Criterion and Paramount

[SamLowry]

Criterion should do a poll on their website with the new "create your own profile" thing....allow people to vote on which titles from a particular catalog they would like to see on Criterion most.

Becket, Manchurian Candidate, Wings, Crack In The World, Nijinsky, & The Conversation are out on Blu Ray already, Harold & Maude and Rosemary's Baby seem to be done deals, so my votes would go to:

1. La Dolce Vita
2. The Conformist
3. Chinatown
4. Nashville
5. Sunset Boulveard
6. The Tenant
7. Come Back To The Five And Dime Jimmy Dean Jimmy Dean
8. Catch 22
9. The Pawnbroker
10. HUD
11. Medium Cool
12. Letter From An Unknown Woman
13. Caught
14. Don't Look Now
15. Day Of The Locusts
16. Barbarella (original uncut version and all the promotional photos as an extra)
17. The Sorcerer
18. Johnny Guitar
19. Macbeth (Polanski's & maybe they could get Welles' too for a Macbeth box)
20. Play It Again Sam (They need at least one Woody Allen in the catalog)

[swo17]

Except that this is how polls turn out:

Spoiler

[onedimension]

I've been thinking this forum should do some sort of formal poll of its own, similar to the forum awards, where any poster can rank their most-wanted Criterions, maybe with separate categories for blu upgrades and the stipulation that 80-85% of the picks come from the existent Forthcoming Criterion/Eclipse lists.. It would be a good test of collective taste. Maybe rank 5 blu upgrades and 20 new titles, with a max of 4 of the 20 coming from fantasy land instead of the Criterion/Eclipse/Hulu lists..

[beamish13]

I wonder if the original cut of Wim Wenders' HAMMETT (1982) exists...

[Tom Hagen]

I've been thinking this forum should do some sort of formal poll of its own, similar to the forum awards, where any poster can rank their most-wanted Criterions, maybe with separate categories for blu upgrades and the stipulation that 80-85% of the picks come from the existent Forthcoming Criterion/Eclipse lists.. It would be a good test of collective taste. Maybe rank 5 blu upgrades and 20 new titles, with a max of 4 of the 20 coming from fantasy land instead of the Criterion/Eclipse/Hulu lists..

I'll save you the trouble. Criterionforum.org's official top 20 most-wanted Criterions:

Paris Belongs to Us
The Nun
Mad Love
Out 1
Celine and Julie Go Boating
Duelle
Noroît
Merry-Go-Round
Le Pont du Nord
Love on the Ground
Hurlevent
The Gang of Four
La Belle Noiseuse
Joan the Maiden
Up, Down, Fragile
Top Secret
Va savoir
The Story of Marie and Julien
Ne touchez pas la hache
36 Views from the Pic Saint-Loup

[knives]

Two of those actually have R1 releases.

[oh yeah]

Four, by my count - coincidentally, his latest four. (If we're only including titles still in print, that is). Anyway...

I can't see some of the bigger Paramount titles speculated here being licensed to Criterion (e.g. Chinatown, perhaps Nashville). But oh boy, The Parallax View would sure be nice and certainly seems within the realm of possibility.

[Noiradelic]

If they can get Harold and Maude and possibly Rosemary's Baby, why not Nashville? I wouldn't take Chinatown off the table either. Paramount yanked the Centennial Edition 2 weeks after its release date (possibly in connection to Polanski's arrest) and then not a peep about it in the last 2 years. A longer shot perhaps, but when it comes to Paramount, all bets are off.

[knives]

Paramount's not as bad as you're making them out to be. They're the only major to release any silents onto Blu for instance.

[Noiradelic]

To quote Jeff:

Paramount doesn't have much interest in their catalog titles beyond the top 30 or so.

Even if that's a slight exaggeration, I'd call that bad. But I didn't mean bad so much as erratic, unpredictable. And the fact that they're bringing out a Wings BD while Sunset Blvd and Chinatown have been MIA for years, and they let the Zodiac BD fall OOP after like 2 years is the very pinnacle of erratic.

[MoonlitKnight]

I could've sworn Skolimowski's "Deep End" (another Paramount title) was also on slate a year or two ago.

[ianungstad]

Paramount have already announced that they are doing Chinatown next year. They also have Samson and Deliah on tap.

[Matt]

I've been thinking this forum should do some sort of formal poll of its own, similar to the forum awards, where any poster can rank their most-wanted Criterions

We actually did that several years ago on a previous iteration of the forum. I don't remember the full list, but I think a box set of Buñuel's Mexican films topped the list.

[Murdoch]

Here it is. Good to see that quite a few have thus been released by Criterion.

[AfterTheRain]

Paramount have already announced that they are doing Chinatown next year. They also have Samson and Deliah on tap.

Whaaaaaa? I've never heard anything about Samson and Delilah being released this year.

[MichaelB]

I could've sworn Skolimowski's "Deep End" (another Paramount title) was also on slate a year or two ago.

The BFI edition is region-free, director-approved and crammed with extras, including a retrospective documentary that's almost as long as the feature.

[zedz]

Here it is. Good to see that quite a few have thus been released by Criterion.

I am so old.

Actually, it might be interesting to redo that exercise, so long as it were carefully constrained. For example, maybe a single vote for a single title (or an already well-defined natural box set, like The Apu Trilogy, not a grab-bag invention like My Favourite Rivettes), with the proviso that it had to be a title never released in R1 that was actually plausible (e.g. no Warner titles, no 'lost films'). Then there could be a secondary vote for a Criterionization of a title that's been released in R1 but is now OOP. And, if you must, a third vote for a BluRay update of an existing catalogue title.

[captveg]

Paramount have already announced that they are doing Chinatown next year. They also have Samson and Deliah on tap.

Whaaaaaa? I've never heard anything about Samson and Delilah being released this year.

It was mentioned here:

Q: Any chance of Samson and Delilah with Hedy Lamarr and Victor Mature getting the DVD treatment?

A: We are told by a reliable source that Paramount is gearing up to make a big splash with catalog titles for their 100th birthday. And, good news: Cecil B. DeMille’s 1949 Biblical epic is among the titles slated for a DVD and Blu-ray release. Look for Chinatown and other classics to get new treatment as well.

And, of course, To Catch a Thief was announced for March already.

[HistoryProf]

Paramount doesn't have much interest in their catalog titles beyond the top 30 or so.

Even if that's a slight exaggeration, I'd call that bad. But I didn't mean bad so much as erratic, unpredictable. And the fact that they're bringing out a Wings BD while Sunset Blvd and Chinatown have been MIA for years, and they let the Zodiac BD fall OOP after like 2 years is the very pinnacle of erratic.

Does anyone know what the deal is with Zodiac? I have the HD-DVD - but that player is currently in a box and not in use so it's not much good since we downsized our residence and don't have the extra tv/room it was in for guests. It's the one thing out of my HD DVD collection I wanted to replace, but never figured it was something that should have been an imperative. Now it's impossible to find and way too pricey to justify it. Why would they do this with a newer critically acclaimed film from one of the hottest American directors going?

[captveg]

I wouldn't be surprised to see it get a re-release/re-promotion when Dragon Tattoo hits DVD/BD. But maybe they just need to do a new run at some point and have no particular schedule in mind.

[fdm]

If you're not willing to bet on or wait for Paramount to re-issue Zodiac on blu-ray, there is an in print, fairly cheap, region free version of it from Warner in the U.K. Its potential weaknesses are that it only has a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack (vs lossless for the Paramount), and that any/all supplements are squeezed onto the same single disc that the movie is on (so very possibly PQ not quite as good as the Paramount version).

[SamLowry]

Except that this is how polls turn out

Yes, but I'm willing to wager that a poll conducted by Criterion on their own website by people with profiles/accounts on Criterion would have a much different outcome than one conducted by Amazon with its customers.

[HistoryProf]

I wouldn't be surprised to see it get a re-release/re-promotion when Dragon Tattoo hits DVD/BD. But maybe they just need to do a new run at some point and have no particular schedule in mind.

I hope so...the secondary market for this thing is getting a bit silly.

[matrixschmatrix]

It's $45 on Amazon, which is a lot but certainly not that ridiculous.

[AquaNarc]

bought this one a few months ago. is there something wrong with it that I'm missing? can get it for 20...