One week's ban, plus three days' absence, plus a new job (YAY!!!!!), plus the title drop of all time is coming tomorrow. Lots of catching up to do.
Quote:
Originally Posted by willbfree
As frowned on it as it may be, I’m putting Risky Business through some AI noise reduction to get rid of the grain. Felt I had to because the grain is not only fuzzy, it is colorful. It reminds me of watching a UHF station in the distant past. After I’m done it will still have some grain - more than the old Warner Blu and more than the AppleTV file. But it won’t be chromatic, and it won’t be as much.
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"And now for my first question...what the hell were you thinking?"
-Jay Leno
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Originally Posted by mande2013
[Last Tango In Paris has] never been outside the top 400 on TSPDT and has even been within the top 250 on there at varions points, so controversy or no controversy, I’m not sure it’s accurate to say it’s never been considered a great film.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cremildo
The levels of history-rewriting going on regarding Last Tango in Paris is reaching insane levels. To imply it was never a well-regarded movie is just plain absurd.
How about we read up a little before making fools of ourselves? My personal cinema-themed library isn't even that expansive, and yet Tango is often mentioned, in books as varied as David Bordwell's Film Art: An Introduction, Ebert's Great Movies and 1001 Movies to Watch Before You Die. Like mande2013 mentioned above, it's not a stranger to Greatest of All Time lists since it came out.
It's fine if you personally dislike it or just want to lash out at it on Maria Schneider's behalf, but at least be honest about it without resorting to confabulation.
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For me, I saw it years ago because I'd heard that it was one of the greatest films ever. And I'm only 25.
While in those days (I was 13 so this was 2012-2013) I couldn't honestly drag the film through the mud, I can honestly say the film failed to live up to my expectations. (Then again, while I think Kane, Seven Samurai, and Wild Strawberries are masterpieces, I also think Gone With The Wind and Salo blow the big one, so don't take me as the arbiter of taste.)
Then when the real story of the butter scene came out, that admittedly tanked my opinion of the film. While many films have rape scenes that are acted (A Clockwork Orange, for example), the knowledge that the scene in Last Tango In Paris was a real rape is just disturbing at a level that's hard to describe. As a viewer of the film, I felt like I was in on the act just by watching it.
I'm not sure whether simple reevaluation, watching and being disappointed, or the revelations about the butter scene caused more of a dip in LTIP's popularity, but it is definitely true that throughout at least the 70s and 80s, there were critics and the more highbrow members of our community lining up to proclaim LTIP a masterpiece.
Nowadays though, I only hear it mentioned (well, heard it mentioned) every now and then when someone would ask "hey, do you think
Criterion would ever do Last Tango In Paris?" It seemed like a perfect fit, so I'd usually question why it hadn't happened yet, especially since the last
Criterion release was a laserdisc from 1990 (which either went OOP fairly quickly, sold so poorly there were enough copies left to go around, or was sold at the same time as the 1992 MGM/UA laserdisc; both were letterbox, but the
Criterion disc was surprisingly the censored R-rated version, while the MGM/UA disc was the uncensored X-rated cut (later given an NC-17, which it holds today).
Whenever VS's license lapses - or whenever they sell out of LEs and decide to not reissue it - I expect the conversation about LTIP coming to
Criterion will begin again.
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Originally Posted by mande2013
Having pre-ordered the 4K of «*Last Tango*», I still have to ask why some people get so up in arms over «*cancel culture*» when the people implicated, such as Polanski and Klaus Kinski, have in fact done reprehensible things? Sure. Some people will say if you canceled every single artist on account of their personal shortcomings you’d be left with very little art, but there’s a difference between the Polanskis of the world and people who were simply *******s like Godard and Bergman.
I think fundamentally, people are on guard against cancelling cultural figures because they feel it just becomes an obfuscatory way of justifying one’s own philistinism.
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Surprising one of your actresses with a rape scene because you want her hurt, anger, pain, and disgust to be genuine...yeah, you deserve to be cancelled. Nowadays, Bertolucci would've likely been arrested over it, or at the very least he would've been knocked so many rungs down the totem pole that it would've made Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey look like choir boys.
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Originally Posted by bergman864
As long as we're still mentioning the works of these directors with any reverence is a sign that their legacies remains intact. We're also talking about directors with large filmographies and I can guarantee you no one, not a single solitary soul on Earth now or has ever been on Earth, considered every film of theirs to be a classic.
For directors who've stopped making films, we think of their careers in totality. That's why no one points to Truffaut's Confidentially Yours, Bertolucci's Me & You or Antonioni's Beyond the Clouds as the final say on their work.
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There are so many great directors out there - Kurosawa, Ozu, Bergman, Coppola, Kubrick, Stone, Lucas, Scott (both of them), Mel Gibson, and many more.
I can name at least one movie from every one of them where I think it sucks.
Imagine judging Coppola by Megalopolis, Kubrick by Eyes Wide Shut, and Lucas by Revenge Of The Sith. You'd be tearing down so many masterpieces in the process, including The Godfather 1 and 2, Apocalypse Now, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, and American Graffiti.
That's not to say they're bad filmmakers, or bad artists, but nobody's perfect. That's at least ten movies up there I wasn't into. There's easily a combined 150+ movies up there that are at the very least good, if not outright perfect.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mande2013
I do think the Criterion DVD era, which was primarily the aughts, ushered in a second golden age of sorts for the appreciation of a lot of these haloed arthouse Gods like Bergman, Fellini, Antonioni, Godard, etc.
My understanding is it was next to impossible in the 80s and 90s to track down a lot of these films unless you lived in NYC or Paris.
I'm a millennial by the way.
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Same here. If not for the occasional thrift shop find and literally researching
Criterion, there's a minimum of a thousand films and a hundred filmmakers I would've never heard of. P&P, Bergman, Varda, Akerman, and all non-Godzilla Asian cinema would all be nowhere on my radar without
Criterion.
I don't know what it was like back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, but nowadays, the billion-dollar films and the TikTok-popular films are the only things you can find or hear about, unless you follow companies like
Criterion.
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Originally Posted by Professor Echo
All true, but my original perspective on all this had to do with the then current waning reputations of certain directors who had previously been lauded earlier in the decade of the 70's.
Certainly JAWS and all the focus on grosses by the media and subsequently the general public changed film history and was the first death knell for the "New Hollywood" movement, unless you want to count THE STING as that. STAR WARS two years later was pretty much the last nail in the coffin for the New Hollywood era, but it continued in drips after that and to this day to a degree. But the days of when a film like CHINATOWN was considered a "summer blockbuster" release were over.
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Not even close. That title belongs to Heaven's Gate.
While all studios were micromanaging even the directors who had "free reign", United Artists was built on the filmmaker being the driving force behind the film. They recognized film as an art, not as a business. Many of their films bombed, yet came back years later to be regarded as masterpieces, solely because they were designed to sell a story first and make money second.
When Transamerica (an insurance behemoth who diversified by buying UA) decided they knew more about the film business than the people in the film business did, it began a war between the respective brasses of Transamerica and UA (a very long story), a war which ended with the top five executives of UA walking out and effectively saying "you think you can do it better than us, good luck". The new UA brass's first two decisions ultimately became their undoing. First, they continued to extend credit to Coppola on Apocalypse Now. While we know today that it was fairly successful (it brought in $150 million against $31 million, 5:1, or 2.5 times the oft-quoted break-even point), in the 70s, it was expected to be a disaster.
Two, off his success with The Deer Hunter, they greenlit Heaven's Gate, giving him both an $11.6 million budget and carte blanche. The latter took precedence over the former, and the film quadrupled in cost to $44 million, then the most expensive film of all time.
Apocalypse Now earned its money back, but the profits went right into buoying Heaven's Gate. Heaven's Gate then bombed...spectacularly...earning $3 million against the $44 million budget (roughly 3.5% of the break-even point), and bankrupting UA.
The blockbusters Jaws and Star Wars were more likely the first nail in New Hollywood's coffin. When the studios realized they could go for broke andpossibly make a massive profit, they all wanted to do it. With Heaven's Gate, they learned that it has to be done right.
Perhaps those who learned their lesson on Heaven's Gate need to sit down with the brass of Disney, and calmly explain to them how seriously they're effing up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by willbfree
Finally getting some of my Criterion Blus onto my hard drive.
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How is that done? Serious question.
I'm both broke and lacking in hardware right now, but that's something I'd love to do in the future.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RojD
Having just watched 10% of my life savings vanish over the last week(!), I'm now wondering what tariffs are going to do to blu-ray and 4K disc prices. For Mexico there's no tariff if the discs are USMCA-compliant, tho compliance depends on origin and manufacturing processes. Anyone know more about this, especially as regards Criterion?
And more broadly, how will they affect other niche labels?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DimitriL
I was just wondering about this too. This might be a circumstance where such a limited amount of disc pressing facilities can be of a benefit, at least for the titles coming out of Mexico. Austria, Germany and Polish pressings are gonna be bad news. Boutiques can’t absorb what’s coming easily.
I was thinking more about how this is going to impact sales for 4k/BD hardware that are already in a fragile state. If companies can’t make a profit on US sales or have to jack up prices - especially when people are going to start paying more for pretty much everything - it’s not inconceivable that manufacturers would just stop making them and never start up again.
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My guess would be whatever crosses the border gets a tariff. So if a case, a cover, an insert, a disc, a roll or piece of wrap, and a sticker cross the border, that's minimum six tariffs, unless they assemble in Mexico too. (It wouldn't shock me if the law changes, making it so that all parts must enter the US separately, and then be assembled in the US, making it possible to charge a tariff on each component of an item, instead of just on the item.)
The only sure thing is that sadly, the cost will go up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rayjg
With border crossings down the cartels could add Criterion discs to their smuggle list to make up the lost revenue. That’s assuming they charge less than the tariffs.
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I can't wait until the answer to "where did you get your copy of *?" is "I have connections..."
Quote:
Originally Posted by hoytereden
Once upon a time, booklets we’re one of the things that distinguished Criterions along with commentaries. Booklets became leaflets and commentaries became scarce.  |
Quote:
Originally Posted by apricissimus
I almost never look at the booklets. Mine are all in a stack in a closet mostly because I can't bring myself to throw them out. (I transferred all my discs to sleeves to save space, and the sleeves cannot accommodate the booklets.)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Querelle
That's kinda insane to me (but I think some people would think it's insane that I rarely watch special features). The booklet is often a huge selling point with me (not as much with Criterion since all their releases come with them, and that's one thing I've always appreciated about them, i.e., that they don't stop including one after a certain run, though I would be more apt to pick up a Criterion if the same movie was put out by someone else so I could get their booklet) to get a limited edition over a standard, such as from Radiance. For me, the supplementary writing about a film is a big part of the experience and what I look forward to most about the packaging (see first line of my sig). But that probably says more about how I relate to art (and life tbh) than anything: first and foremost through words and text rather than image (although the two are inherently interrelated and, to paraphrase Derrida, always arbitrarily limited)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SeanJoyce
A good booklet is my favorite supplement.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DrasticHandprint
Yep. Can't agree more. Wish I could like more than once. Reading through the booklets/essays really help form my opinions about what I just watched, and I value that as much as the movie itself sometimes. But only if they are good, as you said.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Professor Echo
Same for me. I've often double dipped to get solid booklets from other labels and it takes me back to my student days and reading about film in deep, thoughtful and patient ways. You can only get so much from filmed extras, although visual essays are usually exceptionally good, and commentaries too sometimes, but they can often be limited or too ephemeral. A well written review or concise analysis via tract just can't be beat.
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I too love the booklets that
Criterion puts out. The accordion-style pamphlets are okay, but what really gets me is the poster ones. I want to hang it up and read it, but I can't do both. (Likely if I get enough cash to do their every-so-often packaging replacement program, I'll buy a ton of the posters.)
The only insert I can honestly say I hated - and the packaging of this was easily the worst part of the entire set - is the Bruce Lee insert. My god, was that a royal pain in the ass. I usually don't kvetch about packaging - not even their Digipacks that damage either the booklet or the case (or if you're really lucky, both!), but my dog could've made a better box and insert than they did.
Quote:
Originally Posted by apricissimus
While I'm not into booklets, I did really appreciate the insert in After Hours. It's the "This man is a burglar!" sketch that Teri Garr made of Griffin Dunne to post all around the neighborhood. I audibly laughed when I first opened the case and saw that.
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The package and insert brought back so many memories. I hadn't seen the film in nearly a decade, and there was so much I forgot. The poster, the computer at the end, the design in the bathroom, "SURRENDER DOROTHY!", all of it came flooding back, and I was just laughing hysterically as I read the essay.
And if you ever don't want the cases or booklets anymore, I have a shelf just waiting for 'em!
Quote:
Originally Posted by MifuneFan
For any in the NYC area, The IFC center will be showing Kurosawa's Ran from its 4K restoration for its 40th Anniversary starting May 23rd. I've seen the film from the restoration twice over the years, and it's pretty amazing to see it on the big screen. Kind of wish Criterion could get this one back since the US 4K release has been OOP for years, and Criterion's DVD had some exclusive extras that are absent from the international releases.
https://www.ifccenter.com/films/ran-2/ |
Quote:
Originally Posted by dwk
Even though I'd prefer Criterion somehow getting Ran back, I do not understand why Lionsgate hasn't re-issued that in a standard case. That stupid Best Buy steelbook sold out quite quickly.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MifuneFan
Yeah, ssme. Now that they have the Lionsgate Limited site, I could possibly see them doing a release through there, if anything.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dwk
Which is an equally awful way to release it. (I really despise these site exclusives.)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mande2013
Well you can probably import a standard 4K release from Europe if you want.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dwk
Yeah, but that still doesn't explain why Lionsgate hasn't re-issued it sometime in the past 4 years.
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Perhaps this is why. Does
Criterion have deals with Lionsgate and/or SC? One of them likely owns Ran outright. If Lionsgate, then SC likely has non-US or non-NA rights. If SC, the Lionsgate has either US rights or NA rights.
Still though, I don't see Ran happening this July.
I'd love to see an all-Japanese month happen, but it likely never will. One, they do like to give us a diverse group of films. Two, the Japanese restorations are trickling over to the US, when Toho has hundreds of films already done.
And three, they likely wouldn't want us to all collectively have a heart attack when Rashomon, Tokyo Story, In The Realm Of The Senses, The Hidden Fortress, High And Low, and Zatoichi hit 4K in one month.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MifuneFan
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Which all but confirms Flow from
Criterion proper.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Professor Echo
Yes, but a lot of those theories and conclusions and analyses are now 50-60 years old and I see nothing wrong with getting some newer voices thrown into the mix.
In 2001 (the year, not the movie) Sarris thought that the then present state of film criticism had transcended the days when he and Pauline Kael were being held in such lofty regard. I have no idea what critics he was following at that time, but it's hard to agree with him in retrospect. Outside of David Thompson and Dave Kehr and J. Hoberman and OTHERS, I just don't see these recent voices as being as significantly perceptive as the likes of Sarris (although I never liked Kael and still don't).
I am fond of championing User Reviews at the IMDb and message boards like this for learning more details about film history, but criticism and theory is not that easy to find today despite all the multitudes of people now writing about movies as art.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by poisonmail
I don’t agree with Kael with any great frequency but she was a brilliant writer. I was reminded of this when I recently saw the movie Betrayal (1983) and read her review. I didn’t hate it nearly to the extent she did but I was in stitches at how accurately she characterized it.
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While her reviews are admittedly entertaining, I don't think Pauline "Raising Kane" Kael should be regarded as an esteemed critic. She's so far the only film critic I know of who was proven to be factually wrong, which I don't think has happened to anyone. Even some of the internet's finest keyboard warriors have less blemished records than Kael does.
I still say that the best way to decide whether a film is good or not is to watch it. Some people may influence me to watch a certain film, but I can't name one person on this site or any other who I honestly regard as "right" or "wrong" when it comes to finding good, great, or perfect films.
And I'm also one of the few who doesn't regard myself that highly either, and can freely admit it.
It was Socrates who once said "I know I don't know everything, and therefore I am the wisest man in the world."
[quote=dwk;23045199]Thanks to another forum member, I can share some highlights of the Curtis Tsui interview:
No titles were leaked, but he said he is producing "a pretty big one" that might come at the end of the year.
Quote:
Quote:
• Another challenging release to work on was Barry Lyndon due to the scale of the work and how much time he was allowed. He created a lot of video pieces that had to be cut down, as well as getting access Stanley Kubrick’s library but not getting full approval by the estate on what images to add to the release
• All the extras had to be approved by Jan Harlan
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Translation: The lost stuff that was "destroyed" in Kubrick's life, and then "destroyed" again after his death, still exists.
While I can't speak on the lost ending of Killer's Kiss, the lost four minutes of film from Spartacus (the sound exists though), one scene in Lolita, the original ending from Dr. Strangelove, the original ending from The Shining, the rumored-but-still-unconfirmed "using a head as a soccer ball" scene from FMJ, and anything from EWS's original cut, I can confirm that the original cut of 2001 (on a 35mm interpositive) and the original cut of ACO (unknown elements) exist in the Warner Bros. vaults.
I'd love to see more of the special features, and I'd love to see all the images from the Kubrick estate, since this is a film I never knew had more to it than what I'd seen.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dwk
Quote:
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• Dream release for Curtis is Devil's Temple by Kenji Misumi and would be thrilled if he could have a hand in the restoration for it
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dwk
Quote:
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• There is a limit now on how many titles guests can take when they are in the Closet
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When I counted what titles I'd take (because somehow I think I'll wind up in the
Criterion Closet one day), my hard limit would be ten. I don't know them all, but here's some:
-Rushmore (first time I'd heard of
Criterion)
-Videodrome (first
Criterion I owned)
-The Magnificent Ambersons (first multi-cut home video release, even if the "director's cut" was a screenplay)
-Tod Browning's Sideshow Shockers (mainly for Freaks)
-After Hours
-...and then five more.
That's not to knock down films like Kane, The Red Shoes, Seven Samurai, My Dinner With Andre, or a slew of other films. It's just that those films have been essentially talked to death in the film community, and I'd want to give people some films they likely never heard of to see.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MifuneFan
Also known as the Barry Jenkins Rule
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Quote:
Originally Posted by zackisthewalrus
And the Safdies Rule too
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Jenkins and the Safdies completely raided the closet. I counted 22 for Jenkins, and the Safdies moved too quickly but it was at least 20.
Quote:
Originally Posted by concolt
Yikes Criterion must be struggling to put a limit. Seems so cheap. You have a celebrity there advertising your brand and then you have to get an assistant to say sorry Mr. DeNiro you can only take 7 movies with you.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MifuneFan
How does everything turn into a controversy on this forum  |
You must be forgetting, this is Blu-ray.com.
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And now, for my predictions. It's a bit overstuffed, so we're not getting all of these. My prediction is a total of 6-8 releases. At least four are UHDs.
Fairly good chance:
-Barry Lyndon 4K
-Eyes Wide Shut 4K and Blu-ray
-The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford Blu-ray and 4K
-I Know Where I'm Going! Blu-ray and 4K
-High And Low 4K
-Salo 4K+remastered Blu-ray (is there a Chungking Express standalone remastered Blu?)
-Flow 4K and Blu-ray
-Captain Blood 35/24 4K and Blu-ray
-Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore 4K and Blu-ray
-Who's That Knocking At My Door 4K and Blu-ray
-The Last Temptation Of Christ 4K
-Memento 4K and Blu-ray
-Dog Day Afternoon 4K and Blu-ray
-The Wild Bunch 4K and Blu-ray
-Hairspray 4K and Blu-ray (
Criterion wants to do Hairspray first before they do Desperate Living)
-Polyester 4K
-The Unbearable Lightness Of Being 4K and Blu-ray
-King Kong 33 4K and Blu-ray
Unlikely, but I'll hold out hope:
-The French Connection 4K and Blu-ray
-Kundun 4K and Blu-ray
-The Hustler 4K and Blu-ray
-The Color Of Money 4K and Blu-ray (sense a pattern?)
-Goodfellas 4K and Blu-ray (new DV/HDR on the 4K)
-New York, New York 4K and Blu-ray
-The Killing/Killer's Kiss 4K
-Paths Of Glory 4K
-Spartacus 4K and Blu-ray
-Lolita 4K and Blu-ray
-2001: A Space Odyssey 4K and Blu-ray
-A Clockwork Orange 4K and Blu-ray
-The Shining 4K and Blu-ray
-Desperate Living Blu-ray
-Greed Blu-ray
-Doctor Zhivago 4K and Blu-ray
-Ben-Hur 4K and Blu-ray
-The Wizard Of Oz 4K and Blu-ray
-Casablanca 4K and Blu-ray
-The Maltese Falcon 4K and Blu-ray
-At Play In The Fields Of The Lord 4K and Blu-ray
Holy grail:
-The Devils 4K and Blu-ray (117 minutes...this would be a dream come true)
-The Exorcist (1973 theatrical cut, no foolishness) 4K and Blu-ray
-John Waters' films with their original soundtracks and original ARs
-Pink Floyd - The Wall 4K and Blu-ray
-Blade Runner (all cuts) 4K and Blu-ray
-Once Upon A Time In America (all surviving cuts) 4K and Blu-ray
-Twin Peaks: From Z To A 4K and Blu-ray
-A complete collection of Michael Jackson's music videos on 4K and Blu-ray (surprisingly, all previous anthology releases are incomplete)
Sadly, I'll be at work where there's no internet tomorrow, so I'll likely miss all of the fun. Needless to say though, this is the first place I'm coming after work. Good luck, everyone.
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