13-minute mini-doc on the cult of the Criterion Collection

Oh my.

“These are real men, doing real things.”

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I’d imagine there’s some fuckery around rights, licensing, etc that may make it impractical to re-release something. I wouldn’t be surprised if part of their agreements include only being able to produce n copies over t time. But yeah I’m sure there’s also an aspect of forced scarcity to drive demand. Then again it’s not like they are getting a cut off the lucrative second-hand market so it can’t all be marketing.

As for me I’ve long since moved away from physical media in most cases, and these days many digital releases come with tons of special features and such. (And in 4K to boot.)

I used to have a bunch of Criterion stuff back in the LD/DVD days since that was the only way to get a “proper” version of some films but these days it’s just not compelling enough to me since I’m not a collector or anything.

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Same here. I’d buy Criterion editions of a handful of favourite movies, but having a “Criterion Closet” or collecting a lot of discs is not for me. I have enough physical media as it is in the form of books and have made a real effort not to add to what I already have.

As I recall, though, there’s an unopened copy of this release sitting on a bookshelf at my parents’ house (they might have got it as a gift or a comp at an event). 50 movies, including a lot of favourites.

I could probably take it home with me the next time I visit, but we’re trying to donate their film books and movie collection and memorabilia to a new research museum’s library so it would be best to give them first shot.

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How new is the museum? That collection’s got a lot of great movies, but they’re mostly pretty obvious art house classics. The museum could easily already have most of them.

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It’s not opened yet. They likely have it and most of the other stuff already, but the librarian said they’d come by to take a look. If not, I’ll take it!

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“On January 19th, John Lurie and Willem Defoe died of starvation.”

Next episode, when John Lurie shows up to greet Dennis Hopper at the Bangkok airport:

“I made a mistake! John is still alive!”

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Shame about Willem though.

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Fishing with John

I remember that. Existential fishing! Great stuff. Even the theme song.

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There’s a lot to like about Criterion and, yes, they are visually stunning on what passes for the Big screen at home. But it’s difficult to watch Japanese Criterion movies with Mrs Turnips, a native Japanese speaker. She constantly hits pause to explain what what the speakers are really saying. Or I’ll stop it to ask why I didn’t see this or that line in the subtitles–“Wasn’t he saying something about …?” Often large swaths of dialogue are replaced with strategic short sentences that are just enough to keep the plot afloat. At one point years ago she even wrote them offering her services for future translations. I get it, a lot of translation is difficult–speed, dialect, nuance and distraction–but they too often fall on the parsimonious side.

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As much as I love the Criterion Collection (and I do - I have lots of their DVDs and am a charter Criterion Channel subscriber) they fail to represent the entire spectrum of filmmakers - and that is a problem because they are a sort of canonization. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/20/movies/criterion-collection-african-americans.html

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Yup. Actually, the C. Channel seems to be doing a better job at filling these gaps then the official collection’s DVDs/Blu-Rays, although these are often films only temporarily licensed.

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I was never real big on collecting movies as the formats seemed to change often enough I couldn’t bring myself to spending thousands only to have it all out dated in 5-10 years so I’ve generally avoided buying movies. After watching people sell massive collections of VHS tapes as DVD’s became the standard, and then those people selling their DVD collections to upgrade to blu-ray I just looked at it as a massive money sink that takes up a tone of shelf space as well.

I I was gifted an Akira Kurosawa Criterion Collection DVD box set years ago by a friend that is a kurosawa nut (I think he was upgrading his stuff to blu-ray). After watching that collection I understand why he was such a fan. I still watch Yojimbo and Seven Samurai every few years because it’s so good and the features and DVD liner notes are great. Still, I’ve ended up copying the ISO’s over to my PC since it’s getting harder and harder to find a DVD player if you don’t have old game consoles hooked up to your TV. I can see the appeal of Criterion for collectors, but decided it just wasn’t for me. Plus doesn’t Criterion have a streaming option now?

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Right, but it’s not Bay’s fault Fellini never blew up a tanker truck full of gasoline.

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It could. It looks like it was Adam Yauch. He talked about his top 10 from the Criterion Collection:

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Yeah, although what’s on the channel doesn’t match what’s on the discs due to what’s licensed for streaming as opposed to distribution.

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It certainly helps if your TV has an HDMI port. Should this be the casee, they’re a dime a dozen.

Ah, but without region locking?

(That’s one of the reasons why I tend to rip/region-unlock my blurays after purchase, in the event some corporate chucklehead decides to remote-brick the player via a firmware update…)

I really “enjoy” American subtitles for films in languages I have a passing acquaintance with: they are so clean and cuss free compared to the originals! To be fair English is actually much less sweary than lots of European languages.

Funnily enough Irish doesn’t really have swear or taboo words as such. Not that it needs them, like words for yes or no, as it has a verb construction for cursing and blessing in the first place.

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what’s crazier is that Benjamin Button has a Criterion release.

i mean, they gotta eat and when it was released they made bank.

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