criterionforum.org

The MoC announcement of 'La Notte' gives me hope I'm finally getting my Antonioni trilogy on blu.. but probably not this month. I'm guessing at least one 'On The Waterfront' type b&w previous studio property, like 'In A Lonely Place' or 'Red River' or an old screwball comedy..

onedimension wrote:I'm guessing at least one 'On The Waterfront' type b&w previous studio property, like 'In A Lonely Place' or 'Red River' or an old screwball comedy..

Ministry of Fear, perhaps.

More Criterion titles discontinued:

Beastie Boys Video Anthology

Harlan County USA

Viridiana

What gives Criterion? Hopefully these are just all forthcoming upgrades over the next couple of months. There's no real reason for Viridiana or Harlan County to be OOP from a licensing perspective.

EDIT: They may have lost the rights to Harlan County USA. The streaming version has been pulled from Amazon Instant Video.

ianungstad wrote: EDIT: They may have lost the rights to Harlan County USA. The streaming version has been pulled from Amazon Instant Video.

It's owned by Cabin Creek films which seems to just be Barbara Kopple. I imagine it would not go OOP unless they were on bad terms with her.

Harlan County is more than 50% off on Amazon at the moment...

Well Europa, Europa is one of those MGM titles rumored to be a possibility. The World cinema DVD series release was letterboxed & could be vastly improved upon & a Europa, Europa/Olivier, Olivier pairing would also up Criterion's female director quotient quite nicely...

We had the recent entry Before the Rain but it seems to me strange that many of the heralded foreign movies of the 1990s are either not released (the Tit and the Moon etc) or otherwise released during the early days of DVD and in non restored/ definitive forms

Regarding the three recent OOP titles... Isn't it most likely just a temporary out of stock while they change the covers to the new logo? They seem to do that whenever an older title runs out of the current pressing.

CSM126 wrote:Regarding the three recent OOP titles... Isn't it most likely just a temporary out of stock while they change the covers to the new logo? They seem to do that whenever an older title runs out of the current pressing.

One assumes so, since they're not listed as OOP on Criterion's site. Actually, the Criterion site shows the Beastie Boys cover with a wacky C, which as far as I know is new. Can't say I've looked at it recently, though, so maybe it's been that way for awhile.

It's been that way for a couple years now.

The Beastie Boys disc that was discontinued was the reissued 2011 dvd with the Wacky C. Already sold out on Amazon.

brendanjc wrote:Zeitgeist has most of the Quay brothers films in print on DVD in the US - I don't think there's any reason to believe Criterion will be releasing them.

I'm sure Criterion are probably keeping an eye as to when the copyright comes due & are keeping contact with them for future plans, but called them in to do interview or commentary on a Svankmajer release....and with that I'll throw in my wild guess for March:

The French Lieutenant's Woman
Soft Skin
The Conformist
Conspirators Of Pleasure
Tokyo Story
Wild Strawberries
& The Collected Shorts of The Kuchar Brothers (perhaps an eclipse set)

Did you just pull that Kuchar eclipse out of thin air? That would be amazing.

SternDiet wrote:For what it's worth, all these movies will also be available in Germany in the Peter Weir Collection, which not only includes Picnic, Last Wave and Cars that Ate Paris but also The Plumber. The Last Wave has already been released and looks very good.

Bluray.com review of the Last Wave gives it only average marks.

March releases are being announced tomorrow

Eraserhead will probably be in the loot, since it's on Criterion Hulu, this is a release I'm truly excited for

We'll probably be seeing a new eclipse too, since there hasn't been one since November

My guesses:

Emigrants/New Land Troell box
Badlands
Stromboli
Bitter Rice
Last Wave/Picnic at Hanging Rock upgrades
Passion of Joan of Arc upgrade

donniedarko wrote:Eraserhead will probably be in the loot, since it's on Criterion Hulu, this is a release I'm truly excited for

Eraserhead may well be announced, but I wouldn't come to that conclusion solely based on the fact that it's on Hulu. There are over 200 other Janus-owned films on the Criterion channel that they've yet to announce for disc release.

I really think we'll see Badlands tomorrow. It would make since, considering the timing with the newsletter it. Plus, I believe it was said back in the Wexner chat that Badlands would be released in early 2012. March would still mean Q1, so the timing just seems right to me.

I'll predict a number of former New Yorker titles showing up this month:

Lancelot du lac
Montenegro
Pastoral: To Die in the Country
Badlands
Richard III blu
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp blu
Eclipse set of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub

Badlands
The Wanderers
The Soft Skin
Babette's Feast
Etaix Eclipse
New version of Wild Strawberries on dvd and blu

Y tu mama tambien
Ugetsu blu
Bitter Rice
Medium Cool
Badlands
Au hasard Balthazaar blu

Tomorrow's predictions:

Badlands
Ministry of Fear
Colonel Blimp upgrade
Bitter Rice
The Last Wave upgrade

htshell wrote:Did you just pull that Kuchar eclipse out of thin air? That would be amazing.

They were artists in residence @ The Pacific Film Archive about a year ago & I have kicked myself for not going to any of the screenings, if for anything to hear them talk about their own work. Often times some titles from PFA retrospectives make it into the collection eventually, though those are usually ones that have toured (Ophuls, Ozu, Bresson, Japanese horror/sci fi) & I'm not sure the Kuchar brothers retrospective appeared anywhere else. I have not been enamored with Criterion's experimental/short output (Brakhage, Frampton....), for some reason they release the one's I don't particularly care for & not the one's I'd really like to see (Kenneth Anger, Derek Jarman's home movies, Maya Deren, Man Ray, The Dadaists, Warhol...), so I wouldn't hold your breath for a Kuchar blu-ray set ala Brakhage, but one can always hope.

March:

Tess
Richard III
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion
Blimp
Weir

I would love to see a Blu-ray of Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto. I thought a French Blu-ray had been announced but I can't find anything on that now.

ianungstad wrote:More Criterion titles discontinued:

Beastie Boys Video Anthology

Harlan County USA

Viridiana

What gives Criterion? Hopefully these are just all forthcoming upgrades over the next couple of months. There's no real reason for Viridiana or Harlan County to be OOP from a licensing perspective.

EDIT: They may have lost the rights to Harlan County USA. The streaming version has been pulled from Amazon Instant Video.

To add to this list, based on a thread on DVD Talk Forum:

Darjeeling Limited
Last Wave
Wild Strawberries

Darjeeling is a very recent release with a blu-ray version. That certainly needs no up-grade. I did hear rumors of a Last Wave upgrade though.