The Criterion Collection

[kwillard37]

Damn. I watched Lost in America and loved it, so naturally I wanted to see some of Brooks other works, but they must've recently taken them all off Netflix. So my next step was going to Broadcast News, again loved it. I'm hooked on the Brooks (No ragretzz). Somebody help me.

[Mr.F]

Tonight I decided to watch my newly-purchased copy of Demme's Somethin Wild. Everything was going just fine until it got to the part where Lulu was being thrown in the pool and it froze completely. Trying to fast forward or skipping a chapter did nothing either. From the look of the disc itself everything is fine but it just stops workin at that part.

I've already contacted Mulvaney to see if they can send a replacement.

[mja345]

Originally Posted by kwillard37

Damn. I watched Lost in America and loved it, so naturally I wanted to see some of Brooks other works, but they must've recently taken them all off Netflix. So my next step was going to Broadcast News, again loved it. I'm hooked on the Brooks (No ragretzz). Somebody help me.

"Lost in America" is so funny. Watched it last night, the BD looks great. The whole sequence in the motor home at Hoover Dam had me laughing so hard. Also, when they get the suite with the heart-shaped beds, I love Brooks' line, "If Liberace had children, this is what their bedroom would look like."

[The Great Owl]

I just returned from seeing Atomic Blonde at the theater.

This is an insanely fun movie, but, more importantly...and more relevant to this thread...it features a brilliant nod Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker.

There's a fight scene that takes place in a theater while Stalker is playing. That film provides an interesting backdrop for Cold War physical combat.

[ShellOilJunior]

Originally Posted by Ray Jackson

Full Body Massage is in my top 20.

...along with The Rapture, Chained Heat and Weekend at Bernie's.

Ah, Weekend at Bernie's. He dances when the music plays.

A silly comedy or a movie laden with subtext, a critical examination of contemporary mores and treatment of the dead? There's so much to unpack here. The Weekend at Bernie's franchise digs deeper than even The Trouble with Harry.

[donidarko]

Originally Posted by kwillard37

Damn. I watched Lost in America and loved it, so naturally I wanted to see some of Brooks other works, but they must've recently taken them all off Netflix. So my next step was going to Broadcast News, again loved it. I'm hooked on the Brooks (No ragretzz). Somebody help me.

Lost in America is hysterical! I also love Modern Romance and Defending your Life.

[hYPE]

Originally Posted by RojD

Of these, Yi Yi and Safe would be my personal choices.

I love Safe. I first saw it in a theater and I've talked about it ever since. That said, it's definitely not for everyone, and I can't completely disagree with people who compare it to watching paint dry. This is the film that put Julianne Moore into my top tier of actors to watch, and beyond that, the movie just plain left me disturbed. A good Todd Haynes project. For a lot of people, it's a film they're glad to have seen but didn't necessarily enjoy watching.

I just wanted to toss out an alert that it's really different from the other stuff on your list.

I'm actually intrigued & will probably buy Safe now. I absolutely love Julianne Moore so nuff said I guess. lol

L’avventura anyone recommend? I hear good things just curious what everyone on here thinks?

[KubrickKurasawa]

It's time Criterion goes 4K UHD HDR. and stop being lazy. If I did it anyone can do it!

[The Great Owl]

Originally Posted by KubrickKurasawa

It's time Criterion goes 4K UHD HDR. and stop being lazy. If I did it anyone can do it!

There's no way that I'm going to replace my existing Criterion Blu-rays with 4K discs. The law of diminishing returns applies, since the jump from DVD to Blu-ray is already quite amazing, and I'm hard-pressed to imagine films like Seven Samurai looking noticeably better.

I'll happily buy 4K + Blu-ray combo packs of future Criterion titles if they decide to release them as such, though.

I'm treating the rest of my collection the same way. I buy newer "from here on out" movies (La La Land, The Revenant, etc.) in 4K + Blu-ray combos, but my existing Blu-rays are the final versions of those movies in my collection.

...just because the thought of building up my movie collection all over again breaks my heart. I'm getting too old for that.

[bwdowiak]

here's a slightly edited post that I made a few years ago answering the question about which films were gateway films into the CC and art films:

here's my "my path" story...

I spent much of my summers during my high school years hanging by a friend's house. (let's call him Mark) we'd collectively decide to rent a movie and I was so incredibly disinterested in just about everything he'd choose (it would still qualify as crap to this day) that I eliminated myself from the decision making process at the video store. I didn't make a stink. I just let him pick whatever he wanted to. during the movie, I'd sit there off in my thoughts somewhere. there were these 2 neighbor girls who always hung around w/ us. very pretty. I was infinitely more concerned with what the older girl was doing than in whatever movie Mark had rented.

for quite a while, I thought that I just did not like movies. there was a time in my young adult life when conversation about movies would come up and it would be like:

"bwdowiak, have you seen x movie"
me: "no"

"have you seen y movie"
me: "nope. never."

I think that it was DVD that got me excited about movies and when that FBI warning popped up in (what seemed to be at the time) crystal clear fidelity, I soon became very interested.

the AFI created their first top 100 list and I figured, "if these are the "100 best," there has to be some good stuff here!" so I got hooked on Hitchcock, The Third Man, On the Waterfront, and things of the sort.

it was actually this kind little older woman who I worked with who borrowed me the first Hitch I saw. it was Stage Fright (of all films!) she did voice recordings for dramatic radio shows that were still on the air late at night on AM radio. no idea whatever happened to her, but I owe her a debt of gratitude.

I tried the foreign heavyweights - The Bicycle Thief, The 400 Blows, Breathless, L'Avventura, La Dolce Vita. of the 5, the only one that worked magic on me first time around was The Bicycle Thief. The irony now, I guess, is that I'd rank The Bicycle Thief 4th behind The 400 Blows, Breathless, and L'Avventura.

fast forward to a few years ago... I haven't been recently, but there was a time when I was very active on this site. anyway, I'm thankful for you good folks who have expanded my film knowledge exponentially in the last few years.

[bwdowiak]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

There's no way that I'm going to replace my existing Criterion Blu-rays with 4K discs. The law of diminishing returns applies, since the jump from DVD to Blu-ray is already quite amazing, and I'm hard-pressed to imagine films like Seven Samurai looking noticeably better.

I'll happily buy 4K + Blu-ray combo packs of future Criterion titles if they decide to release them as such, though.

I'm treating the rest of my collection the same way. I buy newer "from here on out" movies (La La Land, The Revenant, etc.) in 4K + Blu-ray combos, but my existing Blu-rays are the final versions of those movies in my collection.

...just because the thought of building up my movie collection all over again breaks my heart. I'm getting too old for that.

the truth is, for those w/ smaller televisions (under like 46",) there really isn't much of a difference between DVD and Blu-ray, either.

[MassiveMovieBuff]

Originally Posted by Ray Jackson

Full Body Massage is in my top 20.

...along with The Rapture, Chained Heat and Weekend at Bernie's.

I'm with you all the way on Shannon Whirry's neglected film catalog on blu ray RayJ! No excuse for it really

[Al_The_Strange]

I've been thinking about the "gateway drug of arthouse films" thing. I'm not sure I can pin it down.

Films have just kinda always been there my whole life. My mom worked at a video rental store for a short stint (I forget where--Baltimore maybe?). So I remember perusing rows and rows of VHS tapes. I'm sure that was only the beginning.

My parents amassed a collection that always impressed me--about 300 tapes and 150 LaserDiscs. Their tastes weren't always mainstream. My mother seemed to like a lot of earlier John Carpenter films and Stephen King adaptations--especially movies like The Fog, Halloween, Christine, The Shining. She also liked Hitchcock, so we had Psycho at the very least. My dad liked action and adventure films (what dude doesn't?), so we had our fair share of mainstream titles too. Both liked sci-fi to varying degrees, so we got to see a lot of older classics, cult movies, and B-movies: Logan's Run, Soylent Green, Omega Man, Planet of the Apes, and so many more. In addition to classics--I had plenty of exposure to old Disney movies, old musicals, comedies, etc.

By high-school, we had a pretty grand DVD collection with all of these and more. I was enamored by mainstream movies at the time and it felt like no movie could do me any wrong. By then, I would have seen plenty of classics and I would have embraced some arty films nobody else would (like Dune, for example, still a favorite to this day). In a sense, you could say my enjoyment of arthouse could have started the day I dabbled with sci-fi. And that would have been the day I was born--I entered the world a nerd.

However, arthouse as I'd define it probably didn't come until my 20s. I dabbled with a few oddball movies I saw commercials for--Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, The Cell. Around 2003, I started branching off and seeing edgier movies that I always heard about and wanted to see: A Clockwork Orange, Silence of the Lambs, Full Metal Jacket. But it must have been around 2004 or so when I went outside my comfort zone completely and saw Lost in Translation. My parents fell asleep. I stayed awake and followed the movie just fine, but at the end I had to stop myself and ask, wait, what was the point of that? I wound up writing off the film dismissively, but I always see praise towards it on occasion--been meaning to give it another watch to see if my opinion will change.

Maybe that's my first arthouse film. But not exactly a good gateway--it's like I walked into it and got hit in the crotch by the swinging door. What would be the first arthouse film that let me in fully? Probably a few years later, when I discovered the Criterion Collection and dove into it with the Sergei Eisenstein and Akira Kurosawa collections. Eisenstein had a heck of a visual style with Ivan the Terrible that I could appreciate, and I was glad to own such a vivid film. As for Kurosawa, I was enthralled to see the origins of Star Wars in The Hidden Fortress, and Seven Samurai floored me. Instant classics in my eyes.

So, where does the arthouse gateway begin and end? Was it Lost in Translation? Or Ivan the Terrible? Or earlier, when I caught up with the hype on CTHD? Or the times I pushed the envelope, exploring A Clockwork Orange for the first time?

I like to think it goes further back, during those times when we all sat together as a family and beheld 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time. Or a Planet of the Apes marathon. Or all those Charlton Heston sci-fi flicks. Those Clint Eastwood westerns. The John Carpenter classics. The Hitchcocks. The Kubricks. Mainstream or not, they were classics and I have my folks to thank for immersing me in them. Especially in regards to science fiction, which I now see is where my biggest passions lay. Even in that genre, there's good art to be seen, and it's always been there for me.

[Al_The_Strange]

Originally Posted by bwdowiak

the truth is, for those w/ smaller televisions (under like 46",) there really isn't much of a difference between DVD and Blu-ray, either.

Maybe in a normal living room. But I have a 32" TV in my office and I will watch Blu-Rays while I work there. At 5' or 7' distance, Blu-Rays will look sharp and clean. DVDs, not so much.

[Scottie]

David Byrne in the closet!

[BagheeraMcGee]

Originally Posted by iScottie

David Byrne in the closet!

If there is going to be a Criterion edition of Stop Making Sense, mere words would not be enough to express my joy.

With that said, I wouldn't mind seeing a Criterion edition of True Stories, either.

[StarDestroyer52]

Originally Posted by hYPE

L’avventura anyone recommend? I hear good things just curious what everyone on here thinks?

Same, I am interested in opinions also. I have had a few times to watch it on TV but always missed it.

[klauswhereareyou]

Originally Posted by BagheeraMcGee

If there is going to be a Criterion edition of Stop Making Sense, mere words would not be enough to express my joy.

With that said, I wouldn't mind seeing a Criterion edition of True Stories, either.

That would be a great tribute to Demme (hey guys, maybe Silence of the Lambs too!!).

[klauswhereareyou]

Just received some more B & N Criterion sale items. Just got one that didn't have the booklet with it. Has this ever happened to anyone else (it was sealed)?

[Thebunk]

Originally Posted by bwdowiak

here's a slightly edited post that I made a few years ago answering the question about which films were gateway films into the CC and art films:

here's my "my path" story...

I spent much of my summers during my high school years hanging by a friend's house. (let's call him Mark) we'd collectively decide to rent a movie and I was so incredibly disinterested in just about everything he'd choose (it would still qualify as crap to this day) that I eliminated myself from the decision making process at the video store. I didn't make a stink. I just let him pick whatever he wanted to. during the movie, I'd sit there off in my thoughts somewhere. there were these 2 neighbor girls who always hung around w/ us. very pretty. I was infinitely more concerned with what the older girl was doing than in whatever movie Mark had rented.

for quite a while, I thought that I just did not like movies. there was a time in my young adult life when conversation about movies would come up and it would be like:

"bwdowiak, have you seen x movie"
me: "no"

"have you seen y movie"
me: "nope. never."

I think that it was DVD that got me excited about movies and when that FBI warning popped up in (what seemed to be at the time) crystal clear fidelity, I soon became very interested.

the AFI created their first top 100 list and I figured, "if these are the "100 best," there has to be some good stuff here!" so I got hooked on Hitchcock, The Third Man, On the Waterfront, and things of the sort.

it was actually this kind little older woman who I worked with who borrowed me the first Hitch I saw. it was Stage Fright (of all films!) she did voice recordings for dramatic radio shows that were still on the air late at night on AM radio. no idea whatever happened to her, but I owe her a debt of gratitude.

I tried the foreign heavyweights - The Bicycle Thief, The 400 Blows, Breathless, L'Avventura, La Dolce Vita. of the 5, the only one that worked magic on me first time around was The Bicycle Thief. The irony now, I guess, is that I'd rank The Bicycle Thief 4th behind The 400 Blows, Breathless, and L'Avventura.

fast forward to a few years ago... I haven't been recently, but there was a time when I was very active on this site. anyway, I'm thankful for you good folks who have expanded my film knowledge exponentially in the last few years.

Great post! Love to hear stories like this.