Criterion & Eclipse Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on Vol.4

[Mr. Ned]

Could the covers for March get any more dark and dreary? Despite the nice titles, what an ugly assortment of colors and shades....

[Flike]

Same boat. Glad they're continuing the high output, love almost everything coming in March but, ugh, those covers. I understand what's going on with the Costa set, but don't think it's well-done. As someone else alluded to, Dillinger is a little horse-y. The Kurosawa BDs are far and away the best packaged of the month... love that set.

[keeproductions]

I think it works well for the Nick Ray, but not sure why it seems to be carried over to everything that month.

[FerdinandGriffon]

The Dillinger is Dead cover makes me feel queasy, an unnecessary insult to the injury of it not being released on Blu-ray.Why couldn't they have used the excellent Janus re-release poster?

[James]

The Dillinger is Dead cover makes me feel queasy, an unnecessary insult to the injury of it not being released on Blu-ray.Why couldn't they have used the excellent Janus re-release poster?

I think all of the covers are great, but I would have definitely preferred them to use the Janus poster, which I'll probably end up buying eventually. I'm looking forward to March.

[Murdoch]

Dillinger is DCAD?

And the white/striped border does not work with the rest of the design.

[James]

Dillinger is DCAD?

And the white/striped border does not work with the rest of the design.

I just noticed that. I hope it's a mistake and not a stylistic font-thing; I don't like it. I think the white and orange striped border goes with the gas mask thing.

[swo17]

Dillinger IS Jean-Claude Van Damme.

[godardslave]

Dillinger Is Dead 6/10 (OK but could have been more imaginative)
Bigger than life 2/10 (dreadfully predictable and boring)
Letters from Fontainhas 7/10

[Saturnome]

Dillinger is Dead: The Janus poster made me curious about the film. The DVD cover is confusing.

[Mr. Ned]

Dillinger is Dead looks like someone scrambled together two blurry, low quality stills from Live and Let Die (you know, the 'voodoo' James Bond) and decided to stitch some words onto the picture before getting too bored to continue.

[domino harvey]

Those Costa covers are great!

[jbeall]

I'm wholly unimpressed by this month's covers, but then again, I haven't seen the films in question, so I don't know how appropriate the covers are. Still, from an outsider's perspective they all look pretty unimaginative.

[Anhedionisiac]

The Dillinger is Dead cover is pretty good but I definitely agree with the consensus here that a variation of the Janus poster would have been something special.
The Costa covers are pretty much perfect, if you ask me.
And Bigger than Life is dissapointing but I guess it's a very tough film to crack a cover for, design-wise...

[godardslave]

And Bigger than Life is dissapointing but I guess it's a very tough film to crack a cover for, design-wise...

The Criterion design just shows a complete lack of imagination.
Recently (maybe the last 6 months -1 year) their covers and packaging in general have definitely gone downhill.

I have found myself pulling the earlier classics off the shelf just to remind myself how good they were, Ugetsu, fanny and Alexander, BRD Trilogy, and more.

To say it simply, the recent designs lack imagination.
They have tended towards "realistic" covers and stills with blocky ugly fonts.
They need to go back to art or original film posters, some abstraction and imagination, subjective interpretation and impressionism.

[Jeff]

I love the Bigger Than Life cover -- the still, the fonts, everything. I find it very evocative of the film too.

[jaredsap]

I love the Bigger Than Life cover -- the still, the fonts, everything. I find it very evocative of the film too.

Me too, Jeff.

[TMDaines]

In general for me:

Criterion Digipaks > MoC Keep Cases > Criterion Keep Cases > Criterion Double (Alpha) Keep Cases

Other than when Criterion do the really nice digipaks for the likes of Amarcord, Vampyr and Bicycle Thieves I much prefer the look and stylings of the Masters of Cinema packaging. I can't be the only one who finds the Alpha cases awful and completely unnecessary - do they still use them for any newer two disk releases? How MoC handles two disk releases in a normal keep case is preferable in my opinion, although I do like a great looking digipak like the Criterion ones mentioned. MoC are much more consistant with the quality of their covers too. Sometimes just adapting an original poster for a film is the right thing to do.

[TheGodfather]

I love the Bigger Than Life cover -- the still, the fonts, everything. I find it very evocative of the film too.

Agreed. Although I do think that the BFI cover is better, the Criterion is lovely IMHO.
Another excellent month. Hope they keep it up for the rest of the year!

[hidaniel]

Dillinger is dead cover -- I think I saw this on The Auteurs fake criterion cover forum thread a few months ago.

[bamwc2]

[img]http://criterion_production.s3.amazonaws.com/release_images/2587/506_box_348x490.jpg[/img]

Am I the only one that's glad to see that the universal quantifier has made it into the collection?

[reno dakota]

Am I the only one that's glad to see that the universal quantifier has made it into the collection?

I hear the existential quantifier is quite upset about it . . . all these years and still being ignored.

[Harmonov]

[img]http://criterion_production.s3.amazonaws.com/release_images/2587/506_box_348x490.jpg[/img]

Am I the only one that's glad to see that the universal quantifier has made it into the collection?

Why no wacky C on this cover?

[cdnchris]

It's there but very faint.

[hammock]

It's there but very faint.

Thanks, did not notice at all until your post. I wonder if this will be approved by the staff. If yes, I bet this will become a trend for future designs.