The Criterion Collection

[Gacivory]

Originally Posted by Professor Echo

Hmm, I'm not familiar with that Monte Hellman film. Was that a recent sequel to TWO LANE BLACKTOP about two itinerant computer programmers who travel the country from their cubicles?

I agree with your take on THE SHOOTING and actually prefer RIDE THE WHIRLWIND a little more, but really, any of these kind of low budget "art" westerns are always worth a look. And Hellman is smart enough to incorporate enough of the genre loveliness to make all that high falutin' meditations on existentialism go right past ya, pardner. (Although if truth be told, I like them there meditations as much as the shootouts!).

They were cruising the information superhighway.

[Rayjg]

He actually did write a prequel called Two-Lane Pile-up.

[dkelly26666]

Originally Posted by Kyle15

I hit up 2nd & Charles today. They had a new trade-in cart sitting around with a bunch of stuff on it, amongst it this.
I could not pass it up at that price. It's in perfect shape!

Now, THAT was a deal!!!!

I already had it, but Shout's blu ray of Ridley Scott's "The Duellists" had gone OOP, and was going for like 75 dollars through second hand sellers. I found one at 2nd & Charles for 3 bucks (!!!) and bought it and gifted it to someone who'd been looking for it. Karma and all that....

I also found a pristine, first edition copy (at least first English edition) or Pasolini's "Una Vita Violenta" novel there for around 2 dollars.

It's a fun place to rummage through, for sure. I almost always leave with a stack of stuff.

[BluProofie]

Originally Posted by Kyle15

I hit up 2nd & Charles today. They had a new trade-in cart sitting around with a bunch of stuff on it, amongst it this.
I could not pass it up at that price. It's in perfect shape!

It’s a wonderful movie.

[dylrichard02]

Bull Moose currently has recent CC titles on sale at 21.97 a piece.

Parasite, Crash, Moonstruck, Grand Budapest Hotel, and Ghost Dog.

[traths]

The Bank Dick is long overdue for a blu-ray upgrade.

[jw007]

I watched The Hit last night on my Criterion blu-ray. Excellent performance by Terence Stamp. Wow, what an actor! I feel like he's never talked about enough. And I have a feeling that Quentin Tarantino totally dug this movie and Tim Roth's performance is what compelled him to cast him in Reservoir Dogs. I mean, John Hurt gave a great performance of a hurtfully soulless hitman too. This is ONE HELLUVA movie. The soundtrack kind of reminded me of The Third Man too, with the Spanish guitar.

The Hit could have totally featured Michael Caine, but when you have Terence Stamp, who else do ya' need! I got hit hard, and hit well.

[dcx4610]

Blind bought and watched Lady Snowblood. What a movie. I love Kill Bill and now I think less about it. QT just straight up jacked the basic plot and music. I get that he was inspired by it but inspired and copying is a a slippery slope.

A basic revenge story but extremely innovative in its editing and shots and is beautiful, gory and has a likable protagonist. If you like Kill Bill, check it out. Criterion never ceases to amaze me with the quality of their transfers as well.

[ravenus]

Saw the John Bailey discussion and Jacques Tourneur interview on the Cat People disc, and both make interesting comments about how lighting and shadow are used in film to make the visuals interesting.

Bailey discusses Nick Musuraca's unrealistic (in terms of not related to on screen light sources, and often lit from the bottom) but bold lighting patterns, and how he created visual interest in relatively bare sets or against blank walls by the use of shadows of the actors and props.

JT talks about how during rehearsals for his films he would turn off most of the lights on the set, observe how it affected the actors' movements and body language in the scene and use it as a guide to instruct the DoP about the final lighting.

Good stuff.

[BamaDullard]

Originally Posted by traths

The Bank Dick is long overdue for a blu-ray upgrade.

I don’t know much about this film other than that it was one of Stanley Kubrick favorite movies.

[BamaDullard]

Originally Posted by dcx4610

Blind bought and watched Lady Snowblood. What a movie. I love Kill Bill and now I think less about it. QT just straight up jacked the basic plot and music. I get that he was inspired by it but inspired and copying is a a slippery slope.

A basic revenge story but extremely innovative in its editing and shots and is beautiful, gory and has a likable protagonist. If you like Kill Bill, check it out. Criterion never ceases to amaze me with the quality of their transfers as well.

I saw a few moments of Lady Snowblood a couple years ago on TCM, and that was totally my impression as well. I mean it even has the anime sequences!

[TheBluRayBandito]

How often do they do the 50% sale? I can only remember around Winter time.

[BunyipPouch]

Originally Posted by TheBluRayBandito

How often do they do the 50% sale? I can only remember around Winter time.

Criterion Barnes & Nobles Sale 50% Off - Whole Month of July & November (Online & In-Store)

Criterion Website Flash Sale 50% Off - One Day in February & October (Online Only)

Then there's the random B2G1 Sales on Target/Amazon which basically come out to the same as 50% MSRP off (sometimes even a bit lower), those happen every couple months but no set dates. There was just one on both websites that ended like 2 weeks ago.

[Member-682067]

'Death and The Maiden' from Polanski would be a good pick as it is now out of print on any format.

[ravenus]

If The Cranes are Flying had been a book, it would have been an insufferable melodrama. But by God, what an amazing vision Mikhail Kalatazov and his DoP Sergey Urusevskiy bring. There's nothing like a casual shot/frame, and some sequences are so detailed/complicated, I'm wondering how the frak did they do that? Examples:

An unbroken take in which the camera seems to follow the heroine like a guerilla steadicam as she runs through a crowd, and then starts to pull back and rise as she crosses the streets criss-crossing between moving tanks, becoming a crane shot.

One where the camera seems to be rising while rotating in the middle of a stairwell while the hero runs up flights of stairs.

Some of the wartime footage in the forests seems to pre-figure Ivan's Childhood.

The Criterion disc features an impressive Mosfilm restored transfer that does justice to the film's magnificent visual style. There are a bunch of extras, of which the most important is the 74 min documentary on Kalatazov, which examines his path and legacy as a film-maker. Interestingly between his silent films and the ones that made him a global name in cinema, Kalatazov was a bureaucrat working with the Party, but when returned behind the camera his work - as I have seen from this one and the astounding Letter Never Sent - continued to have the passion of a born film-maker.

Highly recommended.

[TheBluRayBandito]

Originally Posted by BunyipPouch

Criterion Barnes & Nobles Sale 50% Off - Whole Month of July & November (Online & In-Store)

Criterion Website Flash Sale 50% Off - One Day in February & October (Online Only)

Then there's the random B2G1 Sales on Target/Amazon which basically come out to the same as 50% MSRP off (sometimes even a bit lower), those happen every couple months but no set dates. There was just one on both websites that ended like 2 weeks ago.

Doesn't Amazon price match the sales? Or do they do their own sale?

[dylrichard02]

Originally Posted by TheBluRayBandito

Doesn't Amazon price match the sales? Or do they do their own sale?

A lot of titles drop in price during the B&N sales to match their prices, not to mention they regularly have a select few titles for about 19.99 and some drop to" limited time deals" for somewhere between $19-21.

[Rayjg]

Originally Posted by ravenus

If The Cranes are Flying had been a book, it would have been an insufferable melodrama. But by God, what an amazing vision Mikhail Kalatazov and his DoP Sergey Urusevskiy bring. There's nothing like a casual shot/frame, and some sequences are so detailed/complicated, I'm wondering how the frak did they do that? Examples:

An unbroken take in which the camera seems to follow the heroine like a guerilla steadicam as she runs through a crowd, and then starts to pull back and rise as she crosses the streets criss-crossing between moving tanks, becoming a crane shot.

One where the camera seems to be rising while rotating in the middle of a stairwell while the hero runs up flights of stairs.

Some of the wartime footage in the forests seems to pre-figure Ivan's Childhood.

The Criterion disc features an impressive Mosfilm restored transfer that does justice to the film's magnificent visual style. There are a bunch of extras, of which the most important is the 74 min documentary on Kalatazov, which examines his path and legacy as a film-maker. Interestingly between his silent films and the ones that made him a global name in cinema, Kalatazov was a bureaucrat working with the Party, but when returned behind the camera his work - as I have seen from this one and the astounding Letter Never Sent - continued to have the passion of a born film-maker.

Highly recommended.

Hopefully I Am Cuba and The Red Tent are released on Blu-ray too. He directed the hell out of both those films.

[Reddington]

Just arrived from Black Dragon Press in the UK.

[samdaman94]

Does anyone have any info on this Spanish release of Broadcast News, and whether it has the same master used for the Criterion?
Can't seem to find any info on it.