Criterion and Warner Bros.

News on Criterion and Janus Films.
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Jonathan S
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Re: Criterion and Warner Bros.

#776 Post by Jonathan S » Wed Jun 24, 2020 2:13 am

Surely the best new supplement for A NIGHT AT THE OPERA would be the more complete/variant print discovered by Racz Tamas in the Hungarian National Film Archive in 2008. The first reel alone (has the rest of the print been compared yet?) includes "two additional shots, two additional sentences, and different angles of already known shots."

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FrauBlucher
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Re: Criterion and Warner Bros.

#777 Post by FrauBlucher » Wed Jun 24, 2020 10:03 am

Thanks for these two posts. If Criterion is indeed going to release this (which I am becoming more confident that they are) I would hope that they do it with these missing shots and lines. Although I'm not sure that WB will allow that

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agnamaracs
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Re: Criterion and Warner Bros.

#778 Post by agnamaracs » Wed Jun 24, 2020 11:09 am

Jonathan S wrote:
Wed Jun 24, 2020 2:13 am
Surely the best new supplement for A NIGHT AT THE OPERA would be the more complete/variant print discovered by Racz Tamas in the Hungarian National Film Archive in 2008. The first reel alone (has the rest of the print been compared yet?) includes "two additional shots, two additional sentences, and different angles of already known shots."
Aw man. When you said "complete" and "first reel," I got excited that maybe they had found the film's original opening sequence.

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captveg
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Re: Criterion and Warner Bros.

#779 Post by captveg » Tue Jun 30, 2020 7:51 pm

Per latest WAC podcast, no Busby Berkeley films have been licensed out to boutique labels.

bamwc2
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Re: Criterion and Warner Bros.

#780 Post by bamwc2 » Sun Jul 19, 2020 12:58 pm

Warner still owns the Newline library, right? If so there were plenty of New Line titles that Criterion released on laserdisc, but they haven't reissued a single one of them since going DVD (I think). If Warner licenses titles from their main catalogue, then wouldn't Criterion be interested in picking some of these up too? Does anyone know why this is?

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CSM126
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Re: Criterion and Warner Bros.

#781 Post by CSM126 » Sun Jul 19, 2020 1:19 pm

When Criterion licensed from New Line in the past it was handled as a separate entity (this was before they ever got a deal for the main Warner catalog, even), so maybe there’s just some additional hoops to get through?

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cdnchris
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Re: Criterion and Warner Bros.

#782 Post by cdnchris » Sun Jul 19, 2020 2:46 pm

They've already licensed a few New Line films through Warner (New World, Short Cuts, My Own Private Idaho, Bamboozled) so they have access to them. Warner is just listed as the licensor instead of New Line.

It's been the same for Shout! as well (In the Mouth of Madness for example).

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domino harvey
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Re: Criterion and Warner Bros.

#783 Post by domino harvey » Sun Jul 19, 2020 2:49 pm

TMNT Criterion box confirmed

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Cinephrenic
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Re: Criterion and Warner Bros.

#784 Post by Cinephrenic » Sun Jul 19, 2020 3:31 pm

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles...great!

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swo17
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Re: Criterion and Warner Bros.

#785 Post by swo17 » Sun Jul 19, 2020 3:45 pm

Image

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FrauBlucher
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Re: Criterion and Warner Bros.

#786 Post by FrauBlucher » Sun Jul 19, 2020 3:50 pm

Since when does that happen...

bamwc2
Joined: Mon Jun 02, 2008 11:54 am

Re: Criterion and Warner Bros.

#787 Post by bamwc2 » Sun Jul 19, 2020 3:56 pm

cdnchris wrote:
Sun Jul 19, 2020 2:46 pm
They've already licensed a few New Line films through Warner (New World, Short Cuts, My Own Private Idaho, Bamboozled) so they have access to them. Warner is just listed as the licensor instead of New Line.

It's been the same for Shout! as well (In the Mouth of Madness for example).
Thanks, Chris. I had no idea that those were with New Line. There are some laserdiscs that seem like no brainers for rerelease (Crash, Pink Flamingos, etc). Hopefully we'll see them someday.

Jack Kubrick
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Re: Criterion and Warner Bros.

#788 Post by Jack Kubrick » Sun Jul 19, 2020 5:37 pm

Pink Flamingos is getting a standard Blu Ray release from Warner Brothers according to Waters.

bamwc2
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Re: Criterion and Warner Bros.

#789 Post by bamwc2 » Sun Jul 19, 2020 6:27 pm

Jack Kubrick wrote:
Sun Jul 19, 2020 5:37 pm
Pink Flamingos is getting a standard Blu Ray release from Warner Brothers according to Waters.
Thanks. I hadn't heard.

Edit: I tried Googling to find out more, but all I came up with was a 2018 Reddit post. How sure are we that this is happening?

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dwk
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Re: Criterion and Warner Bros.

#790 Post by dwk » Sun Jul 19, 2020 9:25 pm

Waters mentioned it in an interview around the time of Criterion release of either Multiple Maniacs or Female Trouble.

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Ribs
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Re: Criterion and Warner Bros.

#791 Post by Ribs » Sun Jul 19, 2020 9:40 pm

I mean, he just said that WB was “doing it” again or something to that effect, which could very easily just mean “doing a restoration” and not reflect who’s actually releasing the end product.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Criterion and Warner Bros.

#792 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Jul 19, 2020 9:56 pm

He says they're distributing it in the interview. I guess his quote could be read in past tense to mean 'who would have thought that WB would [have ever] distribute[d]' the film, but I thought it was pretty clear

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Re: Criterion and Warner Bros.

#793 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Sun Sep 20, 2020 10:37 pm

So Crash is being licensed from Warner? I seem to remember some talk about the possibility of it being given over to Janus, but perhaps that was just only talk.

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dwk
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Re: Criterion and Warner Bros.

#794 Post by dwk » Sun Sep 20, 2020 10:49 pm

Warner Archive is still selling the Crash DVD-R, so it is pretty safe to assume they still own it.

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Re: Criterion and Warner Bros.

#795 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Sun Sep 20, 2020 11:51 pm

I'm surprised they kept it. New Line practically buried it in the original US theatrical release, delaying it several months and very little promotion in the States at all.

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dwk
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Re: Criterion and Warner Bros.

#796 Post by dwk » Mon Sep 21, 2020 12:21 am

I doubt if they reupped it, but there is no telling how much longer New Line's rights to it lasts. Clearly the deal was for longer than 20 years and they may have picked it up in perpetuity.

Noiradelic
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Re: Criterion and Warner Bros.

#797 Post by Noiradelic » Mon Sep 21, 2020 2:40 am

flyonthewall2983 wrote:
Sun Sep 20, 2020 11:51 pm
I'm surprised they kept it. New Line practically buried it in the original US theatrical release, delaying it several months and very little promotion in the States at all.
Yeah, Ted Turner temporarily suppressed it (as you presumably already know):
NYT wrote:The film's United States opening has also been delayed. ''Crash'' was given an NC-17 rating and was to have been released in New York on Oct. 4, the same day as in Toronto. But its distributor in the United States, Fine Line Features, pushed back the opening date several months, saying that it could not find enough theaters. In November, Ted Turner admitted that he had put pressure on Fine Line, a division of New Line Cinema, which he heads, to withhold the film.

''It disturbs me; people with warped minds are going to like it though,'' Mr. Turner said during a forum at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York. ''Imagine the first teen-agers that decide to have sex while driving 100 miles an hour, and probably the movie will get them to do that, I mean, mimic it.'' Mr. Turner eventually relented. ''God help us, but at any rate, it's going to roll,'' he said.
When British censors demanded cuts, Cronenberg refused, and it took even longer to come out in England.

flyonthewall2983
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Re: Criterion and Warner Bros.

#798 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Mon Sep 21, 2020 7:32 am

Cronenberg said something in response years later about how he'd heard that Billionaire Ted liked to nudge his boat into Jane Fonda's when he was in some boat race while they were married. It's still a wonder it got released at all here, as I can't imagine any other studio/distributor would have been as eager to release it during such a relatively conservative time towards a story that treats sex as Crash does.

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MichaelB
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Re: Criterion and Warner Bros.

#799 Post by MichaelB » Mon Sep 21, 2020 8:46 am

Noiradelic wrote:
Mon Sep 21, 2020 2:40 am
When British censors demanded cuts, Cronenberg refused, and it took even longer to come out in England.
The only part of that sentence that's true is that the release was delayed by a few months - but the reason for the delay was that the BBFC was firmly on Cronenberg's side, and did not request cuts. But BBFC head James Ferman deliberately delayed the announcement until Parliament had been dissolved prior to the 1997 general election, thus neutralising one of the three groups who'd been calling for a ban. (Ferman was notorious for pulling stunts like that.)

The other two were harder to get around, and in fact Westminster Council ended up banning the film from their cinemas - somewhat ineffectively, since Columbia TriStar simply opened it in the central London cinemas nearest the Westminster border on the other side. And the third was the Daily Mail, which ranted and raved about the film throughout this entire process, including trying to whip up a boycott of Sony products ("What YOU can do to keep this revolting film off our screens"), but which had no direct input into whether or not it was released.

Also, even if the BBFC had demanded cuts, Cronenberg wouldn't have been in a position to refuse: the distribution rights had already been sold, and there was nothing in the contract that demanded director approval of the version that was released (which would have been highly unusual, and it's hard to imagine a distributor of a potentially controversial film agreeing to such a clause).

I suspect you've mixed the the BBFC up with Westminster Council, which like all local authorities had the final say in what could be screened in cinemas within its jurisdiction, but they're not film censors. Granted, John Bull, the splendidly-named head of Westminster's Licensing Sub-Committee publicly asked for cuts to be made, but this was greeted with derision, not least from Cronenberg himself. But this absolutely shouldn't be confused with the formal classification process.

flyonthewall2983
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Re: Criterion and Warner Bros.

#800 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Mon Sep 21, 2020 10:43 am

Even years after the fact, Mark Kermode went on a pretty passionate tear about the stupidity of it all.

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