criterionforum.org

Do you think the book will eventually be sold via Amazon?

This pesky CC Store does not ship to Post Boxes, and that's really the only way I can get my hands on it!

You could, er, have it delivered to my house, and I'll bring it right over.

adnankhan wrote:Do you think the book will eventually be sold via Amazon?

This pesky CC Store does not ship to Post Boxes, and that's really the only way I can get my hands on it!

It doesnt say its an exclusive on the site. amazon might get it...

Living in "Non-English Canada", I'm hoping that amazon will get it. They have the book+dvd so odds are good for the book only.

Can you provide the link to Amazon.ca book+dvd? I can't seem to find it. I searched "essential arthouse", "janus", "50 years janus" - nothing. I'd really appreciate it.

Also, the reason Criterion can't ship directly to Quebec customers is that because Quebec's government departments are socialist to all hell, and technically, every DVD sold within the province has to have a sticker certifying it from our Video/Film department with a Quebec rating (yes, Quebec rates their own movies outside of the Canadian ratings system). Of course, it's a completely flawed system as they can't track stuff people buy online thus it only affects brick and mortar stores where Criterion titles are treated like "imports" because no Quebec distributor as far as I know carries Criterion titles directly.

Antoine Doinel wrote:Can you provide the link to Amazon.ca book+dvd? I can't seem to find it. I searched "essential arthouse", "janus", "50 years janus" - nothing. I'd really appreciate it.

Here you go: amazon.com

SncDthMnky wrote:It doesnt say its an exclusive on the site. amazon might get it...

It does appear to be exclusive [for the time being(?)].

The site says "Offer exclusive to the Criterion Collection Store" at the bottom of the product details.

the shipping/shirt offer is exclusive, the set is not. it can be found on DeepDiscountDVD.com, among others.

domino harvey wrote:the shipping/shirt offer is exclusive, the set is not. it can be found on DeepDiscountDVD.com, among others.

I think the above conversation refers to the availability of the book alone. At least that's the conclusion I came to after I read it about half-a-dozen times.

My book arrived in Braille, but the dvd's feel so good I want to regurgitate tonight's tomato soup supper all over them.

bunuelian wrote:My book arrived in Braille, but the dvd's feel so good I want to regurgitate tonight's tomato soup supper all over them.

Do the discs have the Criterion same extras?

Matt wrote:I think the above conversation refers to the availability of the book alone. At least that's the conclusion I came to after I read it about half-a-dozen times.

Yes. That is correct. The book only was the subject of that conversation. If I was unclear, I etc. etc. etc.

When i opened amazon.com tonight, it showed me 3 DVDs I had viewed druing the last day and the % of people who have bought the DVD after looking at the listing. To no surprise, The Essential Art House set has 0% of purchase. I wonder if that number will send a message to Criterion.

Yeah, I'll be getting the book--if only because it will inspire me to buy a coffee table--but that set just has too many DVDs your standard film fan (the kind who has that kind of money devoted to the cause) would already have.

At first I thought it was ridiculous, but then I realized how rarely I actually watch most special features (and almost never listen to commentaries), and now I'm considering it. Also, since it looks like it's just me and Antoine Doinel, that's pretty good odds for the raffle. And that Venture Bros. finale the other night has me seriously craving some potentially free Bowie.

Well, your odds just got better since I can't order the damn thing because I'm a Canadian citizen. It seems we don't exist for Criterion north of the border.

Antoine Doinel wrote:Well, your odds just got better since I can't order the damn thing because I'm a Canadian citizen. It seems we don't exist for Criterion north of the border.

I doubt they are deliberately excluding Canadians. It probably has more to do with issues involving rights have been acquired by other companies for the Canadian market.

It seems that Amazon.com doesn't sell the book/dvd set anymore. Fortunately, i was able to pre-order the book separately, since Criterion now consider us puertoricans as equals and will even gladly ship to the territory for free.

I bet no one bought, maybe they just returned the sets.

Andre Jurieu wrote:I doubt they are deliberately excluding Canadians. It probably has more to do with issues involving rights have been acquired by other companies for the Canadian market.

The regular Criterion edition of these titles are available without any problems in Canada. I think it's more of a shipping issue. I'm sure sending a $500 DVD set across the border UPS would cause customs/duty problems.

Not sure if this is new news, but the book is now available at Criterion's store seperately at $65. Sorry if this was mentioned, i'm lazy.

Cinephrenic wrote:Not sure if this is new news, but the book is now available at Criterion's store seperately at $65. Sorry if this was mentioned, i'm lazy.

Well, some of us are still waiting for Amazon to pick it up...

No real information for us, other than the fact that it is "confirmation" that the rest of the films are eventually coming to CC...

Presenting some of the greatest films ever

"We didn't make it for the true Criterion fan. It wasn't our goal for the people who had 80 percent of the films to make them buy this to get the other 20 percent," Turell said.

Criterion will continue to release its own editions of films in the "Essential Art House" set, Turell said. The set was created for cinema lovers who want an instant collection of some of the world's greatest films, Turell and Becker said.

Here's the whole article, for archival purposes (and for the lazy):

Presenting some of the greatest films ever
POSTED: 3:41 p.m. EDT, October 26, 2006

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- You need only hear their last names -- Bergman, Fellini, Truffaut, Kurosawa -- to know you're in the company of the giants of international cinema.

The pioneering distributor that has kept good company with these and other premier filmmakers is celebrating half a century of foreign classics with the mammoth DVD collection "Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films," which was released Tuesday.

The set gathers 50 DVDs of films Janus has brought to U.S. audiences, among them Ingmar Bergman's "The Virgin Spring" and "Wild Strawberries," Federico Fellini's "The White Sheik" and "La Strada," Francois Truffaut's "The Four Hundred Blows" and "Jules and Jim" and Akira Kurosawa's "Rashomon" and "Seven Samurai."

The set comes with a 240-page book with background on the movies and Janus Films, including an essay of appreciation by Martin Scorsese.

"We wanted to put something up on the shelves to really get a sense of what that film heritage means," said Peter Becker, president of DVD label Criterion, the sister company of Janus. "It's so staggeringly impressive, the group of films that this company over the course of 50 years had the honor and responsibility of representing here in the U.S."

Other films in the set include Alfred Hitchcock's "The Lady Vanishes" and "The Thirty-Nine Steps," Luis Bunuel's "Viridiana," Jean Renoir's "The Rules of the Game," Sergei Eisenstein's "Alexander Nevsky," Fritz Lang's "M," Yasujiro Ozu's "Floating Weeds" and Marcel Camus' "Black Orpheus."

The set is expensive, with a list price of $850, though it's available in the $600 to $650 range at various online retailers, including Janus' own Web site. Given the breadth of the package, it works out to a bargain price of $12 to $13 a film, said Becker and Jonathan Turell, managing director of Janus Films and chief executive officer of Criterion.

Most films in the set are available separately in Criterion editions. The "Essential Art House" versions are just the movies, though, without the audio commentaries, background documentaries and other extras in the elaborate Criterion releases.

"We didn't make it for the true Criterion fan. It wasn't our goal for the people who had 80 percent of the films to make them buy this to get the other 20 percent," Turell said.

Criterion will continue to release its own editions of films in the "Essential Art House" set, Turell said. The set was created for cinema lovers who want an instant collection of some of the world's greatest films, Turell and Becker said.
Touring the country

Janus was founded in 1956 by Bryant Haliday and Cyrus Harvey, who had begun showing foreign films a few years earlier at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They quickly established Janus as the top domestic distributor of overseas cinema, releasing films by Bergman, Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni and Andrzej Wajda.

Saul Turell and William Becker, fathers of Janus Films' current caretakers, bought the company in 1965, continuing to release new foreign films as well as acquiring classics from decades past for the Janus library.

"Essential Art House" features three documentaries made by Saul Turell, "The Great Chase," presenting classic pursuit sequences from silent films; "The Love Goddesses," examining sexy screen sirens; and the portrait "Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist."

Selections from the company's catalog have been playing in a Janus Films retrospective at New York's Lincoln Center. A Janus retrospective opened Wednesday at Cambridge's Brattle, with similar Janus film series touring through next year in Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Toronto and other cities.

One of the hardest tasks in assembling the set was narrowing the film selection down from about 90 Janus titles initially considered for the package, Becker and Turell said.

"You never want to leave any of your children out, but it was easier since we weren't putting the children up for adoption. The films we didn't include were still in the library," Turell said. "I haven't lost any sleep thinking, oh my God, 'Lord of the Flies' isn't in here, 'Three Penny Opera' isn't in here.

"It's not that this list is the 50 greatest. It's a great introduction to some of the greatest movies of all time."

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press

Turell wrote: "I haven't lost any sleep thinking, oh my God, 'Lord of the Flies' isn't in here, 'Three Penny Opera' isn't in here.

Duh..duh..DUH!

-Toilet Dcuk

toiletduck! wrote:

Turell wrote: "I haven't lost any sleep thinking, oh my God, 'Lord of the Flies' isn't in here, 'Three Penny Opera' isn't in here.

Duh..duh..DUH!

Maybe they had it all planned and just forgot to release it. Like they keep forgetting to include booklets and forgetting to include scenes in some movies or the right dialogue in others.