The Criterion Collection

[TheBluRayBandito]

Originally Posted by Splatterhouse 5

Hehe…I’ve had a curiosity for that movie, but haven’t heard enough compelling commentary for me to ever pull the trigger on that one. This is a start!

House or Big Man Japan?

[Splatterhouse 5]

Originally Posted by TheBluRayBandito

House or Big Man Japan?

House. I’ve admittedly never done my homework on that one, but I’m very familiar with the with the promotional art. The peripheral murmurs always seem positive from my POV, but I know absolutely nothing about it. Like, I have yet to bump into that proverbial person that’s told me “stop what you’re doing, and watch this effing movie!!!!”.

[JasonMichael]

Originally Posted by Splatterhouse 5

House. I’ve admittedly never done my homework on that one, but I’m very familiar with the with the promotional art. The peripheral murmurs always seem positive from my POV, but I know absolutely nothing about it. Like, I have yet to bump into that proverbial person that’s told me “stop what you’re doing, and watch this effing movie!!!!”.

Have you checked out the trailer?

HOUSE (1977) Trailer - The Criterion Collection - YouTube

[Splatterhouse 5]

Originally Posted by JasonMichael

Have you checked out the trailer?

HOUSE (1977) Trailer - The Criterion Collection - YouTube

Very effective salesmanship. I’ll hop on that crazy train.

[MifuneFan]

Originally Posted by Splatterhouse 5

Very effective salesmanship. I’ll hop on that crazy train.

This was what I wrote back in 2016 when I first saw the movie. I don't know if it will sell you on the film or not though . It's certainly a different experience, but I thoroughly enjoyed the ride.

Originally Posted by MifuneFan

So Hausu, how do I put my viewing experience into words? I think I'll just post some of the many thoughts I had while watching this movie

"Hm, that feels like the longest opening credits to a sitcom ever"
"I'm pretty sure a Mentos commercial was just like that scene"
"Gorgeous, Fantasy, Melody, Kung-Fu? What kind of names are these!?"
"This would be so awesome as a musical, this definitely needs to be remade as a musical, maybe even Broadway, yeah"
"Okay, a lot of these scenes feel like segues to a porno"
"This should be a porno musical"
"Mac (short for Stomach) is fat-shamed A LOT (also, she's not even fat!)"
"I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids! -said by Creepy cat"
"Kung-Fu is so sexy, damn. Sweet is super cute"
"I could go for a watermelon right now"
"This is defintely somebody's fever dream"
"This movie would be good on drugs, scratch that, this movie makes you feel like you're on drugs"
"Um, greatest movie ever?"

So yeah, it was definitely a fun experience, and I have to imagine it'd actually get even better on repeated viewings since there's so much going on. Like, it feels like they condensed 3 hours of material into a 90 minute runtime. I had an idea of what it would be like going into it, but no trailer or review can really sum up what a crazy random movie this is.

[Gigantic Gene]

Originally Posted by Warm Gun

Okay, that's 28 or 35 dollars ten months out of the year. It's high. Higher than most labels, including several boutiques. Kino Lorber has MSRPs of only $30 dollars with half off on all my still printing releases. How often are the prices that low? My Arrow movies that are still in print have about the same MSRPs as Criterion, but unless I picked the right time to check them they are not limited to two months out of the year. I remember that my Arrow Academy Blu-rays were cheaper than Criterion's at 50% off. My Eureka! collection was much cheaper. Criterion is the only one in my collection that's priced so high so consistently.

We're seeing what's likely a new norm in boutique releases and restorations, generally higher prices across the board. Look at VS and their new Showgirls 4K release, a single movie title. The MSRP for their LE is $65 and the SE for retail is $45. Amazon and other regularly offer Criterions for 30%+ off year round. Even Criterion's own shop sells them for a minimum of 20% off year round, not counting 30% off and other sales they offer.

[DimitriL]

Originally Posted by Warm Gun

Okay, that's 28 or 35 dollars ten months out of the year. It's high. Higher than most labels, including several boutiques. Kino Lorber has MSRPs of only $30 dollars with half off on all my still printing releases. How often are the prices that low? My Arrow movies that are still in print have about the same MSRPs as Criterion, but unless I picked the right time to check them they are not limited to two months out of the year. I remember that my Arrow Academy Blu-rays were cheaper than Criterion's at 50% off. My Eureka! collection was much cheaper. Criterion is the only one in my collection that's priced so high so consistently.

What? The 4K for To Live and Die in LA MSRP is $40. The Silent Running 4k is $50. The Flash Gordon special edition 4k is $60 (and with Criterion, you’re not generally paying extra for when they go full-out with packaging). And you can find titles on sales all year at Amazon, sometimes even more than 50 percent off.

And I mean, Criterion held the line on prices for the entire history of their BDs, like, 13 years, and only tacked on $10 - a *standardized* $10, and not, hey, let’s add an extra $20 when we wanna add a poster or whatever - when UHD hit. Like, they’ve often thrown in an extra movie for NOTHING extra. No label’s perfect, but they’re solid and reliable and I appreciate how they go about their mission.

[TheBluRayBandito]

Originally Posted by Splatterhouse 5

Very effective salesmanship. I’ll hop on that crazy train.

Drop your opinion when you watch it. Too bad there’s no tag feature so you can let me know when you do.

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by Egbert Souse

Given that the best surviving element of Tokyo Story is a 16mm positive that was blown up to 35mm, UHD doesn't seem likely. A big box would be amazing, though.

Where'd you hear that about the 16mm positive? This is what Criterion put in their old Blu-ray:

This new digital transfer was created in 4K resolution on an IMAGER XE scanner from a new 35mm interpositive. The original negative no longer exists, so the new interpositive created for scanning was made from the internegative, the most original film element available. The restoration project was undertaken by Shochiku Co., Ltd., and performed by Imagica Corp. and Imagica West Corp. in Japan, which received additional support in the restoration process from Reliance MediaWorks in India.

Transfer supervisors: Masashi Chikamori, Takashi Kawamata.
Colorists: Osamu Iseki, Seiji Saito.

I assumed that all those elements listed in there - the now-lost OCN, the IN, and the IP derived from the IN - were all 35mm. What did you hear about this 16mm source and the blowup?

Originally Posted by ravenus

Yeah, the 2020 BFI blu-ray is based on the 4k resto and smashes the 2016 Criterion blu to pieces.

Any caps or links to caps? The Criterion Blu already got chopped off the list this go-round, and I wouldn't mind chopping it entirely.

[ravenus]

Originally Posted by Shane Rollins

Any caps or links to caps? The Criterion Blu already got chopped off the list this go-round, and I wouldn't mind chopping it entirely.

Bunch of comparison caps on Caps-a-holic:
https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?d1=14437&d2=14438&c=5571

The BFI transfer is also based off the 35mm inter-positive, done in 2017.

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by TV2693

I ain’t buying After Hours(it was okay)

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by ShellOilJunior

Sales don't tempt me nearly as much as in the past. If there's a movie I want to own and watch very soon then I buy it, sale or not (e.g. Double Indemnity UHD was a day 1).

Sometimes I'm like that. When After Hours was announced, I literally rejiggered my entire calendar to pick up all my Criterions (within reason) in July. It's a shame that there's a few good ones in a few weeks, but hey that's what November's for. If you can save a shit ton of money, why not?

Originally Posted by ShellOilJunior

There's quite a few CC UHDs I'd like to own but if I purchase several in a sale, there's an excellent chance I'm not going to watch all of them in a week or even a month.

After Hours is tonight, rest of the actual movies on my necessity list The Silence Of The Lambs, Godzilla, Night Of The Living Dead, Enter The Dragon) are in the next couple of weeks, and every second of every bit of every title I bag is by the end of October. These things are like fine wine, meant to be enjoyed in moderation, but considering my options in order were an open matte laserdisc of AH (I currently have neither the disc nor the player), the Orion VHS tape of SOTL, the Simitar VHS tape of the US edit of Godzilla, the Goodtimes VHS of NOTLD (oh the horrors!), and a pan-and-scan tape of ETD from the 80s, moderation is going to be pretty hard this go-round.

Originally Posted by ShellOilJunior

On the other hand, a new pair of Saucony running shoes is going to get plenty of use and serves me better for the present (Although, unlike a movie, I'll eventually have to toss the shoes).

For the first time in 4,000 movies I finally threw one out. I promise I'm not making this up, the last guy's cat pissed on it and I didn't realize it until three days later when my entire house smelled like cat piss and that tape was where it was coming from. So given the choice between toss the tape and live in a litter box, the tape had to go.

I do however have shoes that I keep putting off replacing because I'm buying movies. Had them since high school...and I haven't been in high school in a looooong time.

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by NeoNical

Wonder if we can expect a Powell/Pressburger 4K set in the near future (2024)? I haven't bought any of his films yet but I'm probably just going to wait for the 4K releases of the other ones first (If they aren't released individually, then maybe a boxset could be expected) before I start buying their films.

That one seems inevitable, but at the same time I don't think Criterion has ever done that. They've done Bergman, Truffaut, Varda, Ray, Kurosawa, and now Pasolini (which I'm shocked that didn't happen sooner), but somehow they haven't done P&P despite them being arguably the most accessible filmmakers on this list. (As in, you won't have your family and friends complaining about "how they hate subtitles" and "how they hate movies that aren't in English.")

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by Taylor3978

I imagine what would make the most sense would be a B&W boxset and a color boxset.

B&W:
Edge of the World
49th Parallel
A Canterbury Tale
I Know Where I'm Going
The Small Back Room

AFAIK only the first of these has (had?) a BR, from BFI.

Color:
Red Shoes
Black Narcissus
Colonel Blimp
A Matter of Life and Death
The Thief of Baghdad

They seem for now to be focused on the color films, I guess a large part of Scorsese's focus has been saving color films from fading, but 4K can be just as transformative for B&W films. Given everything else is available on Blu Ray (except Thief of Baghdad!), I'd prefer the B&W films first.

Controversial statement here, I think black and white films are better in 4K than color ones are. And while DV and HDR are neither here nor there with color films IMO, with B&W films DV and HDR just transform the image in a way that they simply couldn't with a color film.

Take Citizen Kane for example. The new scan and the native 4K resolution did a little something for the film (more an elements issue than anything else). In 4K SDR vs the old Blu-ray, there's no real difference. The sound, LPCM mono on the new releases, DTS-HDMA mono on the old one, again there was no real difference. The DV on the 4K of Citizen Kane, that's what made that 4K. That honestly made the whole disc, and without it I think that release wouldn't be half of what it is.

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by TV2693

You’d be surprised. some ppl will buy some that’s not exactly their cup of tea, but since the price is cheaper than usual they’ll experiment and see if it surprises them. Or the movie is the type that they like, but they haven’t seen it yet, and will buy it and give it a try.

The sales probably do capitalize on the impulse buyers or hoarders. There’s more to CC’s sales demographic than conservative ppl who just buy the ones they know they will like.

Maybe it's just me but when I see companies that put out lots of different titles (mostly boutiques or defunct distributors from the old days), I take that as a list of new movies to explore. Of the probably 2,000 titles Criterion has released over the years, I'd be shocked if I've seen over 100 of them. Some might get their panties in a bind and say "now why won't Criterion replace *?" I on the other hand think that Criterion has given me a list of thousands of new movies to watch. My wallet doesn't think that's a good mindset, but I sure do.

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by regeyer

They never sell at MSRP. Criterion always sells them for less. It's just that the 50% off sale is based on the MSRP.

The reason they're so high at B&N is because that's B&N making their profit after they already paid for the Criterion discs wholesale. While they paid probably less than we did, it likely wasn't by much. And yes, these are unfortunately expensive to make so they do charge a lot. I think it's too high the rest of the year, so that's why I wait for the sales. By the end of today I'll have at least ten of their discs and will not have paid full price for any of them.

I can't vouch for the website (which I have never used) nor Amazon (which I have never used for Criterions).

[Shane Rollins]

Originally Posted by ravenus

Bunch of comparison caps on Caps-a-holic:
https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?d1=14437&d2=14438&c=5571

The BFI transfer is also based off the 35mm inter-positive, done in 2017.

Beautiful. Leaps and bounds above the Criterion Blu. Do you know how that IP is related to the 16mm positive that Egbert Souse is talking about?

[Member-682067]

Originally Posted by Shane Rollins

Maybe it's just me but when I see companies that put out lots of different titles (mostly boutiques or defunct distributors from the old days), I take that as a list of new movies to explore. Of the probably 2,000 titles Criterion has released over the years, I'd be shocked if I've seen over 100 of them. Some might get their panties in a bind and say "now why won't Criterion replace *?" I on the other hand think that Criterion has given me a list of thousands of new movies to watch. My wallet doesn't think that's a good mindset, but I sure do.

You’re prob their most valued customer. I used to be like that but grew out of it(kinda like eh I don’t NEED this). I’ve bought more from vinegar syndrome and their partner releases over the last eight months.

[mclellandj]

Criterion has the best curation for the best value and it’s not even close. I like vinegar syndrome but you can’t compare the two in terms of their libraries. Only Kino is competitive with Criterion.

Edit: great labels pointed out by others below.

[Mister_Kidd]

Originally Posted by mclellandj

Criterion has the best curation for the best value and it’s not even close. I like vinegar syndrome but you can’t compare the two in terms of their libraries. Only Kino is competitive with Criterion.

Eureka is on their level, IMO.