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Jeff wrote:Ian's discovery of a group of suspiciously Criteriony Warner titles all going out of print at once two years ago looks especially prescient now with the announcement of The Asphalt Jungle. With seven of these 12 now released or announced, phantom pages for Curtiz and Pakula, and the remaining directors being well represented in The Collection already, I'm counting on the remaining five.

In 2014, ianungstad wrote:About a week ago Warner Brothers discontinued a number of Archive releases that generated some speculation that they may have been licensed to Criterion including:

Dreams (Akira Kurosawa)
Blow Up (Michelangelo Antonioni)
The Breaking Point (Michael Curtiz)
Barcelona (Whit Stillman)

The OOP list this week has a few more Warner titles that seem like they may go to Criterion:

Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles)
The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston)


A Face in the Crowd (Elia Kazan)
Klute (Alan Pakula)
Day for Night (Francois Truffaut)
Before Sunset (Richard Linklater)
Cat People (Jacques Tourneur) Both the individual Cat People and the Val Lewton box are officially discontinued this week.
Before Sunrise (Richard Linklater)

I'm piggy backing on Jeff's post....
In light of the releases of Cat People and now Asphalt Jungle, it's clear that WB has opened their vault of "Golden Age of Hollywood" to Criterion. What else may be possibilities-Mildred Pierce, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Swing Time, and perhaps The Thing From Another World? The last two being Criterion LaserDiscs as were Cat People and the Asphalt Jungle.

I'm hoping for Bad Day At Black Rock

Is there any indication that they're going to rescue all those silents that didn't even get DVD releases (The Crowd, The Wind, etc)? That would be amazing!

sinemadelisikiz wrote:Is there any indication that they're going to rescue all those silents that didn't even get DVD releases (The Crowd, The Wind, etc)? That would be amazing!

Last I heard these were put on the backburner for WB based on so-so sales of The Big Parade, so it's possible they could have offered them to Criterion.

Also, my understanding is that WA is reluctant to release any silent films that don't already have a composed score ready to go.

Here are some WB titles that were former Criterion laserdiscs (in addition to the ones quoted in Ian's post above):

Adam’s Rib
The Adventures of Robin Hood
Arsenic and Old Lace
Bad Day at Black Rock
Blade Runner
Casablanca
Citizen Kane
Damage
Forbidden Planet
King Kong
Lolita
A Night at the Opera
North by Northwest
Scaramouche
Show Boat
Singin’ in the Rain
Swing Time
2001: A Space Odyssey
The Wizard of Oz

Obviously, several of these have already received grand Blu-ray editions from Warner (some multiple times), but I wouldn't mind seeing Lolita, Scaramouche and Show Boat return to the collection.

Keaton's Cameraman is oop and Edward Sedgwick has a phantom page. Same goes for old laserdisc title Scaramouche and George Sidney.

Seven Days in May
Woman of the Year
The New World

were also discontinued at the same time as those other releases. I mentioned them in a followup post the next day.

Recent phantom pages certainly hint that Freaks, Cameraman, Showboat box, Scaramouche are forthcoming.

I remember reading a decade ago (can't believe this forum has been around for an eternity) that along with Here Comes Mister Jordan and Robinson Crusoe on Mars, Scaramouche was among the top three personal favorites of Saul Turell. Just like with the other two, I can see them releasing it on that sentiment alone.

captveg wrote:Last I heard these were put on the backburner for WB based on so-so sales of The Big Parade

That's a sad state of affairs, since I (and presumably others, too) passed on The Big Parade due to the atrocious mastering error that made the image stutter needlessly. So the sales numbers for that disc are at least a bit lower than they could have been.

Based on this exchange I had on Twitter, I remain very pessimistic that those silents will see the light of day, or at least given the same care the recent WBA output has been given.

That would be cool. Really cool dude. But we busy putting heroes in spandex on blu.

captveg wrote:

sinemadelisikiz wrote:Is there any indication that they're going to rescue all those silents that didn't even get DVD releases (The Crowd, The Wind, etc)? That would be amazing!

Last I heard these were put on the backburner for WB based on so-so sales of The Big Parade, so it's possible they could have offered them to Criterion.

Also, my understanding is that WA is reluctant to release any silent films that don't already have a composed score ready to go.

I saw the Sjostrom Scarlet Letter streaming from Warner Archive. It was several years ago, but if my memory is correct, I believe that it had a score. That and the fact that they still haven't released it makes me think that Criterion has the plans for the Sjostrom / Gish films.

Phantom pages also indicate that contemporary titles like Gummo and Hedwig and the Angry Inch are forthcoming....


I know that's it's not that well regarded but Haneke's english version of Funny Games has been out of print for years. We assume that they've picked up all the Kino Haneke titles...would Criterion bother to pair these up or just go with the original?

The Crowd and The Wind are my absolute favorite films that have never found legit DVD releases so I really really hope something comes of this speculation.

All this talk of silents and WB and nobody is talking about Greed? Even Christopher Nolan is excited for the possibility.

As WB seems content to bury it into obscurity for the rest of eternity; what about the possibility of Nothing Lasts Forever? I'd also highly expect to get O Lucky Man at some point.

I think we'll be disappointed if the WB deal is anything less than like 1000 films.

I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang is oop and Mervyn Leroy has a phantom page.

Minkin wrote:As WB seems content to bury it into obscurity for the rest of eternity; what about the possibility of Nothing Lasts Forever?

There seems to be a bona fide rights/contractual issue with this movie. I have no idea what it could be (and neither does Schiller himself), but TCM canceled their last scheduled airing of the film and a repertory theater here that used to screen it on a semi-annual basis was told late last year that WB could no longer provide a print or screening rights. (They ended up showing it anyway from a DVD.) A Google search turns up no screenings of the film this year to date, even though it got a number of them in 2015. So it appears something came up near the end of 2015 that has once again buried the film.

Woodstock? With it being on Filmstruck and the deluxe Blu-ray from 2009 recently sold on Amazon for 5 dollars, maybe it's going out of print. I'd imagine the CC would love to have it, completing the trilogy of Monterey Pop Festival, it and Gimme Shelter.

Sha-Na-Na in the Criterion Collection? Say it ain't so!

flyonthewall2983 wrote:Woodstock? With it being on Filmstruck and the deluxe Blu-ray from 2009 recently sold on Amazon for 5 dollars, maybe it's going out of print. I'd imagine the CC would love to have it, completing the trilogy of Monterey Pop Festival, it and Gimme Shelter.

Anything's possible, but not every film on FIlmstruck is going to be a future Criterion and Warner could be clearing the way for a new edition.

I hope The Shop Around the Corner is one of the titles coming CC's way.

Noiradelic wrote:

flyonthewall2983 wrote:Woodstock? With it being on Filmstruck and the deluxe Blu-ray from 2009 recently sold on Amazon for 5 dollars, maybe it's going out of print. I'd imagine the CC would love to have it, completing the trilogy of Monterey Pop Festival, it and Gimme Shelter.

Anything's possible, but not every film on FIlmstruck is going to be a future Criterion and Warner could be clearing the way for a new edition.

Now that I think about it would be more tricky. Whenever WB has done a new release of it, it always coincided with a box set of some sort of the festival since the soundtrack was such a big seller when it came out.

It would be nice, regardless of where it goes, if whatever new edition comes out has more from the filmmakers' perspectives. Wadleigh is still alive and if they can snag Scorsese and Schoonmaker for stories would be great too.

I noticed that Mildred Pierce is still very much in print from WB (a stand alone edition and in four separate collections). If WB is is willing to have their own edition directly compete against the Criterion edition, this definitely opens up speculation to some bigger titles

You can still buy the 2011 WB DVD of Badlands, too (though not direct from the WB shop). Remember that Criterion also still sells barebones DVD editions of many of their own films, so I think they're probably not worried about years-old DVD releases competing with their new special editions.