Criterion Additions

Looks like a confirmation for Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! in the latest newsletter.

May: Like Someone In Love & Red River (two cuts) on dual; Ace In The Hole dual; Life Aquatic & Overlord blu upgrades.

Pretty light month once the upgrades are taken out of the mix.

Love Streams confirmed in latest newsletter.

http://www.criterion.com/explore/214-martin-scorsese-s-top-10

Amazing news re: Streams.

Oh cool, A Hard Day's Night in June.

Plus Judex and upgrades of Picnic at Hanging Rock, Hearts and Minds, L'Eclisse, and All That Heaven Allows.

Sirk upgrades v.needed & welcome.

A lot of redux, but maybe the most awesome single month in a recent memory.

If only b/c the Sirk and the Antonioni are both all-time top 10 contenders.

Hard Day's Night is v exciting. Or at least I am excited abt it

~solo parties~

hmm the canadian A Hard Day's Night br is out of print? might sell mine. that edition replaces the mono songs with surround sound based on the stereo versions -- distracting and they have slight differences.

Looks like a confirmation for the Polanski MacBeth in the latest newsletter.

blu-ray chegwin?

July: Pickpocket upgrade, Scanners, The Big Chill, and a Demy box set that looks tasty as hell.

Insomnia upgrade as well, and ha! The Big Chill has a Lena Dunham essay in the booklet to further piss off the fanboys.

^just noticed that and was coming here to post. lolz.

Man, that Demy box is <booming>, and a steal at $63 during the B&N sale.

I've seen all the Demy films except Une chambre en ville; too bad they couldn't squeeze in Model Shop!

This makes it less imperative that I catch the DCP resto of Rochefort at BAM this week.

The Vanishing blu confirmed in the newsletter, I'm pretty sure

Any hope of seeing the BRD trilogy coming back in print?

They're still up on Criterion's Hulu channel, so they must have some kind of rights to them.

I think they're waiting on new scans/restos to do an upgrade.

I watched Foreign Correspondent on Hulu a few months ago, around the time the fancy new restoration job came out. Just a couple of weeks later, Gizmodo had a video about the restoration work -- http://vimeo.com/84135659 -- so the A/B was sort of fresh in my mind. In every case I can think of, the digital transfers Criterion puts up on Hulu are pre-restoration quick and dirty digital rips complete with scratches and wandering fibers on the prints and generally hissy sound. (Sort of like 128k MP3s.) I guess Criterion wants to keep it that way, so the DVDs and Blus will continue to sell as value-added products, but they can't really be explicit about the discrepancies in quality because they'll just be hurting their own brand if they knock the streaming versions. It's a weird tightrope to have to walk because the streaming and home-video product lines help to sell each other.

The CC site is down at the moment, but the forum is reporting AUGUST: Y tu mama tambien, Love Streams, All That Jazz, and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, along with a Vengeance Is Mine dual format edition.

On closer inspection, VIM is just a blu upgrade, and Love strems comes with "I'm Almost Not Crazy" as a bonus (along with a Michael Ventura commentary on the main feature).

Damn, both All That Jazz and Love Streams are no question buys for me.

Looks like a combo confirm for The Shooting & Ride The Whirlwind in the latest newsletter.

are we absolutely sure it isn't the critically reviled cult Western Mayonnaise Cowboy

(i was SO SURE)

...okay i just remembered Hellman's Mayonnaise is a thing. I will resume my usual place in the Stupid Corner

man, that August lineup is underwhelming. The Cuaron and Almodovar films make me ill.

Nah, this month is underwhelming. Red River? Zzzzzzz.

xp oh fuck off don't ever say anything neg abt Almodovar ever

<3

+ All That Jazz gives me LIFE!!

or a bodybag zipup

Stevie EVERYBODY has made a bad film once in awhile incl Almodovar and John Ford

ESPECIALLY John Ford.

No more dual format: http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/3195-re-format

People who don't have a blu-ray player yet, but plan on getting one, should just buy one all ready.

I imagine it's the HDTV that's the problem

September: Eraserhead, MacBeth, The Innocents, Sundays and Cybele, and an upgrade of Ali: Fear Eats The Soul.

It looks like the Eraserhead blu-ray has everything from the old Short Films dvd except for The Cowboy and the Frenchman :(

Some great news from a usually reliable source (apparently they broke news of The Innocents a month before release and have a more or less unblemished record with Criterion; IIRC their source is some trade paper for retailers):

Criterion Corner: Those folks at Criterion are up to their old tricks, pushing out gems on DVD and Blu-ray that collectors simply can’t live without. Down the road, we’ve learned that the company has slated David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr., the 2001 Hollywood-set mystery that actually started life as a pilot for a TV series. The film deals with an aspiring actress, an amnesiac woman, a film director, and a lesbian liaison and stars Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Harring, Robert Forster and Justin Theroux. This will be a nice companion piece to Criterion’s upcoming Eraserhead. Also due from the company is Terry Gilliam’s fantasy Time Bandits, available in a mega-deluxe edition. Just licensed for future release is Federico Fellini’s 1960 masterpiece La Dolce Vita with Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg. This will make a nice companion with The Great Beauty, the recent Oscar winner inspired by La Dolce Vita.

There's good supporting evidence for Mulholland Drive (people have come forward and confirmed that Criterion does have distribution rights for the omitted The Cowboy and the Frenchman as well as Lynch's animated Dumbland shorts, and their Facebook page posted a note from Lynch to theaters asking for special matting and volume considerations for Mulholland Drive), the Fellini news matches up with Paramount, a frequent Criterion licensor, finally establishing their legal rights to the film, and Time Bandits, if true, could potentially mean reissues of other Handmade Films productions (Withnail & I and the long out of print How to Get Ahead in Advertising, Mona Lisa, and The Long Good Friday- maybe even Life of Brian, though I'm sure the ownership of that film is a little more complicated).

I'm hoping they manage to pick up some other Handmade titles like The Missionary or Track 29, but I'm not holding my breath.

Mulholland is exciting. Eraserhead would be exciting if I didn't already own both the individual DVD and the Lime Green set. Doesn't sound like there's anything new?

Aside from the 4k transfer, I don't think there's anything new, no- all of this material has appeared on the prior Eraserhead and Short Films DVDs. I kind of wish I'd picked up the Lime Green set myself while it was still in print, since it doesn't look like anyone plans to put the Wild at Heart deleted scenes or Industrial Symphony No. 1 back into circulation anytime soon.

TIME BANDITS

¡Sí, los bandidos del tiempo!

It Happened One Night confirmed in latest in newsletter.