More OOP Criterions Announced

In the middle of June, Criterion announced another set of titles headed for deletion status. According to their website, the following titles - DVD plus one Blu-ray - will be out of print as of June 30th:

Billy Liar

Bob le flambeur

Diary of a Chambermaid

Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The

Kind Hearts and Coronets

Man Who Fell to Earth, The --- DVD + Blu-ray

Milky Way, The

Phantom of Liberty, The

That Obscure Object of Desire

Touchez pas au grisbi

Woman is a Woman, A

Some Canadians will note many of these titles were always imports from the U.S., as they either had no domestic distributor, or the rights holder chose not to carry the import editions.

This is hardly a new thing in the home video realm, but perhaps what's surprising is how the window of rights seems to feel more narrow. The impression is that some corporate owners don't want a title tied up for more than 2-3 years with a third party licencee.

What may also be happening is Criterion, for better or worse, is being used as a testing ground by some to see whether there is a demand in Region 1 land for films by a specific drector or from a specific genre. Should a work prove to be commercially viable, the owners can put out their own transfers - taking advantage of the latest technological improvements - and create their own custom edition, with the option of licensing some of the special content materials created by Criterion.

(It wouldn't be surprising, either, for more savvy labels to inlcude in the the use of Criterion extras in their own editions, perhaps as a bargaining tool by allowing Criterion to include a title in their catalogue.)

In any event, those are the latest deletions, and already some have started flinging mud (see comments on the Criterion site) at the alleged rights holder / owner, Lionsgate, for what some feel is an act of betrayal towards the collector. It's not good that these films may remain unavailable for a while, but most of the titles from the last wave of OOP Criterions (Third Man excepted) are still easy to find, so collectors should still be able to pick up their missing editions before supplies run dry.

On the flip-side, Criterion's next wave of titles include Terence Malick's The Thin Blue Line (which I hope will bring back into print, and in widescreen, Andre Marton's 1964 version); Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, Three Silent Classics by Josef von Sternberg (Underworld, The Last Command, and The Docks of New York), Maurice Pialat's L'enfance nue, Terry Zwigoff's Louis Blue and a new special edition of Crumb, and Abdellatif Kechiche The Secret of the Grain.

The label's latest wave of titles include Jan Troell's Everlasting Moments, Carol Reed's Night Train to Munich, and Luchino Viscont's The Leopard making its debut on Blu-ray.

It balances out a bit, right?

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com

Criterion Announces More OOP DVDs for March

As reported by Criterion this morning in an email to its subscribing fans, 23 titles spanning Criterion and Essential Art House lines will go out of print at the end of March when their agreement with Canal Plus ends. Some of the titles are surprisingly new - Carlos Saura's Flamenco Trilogy (Eclipse Series 6) as well as The Fallen Idol, Mayerling, and The Small Back Room had fairly short lives under the label, and one suspects Canal Plus may either be planning their own line of special editions, spanning DVD and Blu-ray formats.

Ran, formerly available from Criterion as a special edition and announced for a Blu-ray release at one time is now OOP, but the title will be back in circulation Feb. 16 via Lionsgate, who have an agreement with Canal Plus/Studio Canal to bring out their own DVD and Blu-ray editions, much like Contempt (also Feb. 16).

For collectors, it means the feeding frenzy against speculators has now begun, much in the way The Third Man DVD and Blu-rays were snatched up as soon as word leaked that these troublesome titles for North American distribution were going OOP yet again.

Here's the list of imminently OOP Criterions:

Alphaville

Carlos Saura’s Flamenco Trilogy (Eclipse Series 6)

Le corbeau

Coup de torchon

Diary of a Country Priest

The Fallen Idol

Forbidden Games (Criterion and Essential Art House editions)

Gervaise (Essential Art House edition)

Grand Illusion (Criterion and Essential Art House editions)

Le jour se lève (Essential Art House edition)

Last Holiday (Essential Art House edition)

Mayerling (Essential Art House edition)

The Orphic Trilogy

Peeping Tom

Pierrot le fou (DVD and Blu-ray editions)

Port of Shadows

Quai des Orfèvres

The Small Back Room

The Tales of Hoffmann (Criterion and Essential Art House editions)

Trafic (1971)

Le trou

Variety Lights (Essential Art House edition)

The White Sheik

Paid up your Visa bill yet?

- MRH

Berlin's Cold War Heat

Back in September, I posted reviews of Robert Siodmak’s Escape from East Berlin (1962) and the documentary/travel video Mauerflug (‘flight over the Berlin Wall’) as the first in a series tied to the giant reverse-chastity belt that was designed to prevent East Germans from penetrating the west.

Here in Part Two, I’ve uploaded a pair of reviews dealing with Berlin before the Cold War, and the city smack in the middle of it. Both productions are biased towards British POVs of the city, and don’t really present the drama from the average person’s stance.

The Man Between (1953), for example, has a snotty and ignorant waif visiting her brother in the British Sector, after which she ends up in the East and has to flee with the gangster she’s fallen for during her exotically dangerous sojourn. The film – still unavailable in Region 1 land – could be regarded as director Carol Reed’s second poke at postwar thrills-among-the-ruins, after The Third Man (1949), although nowhere as clever nor intriguing.

James Mason pulls off a decent East German (even his pronunciation of German is serviceable), and Claire Bloom looks beautiful in spite of playing an idiot. The location footage and recreation of ruined quarters is stellar, however, as is John Addison’s thematic material.

Reed’s film takes place pre-Wall; the GDR regime was starting to tighten its grip on citizens and crack down on flights to West Berlin, and barbed wire and military checkpoints were more severe, but one could still find venues to exit the Eastern Sector.

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1965) was a superb realist drama – WASP-style – taken from John le Carré’s best-selling espionage thriller about a British spy who feigns revulsion towards the British government/western politics and heads over to East Germany with his suitcase of secrets.

Spy is the antithesis of sixties spy films because it’s about characters, spy psychologies, and outright misery. Richard Burton is beautifully subdued under Martin Ritt’s direction, Oskar Werner steals the film at every angle, and Claire Bloom plays a far less naïve woman, although she’s essentially the perfunctory love interest.

Only the last scene takes place in East Berlin (er, a custom set built in Ireland), and the obligatory flight to the west is shorter, less elaborate, but far more tense than what Reed prolonged in his flat film.

The reason Ritt’s finale works in its compact dramatic state is purely because of the characters we want to see happy after been abused by governments and ideological monsters. They deserve a chance at peace, and the tension one sees as Burton tries to keep his performance style under several notches actually makes his scenes more compelling, because one senses his character is struggling with emotions kept locked up due to his risky profession.

There are no explosions, tricked-out Aston Martins, or bald men trying to destroy planet Earth with a lethal gas, but it’s a rewarding drama, as well as another fine example of British Bleakism. Spy isn’t precisely about Berlin – it’s the kludge centre where everything happens once the various levels of badness comingle – but it’s symbolic of the city being mucked up because the postwar winners are playing an elaborate game of chess.

Author le Carré points out in an interview on the Criterion DVD that while one man is sacrificed in the film’s pivotal courtroom sequence, many more of his colleagues and underlings will probably lose there jobs, their dignity, and some their lives due to automatic guilt-by-association.

Paramount released their own bare bones edition of Spy on DVD, but Criterion’s special edition from 2008 is worth every penny for the super transfer (Sol Kaplan’s grim little score is in true stereo!), plus some excellent extras.

- MRH

Criterion’s big C goes interactive and archival

Criterion has just remodelled their website into a more streamlined and interactive portal for their huge archive of classic, foreign, and contemporary films, as well as vintage archival materials, such as essays from laserdisc releases (which so far begins with Roger P. Smith’s essay from the Citizen Kane laserdisc).

The new site design emphasizes bigger spaces between graphics and text, whereas the prior design combined (what seemed to be) a bit more information within a narrower page width. Some titles include streaming trailers or a large still, but there’s still the standard tally of film credits, DVD specs, and special feature contents.

What’s new and novel to the site is Criterion’s decision to offer streaming video of select films, which will reportedly open up to include offline viewing as well in 2009. The $5 fee allows one to watch the film as many times as one wants for a week, and the $5 can be applied as a credit towards the purchase of the film you watched, either on DVD or Blu-ray.

This is perhaps the most intriguing attempt by the label to further exploit its valuable/invaluable catalogue of films. First there was the special edition laserdisc, then SE DVDs, then the bare bones Eclipse series that brought idling classics back into wide distribution, and now the opportunity to watch the film on your PC or Mac.

While the streaming will be restricted to the territories to which Criterion has the rights (making some films unobtainable, except as import DVD purchases for those outside of the U.S.), it solves a dilemma that’s quite common to film students: where the heck can one get that film needed for an essay, a research project, or one part of a class’ viewing list?

In big cities with rental shops catering to the astute – in Toronto [T.O.], there’s Bay Street Video, Queen Video, and Suspect Video among the top 3 – students have the chance to get the films they need, but due to the cost and sometimes highly eclectic nature of a Criterion film (Michael Bay’s Armageddon ain’t part of that group), it means a class of 20 students have to scour the city and get their hands on the 4 or 5 copies that may exist in T.O. If someone’s late in returning the movie, no one gets the film.

There’s the option to buy the film on DVD, but Criterions come with a premium price. The problem’s been slightly offset with the budget line Essential Art House series, but it’s a new stream that thus far includes just a few bare bones editions of classics, encompassing films such as Grand Illusion, Beauty and the Beast, and Wild Strawberries.

So if the rental is out, the sale copy is sold out, or you live in a town or city where it’s cost prohibitive to get the DVD, and you just need the film for a week to finish your project, the new online streaming option may be a life-saver.

The current selection is very small, but a taste of things to come: Au revoir les enfants, Fat Girl, General Idi Amin Dada, Hopscotch, The Horse’s Mouth, Il posto, Juliet of the Spirits, Lord of the Flies, Overlord, La pointe courte, Ratcatcher, Sans soleil, Solaris (1972), The Spirit of the Beehive, Sweet Movie, Sweetie, and The Thief of Bagdad (1940).

It’s an eclectic mix for sure, but here’s one suggestion to Criterion for the next wave of titles: check out the most used films by fans and students, and start to put those online, because those are among the most vital for school projects, and $5 will be the best money spent by students pulling hairs to meet a hard deadline.

I haven’t tried their streaming feature, but Criterion’s interactive site will undoubtedly give the first participants some forum to critique the process, if there’s any bugs or other technical issues.

But I am looking forward to the reproduction of essays and articles from their prior laserdisc releases, since the contents of those 12” platters sometimes contained unique reference materials (such as script and stills, in the case of Forbidden Planet) that were ignored by producers for the subsequent studio releases.

The real question for veteran fans will be whether Criterion will make available some of those commentary tracks (oh, like The Great Escape) that el cheapo producers refused to buy and port over into their DVD SE’s (and don’t get me started on the recalled James Bond commentaries).

Bruce Eder interviewed *a lot* of filmmakers, technicians, actors, and composers, and those tracks really deserve to be rescued from oblivion. Here’s hoping Criterion’s revamped website (with its simple and informative intro video) will evolve into a major resource, so film fans who’ve only heard of the goodies that appeared on long-dead laserdiscs will get a chance to scour them online, in perpetuity.



-MRH