Criterion U.K.

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TMDaines
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Re: Criterion UK

#101 Post by TMDaines » Sun Apr 17, 2016 11:22 am

I don't necessarily disagree with the premise of that article. The only couple of people I've ever spoken to about DVD collecting IRL have both swooned over my possessing of Criterions or the label in general and seemed non-plussed over any other label, either domestic or foreign. They certainly have an overly hyped reputation in contrast to some of the British labels, whose output is now just as strong nowadays – and subjectively far more exciting. I don't think it is unfair to say that nowadays the UK market has a superior range of the publishing to the US.

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colinr0380
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Re: Criterion UK

#102 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Apr 18, 2016 6:16 am

I wouldn't disagree with you TMDaines, though I think that article could have done a little more to place Criterion in context of introducing extra features and pioneering commentary tracks than it did, as well as to mention that for at least the first couple of years of Criterion's DVD existence a lot of the discs were all region (I think it only became a given that everything would be Region 1 only around the end of 2005, though of course since that time a lot of the older discs got reissues in Region coded editions and there was always the PAL/NTSC issue that simply isn't there with Blu), the obvious exceptions being the Hollywood studio titles such as the one picked out for comment, Armageddon! A lot of that extra context is being provided in the comment section under the Guardian article (including noting that the Beastie Boys Video Anthology collection, Criterion branding and all, did turn up in the UK. It helped that it wasn't region coded in that case too!), but really it shouldn't have to fall to the comments to have to provide context lacking in the main body of an article! And that makes me think that a better article could have used the "Sony connection" it sniffily notes but then abandons in this first wave of releases to ask a bigger question of what has happened to the big studios and their backcatalogue releases on home video, and why they need boutique labels to provide care and attention (and enhanced visibility) to their libraries. Though of course it would not be one particularly new to this forum, as we've talked about it on and off for years, ever since the scaling back of Warners extra features and classics division in 2008, and the introduction of burn-on-demand discs in the US.

Anyway, I'm dipping my toe into this month's UK releases with Speedy, as that and Only Angels Have Wings are the only titles from this line up I haven't picked up yet.

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TMDaines
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Re: Criterion UK

#103 Post by TMDaines » Mon Apr 18, 2016 9:28 am

They are way too expensive for me at the moment. I won't be buying anything until they drop to a tenner or so. Too much other stuff at much better value currently. With their current price, importing them from the US as part of a B&N sale would be cheaper (provided you don't get stung by customs).

Hopefully they end rising and falling in price along with the DVDs from other British labels.

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tenia
Ask Me About My Bassoon
Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:13 am

Re: Criterion UK

#104 Post by tenia » Mon Apr 18, 2016 12:26 pm

colinr0380 wrote:And another Guardian piece, which somehow manages to make a backhanded comment in every...single...sentence!
That's actually quite a bad piece of biased work.

It's a very comptemptuous piece of work (as much for Criterion than their customers), singling out every single possible limitation of the UK venture, but even of the existing US catalog... and then also stupid things such as "an army of devotees more than willing to pay top whack" or "Criterion – contrary to popular belief – is not in fact a heaven-sent guardian of the cinematic arts, but rather an earthly organisation with financial and logistical obligations".

The conclusion of the article and its rather short length makes me wonder what the Guardian wants to convey with this article.
"Hey guys, why don't we make an article to spit on Criterion's venture in the UK ? It can be short and biased, we don't care".

I usually like what the Guardian is doing, especially with their long-read article about social or political matters. But in this case, it's exactly the opposite : it's extremely superficial ("DVD" ? Really ? No mention of a single UK competitor like Arrow, Eureka, the BFI, Third Window, Second Sight ?), without a single objective element.

They of course picked out Armaggeddon, though it could be debated that Michael Bay's movie, while being what it is in terms of cinematographical quality, actually is a rather defining movie for the 90s-00s, but is again a very obvious choice to rebute the moral values of Criterion choices of movies ("oh they released Armaggeddon, so they can't even stick to their own slogan ! booo !").
TMDaines wrote:They are way too expensive for me at the moment. I won't be buying anything until they drop to a tenner or so.
I'm actually wondering if they will drop in prices more than they do in the US.
However, even at £18 each, it's still cheaper for me to buy the UK releases than the US ones (mostly thanks to the much cheaper shipping fees to France). Plus, the deliveries will be faster too.

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Alphonse Tram
Joined: Tue Nov 25, 2014 11:32 am

Re: Criterion UK

#105 Post by Alphonse Tram » Mon Apr 18, 2016 1:18 pm

Here's the author on Twitter, just before the article was posted. Is he even old enough to watch an 18 rated film?
Charlie Lyne wrote:Just tapping out my latest anti-Criterion screed.
Image

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Alphonse Tram
Joined: Tue Nov 25, 2014 11:32 am

Re: Criterion UK

#106 Post by Alphonse Tram » Mon Apr 18, 2016 1:25 pm

Ah, this is the guy behind the 'Paint Drying' film sent to the BBFC.

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RossyG
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Re: Criterion UK

#107 Post by RossyG » Mon Apr 18, 2016 1:33 pm

The "UNT" has fallen off his t-shirt.

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Ashirg
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Re: Criterion UK

#108 Post by Ashirg » Mon Apr 18, 2016 2:19 pm

He's 24 and already has a retrospective planned at Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema...

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movielocke
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Re: Criterion UK

#109 Post by movielocke » Mon Apr 18, 2016 2:23 pm

TMDaines wrote:They are way too expensive for me at the moment. I won't be buying anything until they drop to a tenner or so. Too much other stuff at much better value currently. With their current price, importing them from the US as part of a B&N sale would be cheaper (provided you don't get stung by customs).

Hopefully they end rising and falling in price along with the DVDs from other British labels.
I actually think the long term trend as disc sales continue to decline is retrenchment to battle cost deflation which has the ancillary benefit of propping up streaming prices. Thus you see the Warner Archive, for instance, retaining the $20 price point which in the long run becomes the defacto new price floor as fewer and fewer catalog titles are issued to physical stores the years-in-the-making supply glut filling the $5 bins is eventually absorbed and that price point dies. As a result the deflationary spiral of physical media is halted and the price floor moves up to a sustainable point.

As physical copies become scarcer the ever increasingly niche market that desires physical copy places more value on that characteristic, thus supporting the premium price point of the physical copy, prices probably don't get in an inflationary spiral because the content disseminators do not want to accelerate the shrinking of an already contracting market.

Because the wider populace then knows that the physical copy is the 'high end' version, they expect the streaming or download price to be pegged to the physical copy. Thus lifting the price floor of the physical copy above that $5 bin price then also raises the potential price floor of a digital copy.

But all this is relatively long term thinking, five to fifteen years in the making. Perhaps criterion's list prices will come down, but in 18 years in DVD operation in the US, their list prices have not really come down, though they did institute one permanent change the prices of some of their low feature back catalog titles from the first few years of DVD issuance.

On the other hand, spending $39.99 on a criterion dvd in 1998 is the equivalent of spending $58.42 on a criterion dvd in 2016, so inflation has eroded the price point by nearly fifty percent in 18 years.

So given that physical media is transitioning to a premium/niche market and criterion's brand is issuing premium versions for said, I would not expect them to lower prices.

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Paul Moran
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Re: Criterion UK

#110 Post by Paul Moran » Mon Apr 18, 2016 4:26 pm

Perhaps a UK retailer will run "50% Off" promos, as B&N does in the USA.

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perkizitore
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Re: Criterion UK

#111 Post by perkizitore » Mon Apr 18, 2016 5:05 pm

HMV would make sense, although I hope they will have started shipping internationally by then!

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Ribs
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Re: Criterion UK

#112 Post by Ribs » Mon Apr 18, 2016 5:39 pm

Criterion have finally put up a blog post on their website about this, and say new title announcements for the UK will come around the 25th each month.

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TMDaines
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Re: Criterion UK

#113 Post by TMDaines » Mon Apr 18, 2016 6:05 pm

movielocke wrote:I actually think the long term trend as disc sales continue to decline is retrenchment to battle cost deflation which has the ancillary benefit of propping up streaming prices. Thus you see the Warner Archive, for instance, retaining the $20 price point which in the long run becomes the defacto new price floor as fewer and fewer catalog titles are issued to physical stores the years-in-the-making supply glut filling the $5 bins is eventually absorbed and that price point dies. As a result the deflationary spiral of physical media is halted and the price floor moves up to a sustainable point.
You can get WA Blu-rays for miles cheaper than $20. Who on earth is paying that much for them?!
movielocke wrote:So given that physical media is transitioning to a premium/niche market and criterion's brand is issuing premium versions for said, I would not expect them to lower prices.
I'm not interested in their list price because it is utterly meaningless from my perspective as a consumer. All I care about is how low the likes of Amazon, Zavvi and eventually Fopp sell them for. If the Crits somehow stay at £17.99, I've got better things to spend money on, especially when you can buy the rest of the normal releases from the top UK labels for less than a tenner a few months in.

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FrauBlucher
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Re: Criterion UK

#114 Post by FrauBlucher » Mon Apr 18, 2016 6:09 pm

Ribs wrote:Criterion have finally put up a blog post on their website about this, and say new title announcements for the UK will come around the 25th each month.
So, the 26th huh?

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perkizitore
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Re: Criterion UK

#115 Post by perkizitore » Mon Apr 18, 2016 6:12 pm

More like the 28th, I fully expect UK announcements to come 10 days later than the US!

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colinr0380
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Re: Criterion UK

#116 Post by colinr0380 » Tue Apr 19, 2016 3:39 pm

I've just received my copy of Speedy and thought I'd throw up a comparison of the UK cover to the US version. Here's the US cover (taken from Chris's packaging pictures:
Image
Image

And here is the UK version of the cover and disc image with minor changes to accommodate the BBFC logo, though as mentioned earlier the spine has been allowed to remain BBFC logo free!:
Image
Image

The inside cover image and the booklet seem to be exactly the same, and the UK disc even has the usual circular blue "Blu-ray Special Edition" sticker logo that we all know and love!

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TMDaines
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Re: Criterion UK

#117 Post by TMDaines » Tue Apr 19, 2016 6:28 pm

The fact that the BBFC logo is so tightly in the corner makes it even more noticeable than it otherwise would be. Don't think I have seen another release place it there.

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Drucker
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Re: Criterion UK

#118 Post by Drucker » Tue Apr 19, 2016 6:39 pm

Mild slapstick? Thank god those 11 year olds won't see it.

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kidc85
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Re: Criterion UK

#119 Post by kidc85 » Tue Apr 19, 2016 6:57 pm

It looks like it was something in the Extras that caused it to be rated a '12'. I'd love to know what, but the BBFC site isn't that detailed for it.

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knives
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Re: Criterion UK

#120 Post by knives » Tue Apr 19, 2016 7:06 pm

Isn't this the commentary where the granddaughter mentions Lloyd flipping the bird? That might be it.

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swo17
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Re: Criterion UK

#121 Post by swo17 » Tue Apr 19, 2016 7:20 pm

Not the granddaughter, but one of the commentators mentions that.

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Alphonse Tram
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Re: Criterion UK

#122 Post by Alphonse Tram » Wed Apr 20, 2016 3:56 am

The film itself is rated 'U' - 'Suitable for all'. There must be some swearing in the extras somewhere, as it's the extras which have earned the 12 rating.

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colinr0380
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Re: Criterion UK

#123 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Apr 20, 2016 5:20 am

In cases where the extra features up the overall rating of a disc beyond the feature itself, some labels put a comment in that advice section on the back cover saying something along the lines of "The main feature on this disc is classified 'U'. The extra content has raised the overall classification of this disc to '12'". So I think the BBFC allows for adding that extra clarification in situations like this. But in an already crowded cover it might be difficult to put an extra sentence in the BBFC classification box to say that.

I guess it would be more of an issue if Criterion were specifically targeting a mass market children's audience with their disc (it would be more of a shock if the big home video release of the latest Disney film such as Frozen was pushed into a 12 rating by its extras! They just couldn't stop the actors swearing on that darn commentary track! [-X ) than the older cinephile audience who will likely be less affected by the more restrictive rating.

EDIT: And now having watched Speedy, it seems as if the brief moment of Lloyd flipping the bird at himself in the film has now been caught by the BBFC (maybe just through the issue being highlighted in the extra features, as mentioned above, or perhaps the extra clarity from the Blu-ray!) and has bumped the classification of the film up.
Last edited by colinr0380 on Sun Jun 05, 2016 10:01 am, edited 2 times in total.

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MichaelB
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Re: Criterion UK

#124 Post by MichaelB » Wed Apr 20, 2016 5:28 am

A case in point: Arrow's edition of Blanche. The film itself is a strong PG, but the disc is an 18 because of the accompanying hour-long Walerian Borowczyk interview that covers his entire career, very much including the post-Blanche era.

But we decided that sales to the under-18 market would most likely be slim to nonexistent.

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solaris72
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Re: Criterion UK

#125 Post by solaris72 » Wed Apr 20, 2016 11:50 am

perkizitore wrote:More like the 28th, I fully expect UK announcements to come 10 days later than the US!
That's what we fought for in the war isn't it?

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