The Criterion Collection

[Darkcritic]

Originally Posted by melo4mvp

Thanks. I will check this one out.

No problem pal ! This thread is a great one to find out what is the best and what is mostly overlooked but amazing non-the-less .

[capnnarcolepsy]

It seems people are freaking out a little too much over the "Phantom Carriage" thing. Over the years, this kind of things happens on Amazon. It could literally be anything. And it's not a "recall", it's simply them saying that for whatever reason, they just aren't personally selling it until they can investigate whatever it is they see as a problem. If anyone instigated an actual recall, it would be Criterion themselves. It could seriously be something as dumb as people randomly seeing it for sale, thinking it looks cool and then buying it, only to then discover it's silent and in black and white and then complaining and returning it. People are dumb. I wouldn't worry about it.

[JHas]

Originally Posted by capnnarcolepsy

It seems people are freaking out a little too much over the "Phantom Carriage" thing. Over the years, this kind of things happens on Amazon. It could literally be anything. And it's not a "recall", it's simply them saying that for whatever reason, they just aren't personally selling it until they can investigate whatever it is they see as a problem. If anyone instigated an actual recall, it would be Criterion themselves. It could seriously be something as dumb as people randomly seeing it for sale, thinking it looks cool and then buying it, only to then discover it's silent and in black and white and then complaining and returning it. People are dumb. I wouldn't worry about it.

Yeah it could be the 1080i thing, or it could be a bunch of people with sony standalone players who are encountering the criterion crash, I trashed my sony player after it quit playing every criterion bluray.

[s00perd00per]

Originally Posted by JHas

Yeah it could be the 1080i thing, or it could be a bunch of people with sony standalone players who are encountering the criterion crash, I trashed my sony player after it quit playing every criterion bluray.

What's this crash you're talking about? I have a sony player as well and so far it's played every Criterion blu-ray I've put on it.

[Monty70]

Originally Posted by obscurelabel

Silent films were shot at a wide variety of frame rates, mostly between 16 and 24 fps. There wasn't a fixed standard. Projectors in those days had a rheostat speed control, which meant that the film could be projected at whatever speed the exhibitor wanted. Films were usually shipped to theaters with an info sheet stating the correct frame rate, but the exhibitors often cheated by increasing it just a bit -- the faster the speed, the less time it took to show the film, and the theater might be able to squeeze in an extra showing during the day (remember many films were less than 60 minutes in the silent days) to get more ticket sales. Filmmakers knew this and gradually sped up their filming rate to try to compensate, which led to "frame rate inflation" -- by 1927, the average rate had jumped from the 16-18 fps used in the 1910s to about 23-25 fps. When the frame rate had to be locked down because of sound, theaters were surveyed to find out what rates they were using, and about 24 was the mean.

To get a rate of say 20 fps (probably the correct rate for PoS, that was what was used for Pandora's Box from around the same time) into a 24 or 30 fps HDTV environment, there are basically three choices: duplicate some frames (like the 3:2 pulldown in NTSC), use interlacing to interpolate the frames, or some combination of both. If interlacing is done well, it can look fine -- basically undetectable in motion. It has a bad rep because if it's done poorly one can see "ghosting" and other detrimental visual artifacts.

Thanks for the info. I did some reading after the last post and found an interesting article from 1955 by James Card. The link is posted below.

http://www.cinemaweb.com/silentfilm/...f/18_car_1.htm

[Yankees0222]

I havnt heard anyone talk about the PQ of Salo. I bought it but havnt had time to watch it..... Any thoughts from someone that's watched it already?

[JHas]

Originally Posted by s00perd00per

What's this crash you're talking about? I have a sony player as well and so far it's played every Criterion blu-ray I've put on it.

Maybe they fixed it, but about the time Days of Heaven and Walkabout came out, my Sony player started having trouble with Criterion discs, I downloaded the latest firmware and it didn't help, I read about a lot of other people having similar problems with there Sony players. Pretty soon all the Criterion's started being problematic on my player, so I trashed my Sony player and got a Panasonic.

[capnnarcolepsy]

Originally Posted by Rodyon Raskolnikov

So, anybody pre-ordered Kuroneko? I was going to get it from Planet Axel because they ship early, but they boosted their shipping fee.

i have it pre-ordered from Amazon. Very much looking forward to the disc. I watched the film via Hulu+ earlier this year and I was quite taken with it, although I'm always up for a Japanese ghost story.

I do recall on, his name escapes me, Sam Smith maybe?, but the guy that did the cover art said on his blog that Criterion was doing something completely new to them with the cover's printing. Maybe something holographic or lenticular to reflect an aspect of the film. Been waiting for some photos of the packaging or someone to comment on it.

[s00perd00per]

Originally Posted by JHas

Maybe they fixed it, but about the time Days of Heaven and Walkabout came out, my Sony player started having trouble with Criterion discs, I downloaded the latest firmware and it didn't help, I read about a lot of other people having similar problems with there Sony players. Pretty soon all the Criterion's started being problematic on my player, so I trashed my Sony player and got a Panasonic.

Maybe they did. I'm actually pretty happy with mine since I've never had any playback issues whatsoever. I guess it helped that I never used it's internet connectivity and have never even updated it's firmware out of the box.

[ccfixx]

Originally Posted by Yankees0222

I havnt heard anyone talk about the PQ of Salo. I bought it but havnt had time to watch it..... Any thoughts from someone that's watched it already?

It's fantastic. Check out the screenshots from site's review and the DVDBeaver screenshots if you haven't already.

[TJS_Blu]

Criterion-related insofar as it eliminates titles from possible inclusion in the Collection. Fans of Columbia Pictures classic films should check out this thread. The Big Heat looks like its coming to blu (for 3000 fans, at 35 bucks a pop).

[dan21]

Originally Posted by Yami

I'm not entirely sure what you mean. Blu-Ray doesn't support 1080p for frame-rates lower than 24 fps (as far as I know) so they have to be transferred in 1080i or duplicate frames can be inserted to make it 24fps but then the film will be longer than intended and even this requires the framerate to be a suitable integer. The Phantom Carriage will be in 1080i regardless of your equipment.

To be honest I'm not 100% what I meant either, I thought he was stating that some equipment can't handle it but after re-reading his post I see I was mistaken. I guess the question I should be asking is does Phantom Carriage suffer from that problem?

[s00perd00per]

Originally Posted by dan21

To be honest I'm not 100% what I meant either, I thought he was stating that some equipment can't handle it but after re-reading his post I see I was mistaken. I guess the question I should be asking is does Phantom Carriage suffer from that problem?

Like what the other poster said, that problem was prevented by releasing it as 1080i instead of forcing it to be 1080p. So you shouldn't be worried about purchasing it as the issue being talked about has nothing to do with whatever equipment you might have. The movie will play just fine.

[TJS_Blu]

Segue-ing into another OT news item, (double-points for this being standard definition news), fans of theatrical short animations should be interested in the TCM-Sony partnership to bring Columbia shorts out on DVD.

UPA Jolly Frolics – This amazing DVD set includes, for the first time ever, 38 cartoons created by United Productions of America (UPA) and originally distributed by Columbia Pictures. The Jolly Frolics series began in 1949 with Ragtime Bear, which introduced audiences to the hilariously myopic Mr. Magoo. Included in this set are the Academy Award-winning [sic] cartoon Rooty Tooty Toot (1952) and the Oscar-nominated Madeline (1952) and Christopher Crumpet (1953). This set includes an abundance of bonus features, including introductions and audio commentaries by film historian and critic Leonard Maltin, who has written extensively on the history of animation. Street date: early 2012.

Source

Poached from the fine folks at the Criterion forum.

[SpiderBaby]

I just wanted to bring this old post up just to show how quickly, in a funny way, a suggested title can go from "No plans" at all to Janus re-releasing it with a Criterion blu-ray in sight. Heck, Godard's Weekend was pretty much confirmed via facebook post when I take it this e-mail response from Criterion took place.

Originally Posted by fdm

And then there's Criterion's year-old Mulvaney response: 'At this time, we do not have any plans to release "World on a Wire" but thank you for the suggestion.' Maybe, just maybe, they took the suggestion seriously.

[dan21]

Originally Posted by s00perd00per

Like what the other poster said, that problem was prevented by releasing it as 1080i instead of forcing it to be 1080p. So you shouldn't be worried about purchasing it as the issue being talked about has nothing to do with whatever equipment you might have. The movie will play just fine.

This clears things up for me, cheers, I'm not all that knowledgeable about the technical side of blu-rays

[RodneyOz]

Regarding the Phantom Carriage return issue - I'm not comfortable cut-and-pasting someone's email into a public forum, but a member of the DVD Beaver email list has mentioned having a problem with his copy - whenever he tried to use the reverse function on his remote, the Blu jumped ahead to the very end of the movie credits. Another member felt that would be an authoring problem rather than a defective copy. I'm wondering if anyone else has had that problem?

(and I'm kind of happy that, since I have the old Tartan DVD release, I was waiting for the B&N sale rather than purchasing it straight away)

[Arkadin]

why has my bd of The Four Feathers not even shipped yet from amazon??
wtf??
btw--that TT news about the big heat and those other Columbia titles coming to blu has to be the greatest news ever! That makes me so damn happy! what about Lady from Shanghai though?
certainly they should release that one also. (sorry, wrong thread)

[HuggyBear73]

Originally Posted by RodneyOz

Regarding the Phantom Carriage return issue - I'm not comfortable cut-and-pasting someone's email into a public forum, but a member of the DVD Beaver email list has mentioned having a problem with his copy - whenever he tried to use the reverse function on his remote, the Blu jumped ahead to the very end of the movie credits. Another member felt that would be an authoring problem rather than a defective copy. I'm wondering if anyone else has had that problem?

(and I'm kind of happy that, since I have the old Tartan DVD release, I was waiting for the B&N sale rather than purchasing it straight away)

Would that be something Criterion would recall and fix then?

[BohemianGraham]

Originally Posted by jcs913

No transfer is ever going to be perfect, as people are too fickle and frankly just assume that Criterion will be the best. The joke is that the overwhelming majority of people will not be able to tell the difference in the Universal and Criterion releases of Fear and Loathing, Dazed, etc. But because it has the wacky C on it people will buy it. Criterion knows their version will sell better even though it is 3 times the price of the other issue... Frankly, it is a very good business model.
What I want are new films to be put out by Criterion, not ones that are already available on BD. I see post after post of what people wish Criterion would put out or upgrade from dvd, yet these same people rejoice when Criterion upgrades a film like Fear and Loathing, Dazed, etc..

Late, late reply, I know, but I was in New England for the weekend, and then had Thanksgiving.

Anyways, I can see your point, but at the same time, I like the fact that Criterion puts out alternate versions of titles out on BD. I'm more interested in "the wacky C version" for the special features. Transfer quality is important, but the bonus features on a title like F&L are better on the CC edition than the Universal. I think if This is Spinal Tap were to return to the collection (highly unlikely at this point despite my comment from days ago), I may exchange my current BD copy, but only if the special features are better than those already contained on the current BD release.

Change of subject, but I did end up buying 3 CC titles from 2 different B&N stores while down south, as they had a 10% off sale. I bought Kagemusha and Pale Flower at the Portsmouth, NH store, where the guy confirmed that there's a sale coming in November. I was going to get Harakiri there, but the case was smashed with a big chunk missing out of it, and I wasn't sure if the disc was damaged, and obviously couldn't return it if it was. I ended up getting Harakiri at the Augusta, ME store. It was acutally a nicer store than the larger one in NH.

All 3 were blind buys, and I've watched all of them except for Kagemusha. Because I ended up splurging down there, and the fact that I have Harry Potter, 12 Angry Men, and Army of Shadows (only a pre-order because I ordered it with 12AM) on pre-order for November as well, I'm only going to be getting 4 titles during the November sale, possibly 6 at the most, and so far, only have 3 picked out. I only splurged because my Leone Box set ended up being free.

For the November sale, I've narrowed it down to the following:

Dazed and Confused
Kuroneko
The Wages of Fear

I'm hoping to have a few more picked out buy the time the sale hits.