'Forthcoming' Lists Discussion and Random Speculation Vol.2

[Cinephrenic]

The Jews killed em.

Lol. Gibson killed them and the Jews.

[oldsheperd]

I love derailing threads. Richard Cranium Award here I come!

[Ben Cheshire]

To continue the discussion from a page ago, Mimic is coming to Blu Ray in Australia on Nov 4th: http://www.ezydvd.com.au/item.zml/809283, which I'm guessing will be the theatrical cut, with no involvement from Del Toro. I wonder which I should be looking forward to more: Director's Cut (which I've grown suspicious of lately) or Theatrical Blu? If the Blu's a good transfer, I'll be happy I guess.

[psufootball07]

Looking back on some newsletters made me realize how many of them never came true this year. Che, Ophuls, and some other difficult ones to decipher, Stagecoach as well. Last year they had everything they planned to release based on these subtle hints, I believe The Furies, Mon Oncle Antoine and a few others were the hints that panned out, maybe even White Dog?

[kekid]

I sent Jon Mulvaney an e-mail a few weeks ago, expressing my frustration with some of Criterion's decisions and actions in 2009. Specifically, I said that I thought Criterion's Blu Ray rollout was cautious compared to a much faster rollout of classics and international cinema by some European companies. I asked them about the increased empahsis on recent films as opposed to established classics. I asked them why they would issue a large box of Kurosawas without providing an option to their loyal customers to buy only items never before issued. I asked them about their communication strategy: what role they thought the facebook would play, and how they expect to communicate with long-standing customers with stronger loyalties.

I was pleasantly surprised to received a quite detailed response. In addition to a direct response to my questions, Jon included a rather long response by Peter Becker to another customer who had expressed substantially similar concerns. The actual e-mails are too long to post here, but I will try to summarize.

Criterion reassure us that their focus or strategy vis-a-vis what material they issue has not changed. The production of "The Human Condition" took enormous resources. Work on the Rossellini Trilogy has also proven far more complex than they had envisaged (especially "Roma, Citta Aperta"), which explains why it is not out yet, but they are hopeful that they are nearing the end on that. They had also hoped to release Stagecoach and Che in December, but these two items were delayed due to similar difficulties with Stagecoach and the desire to include some additional supplements in case of Che. These delays have made it appear that their emphasis has shifted towards more recent works, however in terms of time and resources expended they have spent far more effort on the classics mentioned.

They tell us that a simultaneous issue of Blu Ray is almost equivalent of two DVD's in terms of resources required. They do not have the capacity to manage that kind of load for every release. However, they accept that that is a desirable strategy, and are working towards expanding capacity.

They believe they cannot manage individually answering a large number of e-mails, hence they adopted the facebook as a more efficient mechanism. In that context I feel flattered to have received such a detailed response from them.

Europe enjoys several companies who regularly release classics and international cinema on high quality DVD's. The US has very few (Criterion and Kino, for the most part). Occasionally Warner and some other companies are energized to issue this or that foreign film, but this is clearly not their priority. Hence it is reassuring to me that Criterion remains committed to their cause.

And no, I am not associated in any way with the Criterion organization (other than as a consumer), and do not know anyone there personally. I hope these comments from them would provide a direct answer to some of questions we see posted on this forum frequently.

[bradass]

I was pleasantly surprised to received a quite detailed response. In addition to a direct response to my questions, Jon included a rather long response by Peter Becker to another customer who had expressed substantially similar concerns. The actual e-mails are too long to post here, but I will try to summarize.

I would appreciate if you posted the entire response you received, I'm quite curious.

Anyone else think that the War Trilogy will be one of Criterion's quintessential releases? It's one of the most important, canonical slated sets in a very long time. Given it's importance and delays, you can be sure it wont be half-assed. Too bad the likelihood of a simultaneous Blu-ray release is slim-to-none.

[kekid]

Here is the complete response from Peter Becker to one of the customers.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My name is Peter Becker. I'm the president of Criterion. Thanks for
taking the time to write in.

You're right to call the Criterion schedule a juggling act, and
juggling this year's schedule has been more challenging than any since
laserdisc days. I understand some of the frustration you're feeling
about the balance of new and classic titles, especially in the later
2009 Blu-ray schedule. Making the Criterion schedule is always a
series of impossible compromises, and in the end, some people, some
years, are going to end up unhappy. Clearly this was not a good year
for you. I'm sorry about that. I know it may not solve anything, but I
thought you might appreciate a quick look at some of the factors that
came into play with this year's schedule.

For what it's worth, we've spent much more time on classic film this
year than our announced schedule shows. The single most time consuming
and expensive mastering project in the history of the company was
Kobayashi's THE HUMAN CONDITION -- that is, until we started work on
Rossellini's War Trilogy, which is still not finished. We had
originally hoped to have the Rossellini set ready for October release,
then November, then December. Ironically the easiest of the masters,
the 2007 restoration of ROME, OPEN CITY, is the one that is giving us
the most trouble. PAISAN, which has never been available in a
watchable video version, has taken us three straight months of digital
restoration, an amount of time and an expense that will probably never
come back, but the film will finally, for the first time, look good --
still damaged, but with a beautiful black and white image that will be
a revelation to anyone who has ever seen the old tapes and 16 mm
prints that are still in circulation. Our tech director is about to
make his third trip to Italy on this project, just to try to
straighten out the last master, next week.

You also mention STAGECOACH. We never announced it for December, but
it's true that we had hoped to release it then. Again mastering turned
out to be more complicated than we anticipated. The original negative
of the film is lost, and we have been evaluating a number of different
elements. We are now working closely with UCLA's restoration team to
evaluate all available elements and create a new HD master, starting
from scratch. The bad news is that it's taking a long time. The good
news is that in the time we've been working on the master, we've had
the opportunity to unearth some interesting supplemental materials, so
the edition will be all the better for it. That said, it's frustrating
that it didn't come out -- the cover's been on the wall of our office
for weeks now, and we're looking forward to making it a part of the
collection.

Those two big classics that we've been hard at work on were never
announced, which helped to give disporportionate weight to the
contemporary releases of this fall/winter. I can understand why you
would think we were stepping back from classics in favor of more
contemporary films, but in fact, the opposite has been true. Our
Blu-ray schedule has been heavily weighted toward international
classics with THE SEVENTH SEAL, PLAYTIME, WAGES OF FEAR, THE THIRD
MAN, REPULSION, 400 BLOWS, THE LAST METRO, IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES,
LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD. And when you throw in our DVD schedule with Z,
JEANNE DIELMAN, 2 OR 3 THINGS..., HUMAN CONDITION, MY DINNNER WITH
ANDRE, the Imamura box, Painlevé, etc., I don't think we pulled any
punches or spared any expense where classics were concerned.

Integrating Blu-ray production into our workflow has been challenging
in its own right. Adding an existing DVD upgrade is about equivalent
to adding a new DVD production to the schedule, at least where our
technical team is concerned, and that is where our capacity is most
constrained. New Blu-rays released day and date with the DVD editions
are marginally more efficient, and many of our customers are avidly
urging us not to release DVD-only editions anymore, but each
simultaneous release we do is one more DVD catalog classic we aren't
revisiting that month. Right now we're struggling to bring our Blu-ray
capacity up from one to two a month to three or four. As our capacity
increases, it will be easier to keep a balance, but in the meantime
it's an inexact science.

The other title that you say you were expecting, but which we didn't
officially announce for December, is CHE. It's coming, and as you can
imagine there's a wealth of great content getting developed. We wanted
to be ready for December, but Steven Soderbergh needed time to
reconstruct some deleted scenes, and we were also able, in what we
think is going to be a controversial coup, to persuade Che biographer
Jon Lee Anderson to do commentaries on both films, but he also needed
more time to prepare. In short, it became clear that if we delayed the
release a month we would be able to make a much better set. That's a
trade we will always make, even if it means we don't get the benefit
of sales in the holiday season, and we think that's the kind of
decision our collectors would want us to make.

To touch briefly on some of the other things you mention: more Eclipse
is a goal for us too. Again, this is a capacity issue. Each disc in a
set represents multiple passes for our QC department, and when we're
working on large-scale projects like Rossellini, HUMAN CONDITION, or
the Imamura box, that has a tendency to cramp our capacity to handle
multi-disc Eclipse sets at the same time. Still, we're proud of what
we've been able to do in Eclipse this year, but we are definitely
looking forward to getting more out next year. As for "two-release
months," by which I assume we're referring to December, I've already
mentioned that we intended to have STAGECOACH and CHE ready for
December as well but we delayed them to make them better rather than
sooner. That said, when one of the two releases is a 25-disc set,
that also factors in. I'm sorry you don't like the Kurosawa box idea,
but we felt that his centennial was an important opportunity to draw
attention to his monumental body of work, and so far we've had some
very positive feedback from people who have not been as diligently
collecting his work as you have.

I don't expect anything I've said will change your mind about our
slate, but I hope at least you'll know that we have no desire to
dismiss your concerns. We do value feedback from our customers,
especially longtime supporters like you, and we hope we'll earn your
loyalty again in 2010.

All the best,
Peter Becker

[Tribe]

Thanks for posting that, Kekid.

[Jeff]

That is a great, thoughtful response by Becker. Those who "want what they want when they want it" (I'm thinking of guys like Jeffrey Wells, who won't stop whining about Che, as much as I am anyone here) don't often think about think about the massive amount of work that Becker, Turrell, and their 40-person crew put into their product. Much of what happens is not even in their control. One upcoming release has been delayed because their licensor sent the wrong master from an old restoration, and Criterion spent months trying to get it corrected. If a director, or commentator, or interview subject is unavailable due to scheduling conflicts, that's out of their hands too.

I'm sure that Criterion would have liked nothing more than to release Che and Stagecoach in December. They would have been big sellers for the holidays. As disappointed as we might be that they didn't make it out in time, think of how much more disappointed they are. It means delayed gratification for us; it means lost profit for them.

There was a time in the laserdisc days when things were frequently announced a year in advance. Criterion let people know what they acquired when they acquired it. Naturally, many releases suffered delays, or never made it out at all. People bitched, and Criterion put their schedule under wraps, only announcing discs when they were ready to go to production. That is where the three month announcement schedule on their site came from. I wonder if they are now regretting their newsletter hints, which have a window closer to six months. Some folks are treating these glimpses at the production schedule as "announcements." If I were calling the shots at Criterion, I'd keep up the fun hints, but drop any mentions of months or seasons.

Criterion has so many great films in the pipeline, that I'm convinced 2010 is going to be a landmark year for them.

[Tribe]

That is a great, thoughtful response by Becker. Those who "want what they want when they want it" (I'm thinking of guys like Jeffrey Wells, who won't stop whining about Che, as much as I am anyone here) don't often think about think about the massive amount of work that Becker, Turrell, and their 40-person crew put into their product. Much of what happens is not even in their control. One upcoming release has been delayed because their licensor sent the wrong master from an old restoration, and Criterion spent months trying to get it corrected. If a director, or commentator, or interview subject is unavailable due to scheduling conflicts, that's out of their hands too.

Now, if only Becker would start watching all the films screened at the various European film festivals and stop leeching off of IFC's cut-throat practices... :-"

[GringoTex]

That email makes me feel much better about the future.

[Ben Cheshire]

That's the best press release I've ever read. It makes me feel like buying a stack of criterions up to my chin.

[Dante Vescio]

You need to stop asking.

Sorry about that. Just looking for an answer. This is a very important movie for me, anyway. Well, I got an answer from Mulvaney and the answer is no, so I guess that's definite. Too bad, but I'll continue on supporting Criterion because their work is truly unique. I'm not about to whine and wish Criterion would go out of business because my favourite movie is not on their schedule, unlike many I see here.

[stereo]

I'll chime in on the agreement that Becker's comments make me all fuzzy inside again.

[knives]

That's the best press release I've ever read. It makes me feel like buying a stack of criterions up to my chin.

This Was my response too. Really thinking about it getting the War trilogy, Human Condition, Painleve set, and Golden Age set in decent condition let alone what they managed in some cases would be difficult for even the bigger studios so Criterion doing it had to be suicide on some level. Also the news of the Che commentary is great.

[Highway 61]

we were also able, in what we think is going to be a controversial coup, to persuade Che biographer Jon Lee Anderson to do commentaries on both films

Nice. These kind of contextual supplements are why I love Criterion. =D>

[ellipsis7]

ROSSELLINI WAR TRILOGY then for February maybe...

[Finch]

Thanks for posting Becker's response, kekid. It's definitely made me more appreciative of the enormous amount of work that goes on behind the scenes especially for the larger scale projects like Painleve and The Human Condition. And if Stagecoach and Che had to be delayed into next year to ensure they're released in the best condition and edition possible (anyone else thinking it could even be February before we get either title?), then so be it. Was very pleased to hear that they are going to try to increase capacity within the company to cope with the demand for more Eclipse and simultaneous DVD & Blu titles. If they succeed, 2010 could be a great year (and very expensive!) for many around here.

[Adam]

Not being able to prophesize = stupidity? And what exactly do you mean by "their own demise"?

You haven't seen Apocalypto yet? Because that's totally what happened.

Although the humor is good, just throwing in a few facts:

1. The Mayas didn't have a demise. They still make up the bulk of the population of the Yucatan and Guatemala. They did retreat from their large "urban" centers, which make the showiest ruins. They did this mostly before the Spanish arrived. The Spanish arrival did decimate the population through disease and general rotten Spanish behavior. But some Maya, for example, weren't taken over by the Spanish until the late 1600s, holding out in remote areas.

2. The Maya calendar, nor the Maya, predict the end of the world in 2012. It's just the end of a cycle of one number in their long count, and the start of the next cycle, but there are 5 different numbers in the long count, and others have turned over many times.

3. They did however predict that the DVD of Che wouldn't be released in December 2009, but would be seen sometime in 2010. this can be found in Stela 4 at Yaxchilan. The more we read American Anthropology instead of watching DVDs, the more we will catch things like this.

[Gregory]

^ Your #1 is part of what I was getting at in my post, but I quickly decided it was pointless and opted to follow it up with a flippant joke.
I do often see comments from ignorant parties on the internet who refer to "the Mayans" (sic) as some sort of extinct culture.

[knives]

ROSSELLINI WAR TRILOGY then for February maybe...

From the sounds of the letter probably not until July.

[ellipsis7]

Our tech director is about to
make his third trip to Italy on this project, just to try to
straighten out the last master, next week.

Suggests it's almost sorted. Of course we'll see it when we see it...

[Cinephrenic]

Not being able to prophesize = stupidity? And what exactly do you mean by "their own demise"?

You haven't seen Apocalypto yet? Because that's totally what happened.

Although the humor is good, just throwing in a few facts:

1. The Mayas didn't have a demise. They still make up the bulk of the population of the Yucatan and Guatemala. They did retreat from their large "urban" centers, which make the showiest ruins. They did this mostly before the Spanish arrived. The Spanish arrival did decimate the population through disease and general rotten Spanish behavior. But some Maya, for example, weren't taken over by the Spanish until the late 1600s, holding out in remote areas.

2. The Maya calendar, nor the Maya, predict the end of the world in 2012. It's just the end of a cycle of one number in their long count, and the start of the next cycle, but there are 5 different numbers in the long count, and others have turned over many times.

3. They did however predict that the DVD of Che wouldn't be released in December 2009, but would be seen sometime in 2010. this can be found in Stela 4 at Yaxchilan. The more we read American Anthropology instead of watching DVDs, the more we will catch things like this.

I think you read too much into the humor. Their empire did end, even though their decendents are still around in the central Americas. Your facts are what is commonly accepted, but those are actually theories regarding their fall. Not much is really known about them until more recent studies have taken place in the last 25 years.

[Adam]

No, I think I was reading about the right amount in the humor. Perhaps I overstressed the word "demise," but that word was really what I was responding to. Just thought I'd pass on a few facts. And I didn't wish to address the theories for their downfall, just the date fact of the abandonment of the centers, which as you mention are many, and still changing.

Recommended film - Breaking the Maya Code by David Lebrun, about the deciphering of Maya hieroglyphics. It's having it's Los Angeles premiere screening today at USC at 3:00. I was the producer of the reenactments for it (but there are only a few reenactments). Based on the book by Michael Coe. It doesn't address the theories behind teh downfall, though. It is available on DVD from Night Fire Films.

I still haven't seen Apolcalypto though, and would like to, for the entertainment value.

Are we far enough away on a tangent for this thread?

[Peacock]

I still haven't seen Apolcalypto though, and would like to, for the entertainment value.

Trust me, you won't find any.