The Criterion Collection

[RipleyLV426]

Originally Posted by octagon

The 50% sales are July and November. You might be able to get close to that if they have a 40% sale in October (I don't remember when they do those) but if you're banking on having it by Halloween you might want to lock in the Amazon price just in case.

It's not a day one need, so I can wait till Nov too.

[jw007]

Originally Posted by starman15317

So here's a little question for everyone: when were you introduced to the Criterion Collection? Was it in the Laserdisc days? DVD era? Or were you introduced with Blu-Ray? And what was the first Criterion you saw or bought?

If I'm not mistaken, it was the Fishing With John DVD I bought in 2004. That was my first official Criterion release. Perhaps it could also have been Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas also. I'm not 100% sure. But its probably either of those.

[Abdrewes]

Like everybody else, I got to know CC on DVD in the process of running down all the great foreign films reccomended to me: 81/2, 400 Blows, Seventh Seal, Seven Samurai, etc.

[zoodermin]

Originally Posted by starman15317

So here's a little question for everyone: when were you introduced to the Criterion Collection? Was it in the Laserdisc days? DVD era? Or were you introduced with Blu-Ray? And what was the first Criterion you saw or bought?

I was first introduced to the Criterion Collection back in July 2011 and it was because of Black Swan. I'd just bought that movie on BD because I liked it very much when I saw it in theaters. I went online to read reviews about it and many were saying that it was similar to a film called "The Red Shoes". Back then, I've never heard of it so I went to Amazon and searched for that film and I discovered Criterion. I went to their site and started searching films in their catalog that I never heard of but that seemed pretty interesting. That, and the fact that the films were beautifully restored and packed with excellent bonus material made me want to own at least one. Lucky me, Barnes and Noble were just in the middle of one their sales so I of course took advantage of it and nowadays I own approx. 70 Criterion films, all BDs.

As you can guess my first Criterion film was The Red Shoes which is now one of my favorite films but, alongside it, I bought seven more on that sale: The Great Dictator, Seven Samurai, The Night of the Hunter, M, Diabolique, Yojimbo and Sanjuro. All excellent purchases and excellent films!

[onetet]

Originally Posted by starman15317

So here's a little question for everyone: when were you introduced to the Criterion Collection? Was it in the Laserdisc days? DVD era? Or were you introduced with Blu-Ray? And what was the first Criterion you saw or bought?

I started working for a very good, art-house focused video store in 1998, the year Criterion started issuing DVDs. I remember us all being a little perplexed when Armageddon and The Rock came out in the collection. For several years there, Home Vision releases were rec'd with almost equal excitement to Criterions.

Branded to Kill is one of the first films I can remember discovering thanks to the collection, and Robocop is one of the first I can remember re-evaluating based on revisiting it as a Criterion.

The 400 Blows was one of my favorite films at the time, so I expect that was the first Criterion DVD I watched.

[monorail91]

Originally Posted by starman15317

So here's a little question for everyone: when were you introduced to the Criterion Collection? Was it in the Laserdisc days? DVD era? Or were you introduced with Blu-Ray? And what was the first Criterion you saw or bought?

I probably first heard of them when Ebert & Roeper talked about the Criterion release of Ace in the Hole, which intrigued me insofar as it was a Billy Wilder movie I hadn't heard of yet, and that some weird DVD company was releasing it. (This is from the perspective of my young teenage self!)

The first Criterion I bought was 8 1/2 just because I love that movie, and I noticed the number on the spine and wondered what exactly that meant.

Several years later...my collection has grown to a couple dozen and I'm happy to say I'm hooked

[Sherlock_Jr]

Originally Posted by starman15317

So here's a little question for everyone: when were you introduced to the Criterion Collection? Was it in the Laserdisc days? DVD era? Or were you introduced with Blu-Ray? And what was the first Criterion you saw or bought?

Actually VHS, with The 39 Steps. But I owned around 50 or so Laserdisc titles. Can't recall the first LDs I bought though, but I had Ghostbusters, Robocop, Time Bandits, Forbidden games, Coup de Torchon, Repulsion, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Jules & Jim...

[jw007]

Got an important question and looking for advice.

I found The Man Who Fell to Earth for $60 used at a local record shop. The Blu-ray is in mint condition and is still in its original digipack. The only problem is, the booklet is missing. I have this already on DVD with the large booklet in any case.

My question is, should I buy this for the price? It seems like a great deal since this is normally selling for $100+ used online.

I really want the Blu-ray of this OOP Criterion too.

Advice?

[Hartley]

Originally Posted by jw007

Got an important question and looking for advice.

I found The Man Who Fell to Earth for $60 used at a local record shop. The Blu-ray is in mint condition and is still in its original digipack. The only problem is, the booklet is missing. I have this already on DVD with the large booklet in any case.

My question is, should I buy this for the price? It seems like a great deal since this is normally selling for $100+ used online.

I really want the Blu-ray of this OOP Criterion too.

Advice?

Maybe e-mail Mulvaney before you buy saying you've purchased a copy with a damaged and/or missing booklet to find out if they have any spares lying around that they can send you (highly unlikely but you never know, they do still sell replacement case artwork).

If I still had my spare mint copy I'd sell it to you now for what I sold it for here, $35. I just don't believe in the aftermarket pricing on all these OOP titles, it just seems so unfair to people who are genuine lovers of the films.

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by starman15317

So here's a little question for everyone: when were you introduced to the Criterion Collection? Was it in the Laserdisc days? DVD era? Or were you introduced with Blu-Ray? And what was the first Criterion you saw or bought?

I didn't have a Laserdisk player in the 80's, although I searched miles and miles to search out one of those backwater theater-buff-only rentals, just to get a cool look at what that King Kong disk set looked like (wow, commentary AND freeze-frame! ), from the way Siskel & Ebert described it.
So, apart from a few more Voyager rentals of 007 and Oz just to hear that new miracle of Film Historian Commentary ( ), I didn't jump onto Voyager until the new low-tech experiment of....A Hard Day's Night on CD-ROM!!

Practically memorized the movie (having the script on Mac HyperCard helped), but if you're going to be a stickler and keep it to Criterion DVD, nothing really interesting and long-term purchase-worthy turned up (in my humble Bergman-loathing opinion) until "The Bank Dick", "6 WC Fields Shorts" and the Bergman "Magic Flute". (Okay, I allowed him that one.)

[The Great Owl]

Originally Posted by starman15317

So here's a little question for everyone: when were you introduced to the Criterion Collection? Was it in the Laserdisc days? DVD era? Or were you introduced with Blu-Ray? And what was the first Criterion you saw or bought?

I bought a Criterion DVD of Seven Samurai about 10 or 11 years ago. I followed that with several other Akira Kurosawa Criterion titles, and found myself impressed with the presentation of the movies. From there, I made a blind-buy of Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai, which quickly became my all-time favorite movie. I veered into older French films from there, namely Elevator to the Gallows, Bob Le Flambeur, Breathless, and such. I also bought The Vanishing early on.

Those were my first Criterion purchases, but not the first time that I had actually seen a movie in the Collection. I saw The Blob early in my childhood, so I guess that's probably the first Criterion that I ever watched.

[Abdrewes]

^^^
It's ironic that The Blob was your first Criterion. Now your obsession is ballooning as fast as that thing

[jayembee]

Originally Posted by starman15317

So here's a little question for everyone: when were you introduced to the Criterion Collection? Was it in the Laserdisc days? DVD era? Or were you introduced with Blu-Ray? And what was the first Criterion you saw or bought?

I was introduced to Criterion back in the late 80s, during the laserdisc days. My first Criterion (as I suspect that of a lot of other folks) was their Blade Runner LD. I was buying and enjoying enough of their titles that I decided to blind buy those films I wasn't familiar with. Ended up with a love for a lot of films (and filmmakers) that I would otherwise likely never have seen. The first Criterion DVDs were The Killer and Hard-Boiled when I found out that they almost immediately went OOP. My first Criterion BD was either The Third Man or Chungking Express.

[jayembee]

Originally Posted by NoirFan

You know that a company is the benchmark for quality when 3.5 stars for video is considered 'problematic' and as bad a rating as one will find for their Blu-ray product. Not that the (relatively minor) issues with those four transfers aren't legitimate - though with Design for Living they are likely inherent in the source material, and probably couldn't be improved upon without an expensive overhaul - it just shows how impressive their overall track record really is. Paradise and Earrings do both look dreadful though.

I think "dreadul" is an exaggeration. Haven't seen Earrings yet, but while Paradise isn't up to their usual high standards, it still looks better than I've ever seen it before (Criterion's LD, and then their DVD).

[jayembee]

Originally Posted by NoirFan

the upper-tier Criterions cost only a buck or so more than people typically pay for Scream releases.

Hell, the typical Criterion MSRP ($39.95) is the same MSRP for most Disney titles (at least their animated ones).

[UNCMT9]

Breathless or Band of Outsiders: which is a more accessible, easier to watch Goddard film? I saw Breathless once about a year ago and wasn't overly impressed, but it was a good film. I think I just had extremely high expectations.

[Mansinthe]

or buy a empty criterion case (dvd size) for 2 discs and keep the DVD and the bluray.

[blkhrt]

Originally Posted by starman15317

So here's a little question for everyone: when were you introduced to the Criterion Collection? Was it in the Laserdisc days? DVD era? Or were you introduced with Blu-Ray? And what was the first Criterion you saw or bought?

My first exposure to Criterion was back in college (about fifteen years ago) when we used several of the LD's in film classes. I am pretty sure the editions of Ran and Bicycle Thieves we watched were Criterion editions, and I believe the Blade Runner edition was also.

About a year after I graduated college, I worked at a job where I would get home at about 3:00 every day. The library down the street had almost every Criterion DVD, so every day I would walk there and pick up a movie to watch before my roommates got home from work. I watched a lot of them that way.

I think the first DVD I purchased was probably either Peeping Tom, The Passion of Joan of Arc, or Bicycle Thieves.

[dmarvin]

Saw Seven Samurai for the first time last night in my film history class. I really wasn't willing to give older foreign flicks much of chance...until I saw that bad boy. Pretty damn good movie. Now I must have me the Criterion BD! I've been tempted to blind buy Rashomon for months now, but now I will definitely be doing that after having my first taste of Kurosawa.

We watched a NON-Criterion DVD of Seven Samurai in class, by the way. Pretty rough condition. I'm hoping the Criterion BD is like 10 notches up.

[Namuhana]

Originally Posted by starman15317

So here's a little question for everyone: when were you introduced to the Criterion Collection? Was it in the Laserdisc days? DVD era? Or were you introduced with Blu-Ray? And what was the first Criterion you saw or bought?

My first contact with Criterion (that I knew of) was with The Red Shoes in April 2012. I had seen, and loved, Black Swan; and, of course, The Red Shoes was compared to Black Swan, so I watched the film on YouTube, fell in love with it, and bought it on Blu-ray. I now own 20 titles with one on pre-order (3 Films by Roberto Rossellini Starring Ingrid Bergman).