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mfunk9786 wrote: Wed Apr 08, 2026 6:32 pm
Happy to hear in the same interview that the box set of all of his films that he owns the rights to will be coming to his website by June.

I'm also thrilled to see this, but part of me wonders what is going on with the rights of Che. If the rights reverted back to Soderbergh, I would have loved to see Che in the box set. Unfortunately, it sounds like the sets are already printed and ready for distribution.

The Christophers intentionally begins as kind of a curio, only to gradually develop into a very sweet movie. Solomon and Soderbergh tweak a familiar formula (here: eccentric aging artist bonds with struggling youth who has complex relationship to him) into something that feels fresh and novel. Subtle turns occur that don't necessarily go to expectedly dramatic places - there's a spontaneous hug that occurs late in the film, and I love how the hugger's response is sourced in such complex emotion that they don't even know quite why they took that action. In the clichéd version, it wouldn't play as it does, and neither would many scenes - though there are some on-the-nose moments, particularly a few of Corden's jokes (a sly joke of casting itself, since the type of person he plays couldn't be 'performed' by anyone else so believably). McKellen and Coel both deliver outstanding performances worthy of Oscar noms. It's primarily a twofer, but rarely feels theatrical and uses the medium to its advantage. Like all Soderbergh, recommended. Random thought: on WTF with Maron, Soderbergh talked about the difference between a "film" and a "movie," and said that the last "film" he made was Che. I wonder if he would consider this to be his first "film" in a while, or if that's purely because it's not a genre exercise.

RSTooley wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2026 2:53 am

mfunk9786 wrote: Wed Apr 08, 2026 6:32 pm
Happy to hear in the same interview that the box set of all of his films that he owns the rights to will be coming to his website by June.

I'm also thrilled to see this, but part of me wonders what is going on with the rights of Che. If the rights reverted back to Soderbergh, I would have loved to see Che in the box set. Unfortunately, it sounds like the sets are already printed and ready for distribution.

Is there something wrong with the Criterion release?

It's going to be a UHD box set and Che was shot in HD as far as I recall, so a UHD would be an upscale and there would be no improvement in picture quality, no point in doing it. I believe Che was his first digitally shot movie and he got the brand new cameras just before filming started, it was unclear if they would be delivered in time.

I'm not excited about the box set because I bet that it will cost a fortune and only George Clooney can afford to buy one.

BoltzmannBrain wrote: Thu Apr 30, 2026 12:19 pm Is there something wrong with the Criterion release?

It's going to be a UHD box set and Che was shot in HD as far as I recall, so a UHD would be an upscale and there would be no improvement in picture quality, no point in doing it. I believe Che was his first digitally shot movie and he got the brand new cameras just before filming started, it was unclear if they would be delivered in time.

I'm not excited about the box set because I bet that it will cost a fortune and only George Clooney can afford to buy one.

I almost made the same reply before checking the Criterion site and yep, Che is out of print. But that doesn't mean Soderbergh has the rights to it?

I really would just like to purchase the alternate version of Kafka separately instead of getting the whole box.

lazarus wrote: Sun May 03, 2026 5:32 am I really would just like to purchase the alternate version of Kafka separately instead of getting the whole box.

Kafka has been my most wanted Sonderbergh release for a long time now. So there are 2 versions? Is this a director's vs studio's cut thing? If there are 2 versions, it would be nice to get an Arrow Limited Edition UHD set as there more likely to give it the full treatment rather than Criterion.

There are two versions of Kafka coming; the original theatrical and his fully reworked (recut, new effects, I believe shorter) Mr. Knepf. It played at a semi-secret TIFF screening I think three years ago. I could not get tickets, but my friend did, and he loved it.

The set, from what I understand, is supposed to be made up of smaller films in his filmography that he has been able to acquire ownership of.

Kafka
Bubble
Full Frontal
Girlfriend Experience
Schizopolis (I think)
Gray’s Anatomy / Everything is Going Fine (again, I think)

I don’t recall Che ever being included, but I could be wrong or that could have changed since the original announcement, what, a decade ago?

lazarus wrote: Sun May 03, 2026 5:32 am I almost made the same reply before checking the Criterion site and yep, Che is out of print. But that doesn't mean Soderbergh has the rights to it?

I really would just like to purchase the alternate version of Kafka separately instead of getting the whole box.

Lowry_Sam wrote: Sun May 03, 2026 6:31 am Kafka has been my most wanted Sonderbergh release for a long time now. So there are 2 versions? Is this a director's vs studio's cut thing? If there are 2 versions, it would be nice to get an Arrow Limited Edition UHD set as there more likely to give it the full treatment rather than Criterion.

I suspect that Soderbergh offered all of these films to Criterion and when Criterion turned them down, he made the decision to self-release a box set. He must have had better things to do than spending a decade producing a home video release if Criterion was willing to take up on the project.

I hope that once the limited UHD set has sold out, he would offer the films to another boutique label such as Arrow, Radiance or Indicator, and one of these labels would release them on Blu-ray and keep the titles in print for good. In fact a few years ago I sent an email to Glenn Kenny and asked if he could talk about this with Soderbergh and Fran Simeoni, since he knows them both, but although Mr. Kenny sent me a nice reply, he didn't promise to do it. Oh well, I still wish that we could get stand-alone Blu-ray releases of Kafka, Schizopolis and Full Frontal, if not all of the films. And if no label wants any of the non-Criterion titles, then SS should at least give the rights of Schizopolis back to CC so they can put it out on Blu.

I doubt that Criterion would have turned these down, especially since they already released three of them.

My understanding is he was such an exacting nightmare on the technical aspects of Sex, Lies, and Videotape that Criterion is unofficially out of the Soderbergh business. Admittedly this is all hearsay and conjecture, but can’t come up with another compelling reason for why he’d go through the trouble of doing it all on his own if he didn’t have to.

dwk wrote: Sun May 03, 2026 6:46 pm I doubt that Criterion would have turned these down, especially since they already released three of them.

He's producing and releasing this box set on his own just for fun, though Criterion was willing to put out all of these films in 4K UHD?

BoltzmannBrain wrote: Sun May 03, 2026 9:59 pm He's producing and releasing this box set on his own just for fun, though Criterion was willing to put out all of these films in 4K UHD?

You'd have to ask him, but Criterion likes to keep their releases in print, so I am not going to assume that they rejected these unless I hear otherwise.

BoltzmannBrain wrote: Thu Apr 30, 2026 12:19 pm It's going to be a UHD box set and Che was shot in HD as far as I recall, so a UHD would be an upscale and there would be no improvement in picture quality, no point in doing it. I believe Che was his first digitally shot movie and he got the brand new cameras just before filming started, it was unclear if they would be delivered in time.

Che was one of the first films shot on the Red One, which captured at 4K resolution. If the IMDB is to be believed, it was finished via a 4K digital intermediate. It wasn't Soderbergh's first digital film - Full Frontal and Bubble (I've not seen the latter) were digitally captured but as far as I know at no higher a resolution than 1080p.

Soderbergh really pushing the limits of his contractual obligation to release this set during the summer

He sent out a new message via his alter ego, he’s still reviewing the files for the discs

That Soderbergh update took quite a while for me to unravel. Essentially he (or one of his alter egos) mentions that the box set mastering process is still ongoing, but mostly in passing, while the main focus is on something called The Loomis Diaries. It appears to be an original piece of fiction in the form of letters written from inside the world of Psycho (I'll confess I only skimmed it to get the gist of what was happening so no idea what happens more deeply than that).

At the very end of the letters, there is an embedded short film a couple minutes long, consisting of a piece of music by Zack Ryan evoking Bernard Herrmann's score, along with still images that come from within he world of Psycho (but as best as I can tell are not stills directly from the film). There are things like Marion Crane sitting by herself in the hotel room from the beginning of the film looking out the window, or the reverse angle of the car being hauled out of the mud at the end.

My guess is these are generative AI, maybe with some training/modeling done by feeding in stills from Hitchcock's film. They're interesting but not particularly evocative I would say. To their credit, I wasn't sure at first if they were film stills or not - I don't know Psycho particularly well enough to know immediately if they were newly made images, but it became obvious after a moment. There's a certain low fidelity crunchiness to them that kind of gives away their AI origins, but if I leave the embedded player small (rather than full screen) they hold up a lot better. So some of the lofi feeling might just be the encoding quality and scaling it up to fill a 4K monitor.

Anyway, kind of an interesting experiment from Soderbergh, but I still dread the extent to which he might start integrating AI at this point.

Don’t worry, his new John Lennon documentary apparently has tons of horrid AI-generated visuals

I’m just really exhausted by him lately. This is all a lot, even without the specter of AI (and that is a problem for another day, but if he follows through on his optimism and intends to utilize it, I’m just out on him in total - plenty of human artists out there in the world and this is a man who cheated on Jules Asner, he is absolutely capable of making incomprehensibly bad decisions). The wording in his statement leaves room for these coming from some other actual boutique label, as has been speculated, and the delay could be down to their own internal announce dates and release windows but it would be very easy to just say that instead of all of this

I feel something akin to Domino. For someone who, go back a decade or so, seemed so on point with dealing with the ‘realities’ of the way American movie business was heading (e.g. experimenting with release strategies, working within diminished budgets), he really seems to be floundering with the current moment. His uptake of AI seems most symptomatic of this, as if he’s scrounging around in the dark for a way to move forward,

I remember watching live Soderbergh win best director back in 2001 (?) and not only finding his speech classy but his summing up of the worth of art within life really resonated and has remained with me. Yet, his recent comments seem a complete about turn (indeed, stab in the back) to the point he made.

Steven Soderbergh ‪winning the Oscar® for Directing

It's really a shame The Christophers may forever be overshadowed by Soderbergh's subsequent brain-poisoning, you'd watch that and think that he's as smart about art and authorship as ever but maybe that's the end of the road (it would be a lovely swan song, at least). This bullshit coming out the same time that Jane Schoenbrun is doing weirdo Psycho pastiche all from their own imagination says a lot, the baton may have been passed whether he wants that or not.

Newletter from Soderbergh's website reveals that:

Re the box set: I know Mr/Dr Soderbergh has been reviewing the files that will be used to press the discs. So maybe we’re getting close? Don’t ask me, I ONLY WORK HERE.

criterionsnob wrote: Tue Aug 25, 2026 2:56 pm Newletter from Soderbergh's website reveals that:

Re the box set: I know Mr/Dr Soderbergh has been reviewing the files that will be used to press the discs. So maybe we’re getting close? Don’t ask me, I ONLY WORK HERE.

Hoping this isn't a situation where this is announced and disappears before I find out about it. Going to be a must buy.

That's why I signed up for the email newsletter. I think it's the first email I've received from him.

Where can I sign up for Steven Soderberghs email newsletter?

This upcoming set is a must have.

Sign up at the bottom of this page: https://extension765.com

jazzo wrote: Sun May 03, 2026 11:11 am The set, from what I understand, is supposed to be made up of smaller films in his filmography that he has been able to acquire ownership of.

Kafka
Bubble
Full Frontal
Girlfriend Experience
Schizopolis (I think)
Gray’s Anatomy / Everything is Going Fine (again, I think)

I don’t recall Che ever being included, but I could be wrong or that could have changed since the original announcement, what, a decade ago?

I hope The Artist Formerly Known As Steven Sonderbergh doesn't include the Spalding Gray titles in his small film box. I'd much rather see them in a Spalding Gray box. They're an odd inclusion with the fictional work & don't need any AI treatment.