Criterion & Eclipse Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on Vol.4

[cdnchris]

When a boxset like this contains movies in individual cases, do they usually all have a individual booklets?

Yes. The ones in here are about 12-pages each.

[ianungstad]

Just a head's up for any Canadians who are planning on buying the Benjamin Button disc. While the image on sites like amazon.ca show the cover for the American release, apparently the Canadian edition of Benjamin Button has the bilingual packaging on it, which all the text is additionally repeated in French. I know that for some people this is a problem as all the extra French text on the packaging can make it look quite unappealing, obscuring the artwork, etc.

If it's an issue, you should consider cancelling pre-orders and ordering from a US retailer.

[James]

It's not a top priority of mine, but I just bought Seven Samurai used for $35 with some store credit at a record store in L.A., and the slipcover has some wear and tear (the cover seems to have some slight rips revealing the white paper underneath, especially on the spine). Does anybody know if Criterion replaces these free or for cheap if you send the bad one in?

[cdnchris]

Packaging for The Friends of Eddie Coyle

FYI, the booklet is 42-pages

[kaujot]

Yowzah.

[cdnchris]

Just a head's up for any Canadians who are planning on buying the Benjamin Button disc. While the image on sites like amazon.ca show the cover for the American release, apparently the Canadian edition of Benjamin Button has the bilingual packaging on it, which all the text is additionally repeated in French. I know that for some people this is a problem as all the extra French text on the packaging can make it look quite unappealing, obscuring the artwork, etc.

If it's an issue, you should consider cancelling pre-orders and ordering from a US retailer.

This isn't a big surprise. Paramount is actually handling everything about this title, including packaging, and distribution and they unfortunately use bilingual packaging in Canada (as petty as it is, that was one of the nice things about moving to the States.) Criterion has very little to do with this release and I can guarantee you they had nothing to do with the packaging/cover art. It's all Paramount using Criterion's templates for packaging and menu design, but some of their standards show through. If Criterion had any actual say on this release I suspect it was getting Kent Jones to write the essay (which is a pretty good essay, if brief.)

[visuallyimpaired]

I saw this advert in the window of a video store in Seattle so I snapped a pic of it. I kinda thought it was cool and a piece of Criterion ephemera I might want.

Has anybody ever seen it before?

[tholly]

Wow, that is awesome. I wonder if there is any way to get that in poster form?

[domino harvey]

It looks like that only collects in-house covers-- unless I missed one, none of the excellent Aesthetic Apparatus covers made it

[kaujot]

Which ones are those?

[domino harvey]

Off the top of my head: Eyes Without a Face, the Honeymoon Killers, Koko, the Testament of Dr Mabuse, Salvatore Giuliano, La Strada

[colinr0380]

Off the top of my head: Eyes Without a Face, the Honeymoon Killers, Koko, the Testament of Dr Mabuse, Salvatore Giuliano, La Strada

Though the poster seems to only be collecting the more recent Wacky C branded covers too, so those could also have been eliminated for those reasons.

[domino harvey]

Ah, I suspect you're right!

[Mr. Ned]

What do you think Criterion will do with the packaging of the Bergman: Four Masterworks box set now that The Seventh Seal has been re-released? Will they produce the set with the new DVD or will they stay with the older one? I only ask because I've been meaning to pick the set up but the cheap price of the re-release is so tempting I may splurge and buy both.

[Anthony]

I saw this advert in the window of a video store in Seattle so I snapped a pic of it. I kinda thought it was cool and a piece of Criterion ephemera I might want.

Has anybody ever seen it before?

I used to live in the Seattle area. I'm going to bet you saw that poster in the window of Scarecrow Video.

[visuallyimpaired]

I used to live in the Seattle area. I'm going to bet you saw that poster in the window of Scarecrow Video.

I was in Seattle to see the Leonard Cohen concert a few weeks ago. The video store was very near 1st and Pike, right near the Market.

[cdnchris]

I think I know the place. They sell mostly used videos, don't they?

[stwrt]

Re The Friends of Eddie Coyle:

It would have been much better to have the illustrated poster (seen on the Beaver review) as DVD cover rather than actors' heads. Almost always it would be better to have the film posters as covers (how much better would the James Bonds look with those cool posters ?) Maybe they're unavailable.

[so lightly here]

Re The Friends of Eddie Coyle:

It would have been much better to have the illustrated poster (seen on the Beaver review) as DVD cover rather than actors' heads. Almost always it would be better to have the film posters as covers (how much better would the James Bonds look with those cool posters ?) Maybe they're unavailable.

Criterion has made their mark with their fastidious attention to detail, the most present and obvious is that of their covers. It is precisely because they rarely use variations of posters that has gotten them much attention. A poster is a poster. A DVD cover is quite another animal. I know I look forward each month to see not only what titles are going to be announced, but how those titles are going to be presented. We may not alway agree with them, but by the number of pages to this thread it is easy to see how much attention the CC covers get!

So with that, I graciously disagree with you on this subject.

[domino harvey]

The only reason there are pages and pages is because they keep doing it wrong. Look at MOC, where 95% of the covers are excellent and most if not all are variations of original poster art. People don't bitch about MOC covers because they're simply indisputably (for most of us at least) of higher quality

[jbeall]

"Indisputably" might be a little too strong. Some MoC covers are simply phenomenal, but then again, when Criterion gets it right, their covers can be a lot better than poster art--I definitely think Criterion's Sansho the Bailiff is better than MoC's corresponding cover. Criterion's 49th Parallel is fantastic (if only the movie were as good!) and the Dassin films (Thieves' Highway and Night and the City) are some of the best work they've done.

Rather, since MoC has a stated policy of going after poster art for their covers, there's less to complain about when it doesn't work. We can only assume they found the best poster available, and there's no art dept. to rip.

[domino harvey]

I'm thinking more recently, when it's become apparent that Criterion has been doing more work in-house, the best covers have invariably been those they farmed out (Miss Julie) or repurposed original art (Magnificent Obsession). Back when they were defining what a Criterion release looked like instead of struggling to maintain said distinction, they really were something special

[Thomas J.]

Re The Friends of Eddie Coyle:

It would have been much better to have the illustrated poster (seen on the Beaver review) as DVD cover rather than actors' heads. Almost always it would be better to have the film posters as covers (how much better would the James Bonds look with those cool posters ?) Maybe they're unavailable.

Criterion has made their mark with their fastidious attention to detail, the most present and obvious is that of their covers. It is precisely because they rarely use variations of posters that has gotten them much attention. A poster is a poster. A DVD cover is quite another animal. I know I look forward each month to see not only what titles are going to be announced, but how those titles are going to be presented. We may not alway agree with them, but by the number of pages to this thread it is easy to see how much attention the CC covers get!

So with that, I graciously disagree with you on this subject.

I disagree. Their policy should be to always use original theatrical art, since it conveys to today's audiences how the film was originally marketed. To commission new artwork with contemporary artistic sensibilities is to mislead or at least subtly inaccurately contextualize the film from a marketing perspective.

I'm aware of the counter-argument. The original theatrical poster was never meant to be condensed down to DVD cover size, nor is it always aesthetically pleasing or even possible to extend the poster art around the length of the DVD cover itself, let alone to use it as a baseline for the DVD's menu design, etc. (i.e. to use the old poster as a baseline for cutting edge DVD menu design -- I admit it's intellectually dodgy). However, if one, generally speaking, is going to argue that the poster was never meant to be shrunken down to DVD size, one could also argue the film was never meant to be viewed on contemporary home theater systems. Why not just continue the logic? But, obviously, I don't hear about many people abstaining from watching movies at home as a matter of principle (well, come to think of it, there is Ms. Rosner...) Therefore, while I acknowledge the counter-argument, I don't think it's logicially internally consistent, so it falls apart for me.

I really think, after considering all sides, original theatrical artwork is the way to go, as it presents its own extra of sorts in that it depicts how the film was originally marketed to audiences. Whereas we're gluttons for original trailers for this same reason in that it shows us how the film was originally marketed, shouldn't we also extend such acceptance criteria of extras to DVD covers -- why are DVD covers allowed to be revisionist marketing devices when nothing else about the intellectual content of the package (e.g. image, sound, cut, etc.) is? Sure, there are re-release trailers, but I think most of us get miffed when DVD producers solely put the re-release trailer on the DVD, eschewing the original trailer.

But let's be honest -- the reason Criterion does it is because it gets people wrapped around their finger -- it markets Criterion rather than the films.

[oldsheperd]

I can see your point Thomas J. however you need to take into account that those original posters were created before the film reach any stage of iconic status. Therefore to use the original poster art for each and every film would not be a proper representation of the film's status in the art form.

Take for example if Criterion were to release something like Citizen Kane. I would much rather have a still from the film or artists' conception rather than the original artwork which imo says nothing about the movie in any sense.

Now, granted, with some films like Mon Oncle, the poster art does work but it's really mix and match.

[domino harvey]

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