This cover does not happily jibe with my love of this film. It does not conjure up the themes or visual appeal of the film in any way, nor does it evoke the feelings that the film gives rise to.
It looks a bit like a cheesy novel cover from the "teen" section of the bookstore-- some garden or girl and her garden type of story.
The Fanciful Norwegian wrote:I think Criterion is tired of other companies ripping off their current logo. There's another DVD coming out this week (some tiny indie thing I never heard of before) which isn't even remotely subtle about it (they do it on the cover and the spine), although I can't for the life of me remember what it's called.
In case anyone cares, I found it:
The mitigating factor being that it's a Home Vision release, but it's still lame.
Since Criterion hasn't officially posted this yet, is it possible they could still tweak it a tad? To be honest, the font size and type is killing this cover for me. I'm not saying that it is wonderful otherwise, but there is a thin line between a Mrs. Miniver/Best Years of Our Lives type of poster and the cover of a Christian and/or pulp romance novel. If the font changes, it could be closer to what they are assumably trying to achieve (the former).
I wonder why they only ever employ talentless artists for their painted covers? A total aesthetic disaster. Why is her right arm covered in random blotches of pink, and why is her left one purple? It's blatantly clear the cover is by someone who's never been anywhere near England - you never get fields all the same colour like that, and it's not marshland either. And what's the black smudge above the "C"? I don't like the lack of a CC logo either - that banner gave their covers balance somehow.
The black smudge is obviously a UFO. Clearly, the transfer is so pristine, that previously unseen nuances are only now being discovered.
This may be the first time that a DVD cover has made me substantially lose interest in a release. So much so, that I don't think I could justify the purchase unless the cover changed again...