Criterion & Eclipse Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on Vol.4

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CSM126 · #1676 Post by **CSM126** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 8:50 pm

domino harvey wrote:Most awkward Wacky C ever

Yeah, after all the other covers where they made it see-through, they choose one where it's on top of text to make it solid. Still not as weird as the "C within a B" on Bicycle Thieves, but weird nonetheless.

HerrSchreck · #1677 Post by **HerrSchreck** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 10:04 pm

It is pretty bad but I still have to go with the falling nose ring/lip-scar Wacky C of the Robeson:

I mean it literally looks like it dribbled outa the guys nose on a cold day.

kaujot · #1678 Post by **kaujot** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 10:28 pm

And the eyebrow ring on Mon Oncle Antoine.

stalker_ozu · #1679 Post by **stalker_ozu** » Sat Jun 20, 2009 3:03 am

what happened to the strange blue ray logo that first appeared??? why didnt they keep it?? It was great.

Jean-Luc Garbo · Sat Jun 20, 2009 4:31 am

Somewhat o/t but Paul Pope has a Yojimbo poster he made for Nakatomi. It's no Rashomon, but it was funny to see another Kurosawa film get some love. I love Pope's work so it's a delight to see. Pope and Williams have both worked for DC coincidentally. There's also a color version, but I like this one better.

#1681 Post by **Jeff** » Sat Jun 20, 2009 10:18 pm

stalker_ozu wrote:what happened to the strange blue ray logo that first appeared??? why didnt they keep it?? It was great.

The "Wacky b?" Personally, I'm glad Criterion decided to keep their regular logo for Blu-ray releases, but I wonder if the decision to drop it might have had to do with its similarity to Yahoo's "Buzz" logo.

#1682 Post by **cdnchris** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 6:09 am

For All Mankind DVD re-issue

kaujot · #1683 Post by **kaujot** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 3:52 pm

Great looking package.

knives · #1684 Post by **knives** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 4:13 pm

kaujot wrote:Great looking package.

I'm just going to walk away from that one. :-"

Love the earth behind the disc thing.

kaujot · #1685 Post by **kaujot** » Tue Jun 23, 2009 5:34 pm

Oh dear. There must have been a better way to say that.

#1686 Post by **cdnchris** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 6:17 am

kaujot wrote:Great looking package.

Thanks! I feed it blondes.

And here's the For All Mankind Blu-ray. It's shorter and reverses the artwork inside (earth on the disc, moon in the background.)

Svevan · #1687 Post by **Svevan** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 9:46 am

I just don't understand that. The moon disc/earth art in the SD made sense; the reverse order doesn't.

CSM126 · #1688 Post by **CSM126** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 10:02 am

Svevan wrote:I just don't understand that. The moon disc/earth art in the SD made sense; the reverse order doesn't.

Uh...from the Earth to the Moon?

willoneill · #1689 Post by **willoneill** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 12:35 pm

Svevan wrote:I just don't understand that. The moon disc/earth art in the SD made sense; the reverse order doesn't.

'cause the earth is blu?

so lightly here · Fri Jun 26, 2009 5:50 pm

Received the Blu-ray "Last Year" in the mail yesterday. I can't help remembering the clamor of nays that came from this thread when the dang thing first appeared at the CC website. It received the same ballyhoo as "Mishima" initially got.

Of course it is stunning (my only one hope when it was first presented was that a special translucent embossed case could be manufactured so that what I supposed would be embossed letters, would be more structural sound than pesky old cardboard - but I knew that would be economically impossible.)

I still remain amazed that this fine crew of critics, so visually in tune with movies have so much trouble imagining what the box art will look like when it arrives at their doorstep.

I always thought film and other forms of visual media went hand in hand. I have finally figured out this is not the case. They are two horses of a different color. This realization now makes it easier for me to read this thread without tearing my hair out and wait the three months for the waters to calm and good sense and taste to rise like cream to the surface. What a load of my shoulders!

#1691 Post by **domino harvey** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 7:13 pm

The Marienbad design is still a piece of shit. Three months from now it will still be a piece of shit. Three years from now it will still be a piece of shit. But whatever

#1692 Post by **swo17** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 7:22 pm

A year ago though, it was beautiful.

#1693 Post by **domino harvey** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 7:24 pm

...and scene!

so lightly here · Fri Jun 26, 2009 10:47 pm

domino harvey wrote:The Marienbad design is still a piece of shit. Three months from now it will still be a piece of shit. Three years from now it will still be a piece of shit. But whatever

I believe I have found out why some people have such a strong distaste for Ben Wiseman's Criterion cover for "Last Year". He does not appeal to people with a strong distate for text/graphic based work (as opposed to those who prefer a more literal approach such as a still or drawing taken or adapted from a film).

He did "Breathless" too (also a strong text based design). I didn't want to dig through 60 pages to see what the reaction to that was, but I can certainly see its resemblance to "Last Year". He did the strong yellow and red cover to Chuck Palahniuk's latest book "Pygmy" (that does have an image, but it has a very forceful look to it). I did find this book cover "Coney Island" by him that is very close to "Last Year" but with some color. It is easy to see his consistent sensibility.

I know that I don't care for the artist who drew the "Amarcord" and "The Thief of Bagdad" covers. I certainly wouldn't say the work is shit, only that that style doesn't appeal to me as much as other Criterion designers. Wiseman, for me, has a real flair.

kaujot · #1695 Post by **kaujot** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 10:58 pm

My distaste for the Marienbad cover stems more from the fact that the text is laid out shitty, rather than it being text. Typographic art can be extremely powerful stuff, but when it's applied with little care, as seems to be the case (and, if with care, then by someone who was rather incompetent at the time), then it's going to be shit. Why the two lines after Last and before Year? Why? Is it supposed to be some sort of meta "this is emulating the film" sort of thing? It makes no sense and looks, as has been repeated a lot, like shit.

Edit: for the record, I quite like the Breathless cover. His cover for Palahniuk (my distaste for the author aside) is rather lame. Any time there's a book with some sort of Russian or "Communist" or other such device, designers just have to give their text a Cold-War-Russian font with cute backwards letters and other such malarkey. Rather sophomoric.

Murdoch · #1696 Post by **Murdoch** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 11:05 pm

I just don't like how the two discs on the inside make it look like Seyrig has bug-eyes, don't really mind anything else after seeing the final packaging. And yes, I am superficial enough to not buy it based solely on such a petty problem.

#1697 Post by **swo17** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 11:09 pm

Might I suggest the Blu-ray then. In that one, it only looks like she just got a pie in the face.

Murdoch · #1698 Post by **Murdoch** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 11:14 pm

swo17 wrote:Might I suggest the Blu-ray then. In that one, it only looks like she just got a pie in the face.

I was just about to edit my post, I guess I'll have to upgrade since I'm more keen on seeing it on blu anyway. IMHO pie is better than bug eyes anyday!

so lightly here · Fri Jun 26, 2009 11:51 pm

kaujot wrote:My distaste for the Marienbad cover stems more from the fact that the text is laid out shitty, rather than it being text. Typographic art can be extremely powerful stuff, but when it's applied with little care, as seems to be the case (and, if with care, then by someone who was rather incompetent at the time), then it's going to be shit. Why the two lines after Last and before Year? Why? Is it supposed to be some sort of meta "this is emulating the film" sort of thing? It makes no sense and looks, as has been repeated a lot, like shit...

Gosh, with the cover being so pristine and with so much complaining about (perhaps) not being able to read it, it seems that the fine lines add just a little more interest to the cover. Why (in the "Coney Island" book cover) is the line broken with the words "of the" between "Island" and "Mind" or the snowflakes before and after the author's first name? Why the lines on the spine of "Salo" and "or"? Cuz they add a bit of interest? I don't know, but I wouldn't worry my little head about it too awfully much when the overall design comes of so smoothly.

Now the packaging, which I would imagine comes under Sarah Habibi control (as she is listed as "art director" which I assume means gathering all the elements together in a comfortable fashion) is quite another story. I have the Blu-ray version so I don't have that odd looking placement of the 2 discs. However all the Blu-ray's that have been issued in a cardboard wrap are a hassle to get out.

When the old style slip cover was the norm for special packaging I never had this problem. I must say that this time with "Last Year" we Blu-ray buyers may have gotten the entire contents of the booklet which is a pleasant novelty, but I much preferred the booklet that used to be the same size as the disc booklet. Now it is crammed in a funky sleeve that doesn't really want to hold it and the entire inner packet is just a millimeter bigger than its sleeve which makes taking it out and putting it back in a bitch.

FerdinandGriffon · Sat Jun 27, 2009 12:51 am

First of all, Ben Wiseman/Rodrigo Corral is probably my favorite designer working today. His covers for Bolano's The Savage Detectives, Aira'a Ghosts and Godard's Breathless are all ravishing and remarkably well-attuned to the product that they advertise. At first I hated the Marienbad cover, but soon it started to grow on me, especially when it became clear that it would be embossed. It's a daring, difficult design, unabashedly modernist, and yet still possessing that fin-de-siecle air that the film has.
But I think the finished package is a failure. If you're going to go to such minimalist extremes with the cover, the same challenge has to extend to the rest of the packaging. Slapping a couple dozen elaborate film stills on the interior completely undermines everything the exterior achieves, and is also a pretty lazy rehash of the Breathless box, where a design like that made more sense.

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