Archived Criterion Streaming Discussion

[duck duck]

For someone who would know:
How much trouble would it be to make Eclipse sets from Hulu titles? I don't know all the technical stuff but it seems if they can do high quality streaming then they must have a pretty good digital copy of the films.

[JonasEB]

None, at least as far as producing the set goes.

The reason their Hulu service exists is because they have too many properties just laying around. They have the materials to produce the sets but that doesn't mean they can just release a lot of Eclipse boxes all the time - it's too much money.

[jwd5275]

Killers on Parade is bonkers. I highly recommend it, if only for the rioting colors and the barely concealed Anti-American sentiments bubbling underneath its bubblegum pop facade.

My wife's reaction to this tonight, "It's like a Disney live action 60s - 70s movie ...with killing. "
(She loved it.)

[headacheboy]

I have a HuluPlus account and I've been watching Keisuke Kinoshita's The Army and it contains commercials. It is in the category of "Clips" so gathering from comments around here, that is the problem. File it under the wrong category (as is the case with Kobayashi's I Will Buy You) and it seems you get stuck with commercials. I e-mailed someone at Hulu last week about a general question and mentioned I was enjoying the many Criterion films they have. The individual informed me that they still have a lot of work to do with their Criterion section. He gave no indication as to what, but I certainly would guess one change would be not sticking their films in the "clip" section. I really want to see I Will Buy You but I don't want to deal with commercials in a two hour film. The Army is only 87 minutes and the commercials come every nine minutes.

[mfunk9786]

You might want to inform Criterion as well, as they'd be a lot more upset about this than Hulu would be, and more likely to be able to get it fixed quickly.

[Minkin]

Black Lizard (1962, Umetsugu Inoue)
Youth In Fury (1960, Shinoda)
Our Marriage (1961, Shinoda)
A Flame At The Pier (1962, Shinoda)
Gonza the Spearman (1986, Shinoda)
Moonlight Serenade (1997, Shinoda)

[Perkins Cobb]

A Flame At The Pier (1962, Shinoda)

Probably better known as Tears on the Lion's Mane.

[jwd5275]

The Junk Shop - 1965 Herz

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this is his excised contribution to Pearls of the Deep...

[knives]

Yes it is.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Why did they cut out Herz's film?

[swo17]

See here.

[Cinéslob]

The latest additions:

Mahler (Ken Russell, 1974)
The Home and the World (Satyajit Ray, 1984)

[criterion10]

Mahler!!! This just made my day. Let's hope it will soon make it to Blu-Ray!

[Minkin]

Well, Uhh, looks like we know who has Eraserhead now...

[ianungstad]

I've long suspected that Criterion picked up the rights to Eraserhead and the Lynch shorts. Lynch inked a deal with mk2 to sell these on his behalf about two years ago. Big news! According to mk2 the original plan was to have a theatrical run for the restored print of Eraserhead. I wonder if that's still the plan and we'll see a fall release from Janus before a Criterion in '13?

EDIT: I wouldn't be surprised if they picked up Elephant Man from Paramount and Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway from Universal too. They could all use supplements and hopefully Lynch/Criterion hit it off.

[mfunk9786]

Wonderful, wonderful news!

[domino harvey]

It's so weird when Criterion actually picks up one of those unlikely titles people on Facebook keep hectoring them about

[flyonthewall2983]

Just goes to show the power of suggestion at work.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

EDIT: I wouldn't be surprised if they picked up Elephant Man from Paramount and Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway from Universal too. They could all use supplements and hopefully Lynch/Criterion hit it off.

That'd be a dream come true. Maybe for Eraserhead Lynch and Criterion mend whatever was broken on that last go. I'm curious about what supplements Lynch would approve.

[dadaistnun]

He's certainly more amenable to special features now than he was ten years ago (witness all the crazy shit on the Inland Empire disc). I would hope Criterion would port over the "Stories" feature from Lynch's own dvd release of Eraserhead.

I don't know what went on with licensing wrt to the Lime Green set, but it would seem everything there (sans Blue Velvet since MGM has already released their disc) would be fair game, including the Wild at Heart deleted scenes (I thought MGM had already bumped their existing dvd up to Blu, but I guess not).

[swo17]

Before everyone starts going crazy with all of the Lynch predictions, it's probably a good time to revisit this snippet of an interview with Peter Becker:

The Digital Bits: What types of title suggestions do you guys get?

Peter Becker: We don't really comment on them. Because as soon we say, "Oh, yeah that sounds great" or "I'm really interested, we're actually pursuing that" or "We're looking at that or we're working on that", then that information would make its way through all of the usenet groups, bulletin boards and all that stuff. Two bad things can end up happening. One, is that we have four new competitors in the marketplace, who weren't looking for it until they were reading the boards and saw this excitement over the fact that Criterion was trying the land the rights. The other problem -- which is even worse -- is that very quickly it would go from "Oh, thanks for that great suggestion, we're actually looking into those rights" or "We're in negotiations for those rights now" to "Criterion has it scheduled" or "Criterion has it coming out next month" or even still, "I went to pre-order it my store, and my store doesn't know anything about it." After that, 48 letters go to Jon Mulvaney, me and to our sales staff saying, "Where is this title? Why do you keep announcing this vaporwear?" That's the fundamental reason that we no longer comment on title suggestions. As much as we love to receive them, and tell people to keep sending them (as helpful as they are), it very quickly feeds a rumor mill that is already willing to believe that we're working on things that we may not be working on. And that just causes disappointment in the customer base.

The biggest disappointment for all of us right now is Eraserhead, which is a title that we never announced. We were in year-long conversations with David Lynch. And it's one of these things where David Lynch is a very particular person. He has very peculiar ideas about how he wants to do things. And he doesn't want to be rushed to make up his mind. And he wants to do what he wants to do, in the way that he wants to do it. He doesn't want his privacy infringed, and he doesn't want to be reading about himself. We were in very protective conversations with him about Eraserhead that were all positive, over a long period of time. Suddenly, there's a rumor on the web that we were actually doing it, and had announced it. At some point, I even saw street dates posted for it. You know, this is something that never even made it on to our actual production load. It had been, at one point, penciled into a schedule -- if we could finish up negotiations in time. But that's as close as it ever come. We had certainly never announced anything about it. That's upsetting.

[CSM126]

But that was from a time when Lynch personally controlled Eraserhead, no? Thanks to his MK2 contract that would no longer be the case and they can do it without him if need be. I can't imagine he's still upset, regardless, unless he really holds a grudge.

[Murdoch]

And if they're posting it on hulu they're not too concerned with the internet speculation it could spawn.

[Cinephrenic]

That man needs to chill out and market his work. Where is all his stuff on Blu?

[eerik]

They even posted a link to it on their Facebook page to let all their 98,5k followers know. I wouldn't be surprised if it comes out within 2012.