The Criterion Collection

[TheHumanTornado]

Originally Posted by digihed

So you guys are getting discounts because of a missing blue criterion sticker but no actual damage? I could care less about the sticker or even if it was
potentially rewrapped as long as it is in new condition.

My copy of Leon Morin had a hole punched through the back of the case and the disc was loose. I opened it and the disc is not scratched or damaged at all. The case has a hole through the back in the top left in the indented area around the disc holder. Whatever hit it tore the outer case plastic and the cover art and I'm betting knocked the disc off the hub.

Looks like many went out damaged by the looks of the used copies sold by Amazon's Warehouse Deals. I'd like to exchange it but think it probably isn't worth it, the rest of the case and front cover art is fine, the disc is fine and the spine is fine which is all I ever see on the shelf.

Honestly the sticker was one of the many signs that it was a used copy that had been re-packaged. The shrink wrap was very unprofessional. My copy was fine but I was more bothered by the fact that I was obviously sold an open blu-ray described as "new".
It was a matter of principal, not quality.
No I'm not a sticker nut.

[ccg1978]

Originally Posted by TheHumanTornado

Got a 50 percent refund for Leon Morin!

Nice, I'll have to email them

[digihed]

Originally Posted by TheHumanTornado

Honestly the sticker was one of the many signs that it was a used copy that had been re-packaged. The shrink wrap was very unprofessional. My copy was fine but I was more bothered by the fact that I was obviously sold an open blu-ray described as "new".
It was a matter of principal, not quality.
No I'm not a sticker nut.

I agree with you. This kind of thing seems to be common with Amazon lately.

Mine may have been repackaged which doesn't bother me as much as the damaged case and cover art. Haven't decided if I'll ask for a discount or exchange.

[TheHumanTornado]

Originally Posted by ccg1978

Nice, I'll have to email them

Don't accept their first offer.

[ccg1978]

Originally Posted by TheHumanTornado

Don't accept their first offer.

Here is what I told the fools.

"I received an reply saying Amazon would offer me 20% off my purchase since it was missing the sticker and re-wrapped. I've heard people getting up to 50% off from a movie forum. Since this is obviously a used copy and Amazon was listing as new I expect to get 50% off my purchase as well. Please advise."

[Sherlock_Jr]

Originally Posted by COLD_COBRA_

update us with how the Rachel McAdams nude scene is.

She's only in the film maybe 10-15 minutes, and the nudity by both women is extremely brief. The movie, however, is amazing.

[TheHumanTornado]

Originally Posted by ccg1978

Here is what I told the fools.

"I received an reply saying Amazon would offer me 20% off my purchase since it was missing the sticker and re-wrapped. I've heard people getting up to 50% off from a movie forum. Since this is obviously a used copy and Amazon was listing as new I expect to get 50% off my purchase as well. Please advise."

I would be shocked if they didn't give it to you. It's pretty much what I said.

[ccg1978]

Originally Posted by TheHumanTornado

I would be shocked if they didn't give it to you. It's pretty much what I said.

Great minds?

[TheHumanTornado]

Originally Posted by ccg1978

Great minds?

Most Criterion fans have them, so yes of course.

[P@t_Mtl]

Originally Posted by TheHumanTornado

Most Criterion fans have them, so yes of course.

Modest are we

[TheHumanTornado]

Originally Posted by P@t_Mtl

Modest are we

We are by nature immodest.

BTW, love your avi.

[ccg1978]

Originally Posted by TheHumanTornado

I would be shocked if they didn't give it to you. It's pretty much what I said.

They said they would only give me 20%!! I don't know why they are offering different amounts. Eh holes

[Abdrewes]

Jonathan Rosenbaum on the second best film of 1999:

"2. The Thin Red Line. I still haven’t read James Jones’s 1962 novel about World War II and therefore can’t gauge the degree to which Terrence Malick’s grasp of collective consciousness, as acute and as eccentric as Kubrick’s, is the product of adaptation or of invention. But Malick’s remarkable, at times visionary evocation of a collective hero–a group of soldiers and officers ruminating in offscreen monologues with essentially the same voice — is basically a reactionary throwback to lyrical-humanist depictions of World War I from the first third of this century, novels such as Three Soldiers (1921), The Enormous Room (1922), and Company K (1933) and films such as The Big Parade (1925) and All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). Malick’s most visible influence is F.W. Murnau’s Tabu (1930), a late silent picture that deals not with war but with “natural” innocence and “civilized” corruption in the South Seas.
All this makes Malick’s beautiful and moving epic somewhat questionable as history — unless one can accept his “retreat” into a silent-movie sensibility as a step forward. This isn’t a position to be rejected out of hand: a few years ago historian Eric Hobsbawm argued in New Left Review that “after about 150 years of secular decline, barbarism has been on the increase for most of the 20th century, and there is no sign that this increase is at an end.” He wrote that “the First World War began the descent into barbarism” and that “civilization receded between the Treaty of Versailles and the fall of the bomb on Hiroshima.” With that as a given, taking a World War I-era view of World War II would be relatively civilized — a step backward into relative sanity.


Whatever one concludes about the wisdom of Malick’s philosophical or aesthetic approach, the film’s first couple of hours offer a deeply stirring experience (during the final hour its power dissipates). Many other films this year gained from having a silent-movie syntax, including The Lovers on the Bridge, Besieged, and Winstanley, and there were a few moments in Eyes Wide Shut that gained as well. But The Thin Red Line is probably the one that buys into the ideological content of silent movies the most, for good and for ill."

Rosenbaum's original review: http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?p=6509


If anybody hasn't seen Murnau's Tabu, please do so, it's every bit as potent as Sunrise. There are few films (silent or sound) that compare in naive beauty.

[P@t_Mtl]

Originally Posted by TheHumanTornado

We are by nature immodest.

BTW, love your avi.

I never wanted to be William Holden so much

[soarinsteven]

I just watched Olivier Assayas' Summer Hours for the first time. I was digging the quiet melancholy and warm, elegant atmosphere just fine, but the themes didn't hit me till those final moments which really kind of gutted me.

[The Great Owl]

I just saw Terrence Malick's To the Wonder at a local theater. I loved the film. I was not bored at all, and I thought that the pacing of this film was quite refreshing.

I'm double-posting my rather haphazard first-impression (and non-spoiler) review from another thread, so here goes...

To the Wonder eschews conventional narrative structure to present us with a work of fluid motion, where characters alternately drift closer and farther from one another as the roving camera catches brief, but insightful glimpses at facial expressions and mannerisms. This movie, like a symphony or a ballet, uses the fluidity and sound to depict specific feelings, instead of relying on traditional dialogue and explanatory interactions. Scattered fragments of dialogue and voiceover function like musical instruments all their own.

My broad impression after this first viewing of To the Wonder is of "grace", whether it is the grace of God, the grace of nature, the gracefulness that all humans have within themselves, or the gracefulness of change, whether this change applies to a rising tide over the sand of a French coast, the manipulation of our natural world by way of man's construction, or falling in and out of love. Terrence Malick's films have always used the beauty of the wilderness surrounding human events to illustrate that mankind is simply another part of nature, but To the Wonder seems to settle on the more reassuring aspects of these observations.

I have always admired Olga Kurylenko, but her wanderings through this movie give her a cinematic presence with which I cannot imagine one not falling in love. Like Anna Karina in Band of Outsiders or Audrey Tautou in Amélie, Kurylenko dances through this movie in with emotional openness that is equally effective through elation or through forlorn sorrow. Ben Affleck plays a central role as well, but his character drifts in and out of the camera's peripheral edges as if to avoid committing fully to any given emotion. Rachel McAdams commands attention with a subtle brilliance that combines fragile beauty with rugged resilience well on its way to a hardened emotional shell. Javier Bardem, in his role as a priest suffering with an indecision about faith, lumbers through scenes with a countenance that seems just as weathered as the poverty-stricken neighborhoods that he passes through during his everyday duties. Malick's camera flows ephemerally, like the water of a tranquil river, through the lives of these characters, and I have never seen a film succeed so well at examining the emotional intimacies of relationships without judging any of the involved parties.

Well done, Terrence Malick, well done...

[ParticleDan]

Originally Posted by KrugerIndustrial

Just because a Criterion BD does not come with the blue sticker does not mean it's used or even resealed. Recently, I ordered 3 Women which arrived damaged and without sticker. Amazon sent a replacement and it too came without the sticker. Both were definitely new though, no doubt about that.

Very true. With regards to the shrink wrap, I'm sure they switched to the softer wrap when I and many others received cases with the wrap melted onto the spines of several titles. Yes it's not at nice to look while wrapped, but it sure beats lasting damage to the spine.

[The Great Owl]

Originally Posted by Snicket

I get it next week!

I did see Oblivion last night, interesting story, amazing visuals, unique art style and M83's score was epic on an IMAX mix. It was soooo nice to see a 2D IMAX film.

I'll probably go see Oblivion on Monday, since I have the day off for Confederate Memorial Day. (I'm not joking. Being a state government employee in the southeastern U.S. is a trip.)

People keep saying that Oblivion is a boring film, but I'm inclined to think that, if I was not bored at all during To the Wonder, I will find Oblivion quite engaging.

[PocosuTheCamel]

Just ordered my first from the Criterion Collection, The Thin Red Line, off of Amazon for $23 w/shipping. Can't wait to get it!

[The Great Owl]

Originally Posted by Sherlock_Jr

She's only in the film maybe 10-15 minutes, and the nudity by both women is extremely brief. The movie, however, is amazing.

Exactly. I'm going to buy To the Wonder on Blu-ray on the day of release, and then watch it 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Okay, maybe not quite that often. I am not sure where to rank To the Wonder on my list of Malick films, but it falls somewhere in the middle. Meaning, of course, that I consider it to be quite a masterpiece.

Malick even makes a Sonic Drive-In look beautiful and majestic in this film. Geez...