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No, the only year when there were two was last year. The previous year, there were seven (31-37).

No Eclipse has ever been released in December, so either we get another for November to tie the lowball record or we set a new one

I stopped buying DVDs except for the Eclipse sets, but I am very selective. I have only 11 sets and I don't intend to buy the rest. I am very much in favor of go blu. I think they should take time (as long as needed) to think about the the director and the titles. The last two sets (Fassbinder and Ray) were totally useless. I am sorry to say that but those were redundant and bloody wastage of slots (in my opinion).
I hope to see more important Eclipse sets in future, but also would like them to start upgrading them. I can live without extra features and there are a lot of films among those Eclipse series, which already got the blu treatment in other parts of the world or received great restoration works done.
I think Kinoshita could be a good choice for a future set. They have dozens of his films on Hulu+, and Eclipse set(s) could be a good option for them.

I stopped buying Eclipse sets because of the availability of those films on the Hulu channel, sometimes even in HD streams. Without features on the discs, unless I felt like I needed to own them for some reason (OOP status of films I want to own forever, etc), it made more sense to just subscribe to Hulu Plus and stream Eclipse films I wanted to see. This still holds true, though I still sort of wish the sets were still being released, perhaps at a lower price point to entice blind buyers.

They should come out monthly. If Criterion sold it as an "Eclipse Club" they'd probably double their sales and get everyone to pay more, too. In closing, that's my business plan to save the label, gentlemen.

domino harvey wrote:They should come out monthly. If Criterion sold it as an "Eclipse Club" they'd probably double their sales and get everyone to pay more, too. In closing, that's my business plan to save the label, gentlemen.

That actually was the original plan:

Peter Becker wrote:We want those films to be more readily available, and that’s why we’re creating Eclipse. Each month we’ll present a short series, usually three to five films, focusing on a particular director or theme. There will be no supplements and the master materials will be the best we can find, but they won’t be full Criterion restorations. Retail pricing for each set will average under $15 per disc, and we are examining the logistics of making the sets available at an even more favorable rate on a subscriber or club basis. The goal here is to make these films available, to make sure that Criterion’s own work style doesn’t contribute to the continuing unavailability of these films. Once our producers and restoration crew get started on a Criterion edition, the project takes on a life of its own. Months later, with a little luck, we’ll have something really special to show for it, but at that rate we can’t make a dent in the number of important unreleased films that we’d like people to be able to see.

More than anything, I think the Dual Format wandering in the wilderness for 10 months probably has more to do with the Eclipse slow-down than anything. That was a major adjustment - twice - for them, and then you add on top quite a few pretty substantial mainline box sets over the last 12-18 months, and there's all their time right there.

Ashirg wrote:The Golden Age of Television should have never been released cause it can't be mastered in HD. They should just erase all those tapes...

That is the most inane thing I've ever read.

MrGregoryArkadin wrote:

Ashirg wrote:The Golden Age of Television should have never been released cause it can't be mastered in HD. They should just erase all those tapes...

That is the most inane thing I've ever read.

I hate to invoke Poe's Law for the second time in two days, but yeah, Poe's Law.

Peter Becker wrote:The goal here is to make these films available, to make sure that Criterion’s own work style doesn’t contribute to the continuing unavailability of these films.

While I recognize and respect that some here have a strong preference for discs, if the above is Criterion's goal, that goal really is served much better by getting things out on Hulu/other streaming quickly, easily, and cheaply, and then devoting the marginal production resources freed up to produce additional mainline titles. (But I personally don't have a stake, as I've never been an active Eclipse buyer or Hulu subscriber, since my kevyip is already enough to keep me busy for the next decade.)

Discs wouldn't matter as much to me if Criterion were prepared to make all of their HuluPlus and Eclipse offerings available à la carte and, of course, reasonably priced as HD files for purchase through etailers like iTunes and Amazon or even exclusively from their own website (because who needs a middle man).

MrGregoryArkadin wrote:

Ashirg wrote:The Golden Age of Television should have never been released cause it can't be mastered in HD. They should just erase all those tapes...

That is the most inane thing I've ever read.

Your sarcasm detector needs to be fixed ASAP.

I hate only having access to things via streaming- streaming is nice and all, but it's also vulnerable to any future changes in who owns the rights, internet access, having a system you can easily connect to whatever streaming service, and generally not being as controllable on my end as a disc that I can do whatever I want with. If I weren't an obsessive weirdo salting away a massive collection of home media I might never get the chance to watch, I wouldnt' be on this forum in the first place.

I completely agree when it comes to films I need to have access to at arm's reach because they're personal favorites, or maybe one or two notches below "personal favorites." But personally, I don't mind needing to root around to see a film that I might only watch once or twice in my lifetime rather than purchase a $60 boxset for it. If an Eclipse set I find interesting is going OOP - sure, that makes sense to pick up since the film's going to be much more scarce. But if there's an Eclipse set and a Hulu Plus entry, I'm not knocking anyone over to buy a featureless DVD set to get at a film that I can otherwise access - until I know for a fact that I can't. Now, the Tati or Demy sets - those are film courses in a box and have a lot more value to me, even if I might only watch M. Hulot's Holiday (for example - I actually love that film) once or twice, because there's a ton of bonus material there that I can't find anywhere else and remastered Blu-ray quality video and audio. The Eclipse sets are scattershot in that respect, and don't offer more than the films - and if I can just stream, to give another example, Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell - I'll do that and keep the cash in my pocket for a main-line release. That wasn't the case before Criterion introduced the Streaming Service That Shall Not Be Named On This Forum, but it is now.

Discs Forever, Streaming Never

OK. I don't think there's anything that's rationally wrong with my perspective on this as long as I have a realistic expectation of the availability of the streaming product going away (I'll never part with something like, say, my The X-Files boxset regardless of its presence on Netflix because it's got value to me for the features and packaging regardless of whether it stays up on Netflix forever or not). But OK.

I used to burn dozens of albums I downloaded while doing a college radio show, but I always found that albums that I didn't OWN never made it into regular rotation. Once I bought a copy, it frequently would.

I could never get through a Netflix instant or Hulu Plus queue when I had one. I've had a dozen films on my DVR queue for months. If I don't own it, there's no real impetus drawing me to watch it. That, plus permanence and higher quality always leave me soundly in the "better to own" camp.

In addition to preferring tangible discs to ephemeral streaming, purely selfishly I was glad to get something like the When Horror Came To Shochiku box, as Region 1 coding for me is much easier to deal with than figuring out how to get Hulu from outside the US.

(And my only, albeit major, issue with the "Late Ray" box was the way that it relegated perhaps his best 'late film', Branches Of The Tree, to the wilderness)

I like my Criterion closet, sorry streaming.

matrixschmatrix wrote:I hate only having access to things via streaming- streaming is nice and all, but it's also vulnerable to any future changes in who owns the rights, internet access, having a system you can easily connect to whatever streaming service, and generally not being as controllable on my end as a disc that I can do whatever I want with. If I weren't an obsessive weirdo salting away a massive collection of home media I might never get the chance to watch, I wouldnt' be on this forum in the first place.

This. I stream too, sure, but herein lies the whole rationale for owning physical media. YOU control it forever. This is important to me, and also why expiring digital copies are total BS.

Linklater confirms Boyhood as a forthcoming Criterion title.

I hope it won't be another "barebones first, special edition later" release.

The New Yorker just did a profile on me and I just happened to have that Criterion shirt on. I thought I would change the shirt but they liked it so I kept it on. So then I told Peter Becker, the head of Criterion, hey I got my Criterion shirt in the New Yorker. Give me that Jacques Demy boxset. He told me it’s on its way. (laughs)

Awesome.

criterionsnob wrote:Linklater confirms Boyhood as a forthcoming Criterion title.

Seemed very likely, but damn exciting to have this confirmed.

eerik wrote: I hope it won't be another "barebones first, special edition later" release.

Hasn't this only happened with Blue is the Warmest Color so far? Speaking of, when are they gonna get around to updating that?

What would have been the point of an early barebones release if a fully stacked release was going to come out shortly thereafter? Most new films take a few years for the Criterion edition to come out (e.g. Secret Sunshine, Like Someone in Love) and I'd be surprised if that didn't prove to be the case here as well.