The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

News on Criterion and Janus Films.
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mfunk9786
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The Criterion Channel -- Film and Content Discussion

#1 Post by mfunk9786 » Fri Nov 16, 2018 4:04 pm

This is the thread to discuss the content of The Criterion Channel and the way that content is presented within (including search functionality, supplemental features, etc). Please direct any technical questions or issues with the channel (including what streaming devices it's available on, etc) to The Criterion Channel -- Technical Issues and Questions.

Official, current list of all films available on The Criterion Channel

albucat
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Re: FilmStruck

#2 Post by albucat » Fri Nov 16, 2018 4:23 pm

Fiery Angel wrote:
Fri Nov 16, 2018 4:04 pm
THE CRITERION CHANNEL TO LAUNCH INDEPENDENT STREAMING SERVICE
AVAILABLE SPRING 2019

The Criterion Collection and WarnerMedia announced today a new chapter for the beloved collection of Criterion films. In the Spring of 2019, through a special arrangement with WarnerMedia, the Criterion Channel will launch as a free-standing streaming service. Additionally, the popular library of films will be part of WarnerMedia's recently announced direct-to-consumer platform that is planned to launch in the fourth quarter of 2019. Today's announcement ensures that fans will have access to these films from the Criterion Collection as well as films from WarnerMedia's deep and extensive library in what will be a rich and curated experience, which will further expand the audience footprint for these classic and acclaimed movies.

The Criterion Channel will be picking up where FilmStruck left off, with thematic programming, regular filmmaker spotlights, and actor retrospectives, featuring major classics and hard-to-find discoveries from Hollywood and around the world, complete with special features like commentaries, behind-the-scenes footage and original documentaries. The Criterion Channel will continue to produce their guest programmer series, Adventures in Moviegoing, which has already featured such cinephile luminaries as Barry Jenkins, Guillermo del Toro, Bill Hader, and Mira Nair. Criterion's monthly 15-minute film school, Observations on Film Art, Tuesday's Short + Feature, and the Friday double-bill will all be back as well.
This is almost certainly the best possible news. All of that pressure seemed to have worked.
Last edited by albucat on Fri Nov 16, 2018 4:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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mfunk9786
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Re: The Criterion Channel

#3 Post by mfunk9786 » Fri Nov 16, 2018 4:27 pm

Newsletter:

We are incredibly touched and encouraged by the flood of support we’ve been receiving since the announcement that FilmStruck will be shutting down on November 29, 2018. Our thanks go out to everyone who signed petitions, wrote letters and newspaper articles, and raised your voices to let the world know how much our mission and these movies matter to you.

Well, if you loved the curated programming we’ve been doing with our friends at FilmStruck, we have good news for you. The Criterion Collection team is going to be carrying on with that mission, launching the Criterion Channel as a freestanding service in spring 2019.

We’ve been trying to make something a little different for the past two years—a movie lover’s dream streaming service, with smart thematic programming, where the history of cinema can live and breathe, where a new generation of filmmakers and film lovers can explore the classics or revel in rarities, where adventurous cinephiles can champion films that have never gotten their due, and newcomers can easily find guidance from major filmmakers, top scholars, curators, and other experts from all walks of life.
The Criterion Channel will be picking up where the old service left off, programming director spotlights and actor retrospectives featuring major Hollywood and international classics and hard-to-find discoveries from around the world, complete with special features like commentaries, behind-the-scenes footage, and original documentaries. We will continue with our guest programmer series, Adventures in Moviegoing. Our regular series like Art-House America, Split Screen, and Meet the Filmmakers, and our Ten Minutes or Less section will all live on, along with Tuesday’s Short + Feature and the Friday Night Double Feature, and of course our monthly fifteen-minute film school, Observations on Film Art.
Our library will also be available through WarnerMedia’s new consumer platform when it launches late next year, so once both services are live, Criterion fans will have even more ways to find the films they love.

We will be starting from scratch, with no subscribers, so we will need all the help we can get. The most valuable thing you can do to help now is go to Criterion.com/channel and sign up to be a Charter Subscriber, then tell your friends to sign up too. We need everyone who was a FilmStruck subscriber or who’s been tweeting and signing petitions and writing letters to come out and to sign up for the new service. We can’t do it without you!

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domino harvey
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Re: The Criterion Channel

#4 Post by domino harvey » Fri Nov 16, 2018 4:31 pm

Bonuses for being a charter member
A 30-day free trial.

A reduced subscription fee for as long as you keep your subscription active. The regular fee will be $10.99 a month or $100 a year, but as a Charter Subscriber you’ll pay $9.99 a month or $89.99 a year.

Concierge customer service from the Criterion Collection, including a customer ID and a special e-mail address.

A holiday gift-certificate present, for use on the Criterion Collection website.

A Charter Subscriber membership card.

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Big Ben
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Re: The Criterion Channel

#5 Post by Big Ben » Fri Nov 16, 2018 4:33 pm

Fantastic news! I'm immensely pleased with this result all things considered. I've signed up for the Charter member stuff too!

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mfunk9786
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Re: The Criterion Channel

#6 Post by mfunk9786 » Fri Nov 16, 2018 4:36 pm

Yeah, no brainer to just throw your name and e-mail address on there. Surprised they don't want to start to store payment info now. Awesome news, just hope they have device parity and it's not computer/phone only.

KJones77
Joined: Wed Aug 23, 2017 11:35 pm

Re: The Criterion Channel

#7 Post by KJones77 » Fri Nov 16, 2018 4:43 pm

Very excited.

I like that the announcement makes it sound like old Hollywood will still be available in some form, rather than this being a strictly "all Criterion" service.

flyonthewall2983
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Re: The Criterion Channel

#8 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Fri Nov 16, 2018 4:47 pm

Perhaps they found allies in the other studios as part of the fallout from the initial news of FilmStruck's demise.

This is such a joy and relief. Signed up immediately.

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Luke M
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Re: The Criterion Channel

#9 Post by Luke M » Fri Nov 16, 2018 5:01 pm

I signed up for the annual. Very exciting news!

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FrauBlucher
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Re: The Criterion Channel

#10 Post by FrauBlucher » Fri Nov 16, 2018 5:05 pm

This actually may be one of those silver lining things. The Criterion brand standing alone can only be good for the company. I wonder if they can/are making side deals with majors on certain old Hollywood titles just for steaming rights.

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goblinfootballs
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Re: The Criterion Channel

#11 Post by goblinfootballs » Fri Nov 16, 2018 5:06 pm

Incredibly relieved, but I wonder to what extent this will provide access to the collection, given this sentence:
Our library will also be available through WarnerMedia’s new consumer platform when it launches late next year, so once both services are live, Criterion fans will have even more ways to find the films they love.
Does this mean the same core collection will be on the Criterion Channel and WarnerMedia's platform? Or will some be in one location and not the other?

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senseabove
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Re: The Criterion Channel

#12 Post by senseabove » Fri Nov 16, 2018 5:07 pm

So... what happened here? Criterion took the groundswell of support as encouragement to go it on their own, and got Warners to agree to trade some kind of reciprocal content access for each of their own independent streaming services?

Hard to see how this isn't going to end up splitting the audience for one service across two services... Regardless, I signed up.

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FrauBlucher
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Re: The Criterion Channel

#13 Post by FrauBlucher » Fri Nov 16, 2018 5:10 pm

I would expect some cross promotion and customer discounts for multiple subscriptions

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371229
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Re: The Criterion Channel

#14 Post by 371229 » Fri Nov 16, 2018 5:43 pm

What will the "new" Criterion Channel loose without the partnership with TCM?

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movielocke
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The Criterion Channel

#15 Post by movielocke » Fri Nov 16, 2018 6:28 pm

mfunk9786 wrote:Yeah, no brainer to just throw your name and e-mail address on there. Surprised they don't want to start to store payment info now. Awesome news, just hope they have device parity and it's not computer/phone only.
The big difference from two-three years ago is that TVs are built around phone platforms, so my new Sony I bought last year does not need any streaming device, because it’s running on android and I just download any app from the android store. That means making an app for Android reaches a far bigger audience. You probably won’t see antiquated streaming device support, but it will probably launch on android, apple devices and have chrome cast support (to enable tv functionality for anyone else). Possibly Roku as well.

Doubt they want to spend budget on compliance and construction for gamer streaming platforms unless it’s merely building hooks into one of the widely used platforms. so the lack of derubergraphicsbeastmachine support will probably cost them four or five customers.

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dwk
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Re: The Criterion Channel

#16 Post by dwk » Fri Nov 16, 2018 7:33 pm

The announcement on the website also says they are hoping to launch in Canada at the same time as the US
The new service will be wholly owned and controlled by the Criterion Collection. We hope to be available in U.S. and Canada at launch, rolling out additional territories over time.

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barryconvex
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Re: The Criterion Channel

#17 Post by barryconvex » Fri Nov 16, 2018 10:42 pm

$90 for the year? i'll never stop buying physical media but that's a ridiculously easy call...

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lacritfan
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Re: The Criterion Channel

#18 Post by lacritfan » Sat Nov 17, 2018 11:59 am


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D50
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Re: The Criterion Channel

#19 Post by D50 » Sat Nov 17, 2018 1:59 pm

Signed up. this puts the netflix idea on the back burner.

email received:


Welcome, Charter Subscriber!
Thank you for signing up to become a Criterion Channel Charter Subscriber. We will contact you soon with details about how to create and activate your account. Your charter subscription will not be active until you complete that process.

If you loved the curated programming we’ve been doing with our friends at FilmStruck, you can look forward to us picking up where the old service left off, programming director spotlights and actor retrospectives of major Hollywood and international classics and hard-to-find discoveries from around the world, complete with special features like commentaries, behind-the-scenes footage, and original documentaries. And our regular Channel series—the guest programmer program Adventures in Moviegoing, Observations on Film Art, Tuesday’s Short + Feature, Art-House America, and the Friday double bill—will all be back as well.

As a Charter Subscriber, you will receive an extended thirty-day trial period. Once you activate your account, your card will not be charged until the service has been live for thirty days. Your charter subscription benefits, including reduced pricing, will be yours to enjoy for as long as you keep your membership active.

Stay tuned for more information. And in the meantime, share the news with your friends and family, sign up for our newsletter, and follow the Criterion Channel on Twitter at @criterionchannl for updates.

Thanks so much for your support. We can’t do it without you.
The Criterion Collection

flyonthewall2983
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Re: The Criterion Channel

#20 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Wed Nov 21, 2018 1:49 am

dwk wrote:
Fri Nov 16, 2018 7:33 pm
The announcement on the website also says they are hoping to launch in Canada at the same time as the US
The new service will be wholly owned and controlled by the Criterion Collection. We hope to be available in U.S. and Canada at launch, rolling out additional territories over time.
Hopefully they can do this world-wide, Europe especially.

hanshotfirst1138
Joined: Wed Mar 12, 2014 6:06 pm

The Criterion Channel

#21 Post by hanshotfirst1138 » Fri Nov 23, 2018 4:14 pm

The cache of FilmStruck for me was having the TCM/Criterion combo; this new service sounds nice, but without the TCM side of things, I don’t know if I’ll be that interested; I hope that Time Warner’s shuttering of FilmStruck doesn’t bode badly for TCM. And I’ll especially miss those extras.

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Ribs
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Re: The Criterion Channel

#22 Post by Ribs » Fri Nov 23, 2018 5:05 pm

TCM has basically been from the beginning a quirk of libraries, taking advantage of the fact that Turner owned such a massive library otherwise not being used that could sustain an entire functional channel at very little operating cost especially compared to their other offerings TBS and TNT. I do not think the overhead on running TCM has increased particularly substantially, and considering it’s a wonderful channel that’s basically been designed as filler to add an extra channel, I don’t think it’ll be going anywhere. I think there’s absolutely a world where the Warner streaming offering allows TCM to be more TCM then it ever was on Filmstruck - or it could just be absorbed into the ether of the gigantic library.

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fdm
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Re: The Criterion Channel

#23 Post by fdm » Fri Nov 23, 2018 5:08 pm

It's going to be a wait and see for me. I did manage to scour the Criterion Channel (CC) side of things a few weeks ago for what to try and watch before it all went dark, and I did come up with a huge watch list of CC content (lots of titles that haven't made it to disc primarily, some of it watched, a lot of it still sitting on the watch list). Presumably this content I can pursue in the future with the new CC.

But it was the FilmStruck part that drew my attention most of the time, since I drifted towards its content that wasn't available elsewhere or was hard to come by (I didn't spend much time with the TCM-particular content, as I've seen a pretty good chunk of it already on TCM). It's this content that was unique to FilmStruck that I'd really like to see re-appear, so it would be really nice if Criterion could get some of that streaming as well.

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FrauBlucher
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Re: The Criterion Channel

#24 Post by FrauBlucher » Fri Nov 30, 2018 8:06 am


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jedgeco
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Re: The Criterion Channel

#25 Post by jedgeco » Fri Nov 30, 2018 11:17 am

Sounds like a plan to both decimate the popular licensed content that Netflix still has, while also making Netflix's pricing seem like a better value.

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