The Criterion Collection

[Abdrewes]

Originally Posted by octagon

Whoa, I don't know where I even got this idea but I would have bet (and obviously lost) serious money that The American was Soderbergh.

It's funny how things can get stuck in your head whether they belong there or not.

(and yeah, very cool film)

Your probably linking The American and Soderbergh because both Solaris and The American received 'F' Cinemascores.

[P@t_Mtl]

Originally Posted by ShellOilJunior

Here's a heads-up for my fellow Audrey fans. This is currently on newsstands ($12.99):

Thanks! DId not know about this, will have to track down a copy

[P@t_Mtl]

Originally Posted by JHas

They even tried to market Malick's "The New World" as a freaking action film!

It's like marketing a Uwe Boll release as a "epic masterpiece"

[Snicket]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

I can understand how one would believe that The American is more of an action film. This is one reason why I dislike a lot of current movie trailers. My favorite movie of 2012, The Grey, is completely different in tone than what the horrible movie trailer might lead one to believe.

I made an effort to stop watching movie trailers/TV spots/random movie ads in the spring of last year and my film experience since then has been awesome, it's so refreshing to go into a film without the burden of expectations.

Its a marvel people have not caught onto this and still devote themselves to watching every trailer and piece of advertisement about a film. How can you enjoy a film that the marketing department is selling to you instead of the director? Isn't obvious you are doing the film, and thus yourself a giant disservice?

Saying a movie looks good because "the trailer was awesome!" is one of the most inane things you can say, the trailer, which the studio paid a marketing team a lot of money to cut together footage to sell the film (often times giving away surprises, plot twists, and endings) actually looks good? Well duh, of course it does. What other keen observations do you have to share with us? The sky is blue? Grass is green?

/rant

[IronWaffle]

Originally Posted by JHas

They even tried to market Malick's "The New World" as a freaking action film!

In a recent bout of insomnia I put on Star Trek: The Motion Picture (try it; it works!) and was amused again at the "Rated PG" splash screen which says, "for Sci-Fi Action". It may mention violence, too, but I can't recall offhand.

Originally Posted by P@t_Mtl

It's like marketing a Uwe Boll release as a "epic masterpiece"

I've never seen his work, so I'll refrain from judging. Perhaps next time I can't sleep I'll see if he's streaming in Netflix. ... Oh, he'll, who's I kidding. I'll just go back to Trek.

[Abdrewes]

Originally Posted by Snicket

I made an effort to stop watching movie trailers/TV spots/random movie ads in the spring of last year and my film experience since then has been awesome, it's so refreshing to go into a film without the burden of expectations.

Its a marvel people have not caught onto this and still devote themselves to watching every trailer and piece of advertisement about a film. How can you enjoy a film that the marketing department is selling to you instead of the director? Isn't obvious you are doing the film, and thus yourself a giant disservice?

Saying a movie looks good because "the trailer was awesome!" is one of the most inane things you can say, the trailer, which the studio paid a marketing team a lot of money to cut together footage to sell the film (often times giving away surprises, plot twists, and endings) actually looks good? Well duh, of course it does. What other keen observations do you have to share with us? The sky is blue? Grass is green?

/rant

I try to drone out the sound of the dialogue and just focus on the cinematographic elements of the film. I generally hate ALL trailers as they are cut so fast and aimed at such an low demographic.

[Scottie]

Originally Posted by P@t_Mtl

It's like marketing a Uwe Boll release as a "epic masterpiece"

Umm...Uwe Boll is probably one of the best directors from the past / current decade or so

[Show spoiler]

[retablo]

Originally Posted by EricJ

And yet...we see...throughout Bergman's films...the continual--
(Oh, wait, sorry, I've been binge-viewing The Story Of Film on Netflix; I don't usually praise foreign directors very slowly in whispery singsong Irish/Welsh accents. )

Me, I tend to not put as much depth in Bergman's "faith" movies that tell us it's all a bowl of pits: We know that Ingmar grew up in a near-medieval household of repressive Swedish Protestantism, which is tantamount, or worse, to growing up in a Catholic household and showing off all your childhood demons about that. At least Ken Russell and Luis Bunuel had excuses for lame schoolyard sniping, or at least thought they did at the time.
It's hard for any Protestant not born in Oslo to fully comprehend Ingmar's fearmongering about "The Church is here to scare us to our eventual deaths!", since, well, shoot me for having a normal, well-adjusted childhood, where nobody lashed the Fear Of God into me or locked me into woodsheds.
As a result, most people make the naive benefit-of-the-doubt mistake of trying to analyze Bergman as making some Deep Important Point about existentialism, and not just basically being a drama-king sympathy-hound Bill Maher with better B/W cinematography.

You put into a film what you want to. But every filmmaker draws upon their lives (except Michael Bay, unless he has giant robots I don't know about), so you take their films AS their world... David Lynch, Herzog, Fellini... many of the greats offer up a world unlike anything we know. yet we accept it while were inside it. That's the beauty of storytelling and cinema... if everyone had the same world view, we'd get the same films over and over.

So if you want to generalize and decide it's hogwash, I guess you can... although Bergman is far from a "drama king sympathy hound Bill Maher". That's a bit silly.

[IronWaffle]

Originally Posted by Abdrewes

I try to drone out the sound of the dialogue and just focus on the cinematographic elements of the film. I generally hate ALL trailers as they are cut so fast and aimed at such an low demographic.

I used to love trailers (even though there's a long history of terrible ones that say too much, get the tone wrong, etc.). Not anymore. These days go about it the way you described.

It mostly worked for Skyfall, whose previews at my theater were clearly aimed at the AARP action crowd with Jack Reacher, Die Harderest and a few other expendably execrable titles. Thankfully since it was nothing interesting to me and all action I could enjoy the 'splosions and purty pictures.

Edited to remove cliché grumpiness.

[Abdrewes]

Originally Posted by retablo

You put into a film what you want to. But every filmmaker draws upon their lives (except Michael Bay, unless he has giant robots I don't know about), so you take their films AS their world... David Lynch, Herzog, Fellini... many of the greats offer up a world unlike anything we know. yet we accept it while were inside it. That's the beauty of storytelling and cinema... if everyone had the same world view, we'd get the same films over and over.

So if you want to generalize and decide it's hogwash, I guess you can... although Bergman is far from a "drama king sympathy hound Bill Maher". That's a bit silly.

I think Bay does draw on his life, it's just pretty empty.

Speaking of which, I picked up Armageddon for cheap and look forward to reassessing it and The Island before his latest film opens.

[Abdrewes]

Originally Posted by IronWaffle

I used to love trailers (even though there's a long history of terrible ones that say too much, get the tone wrong, etc.). Not anymore. These days go about it the way you described.

It mostly worked for Skyfall, whose previews at my theater were clearly aimed at the AARP action crowd with Jack Reacher, Die Harderest and a few other expendably execrable titles. Thankfully since it was nothing interesting to me and all action I could enjoy the 'splosions and purity pictures.

Oh, and GET OFF MY LAWN!

[Scottie]

Here's a full list of the new films on Criterion's Hulu. Credit goes to some guy on FaceBook who typed them all out. I alphabetized them, though.

• All The Boys Are Called Patrick
• Ballad Of Narayama
• Beautiful Days
• Beware Of A Holy *****
• Carmen Comes Home
• Ceremony
• Chinese Roulette
• Chronicle Of A Summer
• Demon
• Diary Of A Shinjuku Thief
• Effi Briest
• Enemy Of The People
• Eternal Return
• Fear
• Fear Of Fear
• Gods Of The Plague
• Gold Rush (1925)
• Golden Demon
• Gray's Anatomy
• Inheritance
• Inn In Tokyo
• Ironfinger
• King Of Kings
• Lady And The Beard
• Modern Coed
• Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven
• Mother Should Be Loved
• Night Drum
• Odd Obsession
• Oil-Hell Murder
• Phantom Horse
• Presentation, Or Charlotte And Her Steak
• Record Of A Tenement Gentleman
• Ronin-Gai
• Satan's Brew
• Scandalous Adventures Of Buraikan
• Schizopolis
• Shadow Within
• That Night's Wife
• What Did The Lady Forget?
• Where Now Are The Dreams Of Youth?

I wouldn't mind an upgrade of King Of Kings and I feel that a future upgrade of Schizopolis is possible, especially with Soderbergh apparently retiring.

I think I may give Hulu Plus a chance in the not-so-distant future as they have a lot of good films, it seems. Although I do have my own backlog of films to watch and probably won't have time to see any of these.

On a side note, does Criterion ever announce ahead of time if they're having a sale or not? Or is it usually on the day of the sale?

[octagon]

Originally Posted by iScottie

On a side note, does Criterion ever announce ahead of time if they're having a sale or not? Or is it usually on the day of the sale?

In the past they've posted little 'hey, we're getting close to 50k or 75k facebook likes, watch this space' teasers but there's not generally a lot of notice when they run sales.

[Scottie]

Originally Posted by octagon

In the past they've posted little 'hey, we're getting close to 50k or 75k facebook likes, watch this space' teasers but there's not generally a lot of notice when they run sales.

Oh okay - thank you!

[Fellini912]

Originally Posted by retablo

You put into a film what you want to. But every filmmaker draws upon their lives (except Michael Bay, unless he has giant robots I don't know about), so you take their films AS their world... David Lynch, Herzog, Fellini... many of the greats offer up a world unlike anything we know. yet we accept it while were inside it. That's the beauty of storytelling and cinema... if everyone had the same world view, we'd get the same films over and over.

So if you want to generalize and decide it's hogwash, I guess you can... although Bergman is far from a "drama king sympathy hound Bill Maher". That's a bit silly.

I don't know if you read my comment retablo, but I believe this notion of a horrible childhood explaining everything of the artist is pseudo-intellectual. This is the most superficial explanation of someones art work (I have encounter this argument many times). This argument excludes all the maturity one gathers through life which include a philosophical perspective, inspirations and outlook towards the world.

The Seventh Seal is definitely not as elaborated existential piece as The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky or Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche, or later works by Albert Camus, although it manages to include some arguments seen in these text. What I find fascinating about philosophical film makers is their approach to answering some of these questions.

In the end, it is all about perspective.. To emphasize what retablo said, is that an artist gives us his perspective.

[retablo]

Originally Posted by Fellini912

I don't know if you read my comment retablo, but I believe this notion of a horrible childhood explaining everything of the artist is pseudo-intellectual. This is the most superficial explanation of someones art work (I have encounter this argument many times). This argument excludes all the maturity one gathers through life which include a philosophical perspective, inspirations and outlook towards the world.

The Seventh Seal is definitely not as elaborated existential piece as The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky or Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche, or later works by Albert Camus, although it manages to include some arguments seen in these text. What I find fascinating about philosophical film makers is their approach to answering some of these questions.

In the end, it is all about perspective.. To emphasize what retablo said, is that an artist gives us his perspective.

Exactly. Plus, I believe many times, artist's childhoods are somewhat exaggerated, so as to create this illusion of a tortured artist... thus giving their work an added depth and "excuse" for being, if you will. Not to discredit everything Bergman said about his childhood, but let's face it — he was a writer and storyteller. Everything is exaggerated for cause and effect.

[Abdrewes]

Originally Posted by Fellini912

Abdrewes, I agree that Bergman later developed much of ideas from the Seventh Seal in greater detail with "God Trilogy or Trilogy of Faith" (by the way it is not a trilogy according to Bergman). I do not agree with taking The Seventh Seal very lightly calling it a "FILM 101 type stuff". Being renewed, imitated and parodied so often does not make it "cliche".

There is a lot of depth in its arguments that can easily be placed in beginners Philosophy or Religious course. Religious to metaphysical arguments in the movie seem to dissuade you which is obvious from your superficial comment.

I admit the Film 101 comment was ill judged. I could have found a better way to endorse his works as a whole, because only in "bulk" do you recognize movements and ideas he would further expand upon in a more satisfying way. Limiting yourself only to Bergman's films available on Blu-ray seems to be missing the point. He's made extraordinary films that may take years to hit the format.

I guess it's just the petty, "See more than 81/2, Seventh Seal, 400 Blows, Breathless," type of stuff. Just scratching the surface is not enough for these masters.

[ShellOilJunior]

Originally Posted by Abdrewes

I guess it's just the petty, "See more than 81/2, Seventh Seal, 400 Blows, Breathless," type of stuff. Just scratching the surface is not enough for these masters.

True but many people don't even give those listed a chance. People that frequent this thread probably have seen them all but the casual moviegoer or youngster probably hasn't seen any of them.

Plus, the fact I've seen 8 1/2 or La Dolce Vita several times each won't stop me from seeing it on the big screen when the print is in town.

[Abdrewes]

Originally Posted by ShellOilJunior

True but many people don't even give those listed a chance. People that frequent this thread probably have seen them all but the casual moviegoer or youngster probably hasn't seen any of them.

Plus, the fact I've seen 8 1/2 or La Dolce Vita several times each won't stop me from seeing it on the big screen when the print is in town.

That's very sobering.

By all means. In opposition to Pauline Kael, movies are meant to be rewatched. A films worth is unearthed when seen under different conditions and different light.

[Fellini912]

Originally Posted by retablo

Exactly. Plus, I believe many times, artist's childhoods are somewhat exaggerated, so as to create this illusion of a tortured artist... thus giving their work an added depth and "excuse" for being, if you will. Not to discredit everything Bergman said about his childhood, but let's face it — he was a writer and storyteller. Everything is exaggerated for cause and effect.

I don't know if you saw the movie Bronson by Refn. I can't say that it is a classic film, it is good in parts.

The one idea that the movie touches that made it unique was the view of his parents. Here you have the most violent, dangerous prisoner in Britain with the kindest loving parents who he respects and cares for. I expected the current film cliche of monstrous parents making a monster. It really gives a spin to the whole idea.