Criterion and Sony

[beamish13]

So, HOUSEKEEPING is for sale on iTunes. I take it a Criterion is never going to happen, eh?

[escobar741]

Does anyone know if the Hickenlooper doc, Picture This, included in the BBS set is the full verison? It comes in at 41 mins, but on IMDb and on Amazon it states 58 mins. I can't think why it might have been cut.

[Roger Ryan]

Does anyone know if the Hickenlooper doc, Picture This, included in the BBS set is the full verison? It comes in at 41 mins, but on IMDb and on Amazon it states 58 mins. I can't think why it might have been cut.

When watching this on THE LAST PICTURE SHOW Blu-ray last week, I was struck with how abruptly it ended; it felt like it was missing footage. I watched this doc when it first played on TV in 1990 and my memory of it was that it had a little more heft, but memories can be misleading. More concretely, I noticed that IMDb lists both Dennis Hopper as a participant and Burt Reynolds as appearing in archive footage; I don't recall seeing either of these guys in the 41 min. version I just watched. Since the film was made to promote TEXASVILLE, maybe the Criterion issue was re-edited to keep the focus squarely on THE LAST PICTURE SHOW? Anyone else have an opinion on this?

[rrenault]

Any chance of Michael Haneke getting a criterion title, since many of his films are distributed through Sony Pictures Classics in the US, such as Cache and The White Ribbon? By the way, has the blu ray of The White Ribbon been discontinued, because I noticed it's only being sold by a marketplace seller on amazon, and it's not noted that more copies are on the way, even though only nine are left in stock.

[swo17]

Amazon is doing this annoying thing lately where they'll list a third party seller with fulfillment by Amazon as the primary seller, even though in many cases you can still buy directly from Amazon, even at times for less than the third party seller. If you go to the individual seller listing for White Ribbon and scroll down, you'll see Amazon selling it.

[movielocke]

fulfillment by amazon lets sellers ship lots of material to an amazon warehouse, Amazon then can dispatch the seller's item when it is sold from their warehouse. The seller pays a monthly fee on each item for this service (a few cents) but it means it will be packaged and shipped by amazon with the same alacrity and speed of an order with amazon themselves.

Amazon probably has in place an algorithm that changes the primary seller to the one that will return the most profit to amazon. So if a third party is selling it, Amazon gets it's percentage of the sale. It's very possible that chunk of the sale is a larger profit for amazon than the small amount they make in profit on a discounted dvd. Amazon probably only does this with fulfillment by Amazon titles because shipping is so much more unreliable from sellers shipping it themselves, and in order to maximize customer satisfaction, amazon probably only allows it on fulfillment by amazon titles.

[rrenault]

Are any films even licensed to criterion from Sony at the moment? Also, any chance of Criterion ever releasing a Haneke title, since a few of his films are distributed by Sony in the US?

[Jeff]

Are any films even licensed to criterion from Sony at the moment? Also, any chance of Criterion ever releasing a Haneke title, since a few of his films are distributed by Sony in the US?

Bottle Rocket, Crumb, Repulsion, and the titles in the BBS set are all currently under license from Sony, and it is expected that others will be coming eventually. I wouldn't count on any Haneke.

[rrenault]

Why wouldn't you count on Haneke?

[knives]

Sony Classic is different from Sony classic.

[Jeff]

Why wouldn't you count on Haneke?

The only Haneke films Sony has are Caché and The White Ribbon. Both are recent arthouse hits with Cannes cred that Sony has already taken the time and expense to license for the U.S. market. It's just not likely that they'd then hand them off to someone else. The White Ribbon in particular already has a stunning Blu-ray release with lengthy supplements, and the region-free Artificial Eye release of Caché isn't bad either. Kino has the U.S. rights to just about everything else.

[swo17]

the region-free Artificial Eye release of Caché

Are you referring to the Blu-ray? I was under the impression it was Region B.

[domino harvey]

It's region-free

[Jeff]

It's region-free

The SD PAL supplements, however, are useless to a standard Region A player.

[swo17]

Thanks for the correction, guys. I remember passing on the AE for some reason a couple years ago before I was region free. Maybe I had just assumed that there had to be a US release around the corner, and I was holding out for better cover art.

[SamLowry]

My Sony on a Criterion Blu Ray Wish List:

City of Hope
Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown
The City Of Lost Children
Indochine
Nine Queens
Cache
Strait Jacket
Body Double
Bunny Lake Is Missing
These Are The Damned
The Go-Between
5,000 Fingers of Dr, T

oh...and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (it seems Sony has dropped the ball on getting this series out)

[matrixschmatrix]

According to Jeunet's website, Sony Classic is working on a City of Lost Children blu.

[Yakushima]

Fantastic news about "The City of Lost Children". I am so looking forward to this.

[rrenault]

Antonioni's The Passenger? Or unlikely?

[Jeff]

Antonioni's The Passenger? Or unlikely?

It's unlikely that Criterion would get it from Sony, since Sony is already licensing it from Jack Nicholson. I doubt Sony has the rights to sublicense.

[captveg]

That being said, Nicholson may be open to making that exception when one considers the BBS box set, no?

[Arthur House]

Old news by now, but last Tuesday Sony dumped both Housekeeping and Rossellini's Vanina Vanini into the "Classics By Request" line.

[tarpilot]

A brand new print at Film Forum last year with the Forsyth retrospective and Housekeeping can't even scare up a proper release? I don't really know how these things work but I know that sucks

[Arthur House]

^^this. Almost exactly two years ago I was in the MFAH theatre watching a restored print of Vanina Vanini (which I didn't know Sony held the rights to; this print came direct from Cinecittà Holding) as part of a series covering legendary Italian starlets. Sony did provide for that series a print of their recent restoration of Visconti's Sandra, which apparently subsequently only appeared on dvd in a craptacular R2 edition. I wonder if that one will be part of a future "Classics By Request" announcement?

[Jeff]

It's not their fault on this one. As has been reiterated time and again Janus bought the rights to the majority of the Malles in one lump sum.

That's certainly true of most of their Malles, but I believe that they've actually licensed Vanya from Sony Pictures Classics. This is as much Andre Gregory's film as it is Malle's anyway.

As Tom said, it would be a great companion to a Blu upgrade of My Dinner with Andre.