Criterion & Eclipse Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on Vol. 6

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

The Zatoichi set looks stunning (far too soon to think about such things, but I wonder if the HVe Yakuza Papers set might get upgraded in the future too?), and I do like the City Lights cover as well even if it the art does make it look like a companion to Make Way For Tomorrow!

The Battles Without Honor and Humanity series are licensed from Toei, a company I don't believe Criterion has ever licensed from. I'd love for them to license all the Fukasaku's from HVe, but most are Toei. I believe Fall Guy is Shochiku and Blackmail is My Life and I Was Young: Rage might be Toho.

[dwk]

Only two of HVe's Fukasaku titles were part of The Classics Collection (Janus films that HVe released), Fall Guy (which is on Criterion's Hulu channel) and Under the Flag of the Rising Sun, so those are, probably, the only two that Criterion has.

Also, I think The Elegant Dandy Fop is right, Criterion has never released any Toei films.

[TheGodfather]

The price for Zatoichi has already been announced and it's incredibly reasonable: $225 MSRP ($9 per film), and half that at one of the eventual 50% off sales.

Ow ok, that`s not too bad indeed. Will get it eventually in some 50% sale

[Minkin]

CriterionCast has an image of the various sides to the Zatoichi set! Looks like the odd wacky C bit will indeed be a sticker.

Also, Criterion posted a larger image of the set, for more oggling.

Edit -Its a tad difficult to see in the images, but you can make out a spine and spine number on that thing!
And the book will be 96 pages apparently.

[RyanGallagher]

Its a tad difficult to see in the images, but you can make out a spine and spine number on that thing

It's spine number 679.

[Minkin]

Its a tad difficult to see in the images, but you can make out a spine and spine number on that thing

It's spine number 679.

Well, obviously.

I was pointing out that the boxset does indeed come with the traditional spine numbering/badging, since it was impossible to decipher that from the smaller images of the set. Now the OCD collectors need not worry, since they can place it right next to their La Notte blu without breaking spine #s.

This appears to be the most amount of work one has to do in order to check off a spine number (Berlin Alexanderplatz being second). Quite the stray from the older days when some bonus features would get their own spine (Fanny and Alexander, Monterey Pop - yeah, before you start complaining that its "another film, etc" - this seems to have changed -as things like the 'Autumn Sonata making of', or all of those bonus films included - like Lonesome/Blow Out/ etc don't also get separate spines these days).

[Moe Dickstein]

It's interesting too that the box itself has no spine number, only the pull out disc casing it seems, so in my display scheme that will display reversed like the BBS set.

[captveg]

I always have my slipcase releases with the pull-out side facing out on the shelf anyway, since that allows the cover to be facing right and conformed with all the other plastic case releases.

Of course, the real "problem" with box sets like this is that when they get near the right side of the shelf and don't fit I have to move it down to the next shelf and move up numbers/alphabetically listings (for non-Criterions) that follow it to the shelf above.

[Moe Dickstein]

well most box sets i display the box with that number and then the contents alongside it so that all the #s are visible. OCD to the max

[swo17]

Zatoichi is going to be way too long to fit on my shelves. I will live though.

[Moe Dickstein]

Yeah this is where I'm so glad I moved to ridiculously deep Ikea IVAR shelving units, I've got enough depth for Laserdiscs so this Zatoichi will be just fine

[domino harvey]

Picturing so many of you as late-period Howard Hughes right now FYI

[Moe Dickstein]

Hey, there are very good reasons for long fingernails and... other things.

[knives]

I keep my jars of urine next to the water heater.

[Jeff]

Caitlin Kuhwald shows how the individual illustrations and liner notes (mocked up with some Lubitsch stuff) for the Zatoichi set will be laid out.

[cdnchris]

To Be or Not to Be

[RyanGallagher]

Tokyo Story will be a digipak

[criterion10]

I'm personally not a digipack fan, so this bothers me. Luckily though, I'm not a huge fan of Tokyo Story and don't feel the need to upgrade anytime soon.

[Matt]

Well, thanks for letting us know your opinion on something you don't particularly like and have no plans to purchase. Please keep us posted on all the other things you don't like and won't be buying. We wait in breathless anticipation.

[criterion10]

I didn't know my opinion wasn't welcome...

[swo17]

Tokyo Story will be a digipak

The spine looks noticeably wider than it is for, for instance, Madame de... or Babette's Feast.

EDIT: Actually, I think that's an optical illusion. When I resize the Babette and Tokyo Story images to be comparable, the spines appear to be of identical width.

[The Narrator Returns]

I didn't know my opinion wasn't welcome...

We welcome your opinion, but only if you have something more interesting to say than "I won't buy this."

[criterion10]

I didn't know my opinion wasn't welcome...

We welcome your opinion, but only if you have something more interesting to say than "I won't buy this."

Fair enough. Looking back, I guess there really wasn't much of a point to my comment.

[Moe Dickstein]

It's interesting to see how they were going to deal with 3 discs, guess we know now. I wonder if 3+ will always be a digipak or if they had a slim booklet they still would go for something like Science is Fiction for 3.

[swo17]

It's hard to say. Tokyo Story is high profile enough that it might have gotten a digipak even for just 2 discs.