The Criterion Collection

[Meek12345]

Originally Posted by CPinheiro

Out of curiosity, do you guys keep track of the movies you have seen?
I'm asking this because I've discovered many wonderful movies through Criterion but to be honest usually I know only one or two titles they release each month, whereas most of the people here seem to know/have seen a lot more... and that makes me think that i haven't watched as many movies as the "average user" has seen.
I started a list about 8-10 years ago including everything I could remember and to this day I have watched 863 movies in my life (about 200 of them were Criterion titles), so I just wanted to know 'how many movies' you guys have seen, if you keep track of things like that.
I also keep track of the movies I see by language, and as I am studying Italian language it surprises me to see that I watched over 100 Italian movies in the past two years (and at least 40 were from Criterion )

Note: I'm 25 years old, I think this is also an important factor in the calculation.
Sorry if this has been brought up before.

Thanks for asking this question! I don't know exactly how many movies I have seen over the years. I have seen about half of the Criterion collection (~400 films). I also have kept my theater ticket stubs over the years, so I known that I have seen about 150 films in the theater from the late 90s (Saving Private Ryan/Shakespeare in Love) to recent films (The Force Awakens).

I have also kept track of the films I have seen in the first edition of 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die (I have seen about half of these) and Mark Cousins' The Story of Film. Several Criterion films are in both both of these books.

I'm thinking that I have seen close to 1,000 films over the last 2 decades. I imagine that most people here have seen a lot more than that. I should start keeping track of the films I watch on TCM and HBO too. It may be difficult to get an actual number though, but you have inspired me to give it a try.

[jw007]

Originally Posted by jayembee

It's not that simple.

Harlan Ellison once said, "A writer isn't a writer because he wants to be a writer; he's a writer because he has to be a writer." I don't accept that completely, but I agree with the core of it, and that's that an artist has to feel passion for what he's doing.

I love movies. I love books. I love music. I love art. But I can't honestly say that I have the passion to create any of it. I have the skills. I've tried doing art -- mostly pencil sketches, some scratchboard -- and while I've been reasonably satisfied with what I've done, I've never felt compelled to keep at it. I played piano back in my teens, but gave it up because while I could learn a piece and play it proficiently, I never felt I really understood what I was doing musically. It was more or less rote learning. I picked up guitar, and that worked much better for me. But even then, I made it to a certain plateau and didn't really feel compelled to go any further. At this point, I haven't played in probably 12-15 years, and I don't really miss it.

As for the part of your post that I bolded above, I think doing anything that you feel passionate about is the "greatest thing" that you can do with your life. Not everyone is built the same way. Some people create, others just observe. I don't think the latter are the lesser for it.

I totally understand your point. Not everyone is built or constructed the same way. Everyone has a different brain wired to certain passions. Yes, you're right, for me, creating seems to be greater than viewing. To add to your point, last night, I spent 3 hours viewing all the supplements from Don't Look Back and had some moments of clarity whilst watching D. A. Pennebaker talking about being a filmmaker. He realized that he was meant to be an observer rather than a director when he shot his very first film in 1953 called Baby. That short film was basically something Pennebaker found out accidentally, that he wasn't meant to be complex and intricate but just simple. If the phrase "K.I.S.S." was meant to apply to any one filmmaker, it would be D. A. Pennebaker. He keeps his films simple, focusing strictly on whoever is in front of the camera, following him or her around. He did this majestically with Monterey Pop too, and some of those shots of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin will forever go down as film history. Pennebaker was indeed creating something, but he was also observing, much like we observe while watching movies.

I write, I play music, I shoot photographs, I make films, I design websites, I build gardens, I act, etc. Ellison's quote is correct. Sometimes many of us have to do what we do because its the only way to keep ourselves sane. For others, we were never meant to create anything. Just because some of us don't create anything, nothing is wrong with that. Some people are meant to do certain things. As for creativity, everyone is born with some sort of creativity, but not everyone is able to use that creativity to their fullest potential.

Steve Jobs once said: "Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty, because they really didn't do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things."

[jayembee]

Originally Posted by Meek12345

jayembee beat me to this I bought the Zatoichi set during a Criterion flash sale for 50% off MSRP (~$112.49). I know that some members here got it for less than $100 at the Barnes and Noble sale in July or November. During the B&N sale it is 50% off MSRP plus some of the cashiers let you "stack" member coupons for an additional 20-40% off I believe.

At the very least, during a B&N sale, members would get an additional 10% off, dropping it down to almost $100. If you have a 20% One Item coupon as well, it'd drop down to almost $80. If a nice cashier lets you stack coupons, you can get it for even less.

I'm not sure how much I "paid" for my set. My nephew traded me his copy in return for my run of the first 6 years worth of Heavy Metal magazine.

The set is definitely worth the 50% off to me anyways. Hopefully, Criterion will restock their site and B&N within the next few weeks, so the prices on other sites like Amazon and eBay will become more reasonable.

Of course, there are always people on Amazon and eBay who will charge the moon at the first whiff of a rumor that a title is going OOP, and never drop their price even if it's not true, because there are also always people who check eBay or Amazon, and never check any other etailers.

[Knaldskalle]

Originally Posted by CPinheiro

Out of curiosity, do you guys keep track of the movies you have seen?
I'm asking this because I've discovered many wonderful movies through Criterion but to be honest usually I know only one or two titles they release each month, whereas most of the people here seem to know/have seen a lot more... and that makes me think that i haven't watched as many movies as the "average user" has seen.
I started a list about 8-10 years ago including everything I could remember and to this day I have watched 863 movies in my life (about 200 of them were Criterion titles), so I just wanted to know 'how many movies' you guys have seen, if you keep track of things like that.
I also keep track of the movies I see by language, and as I am studying Italian language it surprises me to see that I watched over 100 Italian movies in the past two years (and at least 40 were from Criterion )

Note: I'm 25 years old, I think this is also an important factor in the calculation.
Sorry if this has been brought up before.

IMDb is a place where a lot of people keep track of what they've watched and what they're interested in. Other sites to help you keep track are Letterboxd and Mubi. I personally use iCheckMovies.com (full disclosure: I've become involved with the site).

According to that site I've seen about 5,250 movies/TV shows in total and about 700 out of the 966 titles in the Criterion list (the count is off because it uses IMDb entries as basis for the list, so "box spine numbers" don't count, but short films do and things like The Human Condition Trilogy is three entries but only one spine number and so on). According to the little spreadsheet I keep I've seen 578 of the 822 Criterion spine numbers (a "box spine" gets counted only if I've seen all the titles in the set).

[joie]

Wikipedia has an entry, "Urban legends about drug use." One of the legends concerns chromosomal damage due to the use of psychoactive substances, like LSD.

So I think there may be an anxiety about this possibility among boomers and their offspring, millenials, because drug use became widespread in 2nd half of the last century. A reproductive horror film may exploit its audience's anxiety without being about drug use; for example, "Rosemary's Baby," "Eraserhead" and "The Brood" aren't about drug use but are about deformities which could conceivably be caused by chromosomal damage.

I don't know whether I am the first to recognize this new genre, "reproductive horror," and am not sure whether it is a horror sub-genre or sub-sub-genre because it may be a sub-genre of "body horror," which may be a horror sub-genre.

It may not always be true that a horror movie exploits an anxiety. That may be why people find vampire films more amusing than scary, don't they? A very good, recent vampire movie is "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night."

[pedromvu]

Originally Posted by CPinheiro

Out of curiosity, do you guys keep track of the movies you have seen?
I'm asking this because I've discovered many wonderful movies through Criterion but to be honest usually I know only one or two titles they release each month, whereas most of the people here seem to know/have seen a lot more... and that makes me think that i haven't watched as many movies as the "average user" has seen.
I started a list about 8-10 years ago including everything I could remember and to this day I have watched 863 movies in my life (about 200 of them were Criterion titles), so I just wanted to know 'how many movies' you guys have seen, if you keep track of things like that.
I also keep track of the movies I see by language, and as I am studying Italian language it surprises me to see that I watched over 100 Italian movies in the past two years (and at least 40 were from Criterion )

Note: I'm 25 years old, I think this is also an important factor in the calculation.
Sorry if this has been brought up before.

I started using IMDB, but I imported everything to Letterboxd since it has better options for rewatches and exact dates, so I still use both now, I have also been keeping track for around close to 11 years and according to that I have seen around 3500 films, probably more because there are several I never logged when I was younger.

I also keep track of the blu-rays in my collection I have seen via this site, all titles show the "new" icon unless I add a date on which I watched it.

[pedromvu]

Originally Posted by ShellOilJunior

Yesterday I sent Criterion $10 via PayPal a replacement case for The Manchurian Candidate. I didn't realize the case was smashed on the back until I opened it. It didn't stop me from watching the film.

I asked recently about a crushed case I received from the flash sale, and they didn't mention anything about sending money for it, although it is the first time it has happened to me, might have to do with that, or maybe because it was a direct order as opposed to Amazon or something else.

[shadedpain4]

Originally Posted by filmmusic

The 2 DVDs of this edition have the same content with the 1 Bluray, right?
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-T...131014/#Review

If you're a big zither fan take note that you only get the soundtrack with the fancy version.

[ShellOilJunior]

Originally Posted by pedromvu

I asked recently about a crushed case I received from the flash sale, and they didn't mention anything about sending money for it, although it is the first time it has happened to me, might have to do with that, or maybe because it was a direct order as opposed to Amazon or something else.

The last one I had replaced was Bigger Than Life a few years ago but the damaged case was my doing (Got caught in the hinge of drawer). They told me to send $5 for a case. I figure $10 easily covers the cost of the case and they'll act on it fast because they have the money already.

[theater dreamer]

Originally Posted by pedromvu

I asked recently about a crushed case I received from the flash sale, and they didn't mention anything about sending money for it, although it is the first time it has happened to me, might have to do with that, or maybe because it was a direct order as opposed to Amazon or something else.

If something you received directly from Criterion is damaged, I'd expect they'll send a replacement at no cost, in most instances. They are very good about that.

[theater dreamer]

Originally Posted by ShellOilJunior

The last one I had replaced was Bigger Than Life a few years ago but the damaged case was my doing (Got caught in the hinge of drawer). They told me to send $5 for a case. I figure $10 easily covers the cost of the case and they'll act on it fast because they have the money already.

Expect about a week from the time the money is sent for them to get it out, and two more days to receive it. That's been my turnaround time as of late.

[Martin_31]

I add to this site the movies I have watched from my collection. What I do is, once I finish watching a movie from my collection, I'll add it onto the website. Only from my collection though. I don't add movies I have seen on Netflix, the cinema, TV, or any other place. Some of the movies don't have the exact day I watched them. I forget! I'll add them a couple of days later.

[SammyJankis]

Originally Posted by Ray Jackson

What is it you liked about Yi Yi so much?

Personally I liked it, but after two viewings I can't seem to recognize anything truly great about it. It's not a film that inspired me like an Ikiru or a Red Beard.

...what am I missing?

I can't speak for scott, but it represents everything I like about Taiwanese cinema (or cinema in general.) Yang's perfect use of composition, his humanistic touch, his ability to create an epic that consistently feels personal, making one of the greatest family dramas without having the family together, etc. It's a voice that clearly came from one of the heads of the Taiwanese New Wave (the modern setting, while not at the forefront like his earlier work or his contemporaries, is in line with the dynamics of the family.) It moves me in such a profound manner without ever feeling manipulative. Whatever emotional beat that lands is earned.

I love it so. It's one of those films I revisit whenever I want to feel better about life. I always feel at home, as odd as that may sound, when I spend more time with that family. The scene where the father's with his old love is juxtaposed with the daughter's date is probably the scene I'd point to if I wanted to show someone my taste in film.

I'm so anxious for A Brighter Summer Day to arrive. Anticipating it more than any film this year, theatrical or home video.

[Scottie]

Originally Posted by Ray Jackson

What is it you liked about Yi Yi so much?

Personally I liked it, but after two viewings I can't seem to recognize anything truly great about it. It's not a film that inspired me like an Ikiru or a Red Beard.

...what am I missing?

It's a beautifully shot and beautifully told story about life, death, love, and loss.

I think my favorite thing about the film is that it's simplistic, yet complex at the same time. All of the events (to some extent) are seen through or reflected within each character. Each of these characters is also remarkably mature, in my opinion. Even 8-year-old Yang Yang seems to have a solid grasp on how the world operates.

I think I also like the lingering feels of innocence, emptiness, and regret running throughout the film. I absolutely love the blend of cinematography and soundtrack during

[Show spoiler]NJ's trip into Tokyo.

Furthermore, I think my favorite scene in the film is

[Show spoiler]Ting-Ting's dream. What a way to be told everything will be okay.

[RickDee]

Originally Posted by jayembee

At the very least, during a B&N sale, members would get an additional 10% off, dropping it down to almost $100. If you have a 20% One Item coupon as well, it'd drop down to almost $80. If a nice cashier lets you stack coupons, you can get it for even less.

I'm not sure how much I "paid" for my set. My nephew traded me his copy in return for my run of the first 6 years worth of Heavy Metal magazine.



Of course, there are always people on Amazon and eBay who will charge the moon at the first whiff of a rumor that a title is going OOP, and never drop their price even if it's not true, because there are also always people who check eBay or Amazon, and never check any other etailers.

Some of us have no choice but to pay the high price. Who knows when they will be back in stock at Criterion or B&N.

[Helter145]

Originally Posted by joie

Wikipedia has an entry, "Urban legends about drug use." One of the legends concerns chromosomal damage due to the use of psychoactive substances, like LSD.

So I think there may be an anxiety about this possibility among boomers and their offspring, millenials, because drug use became widespread in 2nd half of the last century. A reproductive horror film may exploit its audience's anxiety without being about drug use; for example, "Rosemary's Baby," "Eraserhead" and "The Brood" aren't about drug use but are about deformities which could conceivably be caused by chromosomal damage.

I don't know whether I am the first to recognize this new genre, "reproductive horror," and am not sure whether it is a horror sub-genre or sub-sub-genre because it may be a sub-genre of "body horror," which may be a horror sub-genre.

It may not always be true that a horror movie exploits an anxiety. That may be why people find vampire films more amusing than scary, don't they? A very good, recent vampire movie is "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night."

While I do consider the concept of vampirism to have arised from concrete axieties, mainly the fear of slow, premature bodily annihilation and the incomprehensible nature of decomposition in pre-industrial societies, the concept has become so malleable it can now be used to explore any desired theme without it seeming out of place; despite this I rarely find vampire films to be amusing, sure there are much more terrifying works in literature related to the concept of vampirism than there are in cinema, but ultimately there are still a few that I find quite disconcerting, from Nosferatu by F.W Murnau and Nosferatu: the Vampyre by Werner Herzog, to smaller, relatively unknown films such as Let's Scare Jessica to Death and Valerie and Her Week of Wonders; I sometimes even consider Persona by Ingmar Bergman to be somewhat a vampire film and a quite unsettling one at that, as it deals with the disintegration of socially imposed behavior and the desire to assimilate a different identity, a more preternatural one if you will, hell, there is even a scene in which Liv Ullmann sucks blood from Bibi Andersson's wrist....

[Edward J Grug III]

The line-up for the (Australian) Retro British Film Festival has just been announced:

BLITHE SPIRIT
ODD MAN OUT
OUR MAN IN HAVANA
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP
A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
A PASSAGE TO INDIA
DR STRANGELOVE
MRS BROWN
HOBSON’S CHOICE
THE LADYKILLERS
THE LAVENDER HILL MOB
WHISKY GALORE
THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT
THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE
CHARIOTS OF FIRE
TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT

I'm not a big Ealing Film fan, so that lets me knock a lot off the list. Researching a few I've not heard of, but there's a bunch of films I'm keen to see or re-see on the big screen!

[ravenus]

Not blu-ray related but on Sunday, I saw a couple of Chantal Akerman films as part of an appreciation at a local cinema.

First was Jeanne Dielman.... At 200+ min, the majority of it devoted to scenes of a homemaker doing her chores almost in real-time, it's jumping off at the deep end as an introduction to a director, and based on reputation I was all prepared to pronounce it as pretentious and dull, but the film has a rhythm and a reason for its structure. Day 1 can be interpreted as the last of the woman's orderly if dull existence. We see her wholly a creature of routine, her life devoted to accomplishing a series of tasks, be it cooking dinner, polishing her son's shoes, babysitting a neighbor's infant or sleeping with a regular client for money, all with the same unemotional precision. Day 2, we see a repetition of those tasks but with slight instances of disorder, like a tiny crack on a window, creeping into her routine, suggesting a long gestating mental breakdown. Day 3 shows those cracks spidering ever so little more, until we reach an abrupt startling crescendo

[Show spoiler]where she stabs that day's client with a pair of scissors. Is it shown that she gets an orgasm during sex prior to that and is therefore disturbed by her emotional involvement? I felt so, but not sure

.

The rhythm is what defines the film, stick with the first half hour or so of the film and it will suck you in. The differences in Day 2 will further intrigue you as to where the build-up is leading to, and the film doesn't disappoint in its culmination. There are instances where the film tests your patience, with 5 min static shots of the protagonist staring into space, but even if indulgent they make sense within the context of the film's thrust. I would urge people to see this film.

The other Akerman effort I saw was Je Tu Il Elle (I / you / he / she). It is at 86 min a far more brief venture. Although it was released in the same year as Jeanne Dielman, it carries far more of a student film feel. The opening segment has Akerman monologuing in stream of consciousness mode while we see her sleeping / writing / binging on sugar, all with / without her clothes on. The middle segment has her hitching up with a trucker who takes care of her. Apart from his instructing her in giving him a handjob we don't see any overt evidence of sexual interaction between them. There's a really good monologue (taken in a single shot, IIRC) in this section where the trucker rambles on about his married life and the routine it has been reduced to. It's a lot more comprehensible and easy to empathize with than the intellectual garbage of the first segment. In the concluding act of the film, Akerman joins up with a former girlfriend, with who she behaves in a terribly boorish fashion before proceeding to have vigorous sex with (a precursor to the sex scenes in Life of Adele). The end. My opinion: Akerman has a sexy Venus-like figure she fully exploits, but the film itself is prententious crap IMO, you may feel different.

There was also a 10-min short La Chambre (The Room), which is just a series of 360 degree pans around a 2 room apartment where the only change comes in the position and activity of the woman on the bed. If there was something to be made of this, it missed me entirely.

[AaronJ]

I really need to see Jeanne Dielman. I believe that Delphine Seyrig is one of the best actresses, most interesting actresses I've seen. That, and I'm criminally unaware of Ackerman's oeuvre.

I need to fix that.

[Marlow27]

Originally Posted by Edward J Grug III

The line-up for the (Australian) Retro British Film Festival has just been announced:

BLITHE SPIRIT
ODD MAN OUT
OUR MAN IN HAVANA
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP
A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH
A PASSAGE TO INDIA
DR STRANGELOVE
MRS BROWN
HOBSON’S CHOICE
THE LADYKILLERS
THE LAVENDER HILL MOB
WHISKY GALORE
THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT
THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE
CHARIOTS OF FIRE
TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT

I'm not a big Ealing Film fan, so that lets me knock a lot off the list. Researching a few I've not heard of, but there's a bunch of films I'm keen to see or re-see on the big screen!

I'm so glad they're doing another! (hopefully this means Pomeranz does another Hollywood retro festival too) . I'm definitely down for Odd Man Out, Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, A Matter of Life and Death, Dr. Strangelove, The Ladykillers, The Man in the White Suit and Hobson's Choice, and that's just to start.