The Criterion Collection

[andantelise]

Does anyone happen to know, by past experience, at what time these sales typically begin? For example, will the sale start 12 am on a Monday night?

[theater dreamer]

Thanks for the feedback, everybody.

From my memory, which may be a bit hazy, I think they start about noon EST. I usually start checking about 11 am my time in Texas.

Originally Posted by andantelise

Does anyone happen to know, by past experience, at what time these sales typically begin? For example, will the sale start 12 am on a Monday night?

[andantelise]

Originally Posted by theater dreamer

Thanks for the feedback, everybody.

From my memory, which may be a bit hazy, I think they start about noon EST. I usually start checking about 11 am my time in Texas.

Nice, I'm in Texas too!

[RodChester]

Originally Posted by Ray Jackson

As much as I wish that my father had been a great fighter pilot who almost single-handedly saved America from falling into the grip of Communism...it just isn't so.

[Show spoiler]He was a short-order cook at a local diner who arm wrestled and drank heavily in his spare time. He used to take me on the road to various tournaments around the Pacific Northwest. Well, not so much "tournaments" per se, as they were informal gatherings of aspiring professional arm wrestlers at certain designated locations--watering holes and restaurant type places.

He never got to Vegas though.

The closest we ever came was a Denny's parking lot at 2am in Reno.

...he was glorious that night.

I don’t know. That story seems a little over the top.

[Member-167298]

I haven't been paying enough attention to the reviews on this site and only just saw the early review of Le Samourai. Totally relieved to see that the French master wasn't used. It would have been great to see a new scan, but under the circumstances this will be adequate. At least we will finally have this masterpiece in high definition in the US :-)

[bwdowiak]

Originally Posted by Knaldskalle

My first Bresson was Diary of A Country Priest and I really did not like it. My second was Pickpocket and I was mesmerized from start to finish. My third was A Man Escaped and then I knew I wanted to watch everything he's done. YMMV.

Pretty similar to my experience. I want to see Diary of a Country Priest again, but I felt it was really heavy going. I enjoyed the heck out of Elbert's review of the film. I just wasn't able to gather as much as he did when I watched it.

[Knaldskalle]

Originally Posted by Ctzalman

surprised you didn't like diary, i would agree with nitin that it's one of bresson's best. balthazar is pure magic. bresson is one of my favorite directors, transcendental cinema. there is a true sense of economy to his work, very minimalistic, yet still profound. check out his book notes on the cinematographer, he lays out the basis for a new language in film. whereas many directors in the '50s were more or less filming stage adaptations, bresson was pushing the envelope for an entirely new medium.

In hindsight, yes, I'm surprised too. I guess I just wasn't "ready" for his austere minimalistic style? I've yet to revisit it, but I'll get around to it one of these days and I suspect (hope) that I'll like it a lot more the second time around.

[Scottie]

Announcements tomorrow?

[malakaheso]

Originally Posted by nitin

I would start with either of Pickpocket or A Man Escaped. If Diary of a Country Priest is also an available option to you, that is IMHO his best.

Interesting. I like Diary a lot, but to me it's almost transitional and still carries over elements of 'psychological realism' that were lacking from later works.

For me A Man Escaped and Au Hasard Balthazar are his best. L'argent is the best from his late period.

The only Bresson film from A Man Escaped onwards that I don't rate too highly is A Gentle Woman.

Re: Ebert. This will sound snobby, but he wasn't really an expert on 'art film' directors. Most of what he said was either cliched or just completely off the mark. If you want to gain insight into how little he understood these films if they weren't canonized (i.e when he couldn't lean on received opinion), check out his review of Angelopoulos' Ulysses Gaze. It's eye opening. His limitations were on full display. It's a staggeringly ignorant piece of film criticism. Then there is his original review of Blue Velvet.

Ebert was a great populist, but if you are looking for opinions on great art films you are better off looking elsewhere. Rosenbaum is a much better alternative as far as American writers go. There are others too.

[Arawn]

Originally Posted by malakaheso

Re: Ebert. This will sound snobby, but he wasn't really an expert on 'art film' directors. Most of what he said was either cliched or just completely off the mark. If you want to gain insight into how little he understood these films if they weren't canonized (i.e when he couldn't lean on received opinion), check out his review of Angelopoulos' Ulysses Gaze. It's eye opening. His limitations were on full display. It's a staggeringly ignorant piece of film criticism. Then there is his original review of Blue Velvet.

^ So much this.

[MifuneFan]

Ebert's commentary on Floating Weeds was excellent, and I'm read some great reviews by him for arthouse type films . I don't really think it's fair to make a generalized assessment on his views of certain types of films when it's highly unlikely that you've read all, or even most of them, and surely every critic has films that they are more knowledgeable than others.

[MifuneFan]

I mentioned Ebert's audio commentary of Floating Weeds, but his written review is very nice as well in my view.

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/gr...ing-weeds-1959

Some excerpts I liked:

Sooner or later, everyone who loves movies comes to Ozu. He is the quietest and gentlest of directors, the most humanistic, the most serene. But the emotions that flow through his films are strong and deep, because they reflect the things we care about the most: Parents and children, marriage or a life lived alone, illness and death, and taking care of one another.

For me, “Floating Weeds” (1959) is like a familiar piece of music that I can turn to for reassurance and consolation. It is so atmospheric--so evocative of a quiet fishing village during a hot and muggy summer--that it envelops me. Its characters are like neighbors. It isn't a sad story; the central character is an actor with a healthy ego, who has tried to arrange his life according to his own liking and finds to his amazement that other people have wills of their own. He is funny, wrong-headed and finally touching.

Ozu is known for violating the traditional rules of visual composition. He often composes a conversation so that the characters don't seem to be looking at each other. I think I know why. With alternating over-the-shoulder shots, the audience is required to identify with the point of view of one character and then the other. When Ozu shoots them both looking in the same direction, we are kept outside the conversation; we can regard them objectively, and leave them their privacy.

His shots are direct, but often beautiful. Notice the way he handles an argument between the old actor and his mistress. The camera does not move. They are on opposite sides of a narrow street. It is raining in between them. She walks back and forth with a red umbrella. Break this up into dramatic closeups, and you'd shatter it. The space and rain between them is the visual counterpoint to their feelings. (And perhaps, passionate as they are, neither one wants to get wet.)

Like the Japanese printmakers of earlier centuries, he disliked novelty, and preferred variations on a theme. When you see his films, you feel in the arms of a serenely confident and caring master. In his stories about people who live far away, you recognize, in one way or another, everyone you know.

His review is pretty thorough, and filled with great insight. It's a far-cry from how most critics review films these days.

[malakaheso]

Did you not read what I said? Ozu is canon. Ebert merely parroted what others have said about those kind of directors.

The fact that he refused to watch Colossal Youth at Cannes speaks volumes to me as well.

Ebert was thoroughly middlebrow, almost comically so. I've read enough of his reviews of these films to know that if they got too challenging or minimal or out there he would call them pretentious etc.

His reviews of Kiarostami's 90s films are a joke too.

[SammyJankis]

Originally Posted by malakaheso

Re: Ebert. This will sound snobby, but he wasn't really an expert on 'art film' directors. Most of what he said was either cliched or just completely off the mark. If you want to gain insight into how little he understood these films if they weren't canonized (i.e when he couldn't lean on received opinion), check out his review of Angelopoulos' Ulysses Gaze. It's eye opening. His limitations were on full display. It's a staggeringly ignorant piece of film criticism. Then there is his original review of Blue Velvet.

Bringing up that specific review for a critic to single out their incompetency is lazy and doesn't say a damn thing about why they're a supposed bad critic. If you really want to go by that logic, where it wasn't in hindsight, then just look at his review Who's that Knocking at My Door, where he deemed the then unknown Scorsese as a huge talent. There's also Do the Right Thing, Dark City, My Dinner with Andre (him and Siskel were the key figures to its current status), the array of Herzogs, and, most importantly, Hoop Dreams. To say that he was a wholly ignorant film critic is, well, ignorant. He had his blind spots, like all critics (you could just as quickly point on Kael's wildly off the mark assessment on Kubrick), but that doesn't diminish the body of work, which is monumentally vast. Cultural status doesn't negate quality.

And his commentary track for Citizen Kane is vital for anyone into film.

[MifuneFan]

Originally Posted by malakaheso

Did you not read what I said? Ozu is canon. Ebert merely parroted what others have said about those kind of directors.

All I see is you being dismissive over a man's body of work by pigeonholing him into a box that doesn't exist. Every single critic out there learns, and gathers information, and ideas from elsewhere to help formulate their reviews. It's a silly point to make, and doesn't really say anything at all. And if you think none of his ideas and theories have been formed organically, or of his own creation, then I don't know what to tell you, other than you haven't read, watched, or listened to enough of them.

[mja345]

Ebert became more of a populist critic as he got older. His tastes were clearly very different as a younger man. Here are his top films from 67-79.

1967: Bonnie and Clyde
68: The Battle of Algiers
69: Z
70: Five Easy Pieces
71: The Last Picture Show
72: The Godfather
73: Cries and Whispers
74: Scenes from a Marriage
75: Nashville
76: Small Change
77: 3 Women
78: An Unmarried Woman
79: Apocalypse Now

Here are his top films from 2000-12
2000: Almost Famous
01: Monster's Ball
02: Minority Report
03: Monster
04: Million Dollar Baby
05: Crash (UGH!)
06: Pan's Labyrinth
07: Juno (Yikes)
08: Synecdoche, New York
09: The Hurt Locker
10: The Social Network
11: A Separation
12: Argo

Ebert in the 70s, 80s, and most of the 90s was mostly on the money, outside of some very notable misfires. But that's the nature of being a critic. Late 90s and on, he obviously lost some MPH off the fastball, so to speak.

Ebert was populist in the sense that his reviews, and style of writing, were more accessible to the average person. I'm sure a lot of teenagers back in the day got into film by reading some of Ebert's reviews. You're not getting into film by reading Pauline Kael reviews or critics of that ilk. Not that one style is better than the other, just different.

[theater dreamer]

I read Ebert's The Great Movies about three months ago, which contained many outstanding critical reviews of foreign classics. I felt his assessment of 8 1/2, The 400 Blows, The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Seven Samurai, and The Seventh Seal were spot on. There are several other reviews I'll revisit once I've watched the films. But to say that the man was limited where foreign films are concerned is absurd. I've read reviews from highly respected critics like Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael where I disagreed with their opinions. But I never questioned their acumen.

[malakaheso]

Originally Posted by theater dreamer

I read Ebert's The Great Movies about three months ago, which contained many outstanding critical reviews of foreign classics. I felt his assessment of 8 1/2, The 400 Blows, The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Seven Samurai, and The Seventh Seal were spot on.

Those are all canon films. The problem is when films were new and he didn't have received opinion to rest on.

Anyone that is familiar with Angelopoulos or the history of long take cinema in art films knows why that review I referred to above showed his complete ignorance. There are many different ways he could have engaged with that film, but clearly he couldn't find one because he had no idea so he turned his review into a personal attack.

Ebert was good for some things, but if I want to find out more about the more artistic end of the film spectrum, he is not somebody I'd bother with at all.

[SammyJankis]

Originally Posted by malakaheso

Those are all canon films. The problem is when films were new and he didn't have received opinion to rest on.

Fanny and Alexander
The Tree of Wooden Clogs
Satyricon
Claire's Knee
Maborosi
The Tree of Life
The Sacrifice

This is an utterly absurd accusation to make and works under the assumption that a critic isn't capable of fault in hindsight. There are a countless number of others, one of whom you cite, Rosenbaum, that are just as guilty for this hollow critera. Hell, I saw Rosenbaum give a speech on Ebert's importance, specifically that aforementioned commentary track.

[malakaheso]

Originally Posted by mja345

Here are his top films from 2000-12
2000: Almost Famous
01: Monster's Ball
02: Minority Report
03: Monster
04: Million Dollar Baby
05: Crash (UGH!)
06: Pan's Labyrinth
07: Juno (Yikes)
08: Synecdoche, New York
09: The Hurt Locker
10: The Social Network
11: A Separation
12: Argo

Yeah, pretty much all Anglophone films in the 00's. Boring middle of the road ones too.