The Mystery of the Phantom Web Pages

[ianungstad]

They put up phantom pages for Woody Allen and the cast of Take the Money and Run.

If these are just jokes on Criterion's part, it's a dumb one.

[flyonthewall2983]

I'd imagine a more likely Leone title would be Duck, You Sucker!. MGM released it on DVD several years ago in a box set with GBU but it never came out on Blu-ray.

[Graham]

They put up phantom pages for Woody Allen and the cast of Take the Money and Run.

If these are just jokes on Criterion's part, it's a dumb one.

Oh, I'd be all over a release of that. It'd probably be priced at $29.99, given how the chance of Woody Allen participating in extras is almost zero.

[Lowry_Sam]

They put up phantom pages for Woody Allen and the cast of Take the Money and Run.

If these are just jokes on Criterion's part, it's a dumb one.

A while back there was conjecture over what Woody Criterion might release & I placed my bets on Take The Money And Run, since it was not in any of the box sets & released in the wrong aspect ratio on dvd (letterboxed to boot), would love to see a twofer with Bananas, since that one is probably not high on the upgrade list & is my favorite of his more slapstick comedies. However, I also thought that Woody's first appearance on Criterion might be The Front, which is often neglected. Since Woody doesn't like to do extra features for his home video releases, this one could be combined w/ documentaries/commentaries about those in the industry who named names & those who were most affected by the blacklist.

....and on a side note, speaking of mid-70s Hollywood political comedies, I was also hoping that the first appearance of Barbra Streisand (whom I normally don't care for in films) would be Up The Sandbox, which makes a great double feature with Bananas.

[knives]

Unfortunately the Kershner is highly unlikely given that it is presently owned by Warners and even with Badlands I highly doubt we have an MGM situation in terms of what Crit can pick and choose from them.

[The Narrator Returns]

Goin' Down the Road appears to be forthcoming, with pages for Donald Shebib, William Fruet, Doug McGrath, Jayne Eastwood, Cayle Chernin, Nicole Morin, and Pierre La Roche up.

[Lowry_Sam]

Unfortunately the Kershner is highly unlikely given that it is presently owned by Warners and even with Badlands I highly doubt we have an MGM situation in terms of what Crit can pick and choose from them.

Which is rather unfortunate, since it is probably the last Streisand title Warners would likely upgrade to blu-ray, whereas imho it is her best acting performance & the only one I'd consider buying on its release date.

Um, that's the director and leading cast for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, already out on Blu-ray from MGM/Fox.

And due for an upgrade. The film needs to be presented in its original Italian form, as well as in its English-language international edition (two different cuts, two different audio tracks). That would require a multi-disc set. I doubt that anyone besides Criterion would be willing to do right by this title.

I agree the film needs an upgrade with both cuts. The thing that makes me suspicious, though, is that, as far as I am aware, this would be the first MGM film that Criterion would release that has already been released on Blu-Ray by MGM themselves. If such an arrangement were to happen, why wouldn't Criterion first go after getting the rights back to the OOP MGM releases like Robocop, Sid & Nancy, The Silence Of The Lambs? Each one of those could also do with an upgrade. I emailed Criterion awhile back curious about why those have never come back in print since they have a deal with MGM, but unsurprisingly never received a response.

For starters, there would not be as much of a difference between those titles & an upgrade, whereas a 2-disc TGTBTU Special Edition is quite possible. There were complaints about the US/international blu-ray from day one, most notably that there is no original Italian soundtrack on it (despite being listed), and the Italian blu-ray which features a better PQ of the Italian restoration (but not the additional footage or English subtitles) had already been available. I (and many others) saw this first in Italian with Italian titles on the big screen, and the English version just doesn't compare (which is why I...and I'm sure many others...emailed Criterion requesting it).

I think it's a safe bet that TGTBTU would get many more people willing to double dip for a proper 2-disc special edition w/ the original Italian soundtrack & titles than you would for S&N or TSOTL, & probably Robocop too (it would probably depend on how dramatic the improvement would be, & I'm not sure source material would allow for such a dramatic improvement). I finally watched Robocop, and while I liked the premise, it's not a title I see myself revisiting (the acting wasn't good enough to be a thoroughly engrossing film & wasn't bad enough for it to be a camp classic).

[hearthesilence]

Jesus, you guys weren't kidding about the crappy PQ on the MGM BD. I found these:

MGM disc

and

Mondo Italian disc

ENORMOUS difference, they scrubbed the life out of the MGM disc. Shameful, especially considering the work John Kirk had done on restoring that print. (To my understanding, communication between the home video and archival departments at MGM have been surprisingly and notoriously poor in the past.)

[MongooseCmr]

If these are all serious future titles for Criterion I would love for them to just release some of them or any other secret titles in the second half of the year with no newsletter hints or Hulu debuts. It seems like nearly every release nowadays has been known months or years in advance.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

I'd like to just say that I'm surprised people are disappointed about The Good, the Bad and the Ugly coming out from Criterion. It's bad enough when mono films get a new 5.1 mix, but that one is especially terrible. It feels like the sound isn't coming from the film but from another place. Plus studio fluff special features and a Richard Schickel commentary. There's definitely is room for improvement.

I also want to jump in the middle of this and confirm that I know for a fact now that Michael Mann's Thief is being worked on. It's probably my favorite film of the 80's and I'm so excited it's getting an HD release after the horribly crappy MGM disc with it's non-anamorphic transfer and MPEG-1 quality image. I think it's been mentioned before, but I just wanted to bring it up.

[Drucker]

I'd like to just say that I'm surprised people are disappointed about The Good, the Bad and the Ugly coming out from Criterion.

I'm sorry if I got confused somewhere along the way, but are you saying this is fact, now? Because TGTBTU from Criterion seems to me to mostly be wishful thinking...

[Mr Sausage]

Yeah, it seems pretty unlikely that whoever owns The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (MGM?) would give away a cash-cow like that to another company.

[Jack Phillips]

Different markets. The Criterion edition would be for those willing to pay the premium because 1) they are fans of the film who already have the MGM but want something better; or, 2) they are people who never thought of owning the title before but are swayed by the CC imprimatur. The MGM would still be available for the hoi polloi.

[Drucker]

I understand that this is a "random speculation," but it seems pretty silly to speculate that a film as popular and well-selling as The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (which will unfortunately probably sell well no matter how shitty the actual release) would be licensed to someone else, as Sausage already noted above you. Without any actual evidence of this happening, this starts to devolve into "well Studio Canal will just rip up their contract with Lionsgate" territory, and as fun as that is, it really does nobody any good.

PS. You really think there is a large, untapped market of people who are holding out for Criterion to bless The Good, The Bad, The Ugly with their seal of approval before checking it out?

[TMDaines]

I still don't own it, and my arse is getting sore from sitting on the fence between the (better Italian-only) Mondo and (poorer English-only) MGM. I'll probably get the Italian box eventually. If only RHV had the rights, like with their fantastic Un pugno di dollari!

[vsski]

I can't help but think that the whole placeholder pages on Criterion.com is one big ruse. While CC may initially indeed have put placeholders pages for the directors of titles they have the rights to on their website, once someone discovered this and CC heard about it, I think they decided to have fun with it and put up some like TGTBTU, which I can't believe they will ever release for all the aforementioned reasons. I'd like to be wrong, but also the fact that suddenly so many new pages seem to crop up, would indicate to me someone having fun.

[Cinephrenic]

Why would they put names for fun? Seriously...

[swo17]

Not for fun, but more to dissuade people from searching their website for clues.

[jwd5275]

Exactly. If you really think that they are going to release this, I have a couple bridges out here to sell you.

[Moe Dickstein]

Doesn't Criterion value secrecy? If one of your methods for preparing the website got "cracked" and discussed on a public forum, doesn't it make sense to take 5 seconds and program in a bunch of random, semi-plausible smokescreen stuff so nobody can really tell the wheat from the chaff?

It makes TOTAL sense that they would do that. They read this forum.

[andyli]

Technically the easiest way to stop people peeping into their 'secrets' is to make those unassigned people pages inaccessible to the public. It takes what, a second to do that on their website. Instead, the names they threw onto the website after this month's announcement only served to stir up the discussion and speculation. If they really want to signal us 'don't take the people pages seriously' how about put cast of Gone with the Wind or Disney's Snow White on.

[zedz]

They might not want us to know anything, but they sure as hell don't want us to ignore them. I'm just surprised they hadn't thought of doing this earlier.

[ianungstad]

They added more cast pages but this time it's mostly for films that we already know are with Janus. There's cast and director pages for a lot of the Zatoichi and Bulldog Drummond serials. Also Master of the House (Carl Dreyer) and a short/documentary called Night Journey which features Martha Graham.

[swo17]

Night Journey is on the Martha Graham set.

[knives]

All of the others have been up on Hulu for awhile too.