Options for Renting Criterion BDs and Eclipse DVDs

[swo17]

It's no secret that the big (and even not so big) rental chains have been conspiring to ruin my life of late by drastically cutting back on their purchases of new Criterion releases on Blu-ray, as well as Eclipse titles. Just to have this all out in the open, I've detailed below all of the releases for the past six months and noted where they are available for rent. This showing is frankly pathetic. If anyone has recommendations for where to rent MIA titles, or knows of any changes that need to be made to what I've shown below, please do post your suggestions here.

Netflix (lowercase n means it's available on DVD but not on Blu-ray)
Blockbuster (lowercase b means it's on the site but not available for rent--perhaps it will help the chances of it eventually becoming available if you add it to your queue)
ClassicFlix
GreenCine
Facets

January
Two-Lane Blacktop b
The Tin Drum
The Man Who Knew Too Much C
Pina Nb
Ivan's Childhood

February
The Ballad of Narayama b
The Kid with a Bike NB
On the Waterfront NC
Sansho the Bailiff N
Chronicle of a Summer

March
The Blob NbC
Ministry of Fear nC
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp C
Badlands N
Monsieur Verdoux C
A Man Escaped N

April
Gate of Hell n
Richard III C
Naked Lunch
Repo Man
Masaki Kobayashi Against the System F
Pierre Etaix

May
Band of Outsiders N
Jubal C
3:10 to Yuma C
Medium Cool
Life Is Sweet n

June
Wild Strawberries
Safety Last! C
Marketa Lazarová
Things to Come C
Shoah

[movielocke]

does Green Cine do bluray?

[swo17]

They do appear to have a modest Blu-ray selection, but the only CC Blu-rays they seem to have available are The Third Man and Chungking Express.

[Max von Mayerling]

Wow - I was aware that something like this was going on with Netflix, but this is much worse than I thought.

[swo17]

I've added Eclipse titles and availability at GreenCine to the master list. These two appear to go hand in hand--GreenCine stocks both Eclipse releases from this year so far and it's the only one that has either of them.

[Kirkinson]

Though this should in no way be construed as an endorsement of their service (which I've just canceled), Facets has most of the Eclipse sets, though what's missing seems a bit random. They still don't have Allan King or Basil Dearden, for example. And they've added Silent Naruse, but confusingly as a single title rather than as individual films, so I'm not sure what would happen if you actually tried to rent it.

[swo17]

Does Facets have any kind of a Blu-ray selection to speak of? Their genre section for Blu-ray only lists three titles.

[Kirkinson]

Not as far as I know. Just Truffaut, gorillas and pygmy elephants. My theory is they got them by mistake and figured they might as well add them to the inventory.

[swo17]

Perhaps unsurprisingly (since it's a film that only came out last year) Netflix has bothered to stock White Material on both DVD and Blu-ray. If it's a "really old film" (read: from the last 40 years), it looks like Netflix will stock the Criterion DVD but not the Blu-ray (i.e. Topsy-Turvy, Kes, Blow Out). Any older than that (i.e. The Mikado) and it might as well not even exist. Incredibly frustrating.

I should also mention that although Blockbuster doesn't currently have any March or April releases available for rent, they do have nearly all of the Criterion Blu-rays released during this period (and indeed, most of the upcoming April and May releases) in their system at least. The typical pattern is that they will show up in your queue as becoming available on release date, then on the release date the status changes to "on order," then after staying this way for a month or so, they will become "unavailable." (This just happened to Yi Yi.) I don't know why they even bother paying someone to list all of these releases on their site if they're never going to purchase copies to make available for rent, but there I go ascribing logic to Blockbuster's business model.

Perhaps though if enough people add these films to their Blockbuster queues, some of them will eventually become available for rent...

[Perkins Cobb]

My fear is that Blockbuster's bankruptcy caused a shutdown on the purchase of catalog titles around the beginning of the year. They don't have the Shout Factory Corman releases from January or February yet. Hopefully if Dish tries to revive them, the cash will start to flow again.

[MyNameCriterionForum]

Can we somehow consolidate/gather the unavailable CC titles from the two other Netflix threads, and keep the tally post above at the top of the thread? It's not just Criterion BD's and Eclipse DVDs, as most of us know it's also a great many Criterion mainline DVDs which are unavailable, or only available for a pathetically short time (some of the Costa set, By Brakhage 2, etc.).

Actually, ideally, I'd like to see a list like the above for all important but missing titles, by studio or company. Perhaps it could also be noted whether a particular disc is OOP, etc.

[MyNameCriterionForum]

From a brief glance at the "saved" section of my DVD queue, these are unavailable:

A Safe Place
By Brakhage: An Anthology: Vol. 2
Colossal Youth
Drive, He Said

[MyNameCriterionForum]

I beg your pardon, I just realized this thread is for highlighting where these discs *are* available. My Bad.

[swo17]

I beg your pardon, I just realized this thread is for highlighting where these discs *are* available. My Bad.

No worries. But yeah, I try to rent most of Criterion's new releases so I figured while I'm looking this stuff up anyway I might as well keep track of it. But I only ever intended to keep track of a few months' worth of new releases at a time. The lack of availability from Netflix of older catalog titles on DVD is also unfortunate, but at least there are some other options (GreenCine has little in the way of Blu-ray but appears to have a decent DVD selection, ClassicFlix seems to work pretty well if the movie is old enough, Blockbuster will occasionally surprise you, and of course there is your local library, which, if it's anything like mine, declines to embrace Blu-ray but will buy basically any in-print DVD that I request).

On a side note, remember a few years ago when someone started a class action suit against Netflix for queue throttling? Oh that my biggest concern today were that I had to wait an extra day to get any movie I want. Now I pay $2 extra a month for "Blu-ray access" while they are advertently stocking only the DVD and not the Blu-ray version of many new releases (i.e. Topsy-Turvy, Kes, Blow Out, like I mentioned before). How is that not a sueable offense?

[rrenault]

It's unfortunate, but netflix can do whatever they want in order to stay in business. They're not breaking any laws by not carrying a blu ray, as unfortunate as it is. Also, libraries probably don't embrace blu ray, because they know the discs would probably last about a week in a library system.

I'm also worried about the films whose criterion editions have gone out of print and don't have a more recent in print release. At least Ran, Contempt, and The Third Man have in print North American releases. What happens a few years down the line when someone wants to see Pierrot Le Fou or Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie but can't because the mail-in services' supplies have run dry and there's no in print release to turn to to restock. Pierrot has been released by the studio canal collection and the disc is RA compatible, but it hasn't technically been released in North America, so...

[swo17]

Actually, my library's reasoning behind avoiding Blu-ray makes perfect sense: They're there to serve the public at large, and since most library patrons haven't embraced Blu-ray, their acquisition budget is better spent elsewhere.

Re: Netflix, I wasn't necessarily suggesting that what they're doing is illegal. Neither was throttling. But it's certainly misleading:

Does Netflix carry Blu-ray movies?

Yes, we carry Blu-ray DVDs and are adding more as they are released by the studios. If you select the $9.99 plan including DVDs by mail, you can add access to Blu-ray DVDs to your account at any time for an additional $2 a month.

This bolded statement is now patently false.

Also, you hardly have to do something illegal to get sued in America.

[Perkins Cobb]

Eventually it will occur to somebody to try a class-action suit re: Netflix's Blu-ray surcharge. However, my guess is that NF will head that off by just dropping the surcharge at some point, rather than actually going back to robustly adding new Blus -- the opposite of our desired resolution.

[swo17]

I would honestly pay, I don't know, $5 more a month for Blu-ray access if they actually bought all the Blu-rays that came out. That would still cost much less than blind buying everything that interests me.

Thing is, they still are buying Blu-rays of all the new mainstream films, so a lot of people that don't seek out stuff on the fringes probably haven't even noticed a change.

[rrenault]

I would honestly pay, I don't know, $5 more a month for Blu-ray access if they actually bought all the Blu-rays that came out. That would still cost much less than blind buying everything that interests me.

Thing is, they still are buying Blu-rays of all the new mainstream films, so a lot of people that don't seek out stuff on the fringes probably haven't even noticed a change.

And it's from people like these that mail-in services and video rental companies in general make most of their money.

[Gregory]

Actually, my library's reasoning behind avoiding Blu-ray makes perfect sense: They're there to serve the public at large, and since most library patrons haven't embraced Blu-ray, their acquisition budget is better spent elsewhere.

Someone close to me works at the library here in Portland, which is one of the best in the country in terms of number of check-outs processed (and other, more subjective measures). She tells me the two main reasons they still don't have Blu-rays are: 1) that too many patrons still don't know the difference between DVDs and Blu-rays and would be confused as to why they couldn't play the latter (a prominent sticker on the front of the case would go a long ways to clear up this confusion) and (2) that the discs would be too easily damaged and withdrawn too soon.
Nonetheless, the nearby Clackamas County Library system has forged ahead with buying about 150 Blu-rays so far (listing the format in the catalog as "Blue-ray") including at least one Criterion title!

[rrenault]

Yeah, even though I graduated last year, I'm always curious to see what new releases my college's library carries, so every now and then I browse their catalog, and it seems they pick up all the new criterion releases, but only on DVD.

[swo17]

First post updated with May releases. The good news: No one in the world can rent Fat Girl on Blu-ray. The bad news: You basically can't rent anything else either. It looks like ClassicFlix intends to stock The Great Dictator, but that's it.

[rrenault]

Nobody in the world can rent Le Cercle Rouge on blu ray either it seems

[rrenault]

Anyone ever think maybe Criterion and not the rental services may have something to do with the recent trend towards a foregoing of carrying criterion blu rays among mail in rental services?

[swo17]

No. By and large, these rental services are shunning all new Blu-ray releases of films that are older than a year or two, whether released by Criterion, another independent label, or a major studio.