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swo17 wrote:

sorrysomehow wrote:Well let's just say you've named all of the horror films in the collection, and we'll go ahead and round it up to the number 20.

How about rounding it up to 33

And that's clearly incomplete, since it leaves out things like Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell.

On the other hand, quite a few other Eclipse titles are listed, meaning that you can't work out a percentage based purely on 678 spine numbers.

As far as I can tell, that list only includes one Eclipse title (The Living Skeleton). Though the two Karloffs do share a spine number.

Well, we're definitely talking a final reckoning of not far short of 5%, which really isn't bad at all for a non-genre-oriented label.

Certainly, westerns and musicals would come off far worse - as, I suspect, would early cinema. By which I mean anything pre-1930.

Yeah, here are 10 pre-'30s releases. There are even less westerns. And if I'm being generous, the only musicals I see are the Lubitsch Eclipse, Tales of Hoffmann, Jubilee, A Woman Is a Woman, Topsy Turvy/The Mikado, and The Music Room.

+ Le million

swo17 wrote:Yeah, here are 10 pre-'30s releases. There are even less westerns. And if I'm being generous, the only musicals I see are the Lubitsch Eclipse, Tales of Hoffmann, Jubilee, A Woman Is a Woman, Topsy Turvy/The Mikado, and The Music Room.

As long as you're being generous, you may as well include Magic Flute and Pina.

and À nous la liberté and Under the Roofs of Paris, for which I don't think you have to be too generous. And the Carlos Saura Eclipse set. Maybe Spinal Tap, The Red Shoes, and the Martha Graham disc.

If I'm being generous, I missed one or two.

Back to BLOOD AND ROSES for a minute. To me, it's damning that there has never been an Italian or French VHS of it, let alone DVD. That implies that either some strange entity is sitting on the rights (heirs that want far too much money?), or all of its film elements are in dreadful shape. I'm tending to suspect the former, since the film hasn't ever surfaced on European home video. Sounds like a case for Criterion, to me.

No 'Scanners' or 'The Brood' this month, WWTROWIW?

Funding for Maps to the Stars came together pretty quickly. Criterion teased Scanners in the New Year's clue but Maps to the Stars has probably taken up most of his time this year.

....not to be nitpicky, but Animation has Westerns, Musicals & Horror beat by a long shot.

Speaking of animated films, I wish Criterion would release some of Ralph Bakshi's work--specifically "American Pop"--and perhaps Chomet's "Triplets of Belleville" and "L'illusionniste". I don't know about the status of the former (distributed by Image? I know there's no Blu), but the latter two are unfortunately less likely to happen, as far as I know.

sir_luke wrote:Speaking of animated films, I wish Criterion would release some of Ralph Bakshi's work--specifically "American Pop"--and perhaps Chomet's "Triplets of Belleville" and "L'illusionniste". I don't know about the status of the former (distributed by Image? I know there's no Blu), but the latter two are unfortunately less likely to happen, as far as I know.

Actually, you should get your hopes up for the Chomet films: The movies were distributed by Sony Pictures Classics upon their initial release.

Personally, I think content is taking more of a hit than packaging (look at Zatoichi). Serveral releases (Nashville, Tokyo Story, Rossellini/Bergman box, Shoah...) really could have used a another blu-ray disc for more extras/higher bitrate, but of course that would also meant more dvd's too. The essays could be made an audio extra over slides of stills, posters, etc. or posted onto Criterion's website. Personally I don't read all the essays & can't recall going back to read one more than once. Nice packaging is a plus, but I become more disheatened by smaller bit rates (Fanny & Alexander) and sparse features (Marketa Lazarova) for the titles that really warrant more discs.

I bemoan Criterion's increasingly sparse commentaries a lot but the Rossellini/Bergman box is one of the best things they've put out in a long time, it is thoroughly and gorgeously stacked.

Lowry_Sam wrote:Personally, I think content is taking more of a hit than packaging (look at Zatoichi). Serveral releases (Nashville, Tokyo Story, Rossellini/Bergman box, Shoah...) really could have used a another blu-ray disc for more extras/higher bitrate, but of course that would also meant more DVDs too. The essays could be made an audio extra over slides of stills, posters, etc. or posted onto Criterion's website. Personally I don't read all the essays & can't recall going back to read one more than once. Nice packaging is a plus, but I become more disheatened by smaller bit rates (Fanny & Alexander) and sparse features (Marketa Lazarova) for the titles that really warrant more discs.

That's absurd, the list of extras for the year is incredibly impressive.
2013 Bonus features
2013 commentaries

And that's not including the bonus films

I wasn't saying that all releases are short on features, just that some could have made stellar 2 (blu-ray) disc packages, while other releases with nice features seemed to lower the bit rate to cram them onto a single disc.

MichaelB wrote:Marketa Lazarová's extras were fine - not the least bit "sparse".

This is the one I was most disappointed with as it presented a really good opportunity for a stacked package. Extras could have easily been expanded for a second disc of extras, while leaving the first disc to max out bit rate, commentaries & trailer. There could have been a documentary on the book itself, its author and the difficulty of translating it into other languages, as well as its historical importance. I do believe a lot of the story & film gets lost on contemporary audiences not familiar w/ history of Europe or of Christianity. Interviews with those now translating it into English & challenges they had would be nice. A more comprehensive/career-spanning doc on Vlacil also would have been nice & his relation to Czech new wave. Also absent is any of the documentaries on the career of Zdenek Liska since his music is so integral to the film & not widely available.

matrixschmatrix wrote:I bemoan Criterion's increasingly sparse commentaries a lot but the Rossellini/Bergman box is one of the best things they've put out in a long time, it is thoroughly and gorgeously stacked.

Yes this is contender for best features for 2013 award, but it's the reverse problem: reducing the bit rate to fit 2 very similar versions of the same film (plus extras) onto the same disc. Maybe it's the prints used, but I only have a 46" screen & Journey to Italy does look better than the other 2 on my tv, same way I felt about the TV vs film version of Fanny & Alexander, though not quite as dramatic.

I do like extras, but I like them to be educational, truly informative (which Criterion usually does a better job of doing than any one else), but my preference is for maximum a/v quality over their inclusion as I tend not to revisit them. It just seems to me that in older (dvd-only) days Criterion wouldn't hesitate as much to move stuff to a second disc to max out the feature on the first, but now with dual-format & or blu-ray (more expensive to manufacture?) they seem more hesitant.

I think we're overdue for some Japanese releases. Not to discount the Zatoichi set, but aside from that the most recent Japanese film on Criterion's calendar was Life of Oharu.

There also seems to be a dearth of classic French films. I guess this is the cost for them getting access to so many big US titles.

jindianajonz wrote:I think we're overdue for some Japanese releases. Not to discount the Zatoichi set, but aside from that the most recent Japanese film on Criterion's calendar was Life of Oharu.

There also seems to be a dearth of classic French films. I guess this is the cost for them getting access to so many big US titles.

iirc, Curtis Tsui and Kim Hendrickson handle most of their japanese releases, so if they haven't had anything to work on since Throne of Blood, then you're probably right that a japanese release is likely.

Ah, i wasn't thinking about upgrades. We have had Tokyo Story and Throne of Blood, plus a new version of Hidden Fortress and possibly others I've forgotten.

As for classic french films, off the top of my head we've had Breathless, Rififi, and Band of Outsiders recently, so those fields aren't as bare as I had thought.

jindianajonz wrote:I think we're overdue for some Japanese releases. Not to discount the Zatoichi set, but aside from that the most recent Japanese film on Criterion's calendar was Life of Oharu.

There also seems to be a dearth of classic French films. I guess this is the cost for them getting access to so many big US titles.

besides Throne of Blood and Hidden Fortress, but yeah I agree. some new titles especially.

like I said, Kikujiro or some modern stuff (Cure, some Koreeda) would work, as well as the masters (Ozu, Naruse, etc)

if anything is lacking its Italian cinema, both in upgrades and releases. have we had any Fellini upgrades besides Amarcord and 8 1/2?

adavis53 wrote:if anything is lacking its Italian cinema, both in upgrades and releases. have we had any Fellini upgrades besides Amarcord and 8 1/2?

Latley Criterion has been doing great with Italian releases- They've announced Great Beauty, and we've recently had Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspician, the Rossellini/Bergman set, and La Notte. Though there was a period before that where we didn't have anything.

I just want more mainstream Hollywood releases.