Forthcoming Lists Discussion and Random Speculation Vol. 5

[Matt]

Weber is a great chronicler of male beauty, but his films have had the worst distribution. I'd welcome a Criterion set, but I don't see it happening. You and your friend can see Broken Noses on Ubuweb, though.

[zedz]

Now that the June hoopla is out ... I wanna know why Bruce Webber's "Boken Noses" and "Let's Get Lost" aren't available here in region 1.

A dear friend of mind wants to see Andy Minsker, the boxer in BN. She almost married him, and now twenty years later she wants to make sure she didn't marry the wrong guy. She chose brains over brawn, but still want a chance to compare.

Any chance?

I was just asking if Bruce Webber's documentaries might ever be released by Criterion. I will be more erudite in further postings. I realize he is not a director of note, but both the boxing doc "Broken Noses" and the Chet Baker film "Let's Get Lost" were pretty dang good.

Let's Get Lost would indeed make for a great Criterion, but I want to hear more about your friend!

(And it's probably not fair for her to compare her current husband with a 25 year old documentary portrait of the one who got away!)

[Gregory]

A DVD of Let's Get Lost (there's a thread for that film, by the way) was conspicuously absent in the U.S. after the revival in 2008. I wonder if there was some obstacle in getting the rights to put out the music in the film on DVD in this country.

[boywonder]

Now that the June hoopla is out ... I wanna know why Bruce Webber's "Boken Noses" and "Let's Get Lost" aren't available here in region 1.

A dear friend of mind wants to see Andy Minsker, the boxer in BN. She almost married him, and now twenty years later she wants to make sure she didn't marry the wrong guy. She chose brains over brawn, but still want a chance to compare.

Any chance?

I was just asking if Bruce Webber's documentaries might ever be released by Criterion. I will be more erudite in further postings. I realize he is not a director of note, but both the boxing doc "Broken Noses" and the Chet Baker film "Let's Get Lost" were pretty dang good.

Let's Get Lost would indeed make for a great Criterion, but I want to hear more about your friend!

(And it's probably not fair for her to compare her current husband with a 25 year old documentary portrait of the one who got away!)

My friend used to work out with Andy Minkster. He fell is love with her after she let him bounce medicine balls on her abs.

She dumped him, went to NYC and Paris only to be haunted by his buff bod on huge billboards for "Broken Noses" ... He told her his dream was to be a furniture upholsterer. He achieved that dream ... but was last heard running an auto detailing shop with his wife.

We think she made the right choice. Perhaps, after I send her Mister Harvey's link ... Well, the ways of the heart are mysterious!

[zedz]

I'm so glad I asked! That's a great story, and I hope she doesn't start pining away now.

[Numero Trois]

Is there any detectable release date interval for multi-disc sets like Shoah? So that one could reasonably surmise it'll be a minimum of this number of months before they release another set of similar size. Or are sets like that one too much of an outlier to make any reasonable guesses?

[peerpee]

Impossible to try and second guess such a thing.

[swo17]

Trilogy of Life and Qatsi came out within less than a month of each other.

[Noiradelic]

A little more likely to come out in their bigger months? The fall etc....

[MongooseCmr]

Last year had the Lean set in the early summer and the two trilogies in the late fall, right? We just had the Etaix two-disc and now this huge Shoah set, I would guess only one more later this year

And if I had to guess what the third box set would be, I'd say Chaplin at First National in time for the holidays.

[movielocke]

Last year had the Lean set in the early summer and the two trilogies in the late fall, right? We just had the Etaix two-disc and now this huge Shoah set, I would guess only one more later this year

And it is rare that they put out a mainline box set and an eclipse box set in the same month, I'd say the Etaix, and Shoah sets, are why we only have one eclipse set released in 2013. And multidisc affairs like Pina and On the Waterfront are nearly as laborious.

You can't really detect much in the way of patterns, they seem to have a maximum of about 20 discs worth of production per month (dvd and bluray) an average of 13-14 and a lower bound of 7-9.

As for Box sets, it seems fairly haphazard, they're probably more likely to run into hiccups just because there's more discs and more content involved, but they seem to have a couple Box sets a year recently, one early in the year, one in November december.

You might think they release a "big multidisc single title DVD" upgrades in November, but it's just the back half of the year that sees these titles upgraded:
Battle of Algiers - August
Monterey Pop - September
Seven Samurai - October
Fanny and Alexander - November
Brazil - December

So no pattern, just a tendency for these sorts of titles to not be released in the first half of the year.

They did go through a pattern of getting all the titles that had completed a new edition for on DVD upgraded to bluray.

With the most recent list of upgrades being: Two Lane Blacktop, Tin Drum, Sansho, Ivan's Childhood, The Blob, Colonel Blimp, Richard III, Naked Lunch, Band of Outsiders, Wild Strawberries you could argue that two thirds are upgrades of elaborate two disc sets, so perhaps that is something they're focusing now? But I would say that's probably just a coincidence and selection bias at work.

[Drucker]

Regarding Brazil, Seven Samurai, Fanny and Alexander and even the unmentioned BBS Box Set, I'm sure there is some sort of attention paid to getting releases like these out around holiday season.

[RyanGallagher]

Don't forget that we might get the Apu Trilogy this year too.

[zedz]

I don't think there's much point trying to guess a pattern beyond "at least one a year." A few years back we got six box sets in one year, then the next year there was only one.

[hearthesilence]

In terms of a box set upgrade, the Cassavetes box set seems to me the best bet.

Otherwise, would love to see a Rohmer box set upgrade...

[movielocke]

and hey, getting a "new" box set every holiday season is a big step up from "bergman four masterworks" or "Great Adaptations" repackaging that is what we used to get!

[movielocke]

this is how I see their box set slate, I’ve probably forgotten some disqualifying info on some of the Possible upgrades list


Unlikely because OOP, rights, or upgrade of signature title
66 - The Orphic Trilogy – two titles OOP, one title already blu
185 – The Adventures of Antoine Doinel – one title already blue
241 – Stage and Spectacle 3 by Renoir – one title is Studio Canal
327 – 3 films by Malle – one title already blu
369 – Paul Robeson Portraits of the Artist – one title is Studio Canal

Unlikely because released after Bluray Transition
471 – Pigs Pimps and Prostitutes 3 by Imamura
480 – The Human Condidtion – Criterion said they would have loved to release a bluray
500 – Rossellini’s War Trilogy - not all titles are bluray ready due to years long restoration
508 – Letter from Fontainhas 3 by Costa
524 – The Only Son There Was a Father
528 – 3 Silent Classics by Sternberg – Criterion didn’t license bluray rights.

Possible upgrades
86 - Eisenstein the Sound Years
124 – Carl Theodor Dreyer
179 – I Am Curious…
203 – BRD trilogy – oop currently, but perhaps they’ll upgrade the whole set rather than just one title
208 – A film trilogy by Bergman
250 – John Cassavetes Five Films
282 – Andrzej Wajda 3 War films
322 – The Complete Mr Arkadin
342 – Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales
364 – Monsters and Madmen (also need correct aspect ratios on some of these)
392 – 3 films by Teshigahara
411 – Berlin Alexanderplatz
418 – 4 by Varda

I wouldn’t be surprised to see something random like I am Curious get upgraded, The BRD trilogy might be the most likely, perhaps Vagabond and Cleo will be released separately? Technically they are the only titles that have received new editions on DVD that haven’t seen a bluray upgrade.

[Cinephrenic]

With the current upgrade rate, I hardly doubt any of these will be upgraded anytime soon.

[TMDaines]

Unlikely because released after Bluray Transition
500 – Rossellini’s War Trilogy - not all titles are bluray ready due to years long restoration

All out on Blu-ray in Italy. Criterion's decision to release heavily pictureboxed DVDs looks misguided by comparison.

[matrixschmatrix]

Are those blus actually any good? I believe there's a blu release of Nosferatu there that's literally an up-rezzed SD print, so the fact of their existence doesn't prove much of anything.

[TMDaines]

I've only seen Roma, citta' aperta and it looks better than the Criterion DVD and also has more information on the sides. I'm sure in Criterion's hands it would have looked even sweeter. Deutschland im Jahre null Blu-ray is problematic because it has Italian audio (like all of Flamingo's releases). On the whole, Flamingo did a good job with the video quality of the recent Rossellini Blu-ray and DVD releases. The idea these films wouldn't benefit from being on Blu-ray is ludicrous. The Rossellini-Bergman set will be Blu-ray for sure and I'd suspect that were the War Trilogy to come out now, it would be on Blu-ray, given the presence of the Italian discs. For a flagship release, it sadly became outdated almost immeadiately and were it not for the fact that these films had had such a terrible time on home video hitherto, I think there would have been more consternation against them being DVD only. A missed opportunity.

[dwk]

They've gone back and gotten the Blu-ray rights to some of the earlier Paramount titles (If…., Robinson Crusoe on Mars, and, even though it was a separate deal, Days of Heaven), so I wouldn't count out a Blu-ray upgrade of the 3 Silent Classics by Sternberg set.

[captveg]

this is how I see their box set slate, I’ve probably forgotten some disqualifying info on some of the Possible upgrades list

Don't forget the Rebel Samurai set.


Not box sets, but there are "companion" releases that may be upgraded at the same time The Naked Kiss/Shock Corridor style.

27 & 28 - Flesh for Frankenstein, Blood for Dracula - OOP, but rights with Westchester and could be renewed; Frankenstein could be Blu-ray 3D release
22 & 31 & 32 & 461 - Summertime, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, Hobson's Choice
41 & 82 - Henry V, Hamlet
95 & 96 & 457 - All That Heaven Allows, Written on the Wind, Magnificent Obsession
103 & 118 & 292 - The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels, Unfaithfully Yours
144 & 145 - Loves of a Blonde, Fireman's Ball
160 & 161 - À nous la liberté, Under the Roofs of Paris
176 - The Killers, The Killers
194 & 195 - Il posto, I fidanzati
196 & 197 - Hiroshima mon amour, Night and Fog - could conceivably release on one disc like Seventh Seal/Bergman Island
232 - A Story of Floating Weeds, Floating Weeds
239 - The Lower Depths, The Lower Depths
257 & 258 - Secret Honor, Tanner '88
268 & 269 - Youth of the Beast, Fighting Elegy
273 & 274 - Thieves' Highway, Night and the City
298 & 299 - Gate of Flesh, Story of a Prostitute
378 & 379 - Fires on the Plain, The Burmese Harp
380 & 383 - The Naked City, Brute Force
389 & 390 - WR: Mysteries of the Organism, Sweet Movie
400 & 401 - Stranger Than Paradise, Night On Earth
429 & 430 - The Lovers, The Fire Within
432 & 433 - Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, Patriotism - could also be one disc
443 & 444 & 445 - La ronde, Le plaisir, The Earrings of Madame de...
447 & 448 - Le doulos, Le deuxième souffle
459 & 460 - The Exterminating Angel, Simon of the Desert
481 & 482 - Made in U.S.A., 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her


And, of course, we already know the Tati films (sans Trafic) and Grey Gardens/Beales of Grey Gardens are coming.

[dwk]

I think Images rights to Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula have expired. Ian pointed out that Shout tried to get these but they were unable to license them. Both films belong to Westchester Films, so there is a good chance that Criterion has reacquired them.

[captveg]

I think Images rights to Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula have expired. Ian pointed out that Shout tried to get these but they were unable to license them. Both films belong to Westchester Films, so there is a good chance that Criterion has reacquired them.

Good info. Thanks!