Criterion Discussion and Random Speculation Volume 7

[yoloswegmaster]

Griffin Dunne confirms that he wasn't at the Criterion office yesterday to talk about After Hours but he will be back there in the near future to record an interview for it.

[therewillbeblus]

I like how he's well-versed in the sharpness of the pitchforks from the WhY iSnT AfTeR hOuRs On CrItErIoN yEt?!?! reddit/prob-Film Twitter crowd

[RIP Film]

I’ll never understand why that film in particular gained such desired status. Then again, that is the place where 90% of the content is just people posting what they bought at Barnes & Noble.

[beamish14]

Griffin Dunne confirms that he wasn't at the Criterion office yesterday to talk about After Hours but he will be back there in the near future to record an interview for it.

I’m really glad that they’ll be talking about Triple Play/Double Play Productions. Here’s hoping that the wonderful Chilly Scenes of Winter gets a Criterion as well

[yoloswegmaster]

Griffin Dunne confirms that he wasn't at the Criterion office yesterday to talk about After Hours but he will be back there in the near future to record an interview for it.

I’m really glad that they’ll be talking about Triple Play/Double Play Productions. Here’s hoping that the wonderful Chilly Scenes of Winter gets a Criterion as well

The rest of the post is cutoff but he does confirm that he has done a commentary for an upcoming Criterion release of Chilly Scenes of Winter.

[beamish14]

Griffin Dunne confirms that he wasn't at the Criterion office yesterday to talk about After Hours but he will be back there in the near future to record an interview for it.

I’m really glad that they’ll be talking about Triple Play/Double Play Productions. Here’s hoping that the wonderful Chilly Scenes of Winter gets a Criterion as well

The rest of the post is cutoff but he does confirm that he has done a commentary for an upcoming Criterion release of Chilly Scenes of Winter.

Ah! Thank you. I hope they can include the original ending in HD. I’ve seen it in horrible, multi-gen VHS bootleg quality. It’s not as good as what the film ultimately ended up with, but it’s important to have

[Elizabeth Corday]

I am still hoping that La Ceremonie and The Films of Kinuyo Tanaka get announced. I know it sounds ridiculous. Maybe Nashville will be rereleased and I anticipate Everything Everywhere All At Once to get the Criterion treatment. Especially since the directors were in the Criterion Closet recently.

[rrenault]

I’ll never understand why that film in particular gained such desired status. Then again, that is the place where 90% of the content is just people posting what they bought at Barnes & Noble.

Probably because it's never received as much as a blu-ray release of any kind anywhere in the world.

[RIP Film]

I’ll never understand why that film in particular gained such desired status. Then again, that is the place where 90% of the content is just people posting what they bought at Barnes & Noble.

Probably because it's never received as much as a blu-ray release of any kind anywhere in the world.

I get that, but so have any number of other films… even Scorsese’s own Bringing out the Dead. I’m not disrespecting it just strange to see it at the very top of the heap.

[therewillbeblus]

People relate a lot to those One Crazy Night films where our surrogate is placed into a series of surreal situations that spill into one another- it reads like a literal nightmare, it's confrontational about our fears and desires, we visit unfamiliar milieus and characters and get to go on an adventure where we're the star of everyone's attention, etc. Bringing Out the Dead is basically the inverse of After Hours- Cage doesn't look for attention, from God mostly but also other people and systems, and is pretty numbed to surreality since that's his reality- though he's obviously still quite sensitive and wanting in his own introverted shell. I think if that character was written and played more like Dunne's, more would be demanding the Criterion Treatment on grounds of relatability and there being way more fun and wild set pieces built around him, but it's a better and more mature film for going a different/opposite route. After Hours crafts the externalization of a man's nightmarish vacation, Bringing Out the Dead crafts the externalization of a man's nightmarish mental state and shows that this forms his actual life. It's brutally honest about that truth, another reason why it's my favorite anything by either Scorsese or Schrader

[Drucker]

I’ll never understand why that film in particular gained such desired status. Then again, that is the place where 90% of the content is just people posting what they bought at Barnes & Noble.

Probably because it's never received as much as a blu-ray release of any kind anywhere in the world.

I get that, but so have any number of other films… even Scorsese’s own Bringing out the Dead. I’m not disrespecting it just strange to see it at the very top of the heap.

It's a film that that checks off a lot of hip boxes. Downtown NYC in the 80s, punk-era movie (like Demme's Something Wild), a hip aesthetic and a dedicated fan base. While I think Bringing Out the Dead is a much better film, it's so much darker and not fun in the way that After Hours is.

[Harmonov]

I’ll never understand why that film in particular gained such desired status. Then again, that is the place where 90% of the content is just people posting what they bought at Barnes & Noble.

Probably because it's never received as much as a blu-ray release of any kind anywhere in the world.

It looks like it got a Spanish release at some point:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/264972216927?e ... R5Tv7figYQ

[jazzo]

Probably because it's never received as much as a blu-ray release of any kind anywhere in the world.

I get that, but so have any number of other films… even Scorsese’s own Bringing out the Dead. I’m not disrespecting it just strange to see it at the very top of the heap.

It's a film that that checks off a lot of hip boxes. Downtown NYC in the 80s, punk-era movie (like Demme's Something Wild), a hip aesthetic and a dedicated fan base. While I think Bringing Out the Dead is a much better film, it's so much darker and not fun in the way that After Hours is.

I would also argue that, like most works of art that one finds personal connection with, it is very much about when that art resonates within you in your life. And After Hours hit many films Gen X film fans at exactly the right time, in the transitional VHS heyday of 1986, just as we we were becoming emboldened with a newly discovered freedom of cinematic exploration, all for $4 a pop.

For a kid in his second year of suburban high school, who only ever wanted to be Steven Spielberg, discovering that films other than blockbusters existed (like the similar Something Wild, which is pretty much my third favourite film of all-time, or Blue Velvet, or Brazil, or slightly later, Tapeheads, Repo Man or Miracle Mile), was life-changing.

So, aside from the fact that I think the film is impeccably crafted in every conceivable way, it also has a remarkable atmosphere of urban living that I had personally never seen in a film before; a story that defies predictability; and a palpable sense of non-judgmental social and cultural progressiveness, where city-living can actually be non-judgmental homes for the outcasts and subcultures of the world (a rarity in mainstream North American movies back then).

But most of all, for me, it was seeing "voice" in cinema for the first time.

Is it the greatest Scorsese film ever made? I mean, no. Goodfellas, in my opinion, is the greatest achievement of craft in the form – one where every visual and auditory element is so perfectly attuned to the story that its telling, that not a single one can be removed without confounding the movie’s energy or structure – but it's not even close to my favourite picture, or even my favourite picture by him. That's After Hours and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Those two films strike me on a much deeper, core level that few others do when I watch them.

It’s similar to watching a young cinema fan discover Wes Anderson for the first time. The first one they see, at least in my very casual observation, usually tends to be the one that hits home the most. For me, that’s Bottle Rocket. For others (sadly), it would be The French Dispatch.

So. My two cents.

[Harmonov]

Thank you for mentioning Tapeheads. It's one of my all-time favorite movies and one that so few people know about. I would dearly love at least a blu-ray version of it at some point. Maybe Imprint or a company like them will take a flyer on it.

[bottlesofsmoke]

Four titles up so far:
Mildred Pierce UHD
Chilly Scenes of Winter
Inland Empire
Last Hurray for Chivalry

[yoloswegmaster]

Definitely in for Last Hurrah for Chivalry since i didn't bother grabbing the Eureka release that came with the lesser Hand of Death.

[Pavel]

Mildred Pierce is certainly not a title I expected to receive a UHD upgrade anytime soon. Happy for all the others

[FrauBlucher]

As I suspected, CC will play a role in celebrating the WB 100 Anniversary. This is just the beginning

[senseabove]

Holy cow. I checked on a daydream of a whim of the WB100 yesterday to see if that restoration was done in 4k. Delighted to see it, and it will be a rare Criterion pre-order for me thanks to the 30% off Holiday sale + $10 gift code bringing it to half-off-sale price.

[black&huge]

As I suspected, CC will play a role in celebrating the WB 100 Anniversary. This is just the beginning

Dare we pray that Criterion releases The Exorcist?

[dwk]

The Exorcist has already been confirmed as coming from WB themselves.

I was a little surprised at how few titles, but then I remembered that they are doing four UHDs in February and that likely has something to do with them only doing four titles in March.

[MV88]

As I suspected, CC will play a role in celebrating the WB 100 Anniversary. This is just the beginning

It’ll be interesting to see which of their films they license out to Criterion and which they release themselves. Mildred Pierce makes sense as a Criterion release since it probably won’t be a huge seller (relative to other WB films, that is), but there are some that could go either way. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Bonnie and Clyde, for example, are two bigger name titles that I could nonetheless see Criterion possibly acquiring. Barry Lyndon is a bigger title in the respect that it’s Kubrick, but since it has less commercial appeal than most of his others, I imagine Criterion will be the ones doing the UHD release in North America.

[beamish14]

I hope O Lucky Man! and Dusty & Sweets McGee are on the docket. Maybe Bertolucci’s Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man, too

[ryannichols7]

the first four title month since February 2022 featured no true surprises, but I think moreso in terms of timeline or "of all choices, this?"

Inland Empire - we all knew this was coming. lengthy Janus tour, producer confirmation, Lynch determined to have all his films with CC, etc etc and so on

Chilly Scenes of Winter - confirmed by Griffin Dunne and Amy Robinson just days before on Instagram; former Twilight Time title held by MGM

Last Hurrah for Chivalry - on channel with CC/Janus logos, newly restored by Fortune Star

Mildred Pierce - extremely random WB UHD upgrade, the first of its kind; a surprise
----------------

DVD to Bluray/UHD upgrades this month: none

Bluray to UHD upgrades:

860 Mildred Pierce

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

some things I do want to note - not a whole lot of news on the licensing front. Criterion continue to pillage the MGM vaults like every other boutique is doing. I'm grateful (and not surprised) that in the Amazon-owns-MGM era this can continue to be a thing. and I'm in favor of any/all former Twilight Time titles coming back into print. rather quick turnaround on the Chilly Scenes confirmation to announcement. Mildred Pierce is the first Warner title previously released on Bluray to be upgraded to UHD - I tend to leave my personal opinions on the announcements for after this post, but I think almost all of us can agree its surprising this got the call before Barry Lyndon, Badlands, among others.

Last Hurrah continues a steady stream of titles from Fortune Star as well. I know John Woo is very in demand so its not surprising this is one Criterion went for. Eureka released it in a twofer with Hand of Death so I wonder if that will come at some point

and come on, Inland Empire, we all knew it. now it begs the question of whether The Straight Story will happen. I'm gonna guess Wild at Heart will be the last priority since Criterion have a good relationship with Shout and their edition is still in print. obviously Lynch disowns Dune so Arrow will have that one.
-----------------

as for this month's speculation winners - hilariously none of us guessed Inland Empire and of course it gets announced. let's all agree to not guess the Rohmer boxset for April? anyway, here is everyone who correctly guessed the quick turnaround on Chilly Scenes of Winter:

Chilly Scenes of Winter

Chilly Scenes of Winter / Head Over Heels

Chilly Scenes of Winter

Chilly Scenes of Winter

but I wanna give a special shoutout to Luke M, who is the only person who never named Last Hurrah for Chivalry in the guessing thread:

Last Hurrah for Chivalry

Luke, 4/5 of the titles you speculated there have now been released. can we finally see a Kurosawa upgrade in the coming months? we know Toho is holding out on us...I'd accept UHDs of Kagemusha, Dreams, or dare I say even Ran! anyway, many of you guys guessed Z and I hope its because we were all creating our watchlists for the 1969 project and are still wondering where on earth that is. I do hope we see a more beefed up month in April after the light one here, and hope all of you see your wishes come true. Merry Christmas!

[Calvin]

Spike Lee seems to confirm in the comments of this Instagram post that 25th Hour on 4K UHD is forthcoming from Criterion