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Never thought I would see the Visa logo on the back of a cover

None of these except Beau Travail are anything special. I know it's part of a boxset with special theming, but anything except the original poster was going to be a disappointment for Soleil Ô

None of them are particularly bad though. Aside from the unnecessary dots between words, The Elephant Man is great.

The Beau travail one strikes me as mysterious and erotic. I like it quite a bit.

Shadow = mysterious, nipple = erotic

swo17 wrote: Mon Jun 15, 2020 9:02 pm Shadow = mysterious, nipple = erotic

The nipple mention is a bit too specific, and it's entirely up to you, as it's not what prompted my comment. Yes, it's a simple cover. Thanks for the condescending and unasked-for explanation. That's all one asks for when giving an opinion on these boards.

I didn't meant to come across as condescending but I can see how my comment could be taken that way. Sorry.

In some ways though, the Beau Travail cover feels quite minimalistic but a tad cliché in its conception. It does feel like it resorts to very common visual tropes to, indeed, feel mysterious and erotic, but I suppose it works very well since that's indeed what it conveys.
It reminds me of Gaumont's Querelle cover.

tenia wrote: Tue Jun 16, 2020 7:30 am In some ways though, the Beau Travail cover feels quite minimalistic but a tad cliché in its conception. It does feel like it resorts to very common visual tropes to, indeed, feel mysterious and erotic, but I suppose it works very well since that's indeed what it conveys.
It reminds me of Gaumont's Querelle cover.

I agree. Not necessarily visually innovative, but it works for me. In fact, I think it's my new favorite shirtless Criterion cover, to use a totally natural and not at all contrived category. (I'm sure someone is maintaining a list of all the covers with partial nudity.)

I think Beau travail might just be the gayest Blu-Ray cover ever. I haven’t seen the movie but I think they conveyed enough with the cover to convince me I should.

Someone on reddit emailed Criterion and asked about the size of the Varda box and was told "7 x 1.5 x 8 inches." And someone else there created a mock up to compare the size to the Zatoichi set, a regular Blu-ray, an Eclipse set and the Bergman set.

It would be nice if they tried to standardize it, instead of every single special release looking completely disjointed from one another to struggle to fit on the same shelf (Del Toro, Olympics, Bergman, Godzilla all not really working in unison)

I own the Olympics, Bergman, Zatoichi and Del Toro sets, and I ended up storing them in 4 different places because of that, none of them being in my dedicated Criterion shelves. They're indeed as disjointed as they could be, but also so non-standard they don't fit with anything else. My Bergman set ended up with my oversized heavy sets, the Del Toro with my overly-square sets (I have some from Studio Canal and Wild Side like this, the Zatoichi with my sets (it's pretty much the only one that kind of fits a standard boxset dimension), and my Olympic sets is over the top of my shelf in its protective cardbox because it's too big to go with anything else and too light to go with my oversized sets.

cdnchris wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 6:03 pm Come and See

Ooh, region A and B

Yes, and it does play in my region B player (and my region A one as well, as one would hope).

this is the first time - I think - that besides some box set such as the I.Bergman box set) some Criterion Blu-Ray single titles are region A+B (but for instance, I had checked for "Shame" (the single release), the Blu-Ray was authored to be region A
Does that means and/or imply that in a not so distant future Criterion could move on and forget the region B UK line-up (with the UK stickers on it ?) :-k that could be a way to be able to export region B movies to Europe, and not worrying about the UK certification for some movies (War And Peace for instance) - it would be great if the US/Canadian titles, all the titles were region ALL.
I remember that in the DVD years, depending on (c), some Criterion were region ALL (Le Mépris, Solaris, D.A Pennebaker Monterey, etc...)

Rupert Pupkin wrote: Wed Jun 24, 2020 2:56 am... that could be a way to be able to export region B movies to Europe, and not worrying about the UK certification for some movies (War And Peace for instance)....

Last year I ran across a rumor on twitter that Criterion was going to repress either War and Peace or Andrei Rublev (or maybe it was both) as a Region A+B disc once the current pressing sells out. I didnt know the person who tweeted that, and didnt know how reliable they were, so I didnt post about it anywhere (and, stupidly, I didn't like the tweet so I haven't been able to find it again.)

This is indeed the first AB individual Criterion BD (ie Bergman set apart).

I'm not sure if it would change their sales much. Sure enough, it'll be easier to shift some copies oversees, but it will still only aim at people importing US releases, and I would tend to think most of this market is composed of people being Region Free anyway.

It won't prevent however (and of course) a willing UK release to be classified by the BBFC and cut if required, so any AB repress of Andrei Rublev would need to remain a US release to keep the movie uncut, and UK consumers would need to import it.

However, it does mean that Criterion might finally be coordinating more their US and UK branches (much more than Criterion moving in ways to "dropping" the UK line up), like Arrow has been doing for years now. But it might also make more visible their hesitations and changes of mind and all the screw ups from this still-poorly-coordinated UK branch.

Is there anywhere--on this site or the Internet at large--where earlier versions of Criterion covers are kept? Re-reading through the Mulholland Drive thread, I was reminded that they changed the cover but can't remember what the original cover was.

Amazing Goose wrote: Thu Jul 09, 2020 10:50 pm Is there anywhere--on this site or the Internet at large--where earlier versions of Criterion covers are kept? Re-reading through the Mulholland Drive thread, I was reminded that they changed the cover but can't remember what the original cover was.

AFAIK, I don’t think it was ever changed, but this link has the alternate designs that Criterion didn’t go with.

Criterion Dungeon used to have them all from the olden days, but I suspect that site no longer exists

For Mulholland Dr., I do recall seeing alternate covers but I remember them being shared after the disc's release, as a peek into the designer/artist's rejected attempts (some of them rejected by Lynch IIRC), rather than there being any previously announced cover that was changed (a la Tree of Life, Viridiana etc.).