The Criterion Collection

[onetet]

Originally Posted by Nighteyes

Thanks, I hadn't thought of that.

Interesting that Italy has over 60 titles listed. I had expected far less, maybe a dozen or two.

The bulk of that number is likely many titles from a few heavy-hitter directors: Fellini, Rossellini, Antonioni, De Sica, Pasolini.

[fdm]

Originally Posted by lordmorpheus72

Thanks for the info. I do the Best Buy upgrade often myself. I'll have to keep a look out for their next "upgrade and save."


On a different note, anyone know when the other eight WCF films that are part of the free streaming on Hulu will be available? I watched The Housemaid tonight and loved it. Such and amazing film, so glad the WCF and Criterion were able to bring it to those who don't subscribe to HuluPlus. Thanks!

Curious if Housemaid (on Hulu) had remnants of subtitles during certain sections of the film. (The Korean dvd did, and they only did a so-so job of removing them (from memory a few years since watching the dvd).) Maybe they've subsequently re-done those sections better?

[Kevin Ridge]

Originally Posted by jw007

I watched Things to Come for the first time late last night and was silently blown away. The first half just seemed like any other movie but then once it went 100 years into the future, I was amazed at the set design, costumes, makeup/hair and props. It totally was futuristic for a 1936 film and though I should wrap this bit in spoilers, I loved that in those future sequences there was a clear plastic screen shaped in 16:9 aspect ratio! How on earth did they know back then we would be watching material on 1:78 screens?! Not only that there was more of a nature-oriented theme going on in that utopian future with plants and trees all over the futuristic city (that reminded me a bit of the 1970s film Logan's Run). I was quite amazed with this film. It truly is a visionary and ground-breaking movie. For those who own or have seen this film, please share your thoughts?

[Show spoiler]Got to see this last night and was amazed with some of the predictions seen. I know the Nazis were already making a stir at point of when movie was made but it was still amazing to see they predicted how much destruction WWII would have. They extend the war many more years though but one could argue the continuation with the Cold War. The score during the bombing of Everytown is fantastic. There is a regression in life as this war continues on. Not until the scientists/engineers show up do we finally progress forward at a very quick rate. We got widescreen LCD screens! But they weren't clever enough to think of TV remotes: They send people to the moon in 2046 but we beat that for real by many decades. I thought the mob got way too riled up easily to turn against science and progression. Maybe folks were just too exhausted by the continuous go go go advancements.

[Abdrewes]

Originally Posted by SimBelm

Overall I quite liked it, omnibus films are strange as they seem to require a sort of gelling together and I'm not sure about how well the Tokyo! segments gelled together, but with fewer directors and chunkier segments you have more of a chance of each director hitting the right spot. The Gondry is sort of like a live action extended Pixar short, both comical and touching. The Carax, my favourite of the three, I'm sure you know is similar to the Holy Motors skit, but despite the skit being more refined I took more away from the Tokyo! segment, it comically portrays how we view and sensationalize criminals, they're fascinating yet unrelatable, with little attempt to really understand them, we lump them all together, from pedophiles to terrorists, labelling them as monsters, Godzillas in human form, it recalls the themes of Nagisa Oshima's Death by Hanging and Masao Adachi's AKA Serial Killer. The Bong is similar to the first, both funny and sensitive, but I didn't care enough about the characters which made its sweetness have the opposite effect on me.

Thanks for your thoughts! I can't wait to finally see it this week. It may even put me in the mood to revisit 'Holy Motors', which was no doubt entertaining, but hasn't really stuck with me as much as I would have liked it to.

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by Kevin Ridge

[Show spoiler]Got to see this last night and was amazed with some of the predictions seen. I know the Nazis were already making a stir at point of when movie was made but it was still amazing to see they predicted how much destruction WWII would have. They extend the war many more years though but one could argue the continuation with the Cold War. The score during the bombing of Everytown is fantastic. There is a regression in life as this war continues on. Not until the scientists/engineers show up do we finally progress forward at a very quick rate. We got widescreen LCD screens! But they weren't clever enough to think of TV remotes: They send people to the moon in 2046 but we beat that for real by many decades. I thought the mob got way too riled up easily to turn against science and progression. Maybe folks were just too exhausted by the continuous go go go advancements.

I remember that back during pre-war isolationism, the general depiction of war cried if man ever went to war again after WWI, they'd fight it out with the same old gas masks, trenches and European military civility, it would end up spreading to all the continents, ramble on now for twenty or thirty years out of the same forgot-why-we-started WWI cluelessness, and completely wipe all the cities out into Armageddon. (The idea of planes and bombing raids was still considered "new", and people couldn't yet imagine a one-time shock-and-awe strategy like Normandy or the Bomb getting results faster.)
That's pretty much the British blitz-era fears we have here: Britain had a lot less reason to stall off WWII than the US did--But Wells' socialist leanings pamphleted that even if there was another war, man's history told us we'd just end up with the borgeious kings sitting on their thrones and stepping on the peasant proletariat again. (And how'd he get that, eh? By exploiting the workers!--By 'anging on to outdated imperialist dogma...oh, you know the Python sketch. ) And, that only the enlightened, equalified Scientific State could come, knock the kings off their thrones with a flick of their forward-thinking finger, and create a new George Cameron Menzies-designed utopia for everyone.

It would be nice to have that childlike naivety again and read a Wells story just as a Wells sci-fi story about neato time machines and future societies because they're neato, but his original prewar film scripts do tend to make that rather impossible...

[jayembee]

Originally Posted by yhzmr

Why did you drop out of eBay altogether if you don't mind me asking?

Well, on the selling side, they kept changing the rules and fees and such that it became more of a pain in the ass than it was worth unless one owned a "store" as a regular business.

On the buying side, it was more a financial issue. I found myself bidding on too many items (I collect a lot of different things). I wasn't paying a lot per item, but it was adding up to too much. The easiest way to deal with it was to stop bidding on things altogether.

[The Great Owl]

I just wrote up my review for Niagara in the main thread for that film, but I'll stop in here to recommend it to everyone who loves the photography of Joseph MacDonald on the Criterion Blu-ray of Bigger Than Life. Such beautiful 1950s cinema in high definition.

I need a cold shower after Niagara. It's a beautifully sensual movie.

[yhzmr]

Originally Posted by jayembee

Well, on the selling side, they kept changing the rules and fees and such that it became more of a pain in the ass than it was worth unless one owned a "store" as a regular business.

On the buying side, it was more a financial issue. I found myself bidding on too many items (I collect a lot of different things). I wasn't paying a lot per item, but it was adding up to too much. The easiest way to deal with it was to stop bidding on things altogether.

Thanks for the reply. I've considered selling and I have heard about some of the issues you've described. It just confirms my reluctance to get involved.

[jayembee]

Originally Posted by lordmorpheus72

I only have about 25 or so LDs, and my old LD player. I really need to find a new player, mine is an older model that makes me take out the disc and flip it... just have to actually look for one on eBay.

Anyone have suggestions on a model and/or price range to keep in mind?

Well, my original player (bought in Jan 1988) was a Pioneer CLD-1010. It worked like a champ for over 15 years (it was even my regular CD player until I got my first DVD player). Round about 2005, the motor started giving me problems -- it played the LDs fine, but was making more noise than it should. I figured it was time to replace it with a non-flip player, and I got a refurbished CLD-D704 in a private sale with someone from the net. Has worked fine, although...

I hadn't played any LDs for quite a while, and this thread has gotten me to check out some of my LDs again, and my player seems to be giving me loading problems (with both 12" and 8" LDs, as well as CDs). It's probably a belt issue, but I'll have to take a look. If it's not something obvious that I can fix, I'll have to see if someone in the lddb.com forums can troubleshoot.

[jayembee]

Originally Posted by jw007

1,300 LDs.

*faints

Well, as I've said in a previous reply, I bought my first player in Jan 1988. Along with the player, I bought my first 3 LDs: The Philadelphia Story, and p&s editions (almost no one other than Criterion was letterboxing at that point) of Halloween and For Your Eyes Only. I eventually replaced all three with improved editions. The earliest LD purchase I still have in my collection is the Criterion CAV edition of Blade Runner, which I bought in Feb 1988. So I've been collecting for a while. According to my LD purchase file, the last LDs I've bought were in early 2005 from eBay, with the last one being the Image/Turner Astaire/Rogers Collection boxed set in Mar 2005.

So, 17 years first to last. Given how many I currently have, and the fact that there have been several others that had bought along the way, and later sold or traded in, I'd guess that I averaged two LDs a week over the time I was collecting. It helped that I lived in the Boston area, and for most of the time I was collecting, there were as many as three major dedicated LD stores, and at least a dozen other video stores and whatnot that sold and/or rented LDs.

A significant percentage of the LDs I bought after adopting DVD were of "Golden Age of Hollywood" films, because (a) that was a focus of my cinematic interests, and (b) such films were for the most part slow in coming on DVD. While some of the studios were slowly putting out their vintage titles on DVD in the early 00s, it wasn't until 2004-2005 that the floodgates opened.

Which is probably one of the reasons I stopped buying LDs then, as I was spending the money on things like the various Warner DVD boxed sets.

[mrjohnnyb]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

I just wrote up my review for Niagara in the main thread for that film, but I'll stop in here to recommend it to everyone who loves the photography of Joseph MacDonald on the Criterion Blu-ray of Bigger Than Life. Such beautiful 1950s cinema in high definition.

I need a cold shower after Niagara. It's a beautifully sensual movie.

Hey Owl,

A little too much 4-1-1, if you know what I mean!

[Hypnosifl]

Originally Posted by Kevin Ridge

I thought the mob got way too riled up easily to turn against science and progression.

Apparently there was a longer speech by the artist stirring up the masses that was in the script and perhaps shot, see the part near the bottom of this page that starts with this paragraph:

Amazingly, one of the biggest casualties in terms of lost footage is the event that drives the narrative in the last part of the film, namely Theotocopulos's speech to the world. In the Standard Print, it seems that he makes a few disjointed arguments, and suddenly the entire population rebels! The Stover Script does have more of this speech, although since it retains the timescale of the Standard Print, events still seem to progress to near-anarchy far too quickly. It is only in the Film Story that the disgruntled sculptor gets to argue his full case in a speech more than ten times longer than what survives now, while having it take place in the narrative considerably earlier, allowing times for the discontent to fester and grow into open revolt. The speech is also intercut with reactions from various members of the 2036 population - either for or against his arguments - and the few reaction shots of viewers that survive hardly do justice to the initial premise.

[Edward J Grug III]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

I just wrote up my review for Niagara in the main thread for that film, but I'll stop in here to recommend it to everyone who loves the photography of Joseph MacDonald on the Criterion Blu-ray of Bigger Than Life. Such beautiful 1950s cinema in high definition.

I need a cold shower after Niagara. It's a beautifully sensual movie.

Can't wait for my copy to show up!

[Kevin Ridge]

Originally Posted by Hypnosifl

Apparently there was a longer speech by the artist stirring up the masses that was in the script and perhaps shot, see the part near the bottom of this page that starts with this paragraph:

Thank you. They definitely edited this scene too much but nice to see that there was more to it.

[lordmorpheus72]

Originally Posted by fdm

Curious if Housemaid (on Hulu) had remnants of subtitles during certain sections of the film. (The Korean dvd did, and they only did a so-so job of removing them (from memory a few years since watching the dvd).) Maybe they've subsequently re-done those sections better?

As I watched it last night, I did not notice any problems with the subtitles. They seemed to all be where they should be, and nothing out of place.

Originally Posted by jayembee

Well, my original player (bought in Jan 1988) was a Pioneer CLD-1010. It worked like a champ for over 15 years (it was even my regular CD player until I got my first DVD player). Round about 2005, the motor started giving me problems -- it played the LDs fine, but was making more noise than it should. I figured it was time to replace it with a non-flip player, and I got a refurbished CLD-D704 in a private sale with someone from the net. Has worked fine, although...

I hadn't played any LDs for quite a while, and this thread has gotten me to check out some of my LDs again, and my player seems to be giving me loading problems (with both 12" and 8" LDs, as well as CDs). It's probably a belt issue, but I'll have to take a look. If it's not something obvious that I can fix, I'll have to see if someone in the lddb.com forums can troubleshoot.

Thanks for the info. I haven't turned mine on in a couple of years. I rescued one from the university I work at, they were going to junk it many years ago. It is a Pioneer CLD-V2600, and it has the biggest darn remote I have ever seen... has to be 7" long and 3.5" wide. I don't think I'll upgrade my player unless it breaks (knock on wood), especially since the prices on eBay can be quite crazy. My brother has a new Pioneer than I that has the A-B flip, it still works well. He also bought a very large lot of eBay many, many years ago. Anyway... thanks again for the info!

[SimBelm]

Originally Posted by Abdrewes

Thanks for your thoughts! I can't wait to finally see it this week. It may even put me in the mood to revisit 'Holy Motors', which was no doubt entertaining, but hasn't really stuck with me as much as I would have liked it to.

Hope you enjoy it, one friend I saw it with liked Bong's segment the most and another liked Gondry's, so I'd bet on at least one of the segments resonating with you. Holy Motors was a bit of a mess for me the first time, I could unravel some of it, but it was the second time where it really unleashed itself on me and I enjoyed the hell out of it (except for Kylie singing which grated just as much on me the second time, I wish she'd have spoken that dialogue instead).

[SimBelm]

To anyone who has enjoyed Kim Ki-young's The Housemaid on Hulu I strongly recommend checking out the Korean Film Archive's youtube channel which has a handful of his other films available including the two other entries in his housemaid trilogy (they're available in HD but their transfers vary, the subtitles are great).

[starman15317]

Today I watched Charade for the first time. Great thriller that I will be sure to buy, though in all honesty, I'll probably just get Universal's Blu-Ray instead because of the cheaper price, about the same quality in AQ and PQ and the lack of special features.

Originally Posted by andy0510

Hey folks I just picked up Charlie Chaplin's Gold Rush and was wondering from the Criterion community on which version I should watch first? I watched Modern Times and The Great Dictator if that takes into account.
Thanks!

The 1925 version definitely

[onetet]

Originally Posted by SimBelm

To anyone who has enjoyed Kim Ki-young's The Housemaid on Hulu I strongly recommend checking out the Korean Film Archive's youtube channel which has a handful of his other films available including the two other entries in his housemaid trilogy (they're available in HD but their transfers vary, the subtitles are great).

Wow, this looks like a great resource! Thanks for posting.

[starman15317]

Originally Posted by jayembee

[Show spoiler]Well, spec-wise they are equivalent in that both are 480i resolution. The advantage of LD over DVD is that neither the video nor audio is compressed. With respect to the audio, though, the LD is limited by having only two channels, so you couldn't get non-matrixed surround sound. A disadvantage video-wise was that LDs were not anamorphic (there was a process developed to create anamorphic LDs, but it came to late to be used for more than a handful of titles)

In DVD's infancy, they weren't being authored particularly well, and (imho) LDs tended to look better. The authors got better with practice, and it wasn't long before DVDs proved to be significantly better. Added to that was the increased use of digital restoration techniques, creating better masters than were used for LDs for vintage films.

As for specific titles...well, for apartment-space reasons, I only have about a 2-foot shelf of LDs here (the rest are in storage, though reasonably accessible). Among the titles I have on the shelf at the moment are:

Selected Criterions: Breaking the Waves (Von Trier), Crash (Cronenberg), and Nostalghia (Tarkovsky).

A number of "RKO Classic Collection" titles from Image/Turner, including a bunch of Wheeler & Woolsey comedies, Check and Double Check (the infamous Amos & Andy film), Five Came Back and its remake Back from Eternity, and Journey Into Fear, directed by Norman Foster, but stylistically it looks more like a lost Orson Welles film (Welles was an uncredited co-director, and the star and co-writer, with a lot of the Mercury Theater troupe as well).

Three silent films: a two-fer of The Crowd and The Wind, and Greed.

A series of films adapting stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: The Fable of the Beautiful Pigeon-Fancier, I'm the One You're Looking For, Miracle in the Rome (the best of the run), The Summer of Miss Forbes, and The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.

A couple of early Wayne Wang Asian-American comedies: Diim Sum and Eat a Bowl of Tea.

Zora Is My Name!, an American Playhouse film of a stage revue based on the life of Zora Neale Hurston.

The East Is Red. Not the third in the "Swordsman" series with Brigitte Lin, but a Mainland Chinese film that's hard to describe. Imagine if Rodgers & Hammerstein wrote a Beijing opera about the Chinese Communist Revolution. That's what it's like. It's a Hong Kong import with no subtitles, but who needs them? It's still compelling viewing.

Two different versions of Wim Wenders's Until the End of the World: the US theatrical version, and a Japanese import of the extended version.

Weir's Fearless. The LD is letterboxed, the DVD wasn't.

Song of the South. A Japanese import. Zippedy do dah.

Café Flesh, an avant-garde science fiction film masquerading as pornography.

Black Rain (Shohei Imamura, not Ridley Scott).

The Wizard of Speed and Time

Hey, I have Until the End of the World (US cut) on LD too! A Criterion release would be great.