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I can’t imagine Criterion need’s to prioritize Lathan’s starring role in AvP to draw in her fan base, Love & Basketball is a well known movie in black homes/kids who grew up in the 2000s. In the early 2000’s a lot people had this on DVD. It’s probably the best sports movie since Rudy. It would be unfortunate to lump this into a woke Criterion conversation, it never felt like a movie marketed as a “black movie.” It did drive me crazy that Omar was so short and playing a 2 guard, but Iverson pretty much helped tear down our notion of what a position player was…

Bill Simmons and Jemele Hill did an amazing podcast on this film too, I can’t imagine any extra topping their discussion.

I've noticed that on their sell sheets, Criterion tends to put actors' and filmmakers' other works in the description, but never the actual product. I wouldn't be surprised if they merely copied the online description from the sell sheet, and the actual release won't have them there.

yoloswegmaster wrote: Wed Jun 16, 2021 2:30 pmJust go to reddit or to the bluray.com forums, plenty of comments saying that there saying that they are "too woke" for releasing a film directed by a Black person. Thankfully, a lot of people seem to be counteracting against this by making fun of said comments.

Complaining that Criterion is too "woke" for releasing black-helmed films is, obviously, stupid.

But I do wonder how well a blu-ray like this will do for them. I wonder about the extent to which Criterion's fanbase is really going to go for Love and Basketball, The Signifying Work of Marlon Riggs, Deep Cover, Pariah, etc. I wonder if Criterion expects these to be successful, or if these releases are more about overall brand maintenance.

I think it's good either way.

Of course they expect these releases to be successful- while their ethos is primed at expanding awareness to great cinema rather than only sales, they absolutely expect the films they release to garner sales due to their cult demographic of cinephiles willing to discover. Yes, there are obvious disparities between those titles you listed and something like The Breakfast Club, which already has a cult fanbase and will help fund other releases with a larger catchman reach, but I imagine The Signifyin' Works of Marlon Riggs will attract a similar number of consumers who blind-bought other unseen multi-film sets that sounded interesting in the past, and Deep Cover is like a culturally-nuanced and philosophically-mature Abel Ferrara crime film. It's definitely reaching an audience beyond POC "brand maintenance" (perhaps ironically to your point, especially once some people realize there's a Jeff Goldblum film out there they haven't seen yet).

English language film about popular sport staring pretty people is probably an easier sale to people outside the base fanship than big, gay, Italian nazi film.

Edit: what he said

I expect this release and Van Peebles would comfortably be the highest selling of the announced titles for August or September - This movie is like, a real, proper, modern classic a ton of people love and should be one of their biggest releases of the year.

I would assume that the Marlon Riggs set will also have strong sales to Universities and libraries.

Thankfully my local library buys every Criterion release, but I also noticed that they had 16 copies of 1917 the other day, so I'm not sure taste is the qualifier

I genuinely hope you're all right. I hope people buy these.

To go off Ribs' point, I believe I heard that L&B was one of New Line's biggest-selling DVDs, so there's clearly an audience for this one even beyond the normal Criterion market.

I remember back when Facebook was rather new and strictly for university email addresses, you would list favorite movies, books, etc. under their proper heading. Nearly everybody in my school listed Love & Basketball to the point where it became a common joke among my friends there. It's immensely popular.

I missed this (a movie with the name of a sport in its title is like kryptonite to me) but my wife LOVES this movie and I know she watched it on repeat back in the day. She's pretty excited about this one so I'm sure this will appeal to others.

For something this popular it has a small user rating on both Letterboxd and IMDB. Only 15,876 have logged it in on LB and only 19,384 have rated it on IMDB. Now this isn't the kind of movie that generally speaking would appeal to the kind of people that make up those sites. Probably not the best metric for the popularity of the film as this seems like a situation where it's more popular with the general public than those who would care to rate movies on the internet.

The second commentary on the original DVD, with Prince-Bythewood, Terilyn A. Shropshire, and Terence Blanchard, has been added to the supplements.

In addition to the second commentary mentioned above, there's now this:

New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director Gina Prince-Bythewood, featuring additional footage cut from the original release and 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray

Running time appears to be the same as all previous releases - 125 minutes. I'm wondering if some scenes were toned down for a PG-13, and now they're reinstating material that would have originally got it an R?

Also, the short film Bowl of Pork has been dropped (possibly unclearable?), and new commentary has been added to the deleted scenes.

Well, the PG-13 version includes a sex scene that features the entire act from undressing to completion. It gets away this by using the ever popular "missionary style while woman wears hands as brassiere and lower halves are under a blanket" position