The Criterion Collection

[adamhopelies]

Originally Posted by ijustblumyself

I love when this thread discusses films, but sometimes there's a distinct 'anti-youth' sentiment thrown around that can become a little annoying.

I'm young myself and have never noted anything like this in here. What are you referring to?

[exolstice]

Originally Posted by adamhopelies

I'm young myself and have never noted anything like this in here. What are you referring to?

It's less anti-youth and more of a "movies were better back in the day, get off my lawn you damn kids."

[Feiereisel]

Also regarding comic book movies--let's not forget that Blue is the Warmest Color is based on a graphic novel. It' not all superheroes--not that there's anything inherently wrong with those, either.

Assumptions may playing into the art house debate: Are we (myself included) unfairly privileging the American/Western perspective of film history? Kurosawa was/is viewed as an "art house" director in America, but he was commercially successful ("mainstream") in Japan.

Various Western assumptions might be building a disingenuous "art house" box around certain filmmakers.

[AaronJ]

Originally Posted by adamhopelies

For me it's attitude of the audience that is the biggest factor in all of this.

It's easy to overestimate the commercial success of a film like Breathless, especially when ones memories are clouded by the legacy of the film, which far outweighs any contemporary commercial achievement. In France it was only the 25th most successful film of 1960, with the masses opting to see the likes of The Alamo above it, and the most popular film of that year the as-mainstream-as-it-can-get Ben Hur.

See, though, the thing about Breathless -- above all those other pics -- is that it CHANGED FILMMAKING! We can talk about something like Ben-Hur all day. But when all is said and done, it was just another Biblical blockbuster.

But Breathless?! It made movies NEW! It RE-made movies. I don't even care about the commercial success. This is, what, 65 years ago? The effects of Godard's filmmaking are far more felt than that of the films of Ben-Hur or whatever. Breathless is a 5-star film not because it's necessarily a great film on its own, but because it change film making altogether!

THIS is filmmaking on its own! A guy, a girl, and a gun. This is everything, altogether

[exolstice]

Originally Posted by AaronJ

See, though, the thing about Breathless -- above all those other pics -- is that it CHANGED FILMMAKING! We can talk about something like Ben-Hur all day. But when all is said and done, it was just another Biblical blockbuster.

But Breathless?! It made movies NEW! It RE-made movies. I don't even care about the commercial success. This is, what, 65 years ago? The effects of Godard's filmmaking are far more felt than that of the films of Ben-Hur or whatever. Breathless is a 5-star film not because it's necessarily a great film on its own, but because it change film making altogether!

THIS is filmmaking on its own! A guy, a girl, and a gun. This is everything, altogether

The remake of Breathless was better and Godard is highly overrated.

[AaronJ]

Originally Posted by exolstice

The remake of Breathless was better and Godard is highly overrated.

Umm ...

[joie]

Originally Posted by octagon

It doesn't have to be Bresson to undercut the notion that consumers of mass media have become ADD-riddled dullards.

Yes. Consumers of video games, blockbusters, action films, etc. have an advanced ability to pay attention. They don't suffer from any sort of attention problem. If they did, they couldn't enjoy what they do, because a lot of editing and rapid scene changes requires an extraordinary ability to pay attention to what's happening.

[adamhopelies]

Originally Posted by exolstice

It's less anti-youth and more of a "movies were better back in the day, get off my lawn you damn kids."

Again, I don't really see that in here. There's plenty of love for contemporary cinema.

[Moj]

So, there's a sale today?

[Feiereisel]

Originally Posted by Moj

So, there's a sale today?

Fingers crossed.

[adamhopelies]

Originally Posted by AaronJ

See, though, the thing about Breathless -- above all those other pics -- is that it CHANGED FILMMAKING! We can talk about something like Ben-Hur all day. But when all is said and done, it was just another Biblical blockbuster.

But Breathless?! It made movies NEW! It RE-made movies. I don't even care about the commercial success. This is, what, 65 years ago? The effects of Godard's filmmaking are far more felt than that of the films of Ben-Hur or whatever. Breathless is a 5-star film not because it's necessarily a great film on its own, but because it change film making altogether!

THIS is filmmaking on its own! A guy, a girl, and a gun. This is everything, altogether

I dont disagree with any of that, but it doesn't really address my point either (sorry, but I want to make that clear). I'm not saying that Ben-Hur is the better movie because it made more money. Breathless is one of my favourite films, and the single most important film of my life.

My point was that it's easy to over-assume how much of an impact that film had on the wider culture at the time of its release.

Sure, Breathless was a big success in France in 1960. It had more than 2 million admissions. However, when one contextualises this against the rest of the box-office for that year a bigger, clearer picture is revealed (13 million tickets were sold to Ben-Hur). That isn't to say that the release of Breathless wasn't an epoch-defining event, but that's because it connected with a very specific section of French society, as opposed to the country at large.

[bstv69]

Originally Posted by AaronJ

I think that this month, and probably the next month, I am going to focus on upgrading some DVDs to Blu-rays. I've done a lot of that lately, but there are some that I really need to get done. I'm not sticking to ONLY upgrades, but that's what I'm going to try to focus on.

The first one I'm going to go for is this:

Definitely upgrade if you haven't already, I just finished watching this on a 4k TV and it is incredible how amazing it looks. Especially if you watch the special feature where Scorsese shows the restoration processes and shows before and after

[bwdowiak]

"Dreams Never End" now playing on my Pandora mix..

Carlos, anyone?

[fancyclaps]

This no flash sale non-sense is really pissing me off.

[Andrew13]

Originally Posted by fancyclaps

This no flash sale non-sense is really pissing me off.

October's sale started a 2 pm EST, so we've still got a couple hours to hold out hope today.

Otherwise Thursday's probably our last shot...

[kuro_sawa]

Caved last night on my way home and stopped at BN for Don't Look Now. Awesome package, I can't wait to finally watch this film in HD tonight after holding off on the UK release for what feels like an eternity. One thing that struck me is that the leaflet/pamphlet thing folds out to a pretty nice looking mini-poster (noticed from Pro-b's review that Satyricon also has a great looking mini-poster on one side). I like this approach much better than the more scatter-shot designs of the others. One big article on one side adn the art on the other makes for an easier reading experience, and it wouldn't look bad hung up on the wall either.

Now if they have the sale today you can thank me for taking the plunge...

[Moj]

By establishing a precedent of having sales around this period over the past few years, you'd think it'd hurt their online sales, in the sense that everyone is holding off on purchases until it starts.

[shadedpain4]

Originally Posted by fancyclaps

This no flash sale non-sense is really pissing me off.

Nothing pisses me off more than a company not doing what they never said they were going to do.

[bwdowiak]

Originally Posted by Moj

By establishing a precedent of having sales around this period over the past few years, you'd think it'd hurt their online sales, in the sense that everyone is holding off on purchases until it starts.

I doubt this. Anyone with knowledge of their sales probably has the good sense to never buy from them except for these two days out of the year. It isn't hard to beat $31.96 for a $39.95 title.

[Feiereisel]

Originally Posted by Moj

By establishing a precedent of having sales around this period over the past few years, you'd think it'd hurt their online sales, in the sense that everyone is holding off on purchases until it starts.

Yeah, good point. Probably the only way it would stop was if Barnes and Noble decided to move their sale (for whatever strange reason) or if one of these sales flopped and moved little to no product (which seems unlikely).

Edit/addition: But ultimately it's up to Criterion.