criterionforum.org

senseabove wrote: Sat Jan 14, 2023 5:57 am

yoloswegmaster wrote: Sat Jan 14, 2023 12:15 am I just realized that NEON'S official announcement on Twitter omits Saint Omer. I wonder if that's just an oversight.

May also just be that Twitter has a four image max per tweet and so they chose the four movies that already have been or currently are in theaters, not the one that hasn’t had a general release and so will be unknown to anyone who isn’t a nerd following the festival buzz like us?

It turns out that Ribs was correct as Super Ltd posted a tweet late last night saying that Saint Omer was coming to the collection.

Ribs wrote: Sat Jan 14, 2023 2:31 am
I am quite frankly dumbfounded that a movie that recieved such universal disdain from the mainstream major American film press as Triangle of Sadness possibly met Criterion’s internal standards - the movie recieved absolute pans from the head critics at NYT, the New Yorker, New York Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Film Comment, Rolling Stone…. Just shocked they just follow the Palme I guess.

I honestly don't think it's that shocking they went for a Palme winner considering they have like 30 Palme winners in the collection already. Hopefully they release more Palme winners like 'Farewell My Concubine' and 'Eternity and a Day' soon.

yoloswegmaster wrote: Sat Jan 14, 2023 1:54 pm

senseabove wrote: Sat Jan 14, 2023 5:57 am

yoloswegmaster wrote: Sat Jan 14, 2023 12:15 am I just realized that NEON'S official announcement on Twitter omits Saint Omer. I wonder if that's just an oversight.

May also just be that Twitter has a four image max per tweet and so they chose the four movies that already have been or currently are in theaters, not the one that hasn’t had a general release and so will be unknown to anyone who isn’t a nerd following the festival buzz like us?

It turns out that Ribs was correct as Super Ltd posted a tweet late last night saying that Saint Omer was coming to the collection.

Ribs wrote: Sat Jan 14, 2023 2:31 am
I am quite frankly dumbfounded that a movie that recieved such universal disdain from the mainstream major American film press as Triangle of Sadness possibly met Criterion’s internal standards - the movie recieved absolute pans from the head critics at NYT, the New Yorker, New York Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Film Comment, Rolling Stone…. Just shocked they just follow the Palme I guess.

I honestly don't think it's that shocking they went for a Palme winner considering they have like 30 Palme winners in the collection already. Hopefully they release more Palme winners like 'Farewell My Concubine' and 'Eternity and a Day' soon.

Eternity and a Day isn’t happening anytime soon, but I’ve been hoping that Farewell My Concubine and Yellow Earth will get Criterion releases

I don't even know what it will take to get Eternity and a Day or any of TA's work released proper

FrauBlucher wrote: Sat Jan 14, 2023 8:07 pm I don't even know what it will take to get Eternity and a Day or any of TA's work released proper

His estate needs to become more amenable to licensing it.

Right. That's the problem. Whoever is running his estate doesn't see value in having his work easily accessible

Or are they holding out for too high of a price? If so, they can't hold out forever

FrauBlucher wrote: Sat Jan 14, 2023 8:13 pm Right. That's the problem. Whoever is running his estate doesn't see value in having his work easily accessible

I mentioned this earlier, but his widow is pretty much solely in charge of handling his catalog. Presently, they want to ensure that prints and DCPs are available for revival screenings, but she mentioned that the work is exhausting and she seems to want somebody else to take over. When that happens, I can see home video licenses becoming available

swo17 wrote:Or are they holding out for too high of a price? If so, they can't hold out forever

I remember Fran saying that the estate simply didn't respond to his enquiries, so it doesn't look like they're interested in engaging full stop. Or maybe they have an overzealous spam filter...

Or the widow was just too exhausted to answer

gonna be the grouchy one that complains about Criterion releasing way too many contemporary movies when they sit on the rights to countless (and often restored!) classics. but we all know they will take years to get these out, and they will populate guesses in the monthly guess thread for eons. by then the films will already be forgotten, I mean no one is guessing or calling for American Factory despite that supposedly coming from Netflix. but for real, Criterion has always done contemporary stuff (IFC and others) but between Netflix, Amazon, and Neon, there's such an overflow and resources and slots in the release schedule are going to these instead of more pressing films

I mean hell, if they're so dedicated to the Palme d'Or...

1956 Friendly Persuasion
1961 The Long Absence
1961 Viridiana (Criterion released on DVD)
1962 O Pagador de Promessas
1971 The Go-Between
1972 The Working Class Goes to Heaven (which Radiance couldn't release in region A, indicating Criterion is the likely rightsholder here...)
1972 The Mattei Affair
1975 Chronicle of the Years of Fire
1981 Man of Iron
1982 Yol
1985 When Father Was Away on Business
1993 Farewell My Concubine
1995 Underground
1997 The Eel
1998 Eternity and a Day
2000 Dancer in the Dark
2018 Shoplifters

none of these have region A blurays. I'll stop before my posts get moved to "why don't they release what I want" but just some perspective...

swo17 wrote: Sat Jan 14, 2023 8:16 pm Or are they holding out for too high of a price? If so, they can't hold out forever

Poland finally gave in and the UK labels have responded big time by prioritizing Polish films. hoping the same for Angelopoulos

ryannichols7 wrote: Sun Jan 15, 2023 3:10 am 1975 Chronicle of the Years of Fire

Chronicle of the Years of Fire is part of the World Cinema Project deal. Don't know why they haven't released it yet, either as a standalone or as part of a WCP set. Maybe they'll put it out soon; they just restored Eight Deadly Shots and added it to their website as part of that series.

Fisher King (surely a 4k since they already released it on BD) teased on Criterion's Twitter

Finch wrote: Sun Jan 15, 2023 10:13 pm Fisher King (surely a 4k since they already released it on BD) teased on Criterion's Twitter

I’m glad they have such a strong relationship with Gilliam. Really hope we can get a release of The Zero Theorem, which currently has a completely bare-bones disc in North America

ryannichols7 wrote: Sun Jan 15, 2023 3:10 am 1956 Friendly Persuasion
1961 The Long Absence
1961 Viridiana (Criterion released on DVD)
1962 O Pagador de Promessas
1971 The Go-Between
1972 The Working Class Goes to Heaven (which Radiance couldn't release in region A, indicating Criterion is the likely rightsholder here...)
1972 The Mattei Affair
1975 Chronicle of the Years of Fire
1981 Man of Iron
1982 Yol
1985 When Father Was Away on Business
1993 Farewell My Concubine
1995 Underground
1997 The Eel
1998 Eternity and a Day
2000 Dancer in the Dark
2018 Shoplifters

none of these have region A blurays. I'll stop before my posts get moved to "why don't they release what I want" but just some perspective...

Underground was released on blu-ray by Kino.

According to today’s post on The Digital Bits, there’s been word Criterion is working on a UHD of Thelma & Louise (along with the already alluded-to release of The Fisher King).

re: Neon titles

"Moonage Daydream" has already been released on Blu-ray from Decal Releasing. It has been available since November and the only extra feature is trailer.

Hogfather wrote: Sun Jan 15, 2023 8:19 am

ryannichols7 wrote: Sun Jan 15, 2023 3:10 am 1975 Chronicle of the Years of Fire

Chronicle of the Years of Fire is part of the World Cinema Project deal. Don't know why they haven't released it yet, either as a standalone or as part of a WCP set. Maybe they'll put it out soon; they just restored Eight Deadly Shots and added it to their website as part of that series.

both of them deserve their own releases and I hope don't just get jammed in a WCF 5 box. hopefully this happens..

TVC15 wrote: Mon Jan 16, 2023 5:39 pm Underground was released on blu-ray by Kino.

huge oversight on my part, thank you!

Buttery Jeb wrote: Tue Jan 17, 2023 3:36 am According to today’s post on The Digital Bits, there’s been word Criterion is working on a UHD of Thelma & Louise (along with the already alluded-to release of The Fisher King).

I've advised this before but take everything that site says with a grain of salt. very occasionally they're correct, but they've said many of these things before and nothing happened. I will say I expected that to be a Kino UHD but it hasn't happened yet, so maybe a Criterion? I just don't see it personally..

Starting to go up now. Looks like Triangle of Sadness and 4K upgrades of The Seventh Seal and The Fisher King so far.

Small Axe release as well!

Wow, I am very pleasantly surprised by Small Axe! I assumed bc it seemed the BBC had the video rights to it Criterion wouldn’t be able to figure it out but so, so glad it’s coming.

Small Axe looks like one of the most stacked releases of the year (so far). It isn't just a five film boxed set; there's a sixth film, which is a three hour documentary, as a supplement. I'm going to snag this, and McQueen's Hunger, under the assumption that it's a major piece of work.

I completely forgot it existed until today. I only saw Lovers Rock and outside a few great needle drops it left no impression. Felt as indistinct and passable as any prestige streaming tv

MongooseCmr wrote: Tue Jan 17, 2023 6:57 pm I completely forgot it existed until today. I only saw Lovers Rock and outside a few great needle drops it left no impression. Felt as indistinct and passable as any prestige streaming tv

That's a decidedly minority opinion, to say the least.

Granted, I grew up in West London (I'm a few years younger than the people in the film) and remember that milieu well (as, evidently, does Ealing native McQueen), so it was always going to speak to me on a fairly fundamental level, but Odie Henderson doesn't have that background and it clearly spoke to him as well. In fact, both his review and Peter Bradshaw's do a very good job of fleshing out historical/cultural details that were left unsaid, because it's all about capturing the mood and the moment.

It's hard to pick a favourite Small Axe film, as they're all exceptional in varying ways (to answer What A Disgrace above, they very definitely are major work), but I think it might come to a tie between Lovers Rock for immersive atmosphere and Mangrove for ambition (as well as utterly transforming my impression of Darcus Howe, who was ubiquitous on telly as a rather shouty pundit in later years, but who made a genuinely important contribution to black British history in a way that hasn't really been celebrated enough until Mangrove was made).

Is April always this slim or is the label in serious trouble? I love Lover's Rock and am in for the Small Axe set, but it's not like those films required any kind of restoration. The only two new spine numbers this month are both from this decade, and the Criterion-produced supplements seem thin. Not turning my nose up at the NEON deal (and would even ask: Where's a decked-out Crimes of the Future release?) as it's probably superior to the IFC deal from that period. But I'd worried UHD would consume resources that could have gone elsewhere, and wonder if the financial rewards for the format have been as mixed as the reviews for their upgrades. With physical media struggling in general are we not only down to two new titles per month, but ones that could've easily been stamped out by any other house?

brundlefly wrote: Tue Jan 17, 2023 10:26 pm Is April always this slim or is the label in serious trouble? I love Lover's Rock and am in for the Small Axe set, but it's not like those films required any kind of restoration. The only two new spine numbers this month are both from this decade, and the Criterion-produced supplements seem thin. Not turning my nose up at the NEON deal (and would even ask: Where's a decked-out Crimes of the Future release?) as it's probably superior to the IFC deal from that period. But I'd worried UHD would consume resources that could have gone elsewhere, and wonder if the financial rewards for the format have been as mixed as the reviews for their upgrades. With physical media struggling in general are we not only down to two new titles per month, but ones that could've easily been stamped out by any other house?

How many of the 4K releases have actually received mixed reviews? An overwhelming majority of the titles have received very positive or glowing recommendations, with only ItMFL being the sole UHD upgrade that I would actually consider as being useless.

It shouldn't be too surprising to anyone that more recent films are being added as there has obviously been a slow-down in restorations for older films thanks to a pandemic that has screwed the world for a better part of 2 years, so they will have to rely on newer titles. You can see Arrow doing the same thing as they have actually released more films from this decade than Criterion has.