The Criterion Collection

[Watershipdownisgood]

Originally Posted by Areyakiddin

These are the lists I've seen in the past:

Thanks so currently what has been released from both lists so far are these titles.
Pat Garrett
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Bringing Up Baby
Dreams
Round Midnight
Arsenic and Old Lace
I Walked with a Zombie
Gummo
The 7th Victim
Lone Star
Mean Streets
Barry Lyndon
The Roaring Twenties
The Philadelphia Story
Plus everything else from that second list that was already confirmed previously

Not confirmed yet
I am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang
O Lucky Man
The Year of Living Dangerously
Petulia
The Lusty Men
Captain Blood
Scaramouche

So that leaves us with 7 titles not confirmed yet. I find it highly unlikely that this is a coincidence at this point. I wonder what titles from this list will get confirmed next. I'm betting on The Year of Living Dangerously, and Captain Blood, plus I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, and also possibly O Lucky Man! to be confirmed next.

[aladdin123]

What label do you think will eventually release UHDs of Warner titles like The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Big Sleep, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, White Heat, Strangers on a Train, Forbidden Planet, Doctor Zhivago, Ryan's Daughter?

WAC? WHV? Criterion? Arrow?

[koberulz]

Originally Posted by aladdin123

What label do you think will eventually release UHDs of Warner titles like The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Big Sleep, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, White Heat, Strangers on a Train, Forbidden Planet, Doctor Zhivago, Ryan's Daughter?

WAC? WHV? Criterion? Arrow?

Almost certainly nobody for most of those.

[Areyakiddin]

Originally Posted by Watershipdownisgood

[Show spoiler]Thanks so currently what has been released from both lists so far are these titles.
Pat Garrett
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Bringing Up Baby
Dreams
Round Midnight
Arsenic and Old Lace
I Walked with a Zombie
Gummo
The 7th Victim
Lone Star
Mean Streets
Barry Lyndon
The Roaring Twenties
The Philadelphia Story
Plus everything else from that second list that was already confirmed previously

Not confirmed yet
I am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang
O Lucky Man
The Year of Living Dangerously
Petulia
The Lusty Men
Captain Blood
Scaramouche

So that leaves us with 7 titles not confirmed yet. I find it highly unlikely that this is a coincidence at this point. I wonder what titles from this list will get confirmed next. I'm betting on The Year of Living Dangerously, and Captain Blood, plus I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, and also possibly O Lucky Man! to be confirmed next.

I know it won't happen, but a Mervyn LeRoy Pre-code crime boxset with I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Five Star Final, Three on a Match, and maybe a new remaster of Little Caesar from Criterion would be pretty cool.

[aladdin123]

Originally Posted by koberulz

Almost certainly nobody for most of those.

You think most of those titles won't ever have UHDs? Which ones, and why? I think almost all titles I mentioned are only a matter of when, not if. By far the most unlikely of those is Ryan's Daughter.

[koberulz]

Originally Posted by aladdin123

You think most of those titles won't ever have UHDs? Which ones, and why? I think almost all titles I mentioned are only a matter of when, not if. By far the most unlikely of those is Ryan's Daughter.

WAC is only doing a handful of UHDs a year, only for absolute top-tier stuff, so that rules them out for Treasure, Heat, and Planet. Being a Hitchcock might get Strangers over the line, and I wouldn't rule out Sleep entirely but I would be very surprised to see that come from WAC. I'm not familiar with Daughter, does that one have source issues? Zhivago probably isn't big enough to crack the UHD category at WAC either.

That leaves a boutique for those, and I don't see there being the right combo of boutique interest, Warner interest, and market demand getting many of them over the line. Sleep and Strangers, maybe—though they may be more likely to be in that awkward spot where they're not big enough for Warners to do directly but too big to licence out*—but I doubt you'd see Treasure or Heat, personally.

Warners having loosened up on licensing of late is the obvious wildcard here, so they might be more likely to come from boutiques than they would have been a couple of years ago but I would be shocked if we got more than a couple of them from Warners direct.


*I know they licenced Kane, but they also did a UHD themselves for international markets and I'm not sure the same approach would fly with those films, so it would potentially be a case of them only having boutique releases which makes it a bit different.

[aladdin123]

Originally Posted by koberulz

WAC is only doing a handful of UHDs a year, only for absolute top-tier stuff, so that rules them out for Treasure, Heat, and Planet. Being a Hitchcock might get Strangers over the line, and I wouldn't rule out Sleep entirely but I would be very surprised to see that come from WAC. I'm not familiar with Daughter, does that one have source issues? Zhivago probably isn't big enough to crack the UHD category at WAC either.

That leaves a boutique for those, and I don't see there being the right combo of boutique interest, Warner interest, and market demand getting many of them over the line. Sleep and Strangers, maybe—though they may be more likely to be in that awkward spot where they're not big enough for Warners to do directly but too big to licence out*—but I doubt you'd see Treasure or Heat, personally.

Warners having loosened up on licensing of late is the obvious wildcard here, so they might be more likely to come from boutiques than they would have been a couple of years ago but I would be shocked if we got more than a couple of them from Warners direct.


*I know they licenced Kane, but they also did a UHD themselves for international markets and I'm not sure the same approach would fly with those films, so it would potentially be a case of them only having boutique releases which makes it a bit different.

Treasure of the Sierra Madre is absolutely top-tier iconic stuff. Huston's most acclaimed film, just below The Maltese Falcon, which got a UHD by WHV, and both star Bogart. Treasure is certainly MUCH higher than the likes of High Society, which got a UHD from WAC. And I don't see Forbidden Planet as being any less iconic and popular than The Curse of Frankenstein (Forbidden Planet has been for a while strongly rumored for UHD). Your takes on how big, iconic and popular these films are baffle and bewilder me completely.

[Alvarius]

So far all of WAC's 4K movies have been in widescreen and in color, so it may be the lack of these qualities, and not a failure to pass the critical bar, that prevents most of the movies on that list from being considered for a 4K release, at least any time soon. Personally, I too am eagerly awaiting 4Ks of Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Strangers on a Train, and The Adventures of Robin Hood. I'm optimistic that they'll come out eventually, from somewhere.

[koberulz]

Originally Posted by aladdin123

Treasure os certainly MUCH higher than the likes of High Society, which got a UHD from WAC. And I don't see Forbidden Planet as being any less iconic and popular than The Curse of Frankenstein

Curse probably wouldn't have happened without Hammer's involvement. High Society was a VistaVision film that hadn't even had a Blu-ray release.

[sherlockjr]

Originally Posted by aladdin123

What label do you think will eventually release UHDs of Warner titles like The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Big Sleep, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, White Heat, Strangers on a Train, Forbidden Planet, Doctor Zhivago, Ryan's Daughter?

WAC? WHV? Criterion? Arrow?

4K's of those desireable titles would depend on the state of the available film elements. If the elements that are usable for new scans are multi-generation down dupes without close to 4K of picture information, what would be the point? Effectively just a fancy upscale at more money?

Unfortunately those popular films are the ones that are least likely to have high quality OCNs or generationally close to it, since the original elements would have been frequently retrieved from the vaults for decades to strike new prints. The color films mentioned are, I believe, all Eastmancolor which likely means the OCNs have faded to unusable for color and if there weren't good quality color seps made early on a 4K will be really tough.

Finally... I have no idea how these genuine classics would sell. If BD releases of some of them indicate not a whole lot, there may not be much interest from any label, including WAC, of creating 4Ks since those are much more expensive to create than BDs while selling less for many titles. That equation may be different for these well-known classics though.

[aladdin123]

Originally Posted by koberulz

Curse probably wouldn't have happened without Hammer's involvement. High Society was a VistaVision film that hadn't even had a Blu-ray release.

High Society could easily have been just a blu-ray as well, even though it's VistaVision. Blu-ray only would have been much cheaper to make.

Many of Warner's restorations happen with significant support from Scorsese's The Film Foundation, to both big and obscure films.

Originally Posted by sherlockjr

4K's of those desireable titles would depend on the state of the available film elements. If the elements that are usable for new scans are multi-generation down dupes without close to 4K of picture information, what would be the point? Effectively just a fancy upscale at more money?

Unfortunately those popular films are the ones that are least likely to have high quality OCNs or generationally close to it, since the original elements would have been frequently retrieved from the vaults for decades to strike new prints. The color films mentioned are, I believe, all Eastmancolor which likely means the OCNs have faded to unusable for color and if there weren't good quality color seps made early on a 4K will be really tough.

Finally... I have no idea how these genuine classics would sell. If BD releases of some of them indicate not a whole lot, there may not be much interest from any label, including WAC, of creating 4Ks since those are much more expensive to create than BDs while selling less for many titles. That equation may be different for these well-known classics though.

The Adventures of Robin Hood is 3-strip Technicolor, and a title that George Feltenstein has been pushing for years.

Forbidden Planet has been strongly rumored for UHD for years.

Doctor Zhivago is one that, if RAH is truly right, then we won't get a UHD because the elements are that horrible. I think he once said that the old 4K restoration, which is on blu-ray, is really the best that can be done. A film victim of its own gigantic success.

Since prints of black-and-white films in the 1940s were struck from the negative, a lack of a negative can still yield a great restoration if a good nitrate print survive (see the UHD of Casablanca). I don't know about Treasure of the Sierra Madre's elements, but this site's review of WAC's The Big Sleep says that the negative was lost, and the restoration was made from a preservation fine-grain master positive made from the original nitrate negative.

[koberulz]

Originally Posted by aladdin123

High Society could easily have been just a blu-ray as well, even though it's VistaVision. Blu-ray only would have been much cheaper to make.

Okay, but it being VistaVision is a huge part of the reason they felt a 4K could be justified. And not having even been on Blu, a new restoration was needed anyway. That doesn't apply to titles like Treasure or Sleep.

[aladdin123]

Originally Posted by koberulz

Okay, but it being VistaVision is a huge part of the reason they felt a 4K could be justified. And not having even been on Blu, a new restoration was needed anyway. That doesn't apply to titles like Treasure or Sleep.

Treasure is almost as iconic as The Maltese Falcon, which got a UHD by WHV. Treasure will get a UHD eventually. If not Warner, but Criterion. And there have been Warner films that Criterion released in UHD both in the US and in the UK, like Mildred Pierce and The Roaring Twenties.

I have no doubt that High Society only got a UHD because it's VistaVision.

[koberulz]

Originally Posted by aladdin123

Treasure is almost as iconic as The Maltese Falcon, which got a UHD by WHV.

This is quite simply not true.

[JasonMichael]

Originally Posted by koberulz

This is quite simply not true.

Yes, The Maltese Falcon definitely got a UHD release.

[aladdin123]

Originally Posted by koberulz

This is quite simply not true.

Okay then. There's always Criterion, which has released in the US and the UK UHDs of Warner films that are much less known than Treasure of The Serra Madre, like Mildred Pierce and The Roaring Twenties. Let's also not forget how much The Film Foundation gives support to these restorations, from major films to obscure ones.

[JasonMichael]

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is ranked at #154 on IMDB's greatest movies of all time.
On the American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Movies it's at #30.
It's pretty frickin' iconic.

[Brad1963]

Originally Posted by aladdin123

What label do you think will eventually release UHDs of Warner titles like The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Big Sleep, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, White Heat, Strangers on a Train, Forbidden Planet, Doctor Zhivago, Ryan's Daughter?

WAC? WHV? Criterion? Arrow?

I'm almost certain that WAC will release The Adventures of Robin Hood at some point, based on George Feltenstein indicatimg that it is something he is pursuing.

I'd love to have The Treasure of Sierra Madre in 4k, it is amongst my top 4 films of all time.

[darrellmaclaine]

The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre is widely considered to be one of the greatest, most respected and influential American films ever made and it's bizarre to argue it isn't.

[DimitriL]

Originally Posted by aladdin123

The Adventures of Robin Hood is 3-strip Technicolor, and a title that George Feltenstein has been pushing for years.

Forbidden Planet has been strongly rumored for UHD for years.

I feel like Robin Hood will go to Criterion, if only because it was a key early Criterion LD title and I think they like getting back titles that were key to establishing their credibility back in the day, at least when they can. (The Graduate is one that comes to mind.) King Kong, too.

Forbidden Planet is another one - and they have at least one new extra from the channel they could include featuring Ben Burtt - but I feel like that's less likely to come from a boutique.