The Criterion Collection

[Cremildo]

Originally Posted by iScottie

Do any of you keep a cumulative list of everything you've seen in your life?

Yes, tentatively, on IMDb, since 1999.

Thing is, memory plays tricks. Memory fails. It's impossible to know each and every film I've ever seen, especially during childhood and pre-teen years, before I became a "cinephile".

Also: how many of those films did I really watch in their entirety? It's not always easy to remember.

[jaredc]

Purchased:

Ride the Pink Horse (never seen it)
The Asphalt Jungle (never seen it and stoked)
The Big Chill
Short Cuts (never seen it)

I love blind buying.

[Gerby]

Originally Posted by iScottie

Do any of you keep a cumulative list of everything you've seen in your life?

I've always wanted to but I always end up getting discouraged.

I don't keep a list but i am certain the figure is somewhere between 8000-12000.

[SammyJankis]

Christmas is upon us and it brings me yet another reminder for Remember the Night's absence in the Collection. Maybe next year.

[MassiveMovieBuff]

Originally Posted by jaredc

Purchased:

Ride the Pink Horse (never seen it)
The Asphalt Jungle (never seen it and stoked)
The Big Chill
Short Cuts (never seen it)

I love blind buying.

I'm not a big blind buyer at all but I blind bought The Asphalt Jungle and Short Cuts and they are excellent films. You will definitely be pleased.

[oildude]

I have a list of about 30 titles I have been waiting years for Criterion to upgrade to Blu-ray. I suppose culling that down to 10 it would be:

Le Samourai
The Cranes are Flying
Ballad of a Soldier
Pickup on South Street
The Naked Prey
The Furies
Stray Dog
Thieves' Highway
The Human Condition
The Lady Eve

Of course, this leaves off about six desperately wanted noir titles that I get frustrated are still not on Blu-ray and classics like The Last Wave, The Passion of Joan of Arc and Bergman's Faith Trilogy. Some of the titles are available in Region B, so there is that, but since they have been available in Region B for years, it's like Criterion mocks me by not upgrading them. Honestly, some of the best films they could release on Blu-ray are in their DVD catalog right now.

I have to admit that for all the great Criterion titles released in 2016 and announced thus far for 2017, I am getting really tired of seeing them reissue titles already out on Blu-ray and not upgrading hardly anything.

And for the love of Pete, please bring us more Russian/Soviet era films. The Cranes are Flying, Ballad of a Soldier, and Andrei Rublev would be a good place to start.

[jw007]

Originally Posted by iScottie

Do any of you keep a cumulative list of everything you've seen in your life?

I've always wanted to but I always end up getting discouraged.

This is something I've thought of doing in recent years but have no idea where to start in terms of referencing a master list of all the movies that have ever been made that I've seen. I can always check off movies I've watched on Netflix, but that's a very small percentage of what I've watched overall (whether its from seeing them in theaters, on blu-ray, dvd, vhs, laserdisc, digitally online, at friends' houses, in public gathering spaces such as parks/squares, on television, on cable, on demand, in art galleries, in restaurants, in bars, on airplanes, etc.).

I might get around to this soon though since people tell me I have so much free time on my hands.

[pedromvu]

Originally Posted by iScottie

Do any of you keep a cumulative list of everything you've seen in your life?

I've always wanted to but I always end up getting discouraged.

Yeah I started with IMDB, and then moved it to Letterboxd (since it can track rewatches too), I am pretty sure there are many early films and some shorts I am missing though, mostly from when I was simply too young to remember.

I've made a habit over the years to always rate the movies I watch at the end of the day.

Right now I am at 3,641 in almost 11 years, although the first year had much more than normal since I went my way to add all the films I remember seeing, it wasn't as hard as it sounds since my family had a video rental store, so it was just a matter of checking all the covers and writing the names I remember seeing at some point.

[pedromvu]

Originally Posted by bwdowiak

I can check my copies but camera buff is an extra on one of the discs, right?

It isn't, it was along with two other earlier Kieslowski films on Hulu, I am pretty sure they must be in Filmstruck right now.

[jaredc]

Originally Posted by MassiveMovieBuff

I'm not a big blind buyer at all but I blind bought The Asphalt Jungle and Short Cuts and they are excellent films. You will definitely be pleased.

I've only heard good things about both of them and I find something exciting about the blind buy. I usually contain this to the Criterion Collection however because I know the movies will always be interesting even if they turn out to not be my cup of tea.

[MassiveMovieBuff]

Originally Posted by jaredc

I've only heard good things about both of them and I find something exciting about the blind buy. I usually contain this to the Criterion Collection however because I know the movies will always be interesting even if they turn out to not be my cup of tea.

Yeah I can definitely see that with Criterion. I've blind bought quite a few Criterions and I haven't been disappointed yet with any of those. I've also blind bought a good amount of blu rays from other companies too that I lucked out on. On the other hand there's been some that I ended up not liking the film or they were just one and done's for me. I like my whole collection to strictly be films that I will rewatch on a consistent basis. Blind Buying can be exciting though. I blind bought Deadpool when I got a sudden rush to feel the need to go out a blind buy it after I thought the trailer made it look like one of the worst films ever made and am not a big Ryan Reynolds fan but Deadpool ended up being fantastic with Ryan Reynolds finally finding the role he was born for. I did think he was also great in the highly underrated Smokin Aces as well.

[kuro_sawa]

Hi everyone - heads up for those of you who are interested ...

Amazon dropped the pre-order price on Mildred Pierce to $20.95

[silverlakephil]

Originally Posted by kuro_sawa

Hi everyone - heads up for those of you who are interested ...

Amazon dropped the pre-order price on Mildred Pierce to $20.95

Great, pre-ordered and thanks. I recently purchased The Asphalt Jungle for about the same price from an Amazon seller called Themediaoutlet. Happy Holidays!

[MifuneFan]

Originally Posted by kuro_sawa

Hi everyone - heads up for those of you who are interested ...

Amazon dropped the pre-order price on Mildred Pierce to $20.95

Matching Target

[joie]

Originally Posted by iScottie

Do any of you keep a cumulative list of everything you've seen in your life?

I've always wanted to but I always end up getting discouraged.

Here's mine, kept here:

https://www.blu-ray.com/community/co...category=11138

I've seen more than that (about 1300?) but update the list as I remember what I've seen, usually through an announcement/review. I started the list by using movie search, then fill out the watched fields.

add: I see, now, that 'Watched' and 'Seen in Theater' should both be checked to get one consolidated list of everything seen.

[jaredc]

Originally Posted by kuro_sawa

Hi everyone - heads up for those of you who are interested ...

Amazon dropped the pre-order price on Mildred Pierce to $20.95

Thanks for that heads up!

[Bates_Motel]

Originally Posted by iScottie

Do any of you keep a cumulative list of everything you've seen in your life?

I've always wanted to but I always end up getting discouraged.

I counted back in 1997 and was up to around 8,000 movies & shows. I assume now, Im around 12-13K.

[SammyJankis]

Originally Posted by kuro_sawa

Hi everyone - heads up for those of you who are interested ...

Amazon dropped the pre-order price on Mildred Pierce to $20.95

Even if I wasn't already interested in it, I would buy it just for that cover art, something I rarely, if ever, say.

Ordered. Thanks.

[hoytereden]

Originally Posted by iScottie

Do any of you keep a cumulative list of everything you've seen in your life?

I've always wanted to but I always end up getting discouraged.

It would be Mission:Impossible for me. I've probably been watching films for close to 60 years and I'm afraid the old memory banks have suffered some partial erasures over the years. My earliest memories are watching movies on tv with whatever my parents were watching. Those were the days of one tv (b&w) in the house and they called the shots during prime time viewing.

[The Great Owl]

The genre of film noir can be summarized with one sentence. "This will not end well." The 1950 noir, The Asphalt Jungle, is a a masterwork of riveting suspense, and it is often considered the father of all modern heist films, but its characters seem to march toward their fates with a sense of resignation even as they all dream about having the means to travel away from their claustrophobic city surroundings.

Sterling Hayden, who is best known to today's audiences as Captain McCluskey in The Godfather, plays a bruiser who is enlisted to be the violent backbone of a major jewelry heist in order to earn money to buy back the horse farm where he spent his early years. James Whitmore, who is known today for his role as the institutionalized librarian, Brooks, in The Shawshank Redemption, plays a loyal underworld figure who is enlisted to be the driver in the caper. Sam Jaffe plays "Doc", who masterminds the operation as a way for him to escape to the beaches and women of Mexico. Louis Calhern plays Emmerich, the potential fence for the jewels who wants a way out of bankruptcy as he struggles to afford his girlfriend, played by none other than a young Marilyn Monroe, although he also seems to know deep down in his heart that his extravagant way of life has caught up with him at long last. Director John Huston, who also helmed such classics as The Maltese Falcon and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, was adept at examining the lives of people who dwell in the shadows of their own broken dreams, and he lends an offbeat humanity to this story by tweaking W.R. Burnett's source novel for a film that focuses on the criminals and their own tightly-knit world, instead of creating major characters out of the police force.

The Asphalt Jungle is as gritty as its name, with its depiction of small rooms in a cityscape that is given a neorealist sensibility, and its characters, who are burned-out everyday types instead of being the elegant thieves that thrived in older films. Harold Rosson's cinematography expertly blends the unflinching sights of crumbling buildings with the stylistic light-and-shadows approach of classic film noir, where characters look sharp in fedoras as they go through the motions toward their doom.

This is a tremendous film, and it is one of the highlights of my classic noir collection.

The 2K restoration of The Asphalt Jungle looks great on this Criterion Blu-ray, and I'm pleased to report that this disc is quite an improvement upon the Warner Bros. DVD. An informative commentary track is ported over from the DVD, while an Eddie Muller interview is the highlight of the newer extras.