Yeah seems like New Yorker Films is coming back to the dvd world nicely. I am rooting for them as for me, the films they have (from all over the world I might add) far outweighs anything else (fancy artwork, etc).

I agree and much like Kino in recent years it sounds like they are doing better transferwise than before. The price is what kills it for me, but I try to pick up what I can.

It's not that your point here is inherently unreasonable, but you started exactly the same argument at release time last month, and it got discussed, and then it died out because we'd addressed the subject. Do you need to bring it up again every time Criterion doesn't release something?

That's fair matrixschmatrix. I won't bring it up again, as it's obviously not important to the majority here anyways. But the petty remarks to my opinions (not by you, keep that in mind) on a subject in which you also agree is fair and reasonable is funny to me, when we have a continuation thread on how lame we feel someone's artwork to a cover is. I also (since I started, might as well say something) find it funny the continuing bashing of other site's posters (Blu-ray.com or Facebook being this past day's hot topic on here) because the lack of or bubble they like to live in with tastes in film, yet when I bring up a topic that hasn't been touched on pretty much at all on dvd, it's crickets on here, unless I receive a smart remark (where are all the "film fans" that acts above everyone else in knowledge when I bring up something like South American cinema?). I'm a member of both of those sites (and I could care less about films from Malick or Nolan or whatever most believe they always talk about), so what does that make me? Less knowledgeable about film compared to the majority here? I think not. Yes there are some posters on those sites (what site doesn't have these) where you might bang your head on the keyboard over, but is it fair to dismiss everyone on those sites? "Film lover's" priorities are confusing on here for the most part. There are so many wonderful people here, yet I feel some need to act like there is a ranking system or something on who's opinion is of more importance and make "high five" remarks to people that they THINK can't "hang" or some other petty reason (I have been guilty of this myself on those other sites in the past to those posters and I apologize to them.). But like I said, I will be sure to not bring my opinions about this subject into this thread again. I have strong opinions about what the company that this forum is pretty much about releases (who doesn't), so I might be a little repetitive in those opinions. But I stand strong on them and others do with their own. I feel I put those opinions on what really matters and that is the love of said films and not the constant bashing or remarks on others.

Sounds like you might just be too paranoid to post on a DVD message board.

my point..............(another point is to go back to page 38 and read the responses to the poster "duck duck")

Hey instead of keep posting smart remarks why not reply back to the questioning of your "plenty" statement that me and Gregory responded about. I am interested in the plenty as I would like to purchase them, instead of going in circles. You can play "high five" with your buds in the other threads with your "but it's not from South America" chuckles later if you want. And I'm sorry if I come across harsh to you as I don't really want to fight anyone over the internet as I don't know you. You most likely are a pretty cool person, and I just always feel bad if I get into it with someone. So sorry.

I understand the frustration you feel over the various issues you bring up about both Criterion and talking about certain topics here, which can lead to unconstructive wisecracks. There are people I admittedly want punch in the face at the time (and I say that with all respect, and I still love you guys and gals, most of you anyways.) But as someone who has been around here for over 10 years now (the hell?!) I can understand why certain members get annoyed when certain topics keep coming up.

The complaints about the lack of certain countries or regions has been an issue since the very early days of this forum, and I've seen it brought up over and over again as have many other members and it's a topic that's been covered quite a bit despite what you may think, though granted it was primarily many, many years ago. I remember complaints about the lack of Spanish films, Middle-Eastern films, South African films, Mexican films, and so on and so forth. I agree that it's frustrating they seem to concentrate on certain countries but I think a lot of it still has to do with rights issues and the relationships they have with studios around the world; I'm sure the one reason they release so many Japanese films is because of Janus Films and their relationship with Toho, Nikatsu, and the like, so they have quick and easy access to them. I can imagine negotiating rights with another studio is not an easy task and that may be a big issue with certain films from other areas of the world, especially if another distributor already has them here. They've been releasing a lot of American films lately as well, but hell, if the MGM vault opened up to me I would go after them, too. MGM going tits-up is the best thing to ever happen if it was the only way I could get a sweet edition of Sweet Smell of Success on Blu-ray.

But then in general I guess people get annoyed because someone is always complaining about something and it does get irksome. I remember when people would complain there wasn't enough Ozu, with people especially miffed they release all this Kurosawa "tripe" but still haven't released Tokyo Story, the nerve! Then people complained "ohmigod, could they stop releasing all these Ozu films!?" Oh, and it still astonishes me when people get excited about a Seijun Suzuki film getting released because there was a time where people on this forum were ready to murder because another one of his films was coming out from Criterion. And then there's the "why won't they release what I want". There were complaints they didn't release any silents, and with them rolling out more, I can't wait for the day where people complain they don't release "talkies" anymore.

Cover art is really all we have left to bitch about without ruffling too many feathers, so that's probably why it's always the big thing on release day and has become a sort of tradition. I'm actually disappointed this month because I like them all, even Lonesome's.

And I think many here always pick on Blu-ray.com (a little unfair I think) and Facebook (probably deserved) because I won't let them make fun of another Criterion forum site anymore, so you can blame that on me.

Thank you chris for responding in a understandable and informative way without any wisecracks. With that I can understand being annoyed by certain topics (I can't when the response is being kind of a punk to said poster, it just stirs the pot even more I think.).

And the Cover art "bashing" is only harmful to the artists, so it doesn't bother me personally (just used by me as a comparison). The little jabs on other sites is harmless, but does go overboard here and there. No need to blame that on you.

Thank you again for your response and like I said this place is great and filled with wonderful people, just alot of wisecracks and putdowns by some, but it's the internet and to be expected I guess.

Hardly surprising someone gets a bit upset when the response is not 'we know it's a problem but must we keep talking about it?' but instead 'plenty of South American films have been released'; an unsubstantiated remark, challenged and then followed up with a gratuitous crack on the Lonesome thread, and all from a poster who has no apparent interest either in South American cinema or in silents [edit: correct me if I'm wrong, obviously].

I don't mean that as a criticism, believe it or not, as by many people's standards my own interests are pretty limited. But maybe that's why I don't crash into discussions that I have no interest in to make provocative comments and then pretend they were jokes. Except now, obviously, and this is no doubt destined for the infighting sub-forum. But about 85% of mfunk's posts irresistibly remind me of that Onion column, Come On, Lighten Up, I'm Just Being A Total Asshole. It's frustrating because he isn't quite a troll (or indeed an asshole) and I don't quite want him to leave or be banned or anything (it was nice having a back-and-forth about Drag Me to Hell the other week), but it gets pretty oppressive when every other thread seems to feature him in a prominent role, winding people up [edit: apologies for the exaggeration... 85% may not be a precise figure either...].

Really, you're better of ignoring mfunk9876. He pretty much always struggles to contribute anything other than a one line smart arsed remark. It gets on my tits too.

I want that on my tombstone!

A couple points to consider:

1. Established canonical South American films make up, what, 1% of the established world canon? (Obviously these terms are impossible to objectively define, but consider the TSPDT Top 1000--it currently includes nine films at least partly credited to a South American country, one of which is the CCd Orfeu Negro.) So thinking purely in terms of filling quotas, we might expect to see one release from that continent every two years or so, and out of 624 mainline and 35 Eclipse releases, we might expect to find about six such releases in the Collection by now. By this measure, whether or not you count the Camus film, the CC does look lacking. So I think SpiderBaby's point is a valid one to make every so often if a long enough period of time is being considered (perhaps once every couple years). But to hold every month's announcements (of maybe seven new titles) to this standard of quota-filling is ludicrous, and only cheapens the argument by transferring it into an easy punchline.

2. A fundamental flaw with thinking purely in terms of quotas: When Criterion does eventually announce a release from, say, Brazil, in all likelihood, it will be a set devoted to the Brazilian equivalent of Mira Nair.

3. Given Criterion's upfront commitment to technical quality, I suspect that the reason they've shied away from certain regions is the lack of availability of decent source materials and/or the expense required to bring them up to expected standards versus the number of units they're realistically likely to shift.

Criterion has also neglected central/eastern Europe, certainly by comparison with Britain and western European titles, but masters from Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and the former Yugoslavia were notoriously poor until very very recently, and there still aren't acceptable masters available for a huge number of canonical titles (Andrzej Munk's Passenger, for instance). I think it's borderline scandalous that Criterion has ignored Miklós Jancsó when they've released plenty by contemporaries like Bergman, Fellini, Godard, Truffaut and even Wajda (and Jancsó was considered fully their equal in the Sixties and Seventies - just dip into any random Sight & Sound from that period) - but it's only been in the last couple of years or so that decent Jancsó masters have started to become available.

Hell, even Germany they don't show much interest in. It's literally a skimming of a few canonical directors and films. It probably largely depends on who is beating the drum for certain regions and if no members of staff have a particular interest in any particular time, region or movement then the chance of something getting released is slim-to-none.

Criterion's bread and butter has always been mid-century European art films and Japanese samurai films because that's what Janus Films distributed, and Criterion is an outgrowth of Janus Films. Remember that it took them until spine #332 just to release their first film from Spain, and #489 to release their first film from India, both countries with major film industries.

I'm sure Criterion will never tackle the golden era of Philippine film making (Bernal, Brocka et al) -- even for the Eclipse line) -- and I won't blame them a bit. As important (and as good) as some these films are, the source materials all appear to be quite poor. It's a shame -- but it's also simply a fact of life.

Which, again, is only a problem if Criterion becomes the arbiter and definition of the canon- it's true that not enough companies put out movies from South America (and I'd argue there would be more canonical South American movies on various lists if those movies were made more available) but there's no particular reason why Criterion should be automatically responsible for filling that void, any more than any particular movie should be responsible for redressing racial or gender imbalances in Hollywood.

Criterion's never been the most experimental or daring R1 label- and if anything, with stuff like Lonesome and the Hollis Frampton set, they've been improving lately. Apart from questions of rights- because of course we never know what movies Criterion would love to be able to release, but can't- it just seems like it's not necessarily Criterion's job.

For the record...

#1 - France (129 French titles total)
#2 - Japan (74)
#3 - UK (69)
#4 - Italy (44)
#8 - Hong Kong (4)
#10 - Australia (3)
#11 - Sweden (26)
#12 - USA (190)
#21 - Canada (4)
#30 - Germany/West Germany (18)
#34 - Russia/USSR (9)
#45 - Iran (2)
#47 - Norway (1)
#80 - Denmark (9)
#83 - Jamaica (1)
#130 - Czechoslovakia (4)
#133 - Netherlands (1)
#165 - Belgium (4)
#215 - Poland (4)
#301 - New Zealand (2)
#339 - Taiwan (1)
#351 - Spain (4)
#353 - Mexico (4)
#389 - Yugoslavia
#422 - China (1)
#436 - Macedonia (1)
#489 - India (2)
#502 - Austria (1)
#509 - Portugal (3)
#576 - South Korea (1)
#619 - Finland (1)

I can't vouch for the absolute accuracy of those figures (especially since my son interrupted me when I was already three figures into the US tally), but at least that gives a sense of the proportions. In addition to anything south of Mexico (unless you count Black Orpheus), major omissions include Hungary (probably the strongest European film-producing nation not represented at all), Africa, the Middle East (bar Iran) and China (the sole entry being The Last Emperor).

But that's pretty much a map of the distribution situation in Britain too - when I worked in rep cinemas in the 1990s, I daresay the stuff I programmed would have produced very similar results: it's not so much Criterion's fault as a very strong general bias in favour of the US, Japan and western Europe that goes back decades and which spans the majority of arthouse distributors. It's only post-2000 that I've had a chance to broaden my horizons really significantly, with the help of labels that either have a far more eclectic acquisition policy or of course which are based in the relevant countries themselves.

No interest or are the rights unavailable, etc? I'd like to see more German cinema as well....but I doubt that not having more than the "few canonical" movies is because of any particular in house prejudice.

I would say I did this because I was bored, but none of you would believe me...I've taken MichaelB's numbers listed above and compared them to the composition of the TSPDT Top 1000 list by country, as can be seen below. The last three graphs are zoomed in so that the small percentages can be seen more clearly. The blue bars represent the TSPDT "canon" and the red are Criterion. These results actually indicate that films from the US are rather underrepresented (as are films from Russia, India, and Taiwan) while France, Japan, the UK, and Denmark are a bit overrepresented. I say all of this of course in acknowledgment that the canon is ever shifting, impossible to define, and does not exist.

I doubt it's a problem with rights as there's relatively little released in the States between the 30s and the 70s - apart from a few canonical titles. German film doesn't have the richest history in these decades but there's still a lot of good stuff though if you shift through the chaff.

Fair question, the ones who make this list of TSPDT, have they actually seen every single film ever made? I mean it's just going in circles to say not too much South American films are in a "top" films list when you haven't even seen them. And of course a problem with that is no one releases them. What will come first, the egg or the chicken on this?

In order to lobby successfully on behalf of a particular national cinema, you need enthusiasts prepared to do the ground work, and who also have sufficient connections (even if only via a blog at first) to raise awareness.

For instance, I watch dozens of Polish films every year, both trying to keep up with new releases (over the last ten days, I watched eighteen 2011-12 releases, or about a third of the annual output) and fill in the gaps in my knowledge of the national canon - and that accumulated knowledge is then tapped by a range of people including Sight & Sound magazine, the Second Run and Arrow Academy DVD labels and the UK-based Kinoteka Polish Film Festival, plus assorted one-off commissions.

The downside is that a fair number of the films that I watch, to put it politely, aren't exactly masterpieces - but they have to be sifted through in order to dig up the gems, which often come completely out of left field. I certainly wasn't expecting Jan Komasa's The Suicide Room to be one of the strongest debuts I'd seen in years, since it looked like a teen movie at first glance, and I discovered Wojciech Smarzowski's work in similarly unpromising circumstances (any random scene from either The Wedding or The Dark House could easily pass for a gross-out comedy, but he uses ultra-black humour to make very pointed satirical comments on Poland in both the communist and capitalist eras). But at the moment I doubt non-Poles or non-specialists will have heard of either filmmaker - as far as I'm aware, none of their work has been picked up for international distribution in an English-speaking territory, which is of course the next stage and the hardest to negotiate since it involves someone being prepared to pay four or five figures for the rights.

And it's only after that that they get a chance of being accepted as part of a widely-recognised canon, which can easily take decades - Mike Atkinson's piece in the current Sight & Sound cites František Vláčil's Marketa Lazarová as a film that's long been revered at home but which has been almost entirely ignored outside the Czech Republic until it was past its 40th birthday, and would probably be ignored to this day if it hadn't been for the passionate advocacy of people like Second Run in the UK and Malavida in France, both of whose DVD releases predated the first official Czech one by several years. And then from that you gradually build up an awareness of Vláčil's work - Second Run put out two more of his films and a box set, and the Czech Centre in London sponsored a near-complete big-screen retrospective that played on both sides of the Atlantic - but it can be a glacially slow process that's driven more by enthusiasm than money.

And with very few exceptions, the kind of films that get picked up by Criterion are ones that have already got past all these stages and which have been accepted as canonical - which is much easier to achieve if you're American, British, French, Italian or Japanese because the spotlight has been turned onto those five countries for decades. Whereas Hungary is still largely terra incognita (especially if you venture beyond Miklós Jancsó and István Szabó), and Romania is still a comparative newcomer - though one that's had so much attention that I wouldn't be at all surprised if Criterion picked up a Romanian title in the not too distant future.

You can see whose lists TSPDT considers here. The intent is to aggregate the results of every credible poll of critics or filmmakers in the world. Obviously it's going to be something of a feedback loop though.

Yeah, that's the problem - to expand on the Marketa Lazarová example above, it's achieved its present status at least as much because the Czechs themselves have already canonised it as for any other reason. And if you're delving into a national cinema for the first time, or for the first time in any systematic depth, lists like the Czech critics' poll are clearly an invaluable orientation guide but can also be a straitjacket.