Have there been any updates about the relationship between the WCF and Criterion? I know A Brighter Summer Day has been entangled in rights nonsense, but I also thought Criterion was supposed to release Housemaid.

The DVD may indeed go back into print, but this announcement seems to indicate that future Blu-ray releases will come from Image directly. Unless I'm reading this wrong...

Possibly, but don't forget about this precedent.

True.

any chance that the Wim Wenders Road Trilogy will be a boxset or just individual releases? i'm hoping for the latter.

I don't think that there's any reason to believe that Criterion has anything beyond Alice in the Cities right now. I believe that guesses about the other two coming were due to some misinterpretations of Facebook comments that actually only referred to Alice.

There's been a real proliferation of 'trilogies' lately. Where did this Wenders 'Road Trilogy' come from? And, more to the point, which of his many road movies are excluded from it (and why)?

Wenders considers Alice in the Cities, The Wrong Move, and Kings of the Road to be his "Road Movie Trilogy." He refers to them as such on his official website, which you can see at the bottom of this page for Alice.

I guess trilogies are a great marketing hook. It's a shame he couldn't have shoehorned Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty Kick in there as well so there was a greater incentive to get it released!

Thinking about what happens with Life of Brian makes my bwaaain huurt.


I definitely asked about the whole trilogy, and I received the cryptic response of "no fun trying to keep secrets from you people." I know what I meant, but I'm still not sure what they meant.


In other news, the Forthcoming List only lists an SD release of House-oo. Not making this one Blu would be a shame, even if I read elsewhere on the forum that the first reel doesn't look as good as the others.

I will. I just caught up, surprised at the furor over my comment. The movie has a particular tonal palatte that I think bluray will really show off the nuance of. What's more, it doesn't really make sense to buy dvds of new release movies when I have bluray capacity. I've got more movies than I need and many I don't get around to watching for a long while. So it's no great problem to put off buying a new release film like Everlasting Moments on the hopes that it will come out in blu down the line (still waiting on Z, probably a lost cause, but oh well, I've got dozens of unwatched movies I own and netflix and tcm to turn to instead). I do buy things I feel will NEVER be released on blu, such as the Golden Age of Television, all the eclipse sets and Make Way for tomorrow, for example. I vote with my dollars, so to speak. I spend far more on theatrical screenings a year than I do buying home video, although I've watched only about fifty movies so far this year (really low for me) forty of them have been in a theatre, most of those repertory screenings. So to me, it is less about having it to watch in my own home as it is about being able to watch it at all. I don't really ever expect to see Everlasting Moments in a theatre again, so when I do watch it again, I'd like it to be closer in quality to the film experience than what dvd offers. DVD is very very good, but my career has me working with compressed video every day, I see compression in blurays too--and in films that have had 2k Digital intermediates in the theatre, and I simply much prefer watching a 24hz 1080p image because it does not distract me as much as DVDs do.

Aren't all the Rudiger Vogler movies connected in spirit, since his characters have the same surname in all of them?

"You people"? What's that supposed to mean, Criterion? Paging Armond White....

What do you mean 'you people'?

What's the film in that photo Criterion just posted on twitter?

Criterion : Anybody recognize the screenshot? RT @benlim: http://twitpic.com/1a8o5m - Screening the HD master of an upcoming release...

Again, can't say where I got this tidbit of information, but it looks like Criterion will be releasing Ernst Lubitsch's Design for Living and the horror classic, Island of Lost Souls. I haven't seen either one, but they both seem like exciting releases!

"Island" has been more or less assumed for a while now, has it not?

Bless you EDF. You're not only elegant and dandy, but a fount of wonderful news lately. Island of Lost Souls is long-awaited acquisition that many have been pushing for for years. Uni and Criterion's evasiveness on this title certainly pointed in this direction, but it's great to have confirmation. Somewhere out there, HerrSchreck's head just exploded. Hopefully, they've been able to get hold of some decent elements.

More Lubitsch is always wonderful too. Design for Living was the only title I wanted from that ugly Gary Cooper box. I'll gladly pay more than the cost of the box for a single well-appointed edition of the film.

I think Criterion confirmed Island of Lost Souls on Facebook, but told us not to hold our breath over it - so called problems with the print. Any more classic American films is highly welcome. What I think the collection needs more of.

Somehow I missed that assumption. I think my head's getting ready to explode, too...

Island has been years in the making Now if only The Devils would come out of indefinite limbo as well.

I'm excited to see Island as Schreck has mentioned it as a favorite. Considering his praise for City of the Dead, I'd say it's worth a look. More horror in CC is always a good thing. I hope that they can get James Harvey or Scott Eyman for the Lubitsch disc. I keep having the dream that WB finally releases Devils uncut with extras, but tells nobody about it and sticks it on the Archives dump.

So I take it that the Cooper box with Design for Living is out of print? If so, people should try to track it down for the sake of the bizarre masterpiece Peter Ibbetson, which would probably get my vote for strangest Hollywood movie of the 1930s. If that's now up for grabs I'd love Criterion to get their hands on it, what with those Cocteaus slipping out of their fingers.

I would agree that Peter Ibbetson is strange. Despite Buñuel's endorsement, I've never been able to warm to it. Part of that is I think Cooper is miscast. The other part is that I tend to have allergic reactions to heavy servings of the supernatural. Design for Living, on the other hand, is fabulous Lubitsch and I would love to see it get the Criterion treatment.