The Criterion Collection

[MifuneFan]

Originally Posted by randian

Is the iTunes edition of Detour really the Criterion version? iTunes say the studio isn't Criterion, but Producers Releasing Corporation. I also noticed that Elevator to the Gallows, The Naked City, and Le Samourai also don't have Criterion as the studio.

Does it show Criterion's cover art?

[randian]

Originally Posted by MifuneFan

Does it show Criterion's cover art?

Looks like it, but iTunes (on my Mac) doesn't have the C in the upper left corner.

[Sommerswerd]

I really hate this plastic tab on the Criterion Blu-ray cases. I have received quite a number of damaged booklets/leaflets caused by it. What purpose does it even serve?

[KingOfBunnies]

So, I have some titles with very light scratches. You can only see them if you have light shining on them. Will that affect playback? I might test them just in case, but I have no deep scratches.

[styrofoamboats]

Originally Posted by Sommerswerd

I really hate this plastic tab on the Criterion Blu-ray cases. I have received quite a number of damaged booklets/leaflets caused by it. What purpose does it even serve?

This is like 50% of my recent purchases lol. One thing they could learn from Indicator is to put those booklets in with the spine facing out so they are less likely to be damaged by the friction of that plastic tab.

[bipbop13]

Another way to solve the problem, stop giving you picky bastards booklets!

[chocolat]

Originally Posted by acnorca

My Kino and Criterion orders arrived today.

this is hands down one of the best hauls I have ever seen on these forums just based on film selection alone

[KubrickKurasawa]

Originally Posted by bipbop13

Another way to solve the problem, stop giving you picky bastards booklets!

LOOOL Good one

[NeoNical]

With the big news of Demme's Silence of the Lambs (1991), should I consider buying the Criterion Blu-ray in fear of it going OOP. Really low on cash but the 4K UHD announcement of this is making me think this is the same situation as the Paramount titles.

[chocolat]

Originally Posted by NeoNical

With the big news of Demme's Silence of the Lambs (1991), should I consider buying the Criterion Blu-ray in fear of it going OOP. Really low on cash but the 4K UHD announcement of this is making me think this is the same situation as the Paramount titles.

you have 3 months til the UHD. Get the criterion in the meantime.

[RBBrittain]

Originally Posted by NeoNical

With the big news of Demme's Silence of the Lambs (1991), should I consider buying the Criterion Blu-ray in fear of it going OOP. Really low on cash but the 4K UHD announcement of this is making me think this is the same situation as the Paramount titles.

Don't know yet if the Criterion is going OOP (good possibility as the Kino Lorber UHDBD includes BD), but if you can grab it this month during the B&N 50% off sale now is definitely the time; Amazon PMed them on Lambs. Still, it hurts that the newer half of my original "first Criterion UHDBDs" prediction is now off the table, on top of Citizen Kane probably beating out It Happened One Night for the older half. Makes me wonder if Criterion sat on its posterior too long to make a dent in UHDBD.

[StarDestroyer52]

Originally Posted by randian

Is the iTunes edition of Detour really the Criterion version? iTunes say the studio isn't Criterion, but Producers Releasing Corporation. I also noticed that Elevator to the Gallows, The Naked City, and Le Samourai also don't have Criterion as the studio.

Producers Releasing Corporation was the name of the Poverty Row studio that released Detour way back in 1945.

[Blacknapkins]

Originally Posted by Axl Rose

What is up with Criterion and scratched discs lately? Am i the only one having issues? It's becoming rare that i don't get a scratched disc.

A couple of mine have light surface scratches that you can only see
When light is shining on them

[StarDestroyer52]

Originally Posted by RBBrittain

Don't know yet if the Criterion is going OOP (good possibility as the Kino Lorber UHDBD includes BD), but if you can grab it this month during the B&N 50% off sale now is definitely the time; Amazon PMed them on Lambs. Still, it hurts that the newer half of my original "first Criterion UHDBDs" prediction is now off the table, on top of Citizen Kane probably beating out It Happened One Night for the older half. Makes me wonder if Criterion sat on its posterior too long to make a dent in UHDBD.

Yeah, it's too early to know if SoTL is going OOP, but if you want to grab the Criterion now is the time as B&N has there 50% off sale and Amazon is pricematching it. So far the Criterion SoTL is still in print, if they lost the rights to it and other MGM titles one wonder if they will make an announcement about it like when the Studiocanal films left.

[RBBrittain]

Originally Posted by randian

Is the iTunes edition of Detour really the Criterion version? iTunes say the studio isn't Criterion, but Producers Releasing Corporation. I also noticed that Elevator to the Gallows, The Naked City, and Le Samourai also don't have Criterion as the studio.

PRC (now defunct) was Detour's original studio; it's now in the public domain so iTunes coulda gotten it from anyone. Even its Wikipedia article includes a full video since it's PD.

[RBBrittain]

Originally Posted by StarDestroyer52

Yeah, it's too early to know if SoTL is going OOP, but if you want to grab the Criterion now is the time as B&N has there 50% off sale and Amazon is pricematching it. So far the Criterion SoTL is still in print, if they lost the rights to it and other MGM titles one wonder if they will make an announcement about it like when the Studiocanal films left.

I don't know about the other MGM Criterions, but MGM has a lot of titles out there with UHD streaming versions that aren't Daniel Craig Bond films (AFAIK the only UHDBDs MGM ever released under its own name, and that was under the old Fox deal), from multiple Best Picture winners (West Side Story, Rocky, Platoon, Rain Man, and of course Lambs) to all the pre-Craig Eon Bond films plus non-Eon Never Say Never Again -- and that doesn't include its Best Pictures not yet on UHD streaming, from Marty (though its condition makes it a poor UHDBD candidate) to Dances With Wolves, or the two pre-Craig CRs. If MGM starts licensing all those to third parties for UHDBD like the Kino Lorber deal for Lambs, it could be either a godsend to Criterion or a death blow. Even the Amazon deal might not stop it as Amazon reportedly wants to keep MGM's current management for now, the folks lining up prestige new films like Respect & House of Gucci to go with Craig's exit in NTTD. (Expect CGI Leo to become a magnet for little golden guys early next year.)

[evilive]

Would be pretty rad if The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford got a 4k release from Criterion.

[chocolat]

Originally Posted by evilive

Would be pretty rad if The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford got a 4k release from Criterion.

Especially since the only thing that stopped them from releasing it on blu-ray was lack of interest.

[dvining]

Originally Posted by chocolat

Especially since the only thing that stopped them from releasing it on blu-ray was lack of interest.

I bought the Blu-ray, and I'd buy the 4K.

That totally means that it would be a huge seller.

Totally.

[RBBrittain]

Originally Posted by dvining

I bought the Blu-ray, and I'd buy the 4K.

That totally means that it would be a huge seller.

Totally.

Unless you're a buyer for a video store chain, rack jobber, distributor, etc., what any one of us is willing to buy doesn't amount to a hill of beans to either WB or Criterion; it's what customers AS A WHOLE are willing to buy. Even though one of my ancestors was supposedly a first cousin of Jesse James (though he referred to James as a common criminal), I have no interest in that film personally. Considering WB hasn't reissued it on BD since 2008 (the year after its release) except in a 2011 bundle with 1994's Wyatt Earp, there is reason to suspect WB's view about its viability is closer to mine than yours. (Hard to say about Criterion, but they would likely have to propose licensing it on terms more advantageous to WB than if WB reissued it directly.)

Edit: Let me reframe that in personal terms: I have made it clear ever since before I bought the first of my well over a thousand BDs (Dreamgirls in January 2008; still a Jennifer Hudson fan even now with Respect putting her back in the Oscar spotlight) that the top priority in my movie collection was Best Picture winners. (It's why I have an Oscar as my avatar.) WB owns all five of the remaining Best Pictures not yet on BD anywhere in the world: The Broadway Melody (1928/29), Cimarron (1930/31), The Great Ziegfeld (1936), The Life of Emile Zola (1937), and Around the World in 80 Days (1956). (Others own 1948's Hamlet, released on BD only in the UK & certain other foreign markets -- someone just posted here its UK release as a non-Criterion aside to his UK Criterion haul -- and 1980's Ordinary People, released on BD only in Australia using a transfer I myself have called garbage.) I would buy any of those on BD in a heartbeat, just like I bought 1952's The Greatest Show on Earth when it finally hit BD earlier this year. But while Paramount decided the conditions were finally right to release it as a Paramount Presents title the same day it dropped the UHDBD of Cecil B. DeMille's far more famous 1956 remake of his own The Ten Commandments, WB doesn't think my own willingness to buy them amounts to sufficient profit to overcome the significant costs of bringing them to BD, most likely due to known issues with existing negatives, prints & transfers of those films that would require significant expense to overcome even for regular BD, much less UHDBD. (The only one of those five whose OCN still exists to my knowledge is 80 Days, but both of its 65mm OCNs are known to be highly faded, probably from the years after Mike Todd's death -- Liz Taylor personally owned the film just before selling it to WB -- and thus problematic for any transfers beyond the one behind its DVD & HD streaming releases. Emile Zola is the only Best Picture whose streaming release is SD-only, most likely because even its DVD-era transfer was sub-HD; though the only one of the five originally made by WB, its path thru AAP, UA, MGM/UA & the Turner library back to WB was almost certainly harder on it than on otherwise comparable Casablanca. Likely much the same for Cimarron, an RKO box office bomb bought by MGM in the 1940's solely for the rights to its eventual 1960 remake. Broadway Melody's two-strip Technicolor sequence has survived only in B&W on all present-day prints; probably the best option for restoring it properly would be to colorize that sequence, controversial certainly but IMO no different than the BD digital restoration of Wings' original Handschiegl tinting effects.)