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[killertofu]

It seemed inevitable with IFC's deal with Criterion anyway, but Richard Linklater confirms Boyhood as a future Criterion release.

Nice...

 

[Dany]

It seemed inevitable with IFC's deal with Criterion anyway, but Richard Linklater confirms Boyhood as a future Criterion release.

Totally worth it. This movie is astounding.

 

[Guzim]

I bought The Hidden Fortress, Godzilla, A Hard Day's Night, and Thief. I can't wait to watch them.

 

[overcast]

I doubt you guys could get to it, but are there any available coupons to stack with the 50% off at B&N I can get... within an hour?

 

[Dragoon En Regalia]

A 15%-off and a 20%-off + the members' discount will get you to 55%-off, but no chance on anything lower. I'll send you my 20%-off code since I'm done with this sale.

 

[Downhome]

I hate to ask this as well, but do any of you guys have an active B&N coupon code or two that you wont be using? I wanted to pick up Insomnia and one other title today. Feel free to PM me if you can help, thanks!

 

[XShagrath]

I hate to ask this as well, but do any of you guys have an active B&N coupon code or two that you wont be using? I wanted to pick up Insomnia and one other title today. Feel free to PM me if you can help, thanks!

There aren't any valid non-member coupons right now.

If you are a member, there are $5 off $50, and $8 off $40+ title (usable on boxsets and higher-priced sets).

 

[overcast]

My haul from the sale.

-Badlands
-Being John Malkovich
-Brazil
-Branded to Kill

I'm a poor college student trying to save money for a trip, so this is a W. When is the next one typically? November to a little past Christmas, no?

 

[Net_Wrecker]

Just wait until you get to the "C" and "D" selections. So many good choices.

 

[omgkitty]

Remember guys, today is the last day of the sale.

 

[Downhome]

This is my final haul for this round...

• A Hard Day's Night
• Fantastic Mr. Fox
• Godzilla
• Insomnia
• Judex
• La Haine
• Pickpocket
• Picnic at Hanging Rock
• Red River
• Rififi
• Riot in Cell Block 11
• Scanners
• Seconds
• The Darjeeling Limited
• The Freshman
• The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
• The Royal Tenenbaums

I now own more titles from the Criterion label than I do than any other studio, haha...

 

[XShagrath]

What app is that? I need something on my phone to keep track of my collection.

Here's my haul. At least I'm keeping my head above the water.

Jacques Demy
The Kid with a Bike
Medium Cool
Purple Noon
Pierre Etaix
Breaking the Waves
Scanners
A Hard Day's Night
King of the Hill
Martin Scorcese's World Cinema Project
A Brief History of Time
Marketa Lazarova
Seconds
Thief

Haven't watched any of them so far, but have been watching some stuff I picked up from the last sale (or was it the one before that?). Finished watching the BBS set last week. Had watched Head and Easy Rider shortly after I got it, so I watched the rest of those. The Last Picture Show was amazing. I also really enjoyed Five Easy Pieces and Drive, He Said. King of Marvin Gardens was fairly interesting, although it felt a little random. A Safe Place was not my cup of tea at all.

I started watching the Coward/Lean set recently, diving into A Brief Encounter first. What an amazing experience! I'm not usually into romance films, but I thoroughly enjoyed that one.

 

[Downhome]

What app is that? I need something on my phone to keep track of my collection.

It is the official BD tracking app for Blu-ray.com where the big BD forums are. The app is called My Movies by Blu-ray.com and it's a fantastic app to keep track of your collection with tons of features, sorting options, and makes it very easy to add titles on the go...

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/my-movies-by-blu-ray.com/id514571960?mt=8

 

[big ander]

I wasn't going to get anything but after deciding to renew my membership yesterday while buying some books, I might go ahead and grab something.

It is the official BD tracking app for Blu-ray.com where the big BD forums are. The app is called My Movies by Blu-ray.com and it's a fantastic app to keep track of your collection with tons of features, sorting options, and makes it very easy to add titles on the go...

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/my-movies-by-blu-ray.com/id514571960?mt=8

ooh I'll have to grab this later.

 

[Downhome]

ooh I'll have to grab this later.

Yeah, it's pretty great. It even has the bar code scanning ability so you can just scan them and then bam, it is in your collection.

 

[XShagrath]

Yeah, it's pretty great. It even has the bar code scanning ability so you can just scan them and then bam, it is in your collection.

I grabbed it. Gonna take me quite a while to scan everything.

 

[Guzim]

I went back to B&N and bought Throne of Blood on blu-ray. Fantastic film.

 

[Dragoon En Regalia]

It's that time again guys.

 

[omgkitty]

It's that time again guys.

 

[inm8num2]

I was going to guess 'Night of the Demons'.

 

[overcast]

Just wait until you get to the "C" and "D" selections. So many good choices.

Branded to Kill has to be a C selection right. I have 9 criterions now. So proud of them.

 

[Ridley327]

I was going to guess 'Night of the Demons'.

I was thinking it was The Devils at first, but then I remembered Warner Bros. hates people who want to see that film in a proper way.

That's a pretty inspired visual gag, though.

Branded to Kill has to be a C selection right. I have 9 criterions now. So proud of them.

Criterion has basically all of Suzuki's major films from the 60s, although only Branded to Kill and Tokyo Drifter are on Blu.

 

[Borgnine]

Demon Convention apparently isn't a movie, but it should be.

 

[Son of Cervantes]

I hate Satyricon. I had emailed Criterion asking them if Fellini's The White Sheik (which is OOP on DVD) would ever get a Blu release and Jon Mulvaney replied, and I guess he was hinting at some Fellini coming to Blu...but why does it gave to be this one? It's such a weak Fellini film.

 

[Downhome]

This is my final haul for this round...

• A Hard Day's Night
• Fantastic Mr. Fox
• Godzilla
• Insomnia
• Judex
• La Haine
• Pickpocket
• Picnic at Hanging Rock
• Red River
• Rififi
• Riot in Cell Block 11
• Scanners
• Seconds
• The Darjeeling Limited
• The Freshman
• The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
• The Royal Tenenbaums

I now own more titles from the Criterion label than I do than any other studio, haha...

I ended up getting three two more at the last minute - Ace in the Hole and Diabolique.

I just got this in - the Scream Factory release of Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise (1974) with the exclusive poster they gave with it. I have NEVER seen this, total blind buy. I think I watch it right now.

 

[big ander]

Oh jeeze that looks amazing. I've only seen Phantom once and I really enjoyed it but I think it's the kind of movie that would be wonderful on a rewatch. Which I wish I'd been able to do last night with Edgar Wright and the cast in person, but life shit.

 

[Jo Shishido's Cheeks]

Oh fuck me that poster is awesome!
Love Phantom, it's been years since I've seen it or any early De Palma outside of Murder a la Mod. I wish he worked with William Finley more often.

 

[Ridley327]

I hate Satyricon. I had emailed Criterion asking them if Fellini's The White Sheik (which is OOP on DVD) would ever get a Blu release and Jon Mulvaney replied, and I guess he was hinting at some Fellini coming to Blu...but why does it gave to be this one? It's such a weak Fellini film.

It was a part of their deal with MGM.

Also, I am so fucking excited for the release of Phantom of the Paradise next week.

 

[Son of Cervantes]

It was a part of their deal with MGM.

Also, I am so fucking excited for the release of Phantom of the Paradise next week.

I didn't know they had a deal with MGM. Hope it means they'll release Duck, You Sucker on Blu.

 

[Ridley327]

I didn't know they had a deal with MGM. Hope it means they'll release Duck, You Sucker on Blu.

MGM has a deal with just about everyone these days. I don't even think they have the capability of releasing titles on their own anymore, as Fox takes care of all of their recent releases, and their catalog is all over the place between Criterion, Kino, Twilight Time, Shout! Factory, and I'm sure there's even more than that.

 

[Net_Wrecker]

I didn't know they had a deal with MGM. Hope it means they'll release Duck, You Sucker on Blu.

That's coming out in October.

 

[Downhome]

I finished watching Phantom of the Paradise and I enjoyed the hell out of it. I am completely shocked a the quality of this flick, haha. Am I insane that it reminds me, at least the first part, of some sort of weird and twisted Wes Anderson flick? The acting, editing, the cuts, title cards, and even the music. The second half, just incredible as well. I loved it all.

The audio track on this BD is incredible as well. The music just sounds wonderful. The best example of this was the performance of "Life at Last" by Beef. Oh, and speaking of Beef, Gerrit Graham was awesome in that role!

 

[omgkitty]

Here's my final tally for the Criterion sale.

Spoiler

I'm not proud of myself.

 

[Downhome]

Great picks. I really should have picked up Breaking the Waves. Maybe next time.

I really hate how Criterion experimented with those stupid combo packs. Thankfully that has ended and they will soon be offering the option to buy normal cases and artwork for the titles that they screwed up on.

 

[Fjordson]

Man, I should have bought Life Aquatic. I rented it like two months ago to watch on a flight and totally loved it. Best film I've seen from Wes Anderson for sure.

 

[omgkitty]

Great picks. I really should have picked up Breaking the Waves. Maybe next time.

I really hate how Criterion experimented with those stupid combo packs. Thankfully that has ended and they will soon be offering the option to buy normal cases and artwork for the titles that they screwed up on.

Which covers did they mess up? (Like Someone in Love's is terrible) I do find it annoying to have to get the blu-ray disc out from behind the booklet and my DVD's are basically all useless now. I do hope they keep including a copy of the novel when the opportunity arises. Getting the novel with Red River and Picnic at Hanging Rock was cool and unexpected.

 

[Downhome]

Which covers did they mess up? (Like Someone in Love's is terrible) I do find it annoying to have to get the blu-ray disc out from behind the booklet and my DVD's are basically all useless now. I do hope they keep including a copy of the novel when the opportunity arises. Getting the novel with Red River and Picnic at Hanging Rock was cool and unexpected.

All of the stupid dual format editions. Here is where they announced that they were starting it...

Last week, we announced that in November, Criterion will begin releasing dual-format editions, including both DVD and Blu-ray discs in one package. The response was overwhelmingly positive, but we knew there would be questions. The most common by far were: “Will the package be Blu-ray or DVD size?” (Answer: Blu-ray size, except the Zatoichi box, which will be Blu-ray height in one dimension, DVD height in the other.) “Will it take up more space on my shelf?” (Not if we can help it.) And “Is this going to be true forever?”(Nothing is forever, but as long as it works we’ll keep doing it.)

Those were the easy questions, but we knew there was another, tougher set of questions, because they were the same ones we had wrestled with as we arrived at our decision: “Aren’t you just making DVD customers buy discs they can’t use and Blu-ray customers buy discs they don’t want? Doesn’t this mean lots of waste? Aren’t DVD customers worse off, because they’ll pay more? Why are you doing this? And why now?”

It’s been five years since Criterion announced its first Blu-ray titles. During that time, we’ve taken measures to support our audience no matter which format they prefer. Every Blu-ray release has always been available on DVD as well, and as DVD pressing prices dropped, we’ve even passed along some savings to our DVD customers by pricing new DVD releases at $29.95 instead of our traditional $39.95.

Today, something like 60 percent of the discs we sell are Blu-rays, 40 percent DVDs. The good news is that the growth of Blu-ray has more than made up for the slide in DVD, and our overall audience is growing. But now, instead of having one physical product to produce we have two, and that’s where the problem starts.

The only way we can afford to produce the packages we are known for is to print large runs, because at small quantities the cost per unit kills any hope of breaking even. Larger quantities may cost more up front, but as long as we sell the copies, we can capture the savings over time and deliver you a better, more beautiful product.

Having two physical packages to produce has cut those economies of scale in half. Instead of one big, cost-effective run of DVD packaging, we now need two different runs, each about half as big, one for Blu-ray and one for DVD. But to make the packaging affordable on a per-unit basis, we still need to run the original big, cost-effective quantity of each, meaning, essentially, making twice what we need. The Blu-ray may sell briskly, and the packaging may need to be reordered fairly soon, but the DVD stocks will take longer to dwindle. When we finally run out of DVD packaging, printing another big, cost-effective run will not be an option, because we would never sell enough of the copies to pay for the packaging. And at the price for printing a small run, we might be losing money on every copy we sell. What do we do?

Looking around the industry, we saw lots of answers we didn’t like. We could stop making beautiful, substantive packaging, but that wasn’t really an option. We could stop making DVDs, but that would mean cutting off 40 percent of our customers, including most schools, libraries, and universities. We could just take the DVD out of print after its initial run, but we have always strived to keep all our titles in print as long as we have the rights to them. We could strip down the DVD packaging after the initial run and drop the booklet, but then we wouldn’t be publishing the edition we think our customers deserve. None of those solutions would serve our DVD customers well, and more importantly, all of them would run counter to our mission to keep up the quality of our product and serve our audience as well as possible, regardless of which format they prefer.

The model we kept returning to was dual-format releasing, and the more we looked at it, the more sense it made. What seemed like more waste was actually less. Instead of printing big overruns on two packages, we could now make one big, efficient run again. That would mean less wasted packaging. Discs can be printed in small quantities as needed, so there would be no wasted inventory there either. The savings we’d been passing along to DVD customers had evaporated at this point, but while DVD customers would be back to paying a higher price, they would also be getting a product that was “future-proofed” against the day when they might upgrade to Blu-ray. Blu-ray customers would not pay more for the addition of the DVD discs, so they would be no worse off, and they could even use their DVD copies as loaners to introduce their friends to their favorite films. Most importantly, it would allow us to continue to publish the best possible product, which is what we think you want from us.

So that’s how we got here. We’re still finding our way a bit, but we have a good feeling about this. We’ll still release straight Blu-ray upgrades from time to time, but you can expect all of our new Criterion releases to be dual-format for the foreseeable future. Occasionally, we’ll retire existing DVD and Blu-ray editions and replace both with a single dual-format edition. We’ll continue to use a mix of plastic and paper packaging, but we’re going to do our best to make sure the new packaging doesn’t take up extra space on your shelf. (Check out how compact the Zatoichi set is!) All special features on Criterion discs will appear on both formats, but Eclipse will remain a DVD-only line, in keeping with its original goals and identity.

That pretty much covers the range of questions we received after last Thursday’s announcement. For us, all the questions boil down to one: how can we serve the films and the audience, make the best thing we know how to make, and make enough money to do it all over again tomorrow? Today, the best answer to that question is releasing dual-format editions. We’ll see how that shakes out!

And here is where they announced that they were finally ending it after all of the negative feedback. They are ending it with the September titles...

Last November, when we announced that we would start releasing dual-format editions, we hoped that we had found an alternative that would address our concerns about packaging costs across two formats, while guaranteeing that both DVD and Blu-ray customers would still have access to an identical product. While we did solve that problem, no one seemed particularly happy with the solution. Blu-ray customers didn’t like making room for DVDs they didn’t want, and DVD customers didn’t like paying more to get a Blu-ray they couldn’t play. We soon found that we had to start releasing stand-alone DVD editions alongside the dual-format ones because a fairly large proportion of our audience has not made the leap to Blu-ray yet. And once we had separate DVD editions, what was the point of putting DVDs in with the Blu-rays? A good question.

With that in mind, when we announce our September titles at the beginning of next week, we'll be going back to releasing separate DVD and Blu-ray editions. In most cases, the contents of the releases will be the same in both formats. This may come as welcome news to many of you and perhaps as a disappointment to some, but please know that we’ll keep thinking and listening, experimenting and exploring, so do let us know your thoughts and preferences.

What I wish they would do is phase out the DVDs period. I mean, come on. The Criterion label is aimed at the very people who are most likely to have Blu-ray players in the first place. They should help lead the final transition from DVD to Blu-ray. For the people that STILL buy DVDs, I bet you that most of those people would finally jump to BD if that was the only way they could still buy their Criterion releases.

Those stupid dual format sets were so large, horrible packaging. It may not matter to some, but for those of us that buy a lot of the titles in the collection it just takes up to much unnecessary shelf space.

I have no problem at all with them including novels and things like that. I just hate having DVDs of all things taking up that extra space.

 

[omgkitty]

I completely agree and I think for the most part, the DVD crowd is just a separate kind of person to someone who buys blu-ray. I seriously doubt there's a bunch of hardcore collectors and cinephiles out there still buying only DVD. Everyone I know who hasn't jumped over to blu-ray yet simply isn't going to and most of those people aren't buying movies anyways. With the internet, Netflix, Redbox etc, it's easy for someone to just rent something or steal it or do whatever to see a movie, and they don't care how it's seen. Most regular people still say they "can't see the difference between blu-ray and DVD."

I figured the kinds of people who are normally into Criterion are collectors and cinephiles who believe in seeing something the best way possible. I can also understand why Criterion do keep selling DVD's however because they need to make as much money off these releases as possible to keep funding new titles. It's a catch 22 for them because it costs more money to do both, but it makes them more money to do so as well. Honestly, I wish the rest of the world would just fucking catch up. All publishers should just stop making DVD's as that's the only thing that's going to solve this. The move from VHS to DVD was easier because people could see the difference and it made sense. Nowadays there are still people out there who don't even own HD TV's yet. When it comes right down to it though, who the hell are these 40% that are still only buying Criterion on DVD?

 

[Fjordson]

Wow, I didn't know they had announced going to separate releases. Great news. DVD's are totally worthless for me at this point.

And yeah, that 40% figure is surprising to me also. I get that people still buy DVD's, but I wouldn't expect that many within the Criterion audience.

 

[Son of Cervantes]

I'm sure a large number are libraries and other institutions.

 

[XShagrath]

I'm sure a large number are libraries and other institutions.

I believe they stated somewhere that these places were their largest purchasers of DVDs still.

 

[Shiv47]

I think there's probably a decent number of people for whom DVD is "good enough," and don't want to spend the money upgrading their collection yet again. I've seen a few here on GAF in the past in blu-ray/DVD threads. The only reason I'd ever use the DVD in a dual format package is to loan out to people who might want to see a movie, that I know either don't own a BR player or don't care about format (which is most people I know, I think).

 

[Son of Cervantes]

Thing is, after Blu I don't see there being another physical format for 2K or 4K...this is in many ways the last chance to own good editions of movies you love.

All my recent Blu purchases have just been upgraded from DVD unfortunately.

 

[Fjordson]

Slightly off-topic here, but do any of you use a PS4 as a blu-ray player regularly? I have a dedicated one for my main TV, but I'd like to be able to watch blus in my home office as well. Getting a PS4 soon, so if that's adequate as a player then I can just use that instead of having to buy a second dedicated one.

 

[Son of Cervantes]

Supposedly the PS3 is a much better Blu-Ray player than the PS4. Though I'm sure firmware updates will eventually put them on par.

 

[Downhome]

The PS3 has been my primary, and only, BD player since day one.

 

[Son of Cervantes]

Do you guys own any OOP Criterions?

 

[Downhome]

Do you guys own any OOP Criterions?

I own a number of them. Most notably The Third Man. It is the one I refuse to sell no matter what. It may be my favorite Criterion title, and if is the one I have watched the most.

 

[Son of Cervantes]

I own a number of them. Most notably The Third Man.

List 'em!

I have the original DVD edition of The Third Man (not the remastered one), Fellini's The White Sheik, Grand Illusion, Peeping Tom, Rebecca, Spellbound, Notorious, Straw Dogs, and Touchez pas au Grisbi. All OOP, never been released on Blu-Ray (though the Hitchcock, Third Man, and Grand Illusion have gotten non-Criterion releases).

 

[Fjordson]

Grand Illusion? Nice!

I'm super of jealous of that and anyone who has the Le Cercle Rouge blu. Can't get that anywhere, not even a non-Criterion release. One of my favourite films ever.

Only out of print release I have is The Third Man DVD. It's a good version, but I wish had caught the blu-ray version =[