<ChristopherBlig> Great news with WA now with all the releases is there a chance lesser known films with the cast of SNL like Nothing Lasts Forever, Spies Like Us and Over The Rainbow see the light of day on DVD and will the Archive titles have at least a trailer of the feature?
<warnerbros> All of them are coming, but actually more likely for retail than Warner Archive. SPIES would obviously be a widescreen reissue.
Nothing Lasts Forever is coming? I mean, I'll believe it when I (finally) see it...but WTF?
Slightly OT: Are there more filmmaker cameos in "Spies Like Us" or "Into The Night"?
Edit: Sorry Mods, I thought I was posting in the WB section. :-#
Another possibility : The Mosquito Coast. You have the involvement of both Peter Weir and Paul Schrader. The Warner DVD is out of print. They are both alive. The old dvd had no special features. Criterion must have worked with Weir recently or currently are, as the rerelease of Picnic at Hanging Rock is still suppose to come out at some point..would be a strong possibilty.
ianungstad wrote:Another possibility : The Mosquito Coast. You have the involvement of both Peter Weir and Paul Schrader. The Warner DVD is out of print. They are both alive. The old dvd had no special features. Criterion must have worked with Weir recently or currently are, as the rerelease of Picnic at Hanging Rock is still suppose to come out at some point..would be a strong possibilty.
The Peter Weir stuff is a good guess. He's a friend of the company, and Warner's discs of his films suck. Warner has The Mosquito Coast, The Year of Living Dangerously, and Fearless.
I really, really hope Criterion ends up with Fearless. It's the one most in need of an upgrade (the others are at least available in their o.a.r.) and a particular favorite of mine.
ianungstad wrote:2) Se7en (Prior mentioned that he and Fincher talked about redoing some of Fincher's other films but nothing concrete that he knows of yet)
No way Se7en will happen since there's already an awesome 2-disc set out already, and it's still in print right?
I don't know if the Coen Brothers are even aware of The Criterion Collection, never mind have any kind of relationship with the company but it would be nice if they had approached each other to try and secure Hudsucker Proxy from WB to finally give the film a special edition. Even though my hopes have been downgraded since I thought we would have the opportunity to finally see films like Brewster McCloud, The Devils, etc. on dvd I would be quite happy if Criterion picked up some of the titles I've mentioned. (Performance, Hudsucker Proxy, Mosquito Coast, Badlands, CRASH) I don't think Warner is ever going to get around to making non-crappy dvds for any of those titles.
Buttery Jeb wrote:I wonder if any of the New Line John Waters pictures would be part of this deal. It's hard to see them fitting into Warner's distribution plans.
That would be nice. I also have doubt's that Warner's will know what to do with Water's catalogue now that New Line has folded and been brought in-house. I noticed that the Untastefully Yours boxset is OOP at most retailers. Some of the individual titles like Female Trouble are starting to pop up as being discountinued by the manufacturerer at online retailers (in stock at others). A diry shame really.
A Criterion FEMALE TROUBLE would probably become my favorite disc ever.
dadaistnun wrote:I really, really hope Criterion ends up with Fearless. It's the one most in need of an upgrade (the others are at least available in their o.a.r.) and a particular favorite of mine.
I've been harassing Criterion with emails requesting this title for years. My latest response, received a few months back, was the generic "We have no plans at this time..." etc. I genuinely hope this pops up on their radar, as I think it's one of the great unsung films of the nineties and in need of some serious critical reevaluation.
Last edited by TomReagan on Wed Apr 01, 2009 9:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Tom, I couldn't agree with you more. I've only seen Fearless once and that was when it originally came out. The idea of being the only survivor of a plane crash would seemingly be a terrible ordeal and this notion is very well put forward in the film. Jeff Bridges turns in another fine performance (he seems to be someone who escapes acclaim) and I found I was quite able to tolerate and appreciate Rosie Perez. I can still call the ending of the film into my head, the imagery is quite powerful. Fearless is a masterwork and I wish someone would reissue it (the only release in the US that I'm aware of is nonanamorphic). Even without any special features I'd buy a new copy of it.
Well, if this is all by "director request", can someone ask Ken Russell to send a note over regarding The Devils? For that matter, Christiane Kubrick and Jan Harlan could request something to be done about Barry Lyndon and Lolita.
Narshty wrote:Well, if this is all by "director request", can someone ask Ken Russell to send a note over regarding The Devils? For that matter, Christiane Kubrick and Jan Harlan could request something to be done about Barry Lyndon and Lolita.
I really hope that "The Boyfriend" isn't relegated to the Archives collection and gets a proper release.
I am assuming that I am not the only person who received the newsletter today announcing the cross-promotion between Criterion and Nonesuch Records. Interesting not so much because of the 10% off sale, but more because, as any fan of Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" will quickly remind you, Warners are the corporate paymaster of the label.
If we're talking eighties, how about a tricked-out edition of The Killing Fields, with Swimming To Cambodia as an extra feature? Does anyone know who controls the rights to STC, as the dvd has been out of print for years?
Tom Hagen wrote:I am assuming that I am not the only person who received the newsletter today announcing the cross-promotion between Criterion and Nonesuch Records. Interesting not so much because of the 10% off sale, but more because, as any fan of Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" will quickly remind you, Warners are the corporate paymaster of the label.
Actually, Warner Music hasn't had anything to do with Time Warner for about 5 years. They're totally separate entities.
Elia Kazan's America, America has been near the top of my Warner wishlist for years (just behind Brewster McCloud). Would love to see someone release the film. Probably not popular enough that Criterion would be interested. Hoping it's a future archive title. Would be amazing if Criterion wrangled it away from WB.
I'm sure this has been discussed already, but what's WB's reasoning for not licensing their films to third parties anymore if they're pulling films from their own catalog out of print without any intention of ever releasing them again on physical media? I doubt they'd ever release Blow-up or Hitchcock's The Wrong Man on blu ray. What's their reasoning for letting Criterion handle such titles if they're not going to keep them in print themselves?
Some sort of corporate pride? They probably want to release everything themselves, but the top of the company probably doesn't give the home video department enough funding, I don't know, i'd love to hear what other people think about this. It's amazing how many great films they have which they just haven't released, claiming they had plans for it a couple of years down the line, and then claiming the same thing in a couple of years. Or putting classics on DVD-R instead. Personally I don't think the Warner Bros bosses realize/care about the classic titles they have; they are purely businessmen after all. So it keeps things simpler if they just don't license out, less to worry about, means they can still release the stuff themselves if they feel like it at some point. I'd love to hear a less cynical opinion on why though.
Warner's releases more than 250 classic films on disc every year, in an effort to bring their entire catalog to commercial availability. They want to monetize every single asset.
I imagine, at the moment, they're working from old actuarial metrics that suggested they would make more from keeping things in house, than from licensing out titles, other actuaries, for other studios have probably reached different conclusions.
However, if we reach a point where it is acceptable for criterion to release bluray ONLY releases (dear gods, how the luddites on this forum will howl and howl for years and years), it's possible that Warner will refigure the math. They may not want to enter a Burn-On-Demand bluray business to accompany their BOD DVD business, and so they may be willing to license blu-ray rights ONLY for non-A-list titles (such as Hitchcock's Wrong Man) to a company like criterion.
However, don't get your hopes up, it is likely that Warner's math will come out that if no bluray is available, people will settle for a dvd, and if Warners is making 19.90 in profit on every DVD they run through the archives program (presuming discs are around 0.05 apiece, this is all exaggerated, of course), and Criterion is offering a license worth 9.90 a copy on the bluray, Warners would probably never make such a deal. And they probably shouldn't make such a deal because it is self evidently not as profitable for them, as not releasing it on bluray.
It's more than luddites dude. Most of our European and Australian board members aren't Region A capable and need the DVD versions to get some of the rare films that Criterion releases. Would you really want them to be able to not see Zazie for example. It's not like Criterion is forcing you to buy the DVD editions.
My question is why take a key canonical film like Blow Up out of print. For most of their canonical classics they've released two disc special editions, which are mostly still in print. Why not do the same for Blow Up? Also, what do you mean by non-A list titles like The Wrong Man?
They probably just recently exhausted the last pressing and decided it would be more profitable to add it to the Archive eventually than to do another pressing.
