally Posted by ravenus

You're burying them?

They shall rise again.

[ShellOilJunior]

Originally Posted by brandon_260

Just found out that Toronto is getting huge retrospectives of Pasolini and Godard's work this winter/spring. I'm really excited about these.

The cinematheque here snagged 12 Pasolini films for a series starting in a week or so. The word is some of those Italian distributors charge 3x what a normal print might cost and allow just one screening.

[Yami]

Originally Posted by ShellOilJunior

The cinematheque here snagged 12 Pasolini films for a series starting in a week or so. The word is some of those Italian distributors charge 3x what a normal print might cost and allow just one screening.

John Ewing, director of the Cleveland Cinematheque, wrote this on the subject:

In my 27+ years of programming movies for both the Cinematheque and the Cleveland Museum of Art, I feel that I have presented film series devoted to most of the world’s great filmmakers—or at least the major non-American ones. Nevertheless there are still important directors whose careers remain unexplored in a series at either of my venues. Mostly these are individuals whose major movies are unavailable in the U.S., so would have to be imported (at great expense) from overseas.

Well, I’m happy to report that one of these elusive auteurs, Italy’s late film poet Pier Paolo Pasolini, will soon have his moment in the Cinematheque sun. In January and February we are scheduled to present 13 features and three short works from a complete Pasolini retrospective that is now touring North America under the auspices of the Istituto Luce Cinecittà—the same Italian agency that provided the print of Fellini’s The Voice of the Moon that we screened in July.

Luce Cinecittà seems to be a new name for Cinecittà International, which organized and circulated the complete Antonioni retrospective we presented in 2000, as well as the 15-film Totò series we showed in 2001. It’s great to be working with them again after a hiatus of many years. Luce Cinecittà promotes Italian cinema by assembling comprehensive packages of great movies and then shipping them around the world. They prepare beautiful new 35mm prints for these traveling retrospectives and maintain a library of high-quality film copies of Italian classics. It is always a pleasure to see these superb prints projected on the big screen.

So I am pumped about our upcoming Pasolini retrospective. Everything we will show (with one exception) will be presented in a new 35mm print from Italy. The series has already played the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the National Film Theatre in London. Other U.S. cities hosting the show are Los Angeles, San Francisco/Berkeley, Houston, Washington, and Columbus.

But here’s the bad news. Though Luce Cinecittà provides gorgeous copies of films to show, they do not own the rights to the movies they circulate. Thus every screening must be licensed from the foreign or domestic distributor who owns the rights to the title in the country that is presenting it.

For the Pasolini series we have had to license our upcoming screenings from a total of six different companies—three in the U.S., three in Italy. The U.S. companies have been pretty easy to deal with. They know us and our capabilities, so they have asked for reasonable, mostly affordable rental fees. The Italian companies, on the other hand, have quoted screening fees that are much higher than those of their American counterparts. Although one of the Italian companies did negotiate and lower its prices a bit (and, really, why should Cleveland pay the same fee as New York City for one screening of a movie?), the other two haven’t budged on their fees, adopting a take-it-or-leave-it stance.

Because of this inflexibility, my enthusiasm for our upcoming Pasolini retrospective has dimmed. The exorbitantly high screening fees from these two holdouts have compelled me to remove their two titles from our upcoming Pasolini exhibition. And they were two of the movies I was most excited to be able to present. Both are modern-day color fables made during the late 1960s: Pigsty (Porcile, 1969) a satire starring Pierre Clémenti, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Anne Wiazemsky (of Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar), and Ugo Tognazzi; and Theorem (Teorema, 1968), one of Pasolini’s key works, a parable about a mysterious stranger (Terence Stamp) who seduces every member of a wealthy Italian family and then departs, leaving chaos in his wake.

The Italian rights holder to Pigsty wants 550 euros (approximately $725) and the Italian rights holder to Theorem wants 1000 euros (around $1335). In both cases, this is for one screening of a film print that these two companies are not even supplying! These prices are three to five times what we normally pay for classic movies, and we can show those two times. In fact, the Theorem price is the highest rental fee I have ever encountered in my 27 years of running the Cinematheque.

Showing Pigsty in Cleveland may just be a matter of holding my nose, biting the bullet, and upping my usual ante—all for art’s sake (and with the hope that some other Pasolini movie will do well enough to cover the losses on this one—doubtful given the high cost of the whole series). But with Theorem, even if I had the money, should I pay what is in essence an extortionist fee? It would be a bad, bad precedent—especially since the rights holder (who is a TV executive and probably a multi-millionaire) has already refused a collective offer from five of the American Pasolini presenters (including us)—2000 euros for one screening of the film in five different cities. We thought he would accept this not insignificant amount rather than get nothing. But he chose nothing. So all five of us have dropped Theorem from our retrospectives. Even Luce Cinecittà appealed to him to work with us and negotiate an affordable fee (“we hope that a mere question of money will not interfere with the cultural value of Teorema, that is an essential part of Pasolini’s vision”), mentioning the support the retrospective received from the Italian Ministry of Culture. He turned a deaf ear to their request as well.

So at present this story does not have a happy ending. But I guess we should be grateful for the 11 Pasolini features that we have secured, and the beautiful prints in which they will be seen. This tale also illustrates what we sometimes have to go through to bring great cinema to Cleveland, and maybe explains why my hair is so gray.

]

[14728]

I thought the newsletter wold have a clue about Leaving Las Vegas, since the director said that Criterion is working on a release.