criterionforum.org

Please post in here when you discover a worthwhile title has been announced as going out of print, so that others may save themselves a gouging down the line

Newly OOP from MGM:
A Song is Born (Hawks)
the Big Knife (Aldrich)
Come and Get It (Hawks/Wyler)
Dressed to Kill (DePalma)
the Garden of Allah Deitrch/Boyer
The Long Goodbye (Altman)
the Night They Raided Minsky's (Friedkin)

From Warners:
the Music Man (DaCosta) --> both DVD and Blu-ray editions

Astaire and Rogers Ultimate Collection (WB)

Thanks for what's sure to be a very useful thread (put me down for A Song Is Born already) - though I can't believe you resisted the temptation to title it simply "OOPs!", which would also be appropriate to the way several of the majors have been handling their catalogue recently.

zedz wrote:Thanks for what's sure to be a very useful thread (put me down for A Song Is Born already)

I got bad news for you. Even though this was apparently just announced as OOP in March, it's already going for $70 at the cheapest. Such a shame, because it's sooooo good and now I'm paranoid about my copy in storage.

This site that Matt linked to is great to double-check to see if a title you want has been discontinued by the studio, even if there's copies available

This sudden opening up of the earth to swallow the riches of the last decade is frankly terrifying. Apart from simply just enjoying to watch movies, buying DVDs is, at least partially, how I've made my living for the past 5 years. I knew there would be a rough transition from tangible formats to streams/downloads, but I didn't think it would happen this soon and this abruptly. I feel like I need to lie down for a while and then go polish my resume.

But since this isn't a discussion thread and since it certainly isn't about my career panic, here is the on-topic portion of the post: Pauline at the Beach [MGM] is OOP, but that might actually bode well for a Criterion Comedies and Proverbs box.

Every single one of those $3.98 MGM titles at Amazon are OOP

The early Hitchcock titles from Warners are out of print. Stage Fright, Suspicion, Mr and Mrs Smith. I think Suspicion is on one of those TCM sets though.

I mentioned this already in the Deals forum, but Richard Lester's Petulia has also recently gone out of print.

Titus wrote:I mentioned this already in the Deals forum, but Richard Lester's Petulia has also recently gone out of print.

I think it went out with the other title it came in with, Kazan's the Arrangement

I would keep an eye on any dvds from TWC. Apparently they turned over the rights to 200 of their catalog titles to Goldman Sachs because they didn't have the money to pay payments on their debt.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/24 ... n-20100625" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Weinstein Co. has struck a deal to restructure its debt in the wake of several film flops, but the arrangement leaves the independent production company with a formidable task if it is to turn around its fortunes.

The settlement calls for the New York studio, run by Bob and Harvey Weinstein, to turn over about 200 titles from its film catalog to Goldman Sachs and insurance company Assured Guarantee, which were owed $450 million as part of a $1.2-billion financing package the investment bank arranged for Weinstein Co. when it launched in 2005, two people familiar with the situation said Thursday.

Will be interesting to know what the films are and what exactly will happen to them. Will Goldman Sachs license them out to the highest bider? Will TWC continue distribution paying all revenues to Goldman Sachs? A Combination of both?

For those fans of the films that Synapse Films releases, Don May, Jr. confirmed that both version of Thriller - A Cruel Picture are OOP and both Small Gauge Trauma and 42nd Street Forever Vol 5: Alamo Drafthouse Edition had limited pressing and will not be reissued.

Matt wrote:Pauline at the Beach [MGM] is OOP, but that might actually bode well for a Criterion Comedies and Proverbs box.

Criterion hasn't picked up the rights to Pauline thus far, and when I suggested they do so, they said that there was nothing wrong with the MGM disc. That said, I don't think another round of pickups from MGM down the line is out of the question. They might be hesitant to mix properties from different licensors into one box as it causes issues with the royalties, but issuing the Comedies and Proverbs with sequential spine numbers could be a possibility.

Paramount's Marx Brothers set (The Cocoanuts / Animal Crackers / Monkey Business / Horse Feathers / Duck Soup) has been discontinued, as has Cronenberg's The Dead Zone.

I'm surprised that MGMs keep going out of print, since they're owned by Fox now and I can't think of a single Fox title that's gone OOP (knock on wood)

dadaistnun wrote:Paramount's Marx Brothers set (The Cocoanuts / Animal Crackers / Monkey Business / Horse Feathers / Duck Soup) has been discontinued, as has Cronenberg's The Dead Zone.

We have a whole thread for these, tragically

ianungstad wrote:The early Hitchcock titles from Warners are out of print. Stage Fright, Suspicion, Mr and Mrs Smith. I think Suspicion is on one of those TCM sets though.

Foreign Correspondent is forthcoming from Criterion.

domino harvey wrote:

dadaistnun wrote:Paramount's Marx Brothers set (The Cocoanuts / Animal Crackers / Monkey Business / Horse Feathers / Duck Soup) has been discontinued, as has Cronenberg's The Dead Zone.

We have a whole thread for these, tragically

That Marx set is a Universal release (of Paramount films), though...

Tartan's R2 Pasolini sets. They've been OOP forever, but it's a real shame given how shitty their R1 counterparts are. Anybody who wants to sell their Vol. 2 set at a reasonably inflated price please PM me.

Hopscotch wrote:Tartan's R2 Pasolini sets. They've been OOP forever, but it's a real shame given how shitty their R1 counterparts are. Anybody who wants to sell their Vol. 2 set at a reasonably inflated price please PM me.

Yikes! The ones with the books in them? Didn't these only come out a few years ago? They were steals at the time and completely essential, so you won't regret the scalping.

dadaistnun wrote:Paramount's Marx Brothers set (The Cocoanuts / Animal Crackers / Monkey Business / Horse Feathers / Duck Soup) has been discontinued, as has Cronenberg's The Dead Zone.

How do you about the Marx Bros set? It's still available from amazon.

Hopscotch wrote:Tartan's R2 Pasolini sets. They've been OOP forever, but it's a real shame given how shitty their R1 counterparts are. Anybody who wants to sell their Vol. 2 set at a reasonably inflated price please PM me.

I wouldn't be too hasty in paying a lot for these. Palisades Tartan seem to be re-releasing a lot of their back catalogue: Eisenstein, the Bergman Faith Trilogy and others. It wouldn't surprise me to see the Pasolini sets again soon.

denti alligator wrote:

dadaistnun wrote:Paramount's Marx Brothers set (The Cocoanuts / Animal Crackers / Monkey Business / Horse Feathers / Duck Soup) has been discontinued, as has Cronenberg's The Dead Zone.

How do you about the Marx Bros set? It's still available from amazon.

A lot of recent OOPs are still available on Amazon... that's kind of the point of this thread. As it is, the above is listed as discontinued here

domino harvey wrote: From Warners:
the Music Man (DaCava) --> both DVD and Blu-ray editions

Anybody know why they'd delete the Blu-ray just a few months after it was released? In this case even the UK DVD is already gone (a good thing too, as it was cropped to 4:3!)

I wonder if there's a rights issue. I recall when I tried to rent a 16mm print in the late 1970s from the UK Columbia library, I was told in writing that it had been withdrawn because the rights had then reverted to Morton DaCosta (not DaCava, by the way). Obviously Warner got them back again, but maybe only for a fixed term?

Odd, isn't it, that DaCosta not Meredith Wilson owned the rights...

Perhaps, though DaCosta did produce as well as direct the film, which makes it more likely. Of course, the library may have got it wrong, but that's definitely what they told me. Being full of youthful optimism then, I even made some (unsuccessful) efforts to contact DaCosta!